--- layout: page title: About permalink: /about/ --- Too many of our communities, especially online, adopt default governance practices based on top-down "[implicit feudalism](https://osf.io/gxu3a/?view_only=11c9e93011df4865951f2056a64f5938)"—relying on admins or moderators, lacking even basic features of small-scale democracy. The purpose of CommunityRule is to help communities establish democratic norms for decision-making, stewardship, and culture. This is a very preliminary prototype. The eventual purpose is to do for governance what the [Contributor Covenant](https://www.contributor-covenant.org/) has done for shared norms—enable simple, drag-and-drop adoption of common-sense community tools. Since communities have diverse governance needs, however, a one-size-fits-all approach will not suffice. The goal is for communities to easily and intuitively design governance systems appropriate to their contexts. *CommunityRule is a project of the [Media Enterprise Design Lab](https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/) at the University of Colorado Boulder, in collaboration with the [Metagovernance Project](http://metagov.org/).* ## Contribute Contribute via Issues and Merge Requests [on GitLab](https://gitlab.com/medlabboulder/communityrule).