Many companies are now looking to the Inter- net as a mode of communicating with their cus- tomers. partners and the public as well as a chan- nel for commercial activity. However. the Inter- net is also a very new arena for many of these people who have never had open access as they find themselves gaining with the Internet. At the same time. companies and individuals have developed less than positive reputations in the public eye based on how they interacted with the Internet community. Providing guidance to users of the Internet is an important aspect of being a good citizen and presenting one's company as a positive asset to the Internet community. This paper describes the process and issues we went through at IBM to pro- duce our guidelines and the role that they play in how IBM interacts with the Internet.