Evolution of Rules in Reddit Communities

Reddit communities (subreddits) govern themselves through rules. Existing work does not study how rules change within a subreddit, and when different types of rules are added since subreddit creation. As current datasets lack information about subreddits’ past rules, we present an approach to get all rules in the history of a subreddit using the Wayback Machine, and study rule trajectories within 496 subreddits. We find that at least 50% of the first rule additions occurred in less than a year from subreddit creation. Rules about civility and relevance are most common in the first rules. In contrast, rules that prohibit certain content are frequently added over time. Studying rule trajectories can help us answer whether early rule establishment helps with community success, improving key factors like user retention, norm compliance, and overall desirable behavior within the subreddit.