Even the smallest projects need some kind of communications guidelines. Communications guidelines help users and contributors know how best to reach maintainers and help maintainers set expectations for users and contributors.
Think about who is in your community and what kinds of questions they might have. Where should they go with their questions? When can they expect to get answers or responses? What should they do if they have an urgent problem or haven't received a response? This is the kind of information typically included in communications guidelines.
Ideally, communications guidelines should reduce the amount of time maintainers spend managing questions and channels, by allowing users and contributors to manage themselves.
Typical information includes:
- Instructions for joining discussion channels, such as Slack or mailing lists
- Tags that are used on StackOverflow or other Q&A sites
- Links to specific kinds of communications templates (like issue templates or security vulnerability reporting templates)
- Explicit statements about community communications norms. For example, you may state that rude or unkind requests will be ignored or deleted without response, or that job postings are only allowed in one specific channel.