This will be a simple list of guidelines about what constitutes a legitimate project (as opposed to spam, advertisements, etc.). In conjunction with the Terms of Service and Code of Conduct, it will give users something to shoot for when creating and maintaining projects, and hopefully help increase the quality of Hackaday.io. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list, and is subject to change.

1. Indirect advertisements: Hackaday.io will not accept any content that is obviously an advertisement for a third party. We understand that many hackers have sponsorship arrangements with various third-party entities, but we cannot allow Hackaday.io projects to serve as advertisements for these companies.
2. Use of logos: Third-party logos are not allowed on Hackaday.io projects. Projects cannot display third-party logos, either directly and prominently or in the background of project photos, as a watermark, or in any way that's obvious to readers. Project-specific logos are fine, as long as there's no third-party sponsorship.
3. Link farming: Project posts with little more than a series of links to a single third-party website are not allowed.
4. Link dumping: A project whose only content is a single link to some other site presented with no context doesn't advance the state of the art. Worse than that, it's disrespectful to the rest of the Hackaday.io community, who put at least some effort into making projects that people like to read about. We don't have a problem with cross-linking from other project-hosting sites, like Hackster or GitHub. But we have to see at least some effort put into providing context for the Hackaday.io community.
5. Off-topic projects: We at Hackaday.io are an eclectic bunch, and we celebrate all manner of hardware and software projects. We offer wide latitude when it comes to what types of projects people want to post, and we try to keep an open mind. However, some projects are clearly not within the realm of project types that most readers would find interesting. Such projects are subject to deletion on a case-by-case basis.
6. Low-value projects: We understand that everyone is at a different point along their journey in the world of electronics and hardware hacking, and we don't want to judge the relative merits of any particular project. But some projects are obviously simple and quick to design, do not represent any substantial innovation, and are clearly designed only to sell PCBs or components. If a user consistently posts super simple circuits and never seems to make any apparent progress in their learning, that's another huge red flag to us.
7. Obvious spamming: Multiple submissions of low-value projects by a single user in a short time frame are a huge red flag to us. First, it suggests to us that the user is just being paid by a third party to post a bunch of trashy projects. Second, it's a bad look. We recognize that some users will post multiple non-sponsored projects at the same time, but just be aware that this might be misinterpreted by the mods.
8. Empty or incomplete projects: We get it -- not everyone has time to document a project in its entirety in a single sitting. We commonly see new projects that are just a "stub," a placeholder with just a title, and not even a thumbnail image. That's fine, but only for a while -- too many default thumbnails look bad, and a project that stays unpopulated too long is just a waste of valuable space. Stub projects that stay that way too long are subject to deletion.
9. Plagiarism and AI-generated content: Any articles we find that are plagiarized from other sites without proper attribution will be immediately deleted. We'll also delete any AI-generated content, with the obvious exception of projects that explore machine learning systems for the edification of the community.
10. The rest: At the risk of stating the obvious, we will immediately delete any project that contains or solicits anything offensive, harassing, racist, sexist, pornographic, or involving unethical hacking.

When a project is deleted by one of the mods, an auto-generated direct message will go to the project owner explaining that the project has been deleted. Unfortunately, we cannot spend the time to give specific details on why a project was deleted, so please refer to the above list for possible reasons, as well as the Terms of Service and Code of Conduct. If you feel that the project was wrongly deleted, feel free to respond to the DM and we'll review the specifics.

Thanks for your cooperation with these guidelines, and thanks for making Hackaday.io a great place to hang out and share your love of hardware hacking!