text:
How can we raise the participation rate for this beta?
I am periodically checking the beta tracking page for our Cardano SE proposal.  Avid users is climbing but I have no idea how it compares to other betas.
I have set a personal goal of 1 question per day or more over the course of the beta.  I won't be asking junk questions just to meet that goal.
What other way(s) could we encourage more participation in the closed Beta?

Participants in the private beta can invite other experts in.
The "invite fellow experts" section in the right-hand column of any question allows you to invite people to join before the beta becomes public.  It only requires their email address.
If you wish to invite others to this site, please use this link:
https://cardano.stackexchange.com/users/login?ssrc=beta
(at first, I thought only people that committed can join the private beta, but it seems like this link works for all)

"but I have no idea how it compares to other betas."

That A51 stats compare well with other sites that entered Private Beta in recent times (which is not very many sites: Matter Modeling and Drones were the only two other sites to entire Private Beta in the last 22 months).
Our stats are as follows, after 7 days and a few hours:
Questions/day: 13.8
Answered: 93%
Avid users: 33
Total users: 1009
Answer ratio: 1.7
Visits/day: 375
After around 7 days and a few hours, Drones had the following stats:
Questions/day: 21.5 (↑ a lot more than Cardano)
Answered: 99% (↑ a lot more than Cardano, but we were at 99% recently too)
Avid users: 32 (↑ much better than Cardano as a ratio of total users)
Total users: 413 (⬇not as many as Cardano)
Answer ratio: 1.9 (↑ more than Cardano)
Visits/day: 215 (⬇not as many as Cardano)
After around 7 days and a few hours, Matter Modeling had the following:
Questions/day: 16 (↑ more than Cardano)
Answered: 70% (⬇ not as much as Cardano)
Avid users: 35 (↑ much better than Cardano as a ratio of total users*)
Total users: 321 (⬇ not as many as Cardano)
Answer ratio: 1.5 (⬇ not as much as Cardano)
Visits/day: 342 (⬇ not as much as Cardano)
But don't look too much into questions/day at this very early stage: Drones is now at 0.6 and has been under 1 question/day for most of the year, whereas MM is now at 2.8 and has been larger than 2 questions/day for most of the year.
The part that's most concerning is the lack of VOTING.
Only one of the top three most active users is in the top three for voting, and only 50% of the top 10 most active users are in the list of people who have voted at least 10 times.
In fact there's only 25 users that have voted at least 10 times, which is in my opinion abysmally low for a site with 33 "avid" users.
When users spend a lot of time writing a well-formed question or answer and it gets 0 votes, or only a few, it is rare to see them come back.
It's easy to underestimate how many hours people might spend on writing even a 2 paragraph post that has a couple hyperlinks to external references that the user found. Let me quote user gIS from Quantum Computing SE who wrote this on Meta:

"I would just like to remark that upvoting, in my opinion, should not
be meant as some sort of "reward" to be given to exceptional answers
(which is what bounties are for).
Personally, I ask myself a very simple question to decide whether I
should upvote a question or answer: do I believe that this
question/answer should be on this site? It's not really about the
quality of the post, but more about indicating whether I think that
this post is a good fit for the site. How good the post actually is
will still be reflected in the upvotes, because a more useful post
will be found by more people which will therefore hopefully vote it up
more.
Consequently, I believe that upvotes should be given generously and
without too much overthinking. On a practical level, this also
encourages participation to the site, as many people like to see that
their post was appreciated by others, and will therefore be more
likely to stick around more when this happens."

Thanks, very helpful guidance.

I've not invested as much time as I wished in the first lessons of the Plutus Pioneer Program. I plan to do so this week, and keep up with the course, so my current point of view is maybe biased.
However, personally, I'm not a huge fan of the discord format for asking questions: they are all intertwined one another both questions and answers: It is really good to have an overview of all issues raised, and ways to solve. But that's not my cup of tea.

Maybe we could ask for the Plutus Pioneer Program to redirect some kind of questions here. That could move a bit of the Q/A activity there into here.

It is just a suggestion: maybe the discord format is totally sufficient for the Plutus Pioneer Program.

Yes, I agree totally.  Some of the better questions here have come from people working through the Plutus Pioneer lessons and discord is terrible for all the reasons you mention.

Feel free to ask your questions here

If you wish to invite others to this site, please use this link:
https://cardano.stackexchange.com/users/login?ssrc=beta
(at first, I thought only people that committed can join the private beta, but it seems like this link works for all)

Can we contact the authors of the original example questions and ask them to submit them to the beta?

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Dark Theme for the Cardano Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange allows the creation of themes for individual sites however it doesn't provide anything by default beyond the default light theme for new sites.
Would it be possible to set up an additional dark theme (possibly a copy of the Stack Overflow dark theme)?
I know we are still in early days on the site however I feel this would be a useful Quality of Life feature.

Should be two separate questions and the icon/thumbnail is already asked here.

You can always use https://darkreader.org/ or a similar tool if you can't wait for the official dark theme.

We do not currently have any timeline to expand the dark mode features outside of Stack Overflow. You will, unfortunately, have to wait until our design team has ironed out all the details of per-site theming before it can be enabled across the network.
To clarify: we also do not allow sites to create their own themes on their own. Themes are created by our design team as a reward for graduating from beta, or due to the occasional site sponsorship.

It may be important to note that even sites graduated from beta might have to wait a while before getting a design because of backlog.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Misspelled tag 'plutusplaygroun'
The tag 'plutusplaygroun', recently created by a questioner, is misspelt.
It should be corrected to 'plutus-playground' or 'playground', or deleted

I have merged the misspelled tag as suggested with the plutus-playground tag. I also merged the plutusplayground tag with plutus-playground.
Thanks for bringing this to attention.


text:
Site icon is very similar to Astronomy.SE
The icon for the site is very similar / identical to that of Astronomy Stack Exchange. On my iPad, the extra horizontal line is not visible; on my MacBook, with a Retina screen, I can see the font is slightly different but not much more:

Even at 200% zoom (click on the image to view it) the difference is minimal.
Can it be changed to something else (perhaps ADA to be consistent with other blockchain sites on the network, though other suggestions are welcome).
A similar case from the past: Favicon of Earth Science and Spanish are too similar (exactly the same in HNQ list)

Congrats on the very first Cardano Meta question, Glorf ;)

On Google Chrome on my desktop, I see the two horizontal lines, maybe your title can be more specific to say that this is an iPad (or Safari/Apple) problem?

So... is it only the similarity to Astronomy that's the problem? Because that feels less like a problem considering y'all have a Unicode character that directly relates to your subject - like how Chess has a rook or Bricks a brick. In my experience, three-letter (full-width) characters look really squished on the icons so I'd be concerned that "ADA" may be hard to read.

Why not use the Cardano logo for the icon? Wouldn't that make sense? Or is there any copyright issue?

@IngoH would be nice, but it's not a Unicode symbol: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/339853/295232 Perhaps there's a similar one though?

Most people will not see both icons.  I agree that a logo change would be nice but something to address in future rather than right now.

I would make more sense to use the Cardano logo

As mentioned in the comments on the question, we only allow the use of Unicode characters. We would not use a logo.


text:
Can we transition out of Beta?
This Stack Exchange is titled Cardano Beta. Why is there a "Beta" in it ? Wouldn't it be better to remove the "Beta" ?

Updated with a new answer

The process is under way.  Announcements will be made within the next 4 weeks.

