This is a common question. However, it is poorly phrased.
What does it mean to be sustainable? And is this definition agreed upon? This reflection often kills any chance of productive conversation because people tend to not want to waste time (see academia).
So I'd like to ask other questions instead, with some analysis; and am requesting for comments to improve the state of online communities.
From this point forward, when I say "sustainable", I mean:
- content MAY be shared.
There is no requirement for people in a community to participate. There is also no requirement for a community to share content with (non-)participants. This allows for communities to implement tit-for-tat to combat leeches, if need be. It also allows for individuals to implement tit-for-tat to combat bad-faith actors, if need be.
- content MUST NOT be revoked.
Once shared, content must not be censored, edited, locked, removed, nor re-shared. In other words, no revoking of shared content in any way. This closes the door to many avenues of community abuse.
- free labor is NOT needed.
A community cannot survive in a productive form if it requires free labor to exist. People need food to survive, and can move on to new ventures. If there is not an system to promptly replace community leaders and resources, the system will be compromised. Managing your own content is NOT free labor.
- moderation MUST NOT take more steps than it took to engage.
If I make one comment, it should take no more than one command to moderate the entire comment. If I make three comments, it should take no more than three commands to moderate all of them.
- new users MUST NOT be discriminated against.
Any method which uses account age, or any metric directly related to account age (i.e karma), must not be used - under any circumstance. It cannot be understated how fast this will kill a productive community. If moderation is needed, seek other methods.
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What are common ways sustainable communities fall apart?
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Is a code-of-conduct useful in online environments?
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Can communities stay sustainable without censorship? If so, how are people held accountable?
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How can communities combat bad-faith actors without censorship? (Bots, rage-bait, etc)
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Are hybrid (join in-person, speak online) communities a sustainable model?
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Does content length affect how sustainable a community is?
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Should communities have backup websites in-case their chosen platform goes haywire?
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to create a generalized guideline for online communities. They exist in all shapes and sizes (i.e r/politics, microblogs, friend-group's discord server) and are run by people of different motivation.
In practice, creating a guideline may be worthless. However, for theoretical purposes and platform development, it may be extremely useful. For the developers out there, imagine POSIX for online-community tools or Conventional-Commits for posts.
This is an extremely rough and disjointed draft. Let's make it better.