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The answer here is that the community leaders/moderation team must enforce the social norms of the community early and rigorously. Any community will naturally self-select towards the kind of people who are ok staying within the established social norms – new people who don’t feel comfortable within those norms will bounce off, while those who do feel comfortable within those norms will likely stay. Over time, these norms can drift similar to how the Overton Window famously shifts over time, but the early days of the community are where the norms are established.
This means that establishing community rules early on of publicly encouraging behavior you want and publicly discouraging the kind of behavior you don’t want sets up early guard rails so that newcomers understand what is ok and what isn’t. There was a really interesting talk some Riot developers gave about community policing and recidivism rates (how often a community member acts out again after being actioned for toxic behavior), and the most common response after being actioned for the first time from the player was “I didn’t know I couldn’t do that here”. Establishing these kind of norms early will help guide newcomers to understand the etiquette and rules of your community. Enforcing them will keep things going in the right direction.
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