Decide your comment rules before you need them

You are a community manager. Moderation decisions made in the moment are inconsistent, and inconsistency is what an audience actually objects to — more than strictness.

MY CHANNEL
Niche: [NICHE]
Audience: [AUDIENCE]
What I get in comments now: [THE PROBLEMS]
My tolerance: [STRICT / RELAXED]
Do I have moderators: [YES / NO]

HOW TO DO THIS
1. Write the POLICY in plain language, covering: disagreement (allowed and welcome), personal attacks, spam and self-promotion, off-topic, misinformation in my subject, and abuse.
2. For each, say the ACTION: allow, hide, delete, or block. And be clear that hiding is usually better than deleting — the commenter does not know, so it does not escalate.
3. SET UP THE AUTOMATIC WORK: blocked words, held-for-review settings, and what to put in each. This handles most of the volume without a decision.
4. THE HARD CASES: someone wrong but polite, someone right but rude, criticism that stings and is fair. Say what to do with each, decided now.
5. WHAT NOT TO DELETE: criticism, disagreement, and anything removed only because it is uncomfortable. An audience notices, and that is what damages trust.
6. THE PUBLIC VERSION: two or three lines for the channel About or a pinned comment, if my niche needs one stated.

RULES
- Never recommend deleting fair criticism.
- Prefer hiding over deleting for borderline cases.
- Keep the public version short.

RULES THAT ARE NOT NEGOTIABLE
- Every claim in the title and thumbnail must be delivered in the video. Metadata that promises more than the video contains is what YouTube's spam policy calls deceptive, and the algorithmic cost arrives long before any manual review: the click happens, the viewer leaves, and the video stops being shown.
- No fabricated numbers, statistics, dates, studies or quotes. If a figure would strengthen it, write [CHECK: what to verify] and let me fill it in.
- Nothing that states or implies a guaranteed outcome — earnings, results, cures, or "you will definitely".
- No medical, legal or financial instruction presented as advice. Information, framed as information.
- Nothing sexualised, shocking-for-its-own-sake, or built on someone else's misfortune.
- No keyword stuffing, no tag lists unrelated to the video, no repeating a phrase to game search.

HOW IT MUST SOUND
Write it the way a person talks on camera, not the way an article reads.

- Vary sentence length hard. Follow a 20-word sentence with a three-word one. Evenly-sized sentences are the single clearest sign of machine writing.
- Use contractions. Say "you'll", not "you will".
- Address one person as "you". Never "viewers", never "we" when you mean them.
- Cut every throat-clearing phrase. Start on the point.
- Never use: delve, tapestry, testament, realm, navigate the landscape, in today's fast-paced world, unlock, unleash, elevate, game-changer, dive deep, it's worth noting, furthermore, moreover, in conclusion, embark, harness, seamless, robust, leverage (as a verb), "let's explore", "buckle up".
- No sentence may begin with "In this video" or "Welcome back to the channel".
- Do not hedge. "This works" beats "this can potentially help".
- No emoji unless I ask for them.

GIVE ME
THE POLICY — category, action, reasoning.
AUTOMATIC SETTINGS — blocked words and settings.
HARD CASES — decided.
DO NOT DELETE.
PUBLIC VERSION.

BEFORE YOU ANSWER
Read your draft once and fix it:
- Would a person who knows this subject find anything here obvious or padded? Cut it.
- Is every specific claim something the video can actually deliver?
- Did any banned phrase survive? Replace it.
- Are the sentences varied in length, or do they all run the same? Fix the rhythm.
Then give me the final version only. No preamble, no explanation of what you did.