Community rules play a key part in enabling or constraining the behaviors of
members in online communities. However, little is unknown regarding whether and
to what degree changing rules actually affects community dynamics. In this
paper, we seek to understand how these behavior-governing rules shape the
interactions between users, as well as the structure of their discussion. Using
the top communities on Reddit (i.e. subreddits), we first contribute a taxonomy
of behavior-based rule categories across Reddit. Then, we use a network
analysis perspective to discover how changing implementation of different rule
categories affects subreddits' user interaction and discussion networks over a
1.5 year period. Our study find several significant effects, including greater
clustering among users when subreddits increase rules focused on structural
regulation and how restricting allowable content surprisingly leads to more
interactions between users. Our findings contribute to research in proactive
moderation through rule setting, as well as lend valuable insights for online
community designers and moderators to achieve desired community dynamics