Community standards are local norms bounding acceptable conduct. Sometimes these standards can be itemized in a list that states the community's values and sets guidelines for participation in the community. Alternatively, informal standards may be imprecisely described as "I'll know it when I see it."
Often, such standards are invoked in legal situations to resolve disputes, especially around pornography. Critics argue that puritanical moralists have used community standards to wrongly punish minorities such as homosexuals or those in interracial marriages.
Colleges and universities enforce their standards through conduct offices in their Student Affairs divisions.
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or standards:
“... to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, and love of the other birds.”
—Sharon Olds (b. 1942)
“With his brows knit, his mind made up, his will resolved and resistless, he advances, crashing his way through the host of weak, half-formed, dilettante opinions, honest and dishonest ways of thinking, with their standards raised, sentimentalities and conjectures, and tramples them all into dust. See how he prevails; you don’t even hear the groans of the wounded and dying.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)