A confession is a statement acknowledging some personal fact that you would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that you are providing information that you believe other people in your life are not aware of, and that is an admission of a moral or legal wrong.
Your confession must be an act you committed.
If your submission does not contain a confession it will be removed.
An unpopular opinion is not a confession.
- Regardless of whatever unpopular opinion you hold, it doesn't classify here as a confession. You haven't done anything wrong, so to speak, so it isn't technically a confession. Better subreddits for this would be /r/offmychest, /r/TrueOffMyChest, /r/rant, or in some cases, /r/relationships.
Your sexual exploration is not a confession; it's a part of finding out who you are.
- /r/confession is not a place for submissions that read like pornography. Despite our confessional theme, we don't find consensual sexual exploits sinful. /r/gonewildstories would be a better place to share.

Be Specific

All confessions must be titled specifically!

Your title must relay a brief idea of what wrongdoing you have committed. Submissions with vague titles will be removed.

We receive a lot of meta-confessions that lump a lot of confessions into one, and a lot of submissions with titles that hardly relate to the confessions within. These kinds of posts don't take the subreddit in the direction we want it to go—it dilutes the content and leads to far more submissions that read like creative writing rather than the thoughts of real people.

Ideally, your title is a TL;DR of your post.

Do Not Encourage Bad Behavior

Helping one another also means that we do not encourage bad behavior.

We will not accept posts that:

/r/confession is not the place to seek relationship advice.

Even if your submission contains a confession, relationship-based confessions will be removed. /r/relationships, /r/offmychest, or /r/self would be better places to share. We reserve the right to remove any posts referencing relationships, not just those seeking relationship advice.

At this time, this subreddit does not accept pedophile-type confessions, even if the user is seeking help and/or working on their situation.

In the past these types of confessions have been a fine line between acceptable and sexualizing minors. We recommend you seek out sources such as:
- http://www.virped.org/ (18+ Only);
- A counselor that can effectively aid you; or
- Another subreddit like /r/self, or /r/offmychest. However, we do not know their stance or moderation policy on pedophile-type posts.
Unfortunately, We are not well versed in the help that may be available. Hopefully this is a starting point for you.

We do not accept posts with limited context.

Confessing only the barest of snippets or most cryptic of details isn't the purpose of this sub. Understanding what you're confessing shouldn't be like pulling teeth, context is important.

Political-themed posts are not allowed.

Meta posts are for moderator use only.

This is a place to help one another; keep your comments kind & civil. Any form of abuse is not permitted.

Accusations of fake posts are not allowed.

If you're posting on /r/confession, chances are you're not in the best frame of mind to be fielding attacks on your credibility by the vast and uncaring anonymous internet. We instituted this rule to better protect our submitters and provide a more constructive rather than detractive environment.
You may report spammy posts, but commenting solely to try to discredit the experience an OP has claimed to have is at best nonconstructive and at worst genuinely hurtful. Please message the moderators so they may decide if it should be taken down instead.
This extends to any harassment of OP.

No memes, trolling, or otherwise blatantly low-effort content.

There are many subreddits for us to fool around. This is a place for us to stay on topic. Comments and replies should be of substance and contribute to the conversation.

No attempts to identify OP.

Not only is it against sitewide rules, but attempts to identify posters undermines the comfort and reassurance that lies in anonymity.

Follow the steps below to have your comment or post approved:

Read the rules to determine which was violated,
Remove the offending portion of your post or comment,
Message the moderators to have the post or comment approved (skip to this step if the removal was in error).

We abide by a three strike system here. Three rule violations will result in at least a three day ban.

Follow the steps below to have your ban reversed.

Read the rules and review your post history to determine why you were banned
Message the moderators with a case as to why your ban should be reversed. This should be based on the information in the first step. (If the ban was in error, skip to this step)

Message the moderators, we don't bite (often).