Rules & regulations: tea is not just “leaves + vibes”

[Eran Galor]

If you want help with a brew, give people enough information to reproduce the problem.

The searchable unit here is simple: exact tea + water + vessel + brewing parameters + observed result. We are not asking everybody to buy a water lab. “Filtered tap water in London” is useful. A blank field is not.

For brew-clinic posts, change one principal variable at a time when possible. If somebody tells you to change temperature, dose, grind, water and vessel all at once, you have received a shopping list rather than a diagnosis.

For replies, context beats applause. A tested solution from the questioner belongs above a popular theory. Same tea and same setup beats “I drink oolong too.” Controlled side-by-side comparison beats memory from six months ago.

Please label what kind of evidence you are giving: Tested solution, Same tea/batch, Comparable tea, Controlled test, Long-term report, Vendor/order report, Professional experience, Merchant response, Inference, or Original-poster update.

Commercial relationships have to be disclosed. Free sample, vendor employment, affiliate link, friend’s shop: say it. “No relationship” is also useful.

Tea-versus-tea comparisons should tell us whether both teas were tasted under the same water, vessel and session conditions. Teaware comparisons should include actual filled capacity, not only the number printed on the box. Storage threads need dates and, when storage is the actual question, real temperature and humidity readings.

We are not turning votes into “best tea” automatically. A product ranking needs at least five independent substantive reports, at least three confirmed purchasers, no single merchant supplying most of the samples, clear price/harvest/region information, a recent availability check, and a disclosed ranking method. Even then, call it “best supported for these users and circumstances,” not “objectively best.”

A few things are deliberately postponed: automatic parsing of the technical block into filters, a separate chronological-versus-ranked reply switch, vendor-country personalization, and a giant tea database maintained by whichever unfortunate person loses a bet.

For now: post enough detail that another person can actually learn from your cup.

[Eran Galor]

The water rule is good. Please do not make conductivity meters a citizenship requirement. City plus filtered/unfiltered is already much better than nothing.

[Wire And Gloves]

Yes. Ranked view later, chronological stays. I am not erasing the part where everybody was confidently wrong for twelve hours.

[Wire And Gloves]

I would also keep actual filled capacity. My 120 ml gaiwan holds about 95 ml once leaf and normal handling enter the room, which is a fairly large lie for something made of porcelain.

[Phish-Fiction]

Can we postpone mandatory photographs? Helpful, yes. Mandatory every time, no. Sometimes I am asking from work and the wet leaf is already in a bin.

[Eran Galor]

The one-variable rule should probably be repeated in large letters. People love changing temperature, leaf, time and water and then announcing the kettle fixed it.

[Eran Galor]

I support the labels. “Inference” will save us a lot of fake certainty.

[Wire And Gloves]

Good. The archive will be more useful if we preserve the mistakes instead of polishing every thread into a manual.

[Wrench And Jab]

Agreed. Photos are evidence when they show something relevant, not decorative proof that tea occurred.

[Eran Galor]

Please keep chronological view somewhere even if ranked answers happen later. Sometimes the order of failed experiments is the whole story.

[Wrench And Jab]

Could the site eventually filter by tea style and vessel? Not asking you to build it today. I have learned to fear the phrase “quick feature.”

[Wire And Gloves]

Postponed. I would like the data to earn the interface before I build an interface for imaginary data.

[Phish-Fiction]

Vendor relationships absolutely need disclosure. A free sample can still produce a useful report; pretending it was an ordinary purchase is the problem.

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