Large language models (LLMs) alignment ensures model behaviors reflect human value. Existing alignment strategies primarily follow two paths: one assumes a universal value set for a unified goal (i.e., one-size-fits-all), while the other treats every individual as unique to customize models (i.e., individual-level). However, assuming a monolithic value space marginalizes minority norms, while tailoring individual models is prohibitively expensive. Recognizing that human society is organized into social clusters with high intra-group value alignment, we propose community-level alignment as a "middle ground". Practically, we introduce CommunityBench, the first large-scale benchmark for community-level alignment evaluation, featuring four tasks grounded in Common Identity and Common Bond theory. With CommunityBench, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of various foundation models on CommunityBench, revealing that current LLMs exhibit limited capacity to model community-specific preferences. Furthermore, we investigate the potential of community-level alignment in facilitating individual modeling, providing a promising direction for scalable and pluralistic alignment.
@article{arxiv.2601.13669,
title = {CommunityBench: Benchmarking Community-Level Alignment across Diverse Groups and Tasks},
author = {Jiayu Lin and Zhongyu Wei},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.13669},
year = {2026}
}