Running this with your forum? Set up a constitution round. You can edit every tenet before it goes out, and members respond with their own private copy.
The page below is the self-serve pass: mark it yourself and assemble the document on the spot.
Introduce the constitution at your first meeting. Practice the norms live for the first few months. Run the distributed round around month three or four, once the group knows each other. Review it together once a year. See a sample finished constitution: a fictional forum’s marks, notes, and the moderator’s copy.
Purpose and confidentiality are richer discussed in the room. Schedule, retreat format, and attendance gather well through the round.
Each tenet below is written the way it will appear in your finished constitution. Mark your position on each one, and add a note wherever you have a hesitation.
This is not a vote. A tenet goes into the document as written unless one member says they cannot live with it, and one member is enough to send it back to the group. Mark by what you can work with, not by what you’d prefer. “Can live with it” means it isn’t your preference, but you can work with it. “Hesitation” means: I don’t want this, but I’ll follow it. Your note is printed under the tenet with no name attached (though in a small forum, members may guess). “Can’t live with it” is for a tenet that would do real harm to the forum or to your part in it — not for a wording you merely like less. It goes to the moderator with your reason, and the tenet waits until the group has talked it through. Your mark covers the whole tenet: if you support one line and not another, say which line in your note. Answers stay private until everyone has finished.