Very exciting and congratulations to you all. :)

Cardano stack exchange is a relatively new community on stackexchange (less than a year old). The Area 51 page shows stats about different subcommunities such as ours. To graduate from alpha to beta and then to a full community certain requirements must be met, like total number of members, questions asked/answered, etc. I'm not sure what the exact requirements are, but if we keep up the good work I'm certain the high and mighty moderators will take notice and bump us up in due time.

thx, I did not know that it comes from Stack Exchange. So let's give our best. I certainly do.

We satisfy the requirements to graduate out of Beta, but the diamond moderators will have to ask the SE staff to click the button(s) that will actually remove the Beta label.
You can see this related question: Were we just missed, or did we ask to not graduate?
Also, I've informed the Stack Exchange staff here, but it doesn't seem they care much about that. They have not left any comments, and the net score right now is only +1.
Basically we are just waiting for the diamond moderators to tell the staff, whenever they feel ready for us to graduate (or until enough community members make it clear that they want this to happen).

Thank you for the info. I hope the diamond moderators act soon. This "beta"-label looks strange and might give the impression to newcomers that the whole Cardano project is in beta phase.

Any idea how to do that? How to contact the staff? I did click everything possible, but cannot seem to find how do that.

We now meet the criteria for transition from beta to a full site.
This question or variations on it have been asked several times now.  What little feedback we have had on it has been in favor of removing the Beta tag.
Nobody has suggested that it be retained.
I am in favour of it because we meet all the criteria and it gives all the users more of a reason to care and put the effort into raising the standard of the site.
Note: the moderators are requesting that the community managers make the change and we will announce any progress in the "Loveplace" chat room.


text:
2022 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Cardano Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2022-09-19. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.
Here’s how it’ll work:

Until the nomination phase, (so, until 2022-09-19 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into currently.

We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?
A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.

We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.


text:
2022 Community Moderator Election Results
Moderator election #2 on Cardano has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are:

They will be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for volunteering and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes!
Also, please join me in thanking gRebel for their term as a moderator on Cardano, which has come to a close with this election:

For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here or view a summary report online.

Thanks to everyone who voted for me, I hope I can help to further grow this community as part of the mod team! :)


text:
Announcing a “Graduation” election for 2022
Summary: Cardano Stack Exchange will begin the nomination stage for an election on September 19th, 2022, as your “graduation” election!
The timeline:

On September 12, 2022, I'll post a question collection post on Meta, so that the community can post questions they'd like to see the candidates answer.

Starting on September 19, 2022, users can nominate themselves. The top questions collected on the previous week will be compiled into a questionnaire on the election page, so that potential moderators can answer them.

The existing moderator team will need to run in the election if they wish to keep their positions.

On September 26, 2022, if there are 4 or more candidates, we'll run an election. If not, we'll extend the nomination period for a week. If, at the end of that extension period there are still less than 4 candidates, we'll simply appoint the candidates who've nominated (and aren't already pro-tem mods) and we'll default to considering this a "pro-tem election" just to try to bring the total number of moderators on the site up to 3 (for full details of the process, see the announcement on Meta Stack Exchange). (There's a small chance we'll need to remove a nomination.)

If there is an election, we'll announce the results on meta on October 4, 2022 (or October 11, 2022, if we need to extend the nomination period).

If you have any questions about the process, please stick them in an answer here.


text:
2022 Community Moderator Election
The 2022 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://cardano.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.


text:
Header has incorrect capitalization
It seems that on the main Cardano Beta site, the banner at the top of the page with the link to meta has the wrong capitalization.
How it looks on Chrome on my PC:

Is this just the way it is supposed to be, or is this a formatting bug?

It's an old banner that is seen so infrequently that no one has really thought to update it to make it not look childish. Long, long ago lowercasing everything used to be the "style" around here. Glad that's over. Hopefully this can be easily fixed.

@animuson Great, thanks.

Animuson's comment explains why the capitalization is wrong, but to address your question even further, let me suggest not to worry about it too much, since that banner will only be there during Private Beta (2-3 weeks) and then it will be gone permanently (you can take a look at the two most recent sites to have a Beta go live: Matter Modeling and Drones).

I see. This is the first Beta that I have participated on in SE, so I did not know if this header was going to be there through just the first few weeks or through the site's graduation. Thank you for clarifying that.

No problem! Yea you can just take a look at the most recent Beta sites to see how things would look here after awhile (if we do get approved to move on to Public Beta!).


text:
Is our Beta label being removed?
Quantum Computing and Matter Modeling just learned that their Beta labels are being removed. Is it happening here too?

Sadly, we had only 950 questions from the 1,000 needed to move out of beta.

We'll be there by December 16th for sure!

We were well beyond 1000 questions when the 58 other sites graduated out of Beta. That post said "we allowed the communities to stay in Beta if they didn’t feel ready to leave that state yet". Does that mean that you (the diamond moderators of Cardano.SE) told SE that you didn't feel we were ready? That's totally okay if you did, but I'm just wondering if that happened, or if they just missed us because we weren't (yet) at 1000 questions at the time that they checked.

The beta label has been removed.


text:
Enable syntax highlighting for Haskell?
Smart Contracts running on Cardano are mainly written using Haskell. Also, the Plutus Pioneer Program brings in a lot of Haskell developers.
So one of the most used, even probably the most used programming language within questions will be Haskell.
Examples of questions that would benefit from Haskell syntax highlighting:

Hardcoding currency symbol and token name in validator script
Why do we need parameterized contracts? Can't we just use datum?
Haskell IDE INLINABLE error help
Confused by compilation message in plutus playground (week 5 pioneer program)
How can I find the Haskell source code for the sqrt function?

Examples of questions that would benefit from other languages syntax highlighting:

Re-Implementing Policy Hashing in Python
Does the testnet faucet still exist? How to create testnet ADA?
How can metadata.json properties be changed after a token is minted?
Problem starting a plutus devcontainer in windows


text:
What should be the style of the tag excerpts on this site?
Tags excerpts on this site have a variety of patterns.  The inconsistencies annoy me a little and some are much more helpful than others.
For example, the "For questions about..." prefix on almost every edited tag excerpt is unnecessary and adds no value when the word question already appears in multiple places on the page and there is nothing to tag but questions.

I think tag excerpts such as

For questions about the Plutus language, a programming language based
on Haskell.

are better expressed as simply

A programming language based on Haskell.

Then the excerpt provides genuine value for somebody who hovers their mouse over the tag.
We should definitely follow the guidance in the last few paragraphs of Redesigned Tags Page


text:
2024 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Cardano Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2024-09-24. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.
Here’s how it’ll work:

Until the nomination phase, (so, until 2024-09-24 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into currently.

We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?
A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching enough reputation to access moderator tools or become a trusted user?

At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.

We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.


text:
2024 Community Moderator Election
The 2024 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://cardano.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.


text:
How to get in touch with Stack Exchange moderators?
We would like to get in touch with SE moderators, to try to promote our space out of beta, but it has proven more difficult than expected.
Anyone more familiar with the SE space, any idea?

Moderators can tag posts in Meta with the moderator-only tag status-review
That will get the attention of Community Managers (CMs).

I have taken the matter up in the teachers lounge chat room.

Cardano SE is eligible for transition out of Beta status. Is there a
defined process or do we need to contact a CM or a specific CM?

It is where experienced mods are on hand to discuss moderator questions.

Update
Response from the chat was that there is no 'defined' process at present, just ping a CM and ask.
Note: Typing whois cm in the Teachers lounge chat will return a list of CMs and which ones are currently in the chat.

Will update if/when I have a response, but my timezone doesn't help.

Doesn't Cardano.SE have a private chat room only for diamond mods? Matter Modeling has a room like that.

