How do you find and read a community's local rules?

Every subreddit can establish its own set of community rules that apply in addition to Reddit's site-wide Content Policy, and moderators are expected to enforce these local rules within their communities. Finding and reading these rules before you post is one of the most important habits to develop as a Reddit participant, because posts removed for rule violations leave no karma and can result in community bans even when the behavior would be perfectly acceptable elsewhere on Reddit. On the desktop version of Reddit, community rules are displayed in the sidebar of every subreddit. When you visit a subreddit's page, look to the right side of the screen for a section typically titled "Community Rules" or "Rules." Each rule usually has a short title and an expandable description that explains what is and is not permitted. Some subreddits list rules comprehensively in the sidebar; others include additional guidelines in a pinned wiki post or a stickied "welcome" post at the top of the feed. In the Reddit mobile app, community rules are accessible through the subreddit's information page. Tap the subreddit name at the top of the feed to open the community information view, then look for a "Rules" or "About" section. The rules are presented in a scrollable list with the same expandable descriptions as on desktop. If the sidebar rules feel brief or ambiguous, many subreddits maintain a more detailed wiki that can be found by appending "/wiki" to the subreddit's URL — for example, reddit.com/r/communityname/wiki. Pinned posts and "megathreads" often contain additional guidance about what types of content are currently welcome. When in doubt about whether a specific post would be appropriate, reading recent submissions and checking what gets removed is a useful supplement to the formal rules, as it reveals how moderators apply written rules in practice.