**tl;dr version: Is "the community" a legislative body or a judicial one?**

In [What topics can I ask about here?](https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) there are a few guidelines right at the top that ostensibly inform you whether or not "...you’re in the right place to ask your question!" However, the page then goes on to repeatedly point out ways in which, due to this or that reason, your question might be "closed by the community".

It's not immediately obvious to me whether to interpret the phrasing on the page as indicating 1) a set of rules that the community is tasked to enforce; or if it indicates 2) helpful advice to make your question pleasing to an all-powerful community.

Certainly many posts on Meta seem to involve discussions about rules for material "belonging" on the site. Is this "the community" *creating* or merely *interpreting* rules for "belonging" on the site?

Is "the community" on Stack Overflow intended to be an agent or an authority? Does the community serve primarily a judicial role, or also a legislative one? Has this role changed much since the site's inception? Does this role vary much from site to site on the network? What are the constitutional limits to the legislative and judicial powers of the community? For example, do the legislative powers extend to defining/allowing spam and/or hate-speech?