Yes we do, but we had trouble getting their attention.  Not sure whether it was my weird timezone or CM's personal issues that meant we didn't get a response in chat.  It seems that the better way to get their attention is by flagging a post in Cardano meta.  See my other answer to this question.


text:
Cardano is leaving Beta
Today we are leaving the Public Beta of the Stack Exchange.
Good job everyone. Keep it up by posting questions and most importantly, answers.

Everyone here from 0 reputation to the top has made this possible.  Well done all!

Announced on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/comments/sjmjsh/congratulations_we_have_officially_left_public/


text:
2021 Community Moderator Election Results
Moderator election #1 on Cardano has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are:

They will be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for volunteering and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes!
For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here or view a summary report online.

Conflagrations to the new moderators. Great beginning.

This wouldn't have have happened without you @raghu, the community owes you a debt of gratitude for proposing and getting this site started.  So, thank you from all of us.  I think you are one of Cardano's many heroes.

Welcome to a completely new world of Moderation.
Congratulations for Matthias Sieber, gRebel, Marek Mahut - StakeNuts.
I am happy that we have elected new awesome moderators on Cardano Stack Exchange.
Wish you all luck and thank you for moderating. :)


text:
2023: a year in moderation

It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.
So as we say goodbye to 2023 (and January 2024… ahem) and move into 2024, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Cardano over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community User¹
Community²

All comments on a post moved to chat
0
0
0

Answer flags handled
37
8
0

Answers flagged
1
15
30

Bounties canceled
0
0
0

Comment flags handled
0
0
0

Comments deleted⁸
4
0
39

Comments flagged
0
0
0

Comments undeleted
0
0
0

Escalations to the Community Manager team
0
0
0

Posts bumped
0
832
0

Posts deleted⁷
34
123
20

Posts locked
0
5
0

Posts undeleted
2
0
1

Posts unlocked
0
0
0

Question flags handled⁶
4
12
0

Questions closed
10
0
0

Questions flagged⁶
0
0
16

Questions merged
0
0
0

Questions migrated
0
0
0

Questions protected
0
1
0

Questions reopened
0
0
0

Questions unprotected
0
0
0

Revisions redacted
0
0
0

Tag highlight language set
0
0
0

Tag synonyms created
4
0
0

Tag synonyms proposed
3
0
0

Tags merged
2
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue
0
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue
6
0
39

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue
10
0
104

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue
3
0
7

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts" queue
12
0
9

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue
0
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue
15
2
19

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue
0
0
0

User banned from review
0
0
0

User review-bans lifted early
0
0
0

User suspensions lifted early
0
0
0

Users contacted
0
0
0

Users deleted
1
0
0

Users destroyed⁴
4
0
0

Users suspended³
0
3
0

Footnotes
¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² This refers to the membership of Cardano without diamonds next to their names.
³ The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
⁴ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁵ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2022: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2024! ^_^


text:
Could a CM help us make some tag synonyms?
There are ones which I think would be appropriate so far:

"non-fungible-token" for nft.
"transactions-per-second" for tps.
"decentralized-applications" for dapps.

Perhaps also "application-programming-interface" for api though it's much more well-known what API means.
Also I think the following one might be appropriate (but rather than making an entire synonym:

"apple-operating-system" for macos

otherwise it looks like "macos" not "macOS"
this is the tag we use at Matter Modeling SE which might actually be better since it covers both iOS and macOS

API is fine - I actually have no clue what it stands for but I know what an API is. :P Can make a synonym with API as the main tag, though if that makes sense. Is [tag:dapps] actually even correct or should it be hyphenated? (d-apps) - I've done tps and dapps but I'm not sure about nft and api. Not sure about macos - I think some sites do mac-os instead. But I'll let y'all figure that out. Ping me once y'all have some decisions.

@Catija dapps is correct, without the hyphen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_application#Characteristics. API is just application-programming-interface so it could have a synonym pointing to the full-length version just to make things extra clear and remove any possible ambiguity: the only disadvantage I think I know about longer tag names, is that when you put tags in a chat room's description, there's a limit to how many total characters you can have (rather than a limit on the # of tags). What about NFT, you wouldn't make a synonym for that?

NFT is like API - I think more people know the term NFT than they do the long version. Not sure which way the synonyms should go.

@Catija We do type NFT more often than we type it all out, but I thought for tag synonyms it's recommended to have the full version as much as possible, for example here (DFT and ab-initio are what we say 99.9% of the time, but the tags went the other way): https://mattermodeling.meta.stackexchange.com/a/28/5

The question is - what would a novice know. While the site is for experts and newcomers alike, the newer people need to be able to find tags for things when they may not know the short term for things. I think (and I may be wrong) that API and NFT are both pretty commonly known, even by novices. But let me know what y'all think. See - https://mattermodeling.meta.stackexchange.com/a/27/2

@Catija API is certainly known across the network by non-experts. NFT is only going to be known by the domain experts. In either case though, when they type "api" for the tag, it will re-direct them to application-programming-interface, and likewise for "nft", so if a novice only knows to search for "api" they will still find the right tag. By the way: this "vote early, vote often" post was "featured" during the Private Beta for Drones, Matter Modeling, and Operations Research. Could it be for Cardano too since we don't have anything else?

I have edited the tag for catalyst and when I hover over it now, it displays "Caradano's innovation and funding platform"  maybe these could be handled the same way. It is a balance between looking professional and helpful to those unfamiliar with the acronyms.

Thanks @gRebel. That's different from tag synonyms though.

The explanation of Tag synonyms says that it silently converts to the preferred tag.  So it's great for things like consistent misspellings or variants.  I stand by my original comment.  Using it to convert commonly used abbreviations to something friendlier to users unfamiliar with the abbreviation seems like using it for the wrong purpose and the hover functionality is more appropriate.

@gRebel I totally felt that way a year ago! See the link I gave about trying to turn density-functional-theory to dft, but that was denied by Catija and a year later I agree with her.

I believe the appropriate pattern should be to follow what the community terminology is.
e.g. If no posts are writing "non-fungible token" in their text but are using NFT liberally, it is more appropriate to have "nft" as the tag and the hover-mouse expand to "Non-fungible token"
The same applies to the other abbreviations commonly used in the community.


text:
CM made an edit which is not showing up in the timeline?
On the landing page it says that Catija has modified this question:

But the timeline on the question doesn't show what modification that was:

I've never seen that before. Is it a bug?

There was a now-deleted answer on that question which didn't really answer the question. I assume she edited it before it was deleted.

Catija edited the answer, but it was a self-delete.

@JNat thanks for checking!

@JNat Since none of us can see the deleted answer except for CMs and Glorfindel, I wonder if it has something to do with this user having a reputation of 2 including the 1-point default that everyone has. This means they gained a net reputation of 1. Perhaps this can happen by editing a post (+1) and then downvoting an answer once (-1), but the user has never downvoted. If a user never downvotes, how can they gain a reputation of "only 1" ?

@NikeDattani FWIW I can't see the answer now either.

I thought deleted answers on one's own question are still visible, but I could be wrong (perhaps you need more rep). Do you have any idea why that user (from my last comment) had a reputation of 2? It seems it's been decreased back down to 1, but with no history of how it changed. Perhaps @JNat could shed some light on it?

@NikeDattani that user now has 1 reputation; also, they weren't involved in this situation.

@Glorfindel Yea I noticed it's now 1, but it certainly said 2 when I wrote the first comment. It was very bizarre.

That user has nothing to do with any of this, @NikeDattani. Catija edited the answer, and it got bumped on the homepage; the author of the answer then deleted it. That's all there is to it. As per this page, "the post's author, developers, moderators, and users with over 1,000 reputation" can see deleted posts, and no one else can — hence why you can't.


