r/Coffee

Can you post your project here?

Self-promotion of businesses or projects is strictly banned. This includes crowdfunding, affiliate links, and any situation where you have a tie to the promoted entity. Honesty about affiliations is mandatory.

Before you post: Rule 6 explicitly states: 'Do not promote businesses, projects, or causes that you have ties to... under any circumstances.' Rules 9, 10, and 11 further ban product releases, crowdfunding, and surveys.

The rules, in their words

1. Coffee Focus: Posts and comments to this community are expected to be on-topic to coffee beans or beverage, or to Specialty Coffee if industry-/community-focused. The less coffee-focused a post, the more notable we expect the subject to be. A post about a well-known coffee company's business may be deemed "on topic" as it is news that the community would want to discuss, while a post very on-topic to the coffee of an obscure company may be removed as too niche. Mod judgement is used for final decisions.
2. Images & Video: This is not a community for meme, 'pretty,' or neat, pictures or videos; /r/cafe is our light-content sister sub; content here is expected to be educational or informative, where the image/video is necessary to that. Image or video posts must be accompanied by a substantial comment from OP providing content and any necessary context. Questions needing images should be posted as self with the image linked in the text, so that the question is the first thing readers open rather than the picture.
3. Low-Effort Post or Question: Posts or questions that are lacking substance or specifics may be removed, at mod discretion - the community has expressed frustrations with 'boring' or repetitive content here. Examples are posts like "i had coffee it was good", questions like "has anyone tried X", "X, thoughts?", "what gear should I buy?" or "I just bought X, tips?", cases where OP should ask customer service, or readily-googled info. Many of these may be posted to weekly threads, instead, like Noob Questions or Hardware.
4. Be Civil: We're aiming to be civil here, please endeavour to live up to that - be reasonable, stay on topic, and don't escalate. Sometimes dialogue gets spicy here - it's on both parties to set a tone that they're comfortable with. If someone insults you, what you say in response is your responsibility & we'd ask that you not escalate. That said, "Be Civil" or "don't escalate" are very deliberately not protection from getting feedback for being low-key rude.
5. Elitist Nonsense: Coffee needs to walk a fine line here; our line is "education" - is the content presented without personal judgement and with teaching that is useful. We have a very low tolerance for perspectives that want to gatekeep coffee or engage in elitist circlejerking, even including when phrased as jokes or satire; however there are also common misconceptions about coffee that can be perceived as elitist when clarified - ie "moka doesn't make espresso" - that we would be wrong to ban.
6. Promotion: We are *very* hard on self-promotion & promotion here. Do not promote businesses, projects, or causes that you have ties to, (owner, investor, employee, family, good friend, etc.) under any circumstances. Not if 'they asked', not if its extra-relevant, not if you don't profit, not if you only DM, not if _____. We have a wiki page that covers these rules in detail, if needed.
7. Shilling / Sockpuppetry: Because we have strong rules about self-promotion here, sometimes marketers opt to lie and pretend they're not "self" promoting - "I'm just a normal person, totally not affiliated at all!" - and as much as this community dislikes marketing, it *really* dislikes being lied to. Lies by omission, like "i found a thing," count just as much as lies by addition, and none are welcome here. Be honest about your entanglements while visiting us, please.
8. Affiliates & Referrals: Affiliate and referrals are not welcome here, to the point where sites or content containing affilites are also barred, even if the person posting is not 'tied' to the site in question. This rule applies to any and all systems where the person or site sharing the link/code 'gains' something or somehow from other people using it. Just ... they're too much of a problem, with too much dishonesty, for us to draw fine-line distinctions without either being unfair or incentivizing dishonesty.
9. Product Release & Pre-Release Hype: Product reviews go in Battlestation threads, please; and nothing about unreleased or recently-released products - readers here want honest and trustworthy reviews and those cannot be had on products that "real people" have not yet had a chance to try. Because new/unreleased products so commonly shill social media about them, those discussions here are heavily targeted and not to be trusted; because our readers expect us to maintain trust, we bar those products until reviews can be trusted.
10. No Crowdfunding Projects: Absolutely no crowdfunding projects; whether they're in pre-release, active funding, post-funding, ... whatever. We are not a stop on the crowdfund PR tour, and will not be. Once a crowdfunding project stops being 'a project' and starts being a normal retail product that people own, we'll relax our rules on them - mods will make the determination when this is the case. This rule is complimentary to #9 "pre-release", but crowdfunding gets a special mention because of how big a problem it's been.
11. No Surveys / Market Research: We know that we're a big targeted audience of coffee-drinkers and consumers, so we seem like a great place to put surveys or market research about coffee use, hardware, or software - but because there's so many school projects, apps, and businesses, in total, we have been asked by the community to bar all instances of them. No surveys, no polls, no market research, no "what should I make" or "what should an app include" ... please just build your thing or write your report without us.
12. Medical Advice: Coffee-related 'health-science' articles & users seeking health advice are not appropriate in this coffee enthusiast community. We are not medical professionals - we are hobbyists and pros. If you have physical or mental symptoms associated with coffee consumption, or are wanting coffee-specific health advice - you *need* to speak to a physician about your concerns. This community has, in the past, given terrible or even dangerous medical advice - this rule exists to prevent that reoccurring.
13. Mod Discretion: We're a complicated community and cannot have perfect rules. Mods reserve the right to remove content and issue bans, as needed, for the health of our community, and cannot guarantee that every possible edge-case will merit it's own place in these rules.