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What should we name the General Chat Room?
On Bitcoin.SE it's called "mempool".
On Etherium.SE it was called "Whisper".
Does anyone have any suggestions for a name for the Cardano general chat room?

I suggest we call it “sciecne” (misspelling intended)

Suggesting the name of a scientist, specialized in Linguistics (which is related to chat and communication) and with his works on language syntax and theory of parsing grammars: I'd suggest "Chomsky". Though it may be considered political...

I like the name suggestions, but why not just stick to what works, and call it general chat room? Do we really need a fany name and meaning for something as simple as a chat room?  Most of us don't like to "hang" in there anyway.  It's just my opinion...

@IvoG This question was aimed at the people who do like to "hang" in the chat room. For those people, the name of the room does make an impact on their everyday experience. For example, I love hanging around "at the h-bar" on Physics.SE, and I can also very easily find the room on Google (or now by typing "hba.." and letting my browser complete the rest for me based on cache). "General chat room" will not work because the chat rooms across the entire network of ~200 sites are all listed in one place when you click "all rooms". If they were all named General Chat Room it wouldn't work

@Nike Dattani. I agree, it was a silly comment from me. I just wanted to express my opinion about the question. I realice it was wrong of me. Thank you.

@IvoG no problem :)

@EkadhSingh could you give your suggestion as an answer, so that we can comment on it and vote on it in comparison to the other answer?

@StephaneRolland Can you also suggest "Chomsky" in an answer so that we can vote on it?

"Loveplace" - It will distinguish it from the smallest denomination of ADA if that is an issue.

I love it !!!

This is brilliant

I suggest naming it "Lovelace" after Cardano's smallest denomination because it will be a place for small-talk and is well known by the whole community.

I love this because it would also serve as a tribute to Ada Lovelace.

'Playground' comes to mind as it is used elsewhere in the project.

I'm suggesting "Chomsky", the name of a scientist, specialized in Linguistics (which is related to chat and communication) and with his works on language syntax and theory of parsing grammars. Though it may also be considered political...
That being said, I consider that "General Chat Room" would still be a perfect valid name suggestion as the semantic is not blurred at all compared to its purpose ;-)

I suggest naming it “sciecne” because Cardano is based off of research papers. However, calling it “science” would be a bit bland, hence “sciecne.” One possible downside of this is we might get confused with another stack exchange.

Nah mang this is confusing as hell XD


text:
Private Beta for 22+ days?
The email we all received on 27 April contained:

Q: How long will the private beta last?
A: Private betas generally
last 1-2 weeks while you prepare the site for opening day. Once the
site is populated with questions, and its initial scope established,
we'll open it up for public beta.

In my experience sites in the past have remained in Private Beta for up to 3 weeks, but (until now) has it ever lasted longer? The last two sites to enter Public Beta were Drones (after 14 days) and Matter Modeling (after 21 days) but we're now almost done our 22nd day in Private Beta here.
Perhaps to help relieve a bit of the anxiety that some people might be experiencing (the email suggested 1-2 weeks and previous experience suggests up to 3 weeks but I think no longer than that), could we get some feedback on how the site is doing and what things need to improve in order to enter Public Beta?

The Community Team is currently evaluating the site for the eligibility to transition out of the Private Beta phase. The phase can last up to 4 weeks, which we'll be completing next Tuesday — the email you referenced could use some updatin', clearly, so good catch!
In any case, you can expect a post announcing what's next for this site next week — be on the lookout for that! ^_^

What are the eligibility criteria?  I thought that StackExchange is predominantly algorithm driven.


text:
We may need to promote the site more (still in Private Beta!)
Sorry everyone, that I have been a bit tied up with some non-StackExchange things in the last couple weeks. I was meaning to participate more and write this post earlier, but time was tight.
As mentioned here, at 22 days we still hadn't satisfied the eligibility criteria, so we were kept in Private Beta for longer than usual (I've only seen them last up to 3 weeks which would be 21 days).
We might be needing 150+ high-quality questions and right now we have only 180 total questions, so if 30 of them are "low-quality" (net score below three?) then we need to get more high-quality material (like really good questions not just "how does plutus work") here in order not to be permanently shut down and to have all our hard-work done for nothing.
I recommend to advertise the site a bit more on the various communities: Plutus, Cardano Reddit, etc.
Unfortunately we have 4 weeks to demonstrate our worth here and 4 weeks are almost up, so if you want this site to survive, now's the time to act! CMs: I meant to write this last week when I was confused why we were still in Private Beta longer than what I thought was the maximum (21) days, but JNat replied 2 days later and by then I was tied up with some things at work (non-SE related). In case the community didn't quite realize how Priavte beta works and that it can only be temporary if we don't work hard, would you consider giving us a few more days to see if the above announcements help drastically improve the quantity of good questions?

@StephaneRolland we entered public beta at 12:31pm EST.  Can you check when my post was written by hovering on the "2 hours ago" if you're on desktop? I'm on phone. A bit busy today. Will definitely reword this. Congratulations! We made it!!

FYI: https://cardano.meta.stackexchange.com/q/51/26

How should we deal with questions that are no longer relevant?  e.g. What should we do to this post now that we are out of private beta?  close, flag or leave?

@gRebel I accepted your answer, and it's clear to anyone that sees this question that we have now entered Public Beta. Typically meta posts like these don't get closed just because they are no longer relevant, for example when an election/call-for-nominations is over, the meta post will still be up forever even though the election is no longer going on. This post is still relevant in that it's still valuable for us to get more high-quality questions asked and to promote this site as widely as possible. Having starting the Matter Modeling SE myself, from experience I know we need people.

Out of private beta now.  Thanks for the effort Nike. Time to close as answered?


text:
Were we just missed, or did we ask to not graduate?
We were well beyond the required 1000 questions to graduate, when the 58 other sites graduated out of Beta recently. The announcement by Stack Exchange said "we allowed the communities to stay in Beta if they didn’t feel ready to leave that state yet". Does that mean that the diamond moderators of Cardano.SE told SE that we didn't feel we were ready?
That's totally okay if you did, but I'm just wondering if that happened, or if they just missed us because we weren't (yet) at 1000 questions at the time that they checked.

I believe this is the batch of the websites that were selected before, at the time we did not have 1k questions.
Edit: We will have to request it now.

Now, thanks to one of the amazing engineers on our Public Platform
team (Adam Lear, take your bow), the CMs have a tool to allow us to do
this without a developer. So in the future, if a site is eligible and
ready to leave Beta, we can process those requests ad-hoc and in a
more timely manner.

So we didn't ask to be left out. That's what I was wondering.

Yes, we're correct. I failed to find out what it means to request it ad-hoc.

Should we request it now or is there perhaps a good milestone for Cardano coming up that we can raise awareness with and align ourselves to?

No, we simply did not meet other graduation requirements.

In determining what sites were ready to graduate, we factored in site age (being in Public Beta for at least six months), having at least 1K open questions, and at least 70% of open questions having at least one upvoted answer. Sites needed to meet all three of these criteria in order to lose the Beta label. Based on these criteria, Cardano isn't ready to leave Public Beta yet.

Marek Mahut identified that we were just 50 questions short.

We met all of them. "(1) The site needed to be in public Beta for at least six months. (2) The site needed to have at least 1000 open questions. (3) At least 70% of the questions on the site needed to have at least one upvoted answer."

Please see my updated answer.

We have 1000+ questions and 80+ % answered. I'll look into it more later.

50 questions short of what? We had 1000+ open questions and 80% of them answered when the other 59 sites  graduated.


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Should we use 'mint' or 'minting' as a tag?
Most of the existing questions use 'mint', but 'mint' is a verb whereas 'minting' is a noun. If tags are topics and topics should be nouns, then 'minting' should be used, but 'mint' is shorter. Do we have a convention to keep tags as short as possible?

I believe "minting" is appropriate.
Minting is the infinitive version of the word as opposed to minted (past) mint (present) and will mint (future)


text:
Should the nix, nix-shell and nixos tags be merged?
At present there are several "nix" tags on the [cardano.se] site.

Nix (34 questions)
Nix-shell (23 questions)
Nixos (5 questions)

For the sake of easier searching, I suggest that we merge and synonym the tags so that all three become nixos
What's the community opinion?

Yes
This is a good idea as the questions all relate to parts of NixOS

No
They are better as separate tags.

not a vote for "no", but I assume nix-shell and nixos questions should be different enough to warrant separate tags.


text:
What standard should we set for questions tagged "Plutus-Pioneer"?
There are a large influx of new users here when a new cohort starts on the "Plutus pioneer" course.  It leads to a lot of new questions that do not come close to the guidelines set out in the tour and the help center.
Which guidelines should we be particularly focused on enforcing and encouraging?

1- to look for previous similar questions (many questions are repeated).
2- to stick to plutus-related questions as all haskell questions (syntax etc) should be asked in other forums.
Other than that there are many entry level questions that are valid and healthy for an ecosystem like this one.
In addition, please let's also remember that in the PPP classes, it is encouraged to post All questions in this platform (for the live sessions, like an Ask Me Anything).
One more solution is to ask the ppp team to also communicate the standards to the ppp cohorts, either using those guidelines from the Tour, or refining them further based on additional previous non-compliant examples not covered in the tour.
Call for action:
Can then all moderators gather/synthetize what types of questions are not too good? this thread can be used for gathering such types.

I have already reached out to the PPP program and asked that they suggest several steps/standards for using this site early in the program.  I don't know if they will take any or all on-board.

Great! I think it should be an iterative process as this community is just so new (all actors). Do you have examples of recent not too good questions? (not to point fingers but an example).

Thanks for the note. I've deleted the other entry

The questions can be edited, so pointing at specific examples doesn't necessarily remain a valid criticism.

Too many PPP questions seem to be generic questions that are more about github, git, setting up an environment.  Worst case seem to be "this threw an error", large dump of screenshots/logs, "help me!/do I need help?".

I have been in IT industry for decades and I wouldn't be so slack/clueless in public.  When I post here, I put in a lot of effort to be as concise, accurate and professional as possible.

I think what we should promote is the standards set in [ask], [answer] and the article in the help called "What questions should I avoid asking?"


text:
At the beginning of 2022, what are our site's biggest challenges?
Our "Cardano" site caters to a diverse set of users.
I believe that this is causing some unusual challenges and would like to hear what others feel are our biggest challenges and how we might address them.
Please add 1 answer per challenge and use the comments to offer your opinion on them.

Voting

Up-votes for answers and questions are both low.
People not voting for a question unless they want to know the answer?
Need to encourage people to vote for any new decent quality question?

Answers not being accepted

People are putting effort into answers and often not getting feedback
Posters often don't mark an answer as accepted despite getting multiple answers

Plutus Pioneers

Appears to be a lot of new users unfamiliar with Stack Exchange
Understandably more focused on Plutus Pioneers than providing quality questions and answers here
Lots of transient questions (relevant to a specific cohort)


text:
What should we ask the CMs to add to the "Cardano on Topic" page?
In answer to How can we turn this flood of question that do not meet the site guidelines into a positive?
Catija said:

The CMs can also drop some guidance on the Cardano On Topic page - y'all just need to formulate it for us.

Can we put it together here by answering, voting and consolidating?

The Cardano stack exchange is for Developers, Stake pool operators, enthusiasts users and wonderers.
If you have a question about …

Developing software that works with Cardano
Stake pools and their operation
How to use the Cardano ecosystem or accept Ada
The Cardano ecosystem's network or protocols
Open-source Cardano wallets or other Cardano software
Technologies or events that are applicable and relevant to the Cardano network and users of the Ada currency

and it is not about …

When will... be delivered/completed
Will there be a....
General programming techniques
Investment advice and/or price of Ada and related tokens
Politics or philosophy
A site or software recommendation
Any cryptocurrency or technology that is not applicable to the Cardano network and users of the Ada currency

then you’re probably in the right place to ask your question!

I started with something very similar to the on the Bitcoin stack exchange.  Looking for comments to help improve it.

I think the "you're probably in the right place" line should be placed under first paragraph.


text:
Could edit rules be relaxed?
So far I have hit two rules which discouraged simple cleanup edits -

I tried to add a brief note to the Edit Summary field, but it requires either 0 or 10+ characters.

I tried to correct "strait forward" to "straightforward", but edits are required to change at least 6 characters. (And adding whitespace doesn't work.)

Both of these seem suboptimal, could they be relaxed ?

These rules cannot be changed.

A 10 character summary for the edit is not much to ask, and we want edit summaries to provide enough detail as to what is being changed. Even tiny descriptions like "edited title" are still more than 10 characters.
The 6-character limit can already be avoided by earning full editing privileges. That is awarded at 500 reputation in private beta, and at 1,000 reputation during the public beta. With that privilege, your edits also take immediate effect and do not have to be reviewed by others.

It's unlikely that they're going to let us change these rules based on this (brand new) site asking for it, since these restrictions are the same network-wide.
It shouldn't be hard to write 10 characters to describe your edit. As for the restriction that the edit must have at least 6 characters, this is largely because edits by users without enough rep, are generally expected to be more substantial than just changing one word. Editing a post will bump that post up to the top, and make other (possibly unanswered and therefore more important to some people) posts less likely to be seen, it can be seen as a "cheap" way to earn reputation without knowing anything about the site's subject, and it will cause more work to be done by reviewers, so if you don't have enough rep to edit a post, it generally should be more than just a one-word change.
In the example you gave, where "straightforward" was spelled wrong, earlier in the same answer, "regulate it block production" should have said  "regulate its block production". In my experience network-wide, when there's one typo that's severe enough for me to want to correct it, there's usually (not always, but usually) at least one other thing that also needs correction, and this was indeed the case this time.


text:
Closing a question without even a comment
It is my understanding that due to this StackExchange's infancy, questions that otherwise may seem close-worthy, shall stay open if they aid in the discussion of Cardano and help in forming this StackExchange's character.
I would like to discuss the closing of this question:
What's happened with Cardano Proof of University Diplomas in Greece?
Unfortunately, this question has been closed without an explanation.
Personally, I found this to be an excellent question. I also wanted to know the status of this project. Why has it been closed? What is "off-topic" about it? What would have to change in the question to make it on-topic?
If other community members think this is a valid question, please make use of your reopen vote.

I also agree that was a great question. Maybe the Cardano team will be able to answer (even if the cooperation is not active anymore).

Who do you mean by Cardano team?

Firstly, closing questions without a comment is poor form.  It doesn't help the poster understand why it was closed and how to improve or indicate a better forum to raise the same question. We should discourage it in all but the most extreme cases (somebody asks a question that has nothing to do with Cardano)
Allowing questions about events and specific projects sets a precedent that is highly likely to be abused.  It could lead to spam, self-promotion and weakening of this site's value. - that's why I voted to close it when it appeared in my queue.
I believe that, to be relevant here, questions should rarely have answers that change over time and about Cardano itself rather than the projects and opportunities that are on it.  In my opinion this question failed on both those counts.

I did vote to close it as it did not appear to be really connected with Cardano, but to a closed Enterprise version planned by IOG back in the past.
All I found is a press release, not even issued by IOG, describing a potential project that someone could build on Cardano. So, as far as I know, all it ever was is a press release without a real project.
We can discuss if we want to allow discussion about projects build on top of Cardano technology (not the Cardano mainnet blockchain). I mean, is this SE a good place for project such as Emurgo Tracability? Probably not, but that's just my opinion I'm open to change.
I would be interested if discussion about Hyperledger or Quroum are allowed on the Etherum SE?

Thanks for the response. I found this on Charles Hoskinson's Twitter: https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1140567328331128832

I think that is about Atala in Georgia. I think my take on it is: If the solution is open and based on Cardano, we can consider it Cardano related. If the solution is proprietary and we do not know how integrated with Cardano it is, let's consider is an off-topic?


text:
Is there a site-specific help section?
I would like to see somewhere that we could define site-specific guidelines and help for users.
E.G.

Opinion based questions should be asked on Reddit
When will.... questions are unsuitable unless...
Our tag definition guidelines are...

If y'all create the text for it, the CMs can put it up in the time before mods. Ping one of us whenever you have something you think works - either in a comment or have someone who's a mod elsewhere (like Glorfindel) ping us in the TL.

♦ moderators will be able to edit the Help Center page What topics can I ask about here? which (on other Stack Exchange) is often used for site-specific guidelines for questions. Some of the (network-wide) reasons can be found on What types of questions should I avoid asking?  as they are not really specific to Cardano.
Tag definition guidelines are often discussed on Meta, so everybody from the community can weigh in. My experience on other Stack Exchange sites is that users creating tags usually don't read the Help Center when they create them.


text:
Why do I have close vote privileges, but no edit privileges?
I can vote to close any question, as well as reopen any question. I presume this is because no one on the site has more than 3,000+ reputation.
However, there are users with 2,000+ reputation, meaning I have privileges to close and reopen a question, but I don't have the edit privilege. I thought that closure was a privilege that came after editing.
Is this intended, or an oversight?
Note that I can also review in the Close votes Queue, and the Reopen votes Queue, but not the suggested edits queue.

Related: Why is more reputation required to edit on beta sites than to vote to close?

Have a look at the privileges page, and you'll notice that all the rep thresholds are artificially lowered, while the site is in private beta. Particularly, here's where the two relevant privilege thresholds lie:

Thanks for your answer! Specifically though, shouldn't they be swapped? Closing and reopening, in my mind, are harder to use privileges than editing. But if it's not a bug, that's okay with me.

I would say they're deliberately swapped, given that this phase is where y'all are defining what's on- and off-topic, and as such there's likely to be a lot more fast closing and reopening happening.


text:
I always see a notification for a low quality post review but my queue is empty. Why does this happen?
For some days now I always see a red notification dot on the review queues button:

But when I click on the "Low Quality Posts" tab, my queue is empty. I think this is because it's a question that I created or edited. After viewing the empty queue, the red dot disappears until I visit the site again at a later point in time. Is this a stack exchange bug?


text:
Who is using the Plutus Application Backend (PAB) here in this forum?
My last three questions all concerned the PAB and have received no answers. This got me wondering if anyone in this forum is actively using the PAB and if so, how he/she is using it.
This is more a community survey than a question, but I think it would be very helpful to know how people here think about this. So if you are using the PAB or considering using it, please let the forum know how your experience has been so far. What has been working, what issues did/do you have ? How could others in this forum help you ?
I, on my side, am following the examples of the Plutus git repository. I could launch endpoints in the PAB simulator and make some transactions work that only involved the known wallets of the simulator. I am now trying to export a transaction from the PAB to pass it to the Nami wallet for the user to sign it. This is were I am currently struggling.

I’m struggling with the same thing. I’ve gotten comfortable with the simulator but my workflow doesn’t feel translatable to working on the testnet/mainnet. I’ve figured I just need to wait for better support. The cli doesn’t make for a good development flow.

I haven't tried with the CLI. I don't think it is worth the effort. I just got one step further in this moment as I could solve my serialisation issue. I have the feeling that I am quite close to a solution for integrating an external wallet. The thing that is difficult is that all examples are shown with contracts directly submitting the transaction. I think a first step is to add for all these contracts a contract that returns an 'ExportTx'.

Moving to [meta]

There a number of possible reasons why there are no responses to questions about the PAB.

Nobody with the answer is here
The question is not encouraging a response
Those that could answer the question no longer come here because their efforts are not rewarded (their answers not upvoted and/or marked as accepted)
So few users have looked at the tour or the help center that the site is destined to fail at building into a useful database of questions and answers

Searching this site for PAB questions shows that many of the short, well explained, targeted questions are being answered.

How can I get a fully built transaction from the PAB was long, confusing and
vague.  It seemed like the poster wanted somebody to write a tutorial for
them.  I believe it would be much more likely to be answered if it followed
the guidelines in What types of questions should I avoid asking?

If this community does not establish a culture of informing new users, adhering to the guidelines and supporting each other then it will never be as good as the Stack Exchange sites for the other cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos, etc.)

Are you kidding me ? "How can I get a fully built transaction from the PAB" could be answered by one sentence or one line of code. I referred to my open issue on the Nami GitHub, which is very informative, to get more background. My issue even made it into the official Cardano documentation (see section "Browser wallet": https://plutus-apps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plutus/explanations/pab.html).

Could the question simply be...  "The only way to implement smart contracts is to hand over a fully built transaction to the wallet. When using the PAB, the Contract instance needs to build it using the wallet address (and optionally a pre-defined UTxO for the collateral) of the user. I haven't seen any code showing how to achieve this in the GitHub repository. How can this be done ?"   The first two paragraphs as they are currently written seem superfluous to me.  It may well be answered with a short response, but the question didn't give me that impression.  Different for a Plutus dev?

BTW - Good work getting your issue into the official Cardano docs.

This formulation would miss the point that this question is making: handing over an unbalanced transaction to the wallet is the way that the Cardano developer team has defined as the standard and only way to interact with the wallet using the PAB. Apparently they did not notice that this is not possible with current wallets. This question gives a nuanced take on this approach and asks for an alternative. I don’t see a need to dumb it down.

OK, it didn't make that point clearly to me but your comment did (might say more about me than the question).  Thanks for the clarification.  Hopefully someone will answer it.


text:
A way to incentivise quality questions... Maybe?
I feel that the way to get quality questions is to incentivise a discourse about the technical and governance issues along with roll-out and deployment strategies.
To incentivise, allow payments to be made to the most upvoted comments.  Maybe on a monthly basis.  This could be a part of the research strategy for ongoing R&D which will allow a true democratisation and meritocracy of good knowledge.

Payments are not an option for this site.  The features are determined by Stack Exchange.
You would need to suggest it on the Stack Exchange Meta site.


text:
No nominees for moderator election: What happens next?
Stack Exchange’s position is that every site must have team of moderators to operate in our network. Currently this community is being moderated by eddex, who is doing a great job, but site moderation should never be just a one person job.
While sites are in Beta, elections do not need to be competitive. However, once a site graduates/loses the Beta label (which Cardano did in 2022), elections must be competitive to progress to the voting stage and be considered successful. We define an election as competitive when it has at least one more nominee than available moderator slots. This most recent election was for two moderator slots, so we would have needed to receive three nominations for it to be competitive, but unfortunately we received no nominations at all.
Members of an SE site being willing to step up as moderators has been the primary threshold for keeping a site alive since we created this policy in January 2015. Without that, a site is in danger of being shut down. Today, I am posting on behalf of the Community Management team to discuss the next steps for this site.
After a failed election we typically wait 6 months before trying again. In order for a future election to be successful, there need to be community members who are eligible to serve as moderators who are willing to step up to the plate.
Next Steps
We recommend waiting until April 2025 before setting up another election for this site. We’ll be looking for additional individuals to nominate themselves as moderators to join the team. If we can’t find at least three people willing to nominate themselves to be a moderator on this site by that time, the site is at risk of shutting down.
Do you have any questions about the election process, or any concerns keeping you from nominating yourself as a moderator? Let us know, and we’ll do our best to address them.


text:
Changes to Cardano moderator team, and scheduling a moderator election
You may have noticed that some moderators on your site have lost their moderator access today. On July 8th, 2024, we released a new version of the moderator agreement. Moderators network-wide had 30 days to sign the new agreement. Of the 600 moderators network-wide, around 44 did not sign the new revision of the moderator agreement by the deadline. As a result, those 44 moderators’ diamonds were removed today.
While we are generally satisfied with this outcome, unfortunately some sites lost more moderators than others. On Cardano, there is only one moderator remaining as of today.
We are currently in the process of scheduling new elections where needed, and we will prioritize sites like Cardano that have been harder hit by this change. Until a new election concludes, Community Managers (Stack Exchange employees) will be checking on Cardano occasionally to assist with moderation. However, please be aware that it may take a bit longer than normal for flags to be handled.
We would encourage you to begin discussing and organizing your community for an election, and we’ll be around to schedule one soon.
In the meantime, we strongly encourage curators to use site curation tools to the best of your ability (up/down voting, closing, editing, flagging, and reviewing), in order to provide a good experience for users of Cardano in the interim. If you see anything that needs immediate staff attention, please feel free to contact us.


text:
Vote early, vote often!
Like other Beta sites, such as Operations Research, Matter Modeling and Ethereum, I think it would be a good idea to advertise this voting principle to the Cardano community. This is a condensed version of Atwood's "Vote Early, Vote Often" post.

"I cannot state this strongly enough. Voting is absolutely critical to the formation of a healthy SE site. And this is never more true than in Private and early Public beta.  You don't have to agree with an answer to vote it up!"

Quoting Robert Cartaino from chat:

"Vote, vote, vote. Encourage others to vote, vote, vote. On good content, leave signposts ("If you like this, please vote it up. It's important for the community!")-- in both meta and the main site. Maybe a few meta posts informing the users of the important of that type of participation. You are empowered a lot more than you know."

Credits to Dawny33.


text:
How can we turn this flood of question that do not meet the site guidelines into a positive?
You may or may not have noticed but the Cardano StackExchange site has recently been flooded with question that do not meet the site guidelines. This is unfortunate because this recent flood has brought a significant amount of new users.
How should we go about helping these new users learn better StackExchange practices without discouraging them from continuing to use the site?

I am glad you raised this in this way

Upvote the ones that get it right
Edit the questions to improve their quality (especially title)
Point them at the help for guidance on quality questions and answers
Explain politely and add comments when we resort to flagging/reporting

A pretty much perfect answer!

Thanks, but Catija's is much better (I learnt a lot from it).

She has a lot of experience on the network :) I didn't comment on it yet, because I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'm sure it was very informative!

The first few weeks and months of a site being around are when you all do the work of finding out what works for you.
We have general guidelines for what is in and out of scope on Stack Exchange and, for the most part, it's best for sites to keep in alignment with that - but if you find something that works well for you here, it's possible to keep it.
Where I'd be really cautious right now is the influx of forum-style questions that should be asked on a Cardano forum - things like:

Will there be a web-based Daedalus wallet?
Turkish language support?
Will ADA always be deflationary?
When is Hydra going to be completed?
How and when we will be able to use Catalyst for our own projects to vote?

These sorts of questions are more like news reports and future guessing - maybe there's official documentation of what's happening when but in a year when these things are done, these questions are useless - they're not generally considered a good fit for the Stack Exchange platform. Just as questions about when the next season of [TV show] is going to be released is out of scope on Movies & TV and Anime, when the next feature or release of a product should be out of scope here.
In the near term, you have some options - comment and vote to close or flag to close (if you have under 500 reputation) so that these questions get closed and prevent others from answering them. The CMs can also drop some guidance on the Cardano On Topic page - y'all just need to formulate it for us.
The thing to keep in mind through all of this is - there's no rush! You're in public beta. If a question sticks around and gets answered - that's fine. It's part of the learning process and it's completely normal! You need these sorts of questions to help make evidence-based decisions on your scope, so don't necessarily jump to conclusions of whether something should be in scope or not right away, though do feel free to base some discussion on how other sites have handled things.
Your meta should be as busy with scope discussions right now as your main site is with new questions - if you're curious about when something is in scope or not - ask here and work through it together, as a community. Make decisions and then implement them - either as community-specific close reasons (which the CMs can also help with until y'all get moderators) or on help center pages, or even just in comments.
Oh, and as a note - use the custom close reason you have - the field where you can enter whatever reason you want - it's often going to be more helpful to the person asking the question to have a more specific close reason rather than just "opinion based".
Enjoy the activity and help the new visitors get to know the site and adapt rather than pushing them away. Don't be afraid to ask us for help if you need it.


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Is syntax highlighting not working for Cardano SE?
Code syntax highlighting doesn't seem to work.  Is this a bug or just a feature that needs to be enabled?
I have tried adding the languages examples from What is Syntax highlighting...
These are either poorly chosen examples or syntax highlighting is not working.  Our users will possibly use lang-haskell or lang-hs
lang-js
function greet(person) {
    return "Hello " + person;
}
var user = "Jon Skeet";
alert(greet(user));

typescript
var arr = [0, 1, 2];  // will highlight if [typescript] tag exists

"c" using html format to specify
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
  printf("Hello World");
}

I've enabled syntax highlighting here on Cardano both on the main site and on meta. Please let us know if you run into any issues.


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2022 Potential Moderator Election: Community Interest Check
UPDATE: The election has now been scheduled. Thanks to all who expressed interest in nominating.

It is time for us to consider holding a new election for moderators for the Cardano SE.
The last election we held was back in Q2 2021, where we elected three moderators.
One of those has been recently removed due to inactivity.
It is proposed to hold a new election to get ourselves back up to a more regularly-available and active moderation team. To avoid finding ourselves in a situation where an election would fail due to an insufficient number of candidates, I am posting here to assess the community members' willingness to step up and nominate themselves.
Please leave an answer if you would like to run for a moderator position.
NOTE: This is not an official election nomination thread, just a "pulse check" to get a notion of how many people here would be willing to step up.

I’m voting to close this question because the election has been scheduled and the community interest check is no longer needed.

I’d love to help moderate. I don’t have much moderation experience, on stack exchange, but I’m up for the challenge.

I suggest you spend time building your reputation, gaining access to the edit review queues, etc.  Moderation is pretty light at this stage from my point of view, but that may be due to me being in UTC+10 (Australia).

I suggest anyone interested in Moderation/site direction, etc. start chatting about it in our chat room (Loveplace)


text:
Could we have some leniency to this new user?
I am aware that moderators (and CMs) will not discuss why a user was suspended and I am totally not complaining about that right now, nor am I asking for details about what happened, but the user that was suspended for "plagiarism" is a total novice on SE, having only joined SE 3 months ago at around the time when the Cardano site was first proposed on Area51.

But you can see based on their Meta questions and Area51 activity that they are a total novice.
I once reached out to staff about a similar situation, and the CMs said in that support ticket that Meta would be the place to ask about this type of question, and the support tickets should only be used as a last resort, so that's why I'm asking here.
Considering that:

The user is brand new to the SE ecosystem and is still learning how to use the platform,
A 7-day suspension during Private Beta can be extremely impactful compared to, for example, a 1-year suspension on StackOverflow,

I wonder if some leniency could be offered to the user, such as giving them a warning, or a 24-hour suspension?
If the user was a repeated offender, then please forgive me for this request, but otherwise I think the suspension is too harsh.

Yes, a 7-day suspension can effectively end a user's participation in a private beta. But at the same time, a user continually posting copy-pasted content can be just as detrimental to the private beta as a whole. You have to consider the downside of removing one user versus the downside of an entire beta failing because the site is littered with copied content. The issue was already pointed out to them in a since-deleted question (because plagiarism) and they continued doing it. So there's not really a lot else to say here.

Thanks so much for the explanation @animuson. The background about them having been given a warning and still continuing to do it, is extremely helpful. We do not want this site to be littered with copy-and-pasted content, especially in Private Beta, though I'd be surprised if this isn't something the user can early-on learn to stop doing. Have you been able to look at support ticket SUPPORT-4629 Extreme plagiarism from a moderator which was handled by JNat? In that case the mod (I won't say who it is for their privacy) answer was just edited to put the source and the rest of the plagiarized

content was kept on the site (and is still there right now). There was another question where that same mod had plagiarized, which was also mentioned in that same support ticket, but I got that mod to delete their answer by asking them to do so privately.

I've edited your question to remove the content extraneous to the matter at hand, @NikeDattani — what was done in some other site on some other occasion hardly has anything to do with this case you're bringing to Meta, and only serves to muddy the waters. If you want to reopen the ticket in question, I'd be happy to respond to you there.

As you note in the question, it's not common for suspensions to be debated in Meta. And as animuson noted, warning was given before the suspension.
As harsh as a suspension during private beta may come across, this phase is instrumental in the site's lifecycle — and using it to fill the site with plagiarized content is more detrimental in the long run than a 7-day suspension (which, incidentally, can be used to passively learn what makes a good question by observing other on the site, even if one can't directly participate).


text:
2021: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2021, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Cardano over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Users suspended²
2
5

Users destroyed³
1
0

Users contacted
4
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
146
392

Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
0
28

Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
13
76

Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
1
24

Tasks reviewed⁴: First questions queue
14
256

Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
5
406

Tasks reviewed⁴: First answers queue
8
177

Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
18
174

Tags merged
8
0

Tag synonyms proposed
6
0

Tag synonyms created
6
0

Questions protected
0
1

Questions migrated
1
0

Questions flagged⁵
4
56

Questions closed
33
31

Question flags handled⁵
39
21

Posts undeleted
0
14

Posts locked
0
3

Posts deleted⁶
70
126

Posts bumped
0
128

Comments undeleted
3
0

Comments flagged
0
15

Comments deleted⁷
19
132

Comment flags handled
8
7

Answers flagged
2
119

Answer flags handled
102
15

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Cardano without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

You can also check out this report on other sites
Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2022! ^_^

Number of edits vs number of questions seems low.
I am surprised how many "suggested edits" the moderators did.


text:
2022: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Cardano over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Answer flags handled
253
99

Answers flagged
45
303

Comment flags handled
2
2

Comments deleted⁷
6
149

Comments flagged
0
4

Comments undeleted
1
0

Posts bumped
0
724

Posts deleted⁶
187
214

Posts locked
0
20

Posts undeleted
5
25

Question flags handled⁵
26
26

Questions closed
48
0

Questions flagged⁵
4
49

Questions migrated
3
0

Questions protected
0
4

Tag synonyms created
2
0

Tag synonyms proposed
3
0

Tags merged
4
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue
14
5

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue
115
283

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue
117
276

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue
35
75

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue
57
33

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue
3
1

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue
79
102

Users contacted
1
0

Users destroyed³
6
0

Users suspended²
0
13

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Cardano without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). Community can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2021: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^


text:
2021 Community Moderator Election
The 2021 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://cardano.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.

I'm excited about this. I see that Marek nominated himself. I followed his lead and did the same.
Once the election is over, I propose to possibly work with the Town Hall folks to bring more directed attention to this StackExchange by possibly feature some (unanswered) Questions.
I'm excited to be part of this journey.

Great, Matthias. we need to get moderators in stack pool and developer telegram channel to divert users here. Answers are reviewed in a much better way in stake exchange.


text:
Announcing a Pro Tempore Moderator election
Summary: Cardano Stack Exchange will begin the nomination stage for a special election on May 31 to bring in your three inaugural pro-tem moderators — congratulations on making it out of private Beta!
For full details of the process, see the announcement on Meta Stack Exchange. The timeline:

Starting on May 31, users can nominate themselves. Users can also ask questions on meta for potential moderators to answer. (Use the discussion and election tags.)

On June 7, if there are four or more candidates, we'll run an election. If not, we'll extend the nomination period for one more week. If at the end of this extension period there are still not four or more candidates, I'll simply appoint the candidates who've nominated. (There's a small chance we'll need to remove a nomination, but I doubt that will come up.)

If there is an election, I'll announce the results on meta on June 15 (or on the 22nd, if we need to extend the nomination period and only get 4 or more candidates then).

If you have any questions about the process, please stick them in an answer here.

It would be good to get official nominations from IOHK, Emurgo or the Cardano Foundation

It would be good to get nominations from folks well-familiarized with the Stack Exchange engine, too — moderation is often about knowing the tools and mechanics, and while being a subject matter expert can be useful, it is definitely not the strongest requirement, @gRebel


text:
What about better Icon more releated to https://cardano.org/?
What about better Icon more releated to https://cardano.org/ as this icon not readable and very similar to other sites in Stack Exchange Network?
My Question is different. Beacause Site icon is very similar to Astronomy.SE mean it similar to another site but I mean it is too dark in browser dark mode So Sadly this does not answer my question.

Do you have a suggestion for which icon to use?

@NikeDattani Actually No , but what about the official icon of https://cardano.org/ .. I see it a bit good

Unfortunately I don't think that will be entertained because unless it's a unicode character. Sites don't get custom designs unless there's a sponsor, or the site becomes very mature (usually takes several years: Etherium.SE and Bitcoin.SE do not even have custom designs yet!).

@NikeDattani Ok Bitcoin have icon that have written "B C" So what about make icon be like "C A" or any other character that make readabilty better but I am new in SE So I do not know how to change icon of sites .. OK

You could suggest "CA" as a logo in the Meta question and see how the community feels about it!

@NikeDattani OK .. No problem we will keep icon as it is. but what about make icon other color in meta than dark beacause in Browser Dark Mode it make everything worse!

Such changes are very unlikely to be entertained just for this tiny Private Beta site (these are problems with the entire SE Network, not just Cardano.SE). You might want to search on Meta SE if someone else has previously complained about the issue in the browser's darkmode.

@NikeDattani Sure but what about make site better (I know we tiny but in future this will change .. Right) Ok I will search .. If you found any similar question tell me out .. Thanks Nike Dattani


text:
How to become Moderator in Cardano Stack Exchange Network?
I see a lot of users are automatically chnaged from normal user into Moderator So is their steps to follow to be Moderator or specific number of reputation or badge or something other.

Those users are "community managers", and they are employees (working full-time and getting paid a salary) from the Stack Exchange company.
To become a "site moderator", there will be 3 candidates chosen via an election which will take place at least a month from now (if and only if the site passes the Private Beta stage and enters Public Beta).

How to apply for Community Manager?

It's rare that new CMs are recruited. They hired at least three new CMs very recently, so I don't know if they'll be hiring more in the near-future. Catija might be able to tell you if there's any likelihood for more CM recruitment in the near-future.

We are, in fact, currently hiring CMs but it's a role that requires either CM experience elsewhere or moderation experience here on SE. https://stackoverflow.com/company/work-here/3049910/community-manager-curator-support-team