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2017 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire
In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers.
Due to the submission count, we have selected all provided questions as well as our back up questions for a total of 8 questions.
As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes.Please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written, and also including a link to your answer on your nomination post.
Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.
Good luck to all of the candidates!
Oh, and when you've completed your answer, please provide a link to it after this blurb here, before that set of three dashes. Please leave the list of links in the order of submission.
To save scrolling here are links to the submissions from each candidate (in order of submission):

MeshCollider's Submission
Murch's Submission
Andrew Chow's Submission
asterisk's Submission

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?
What is the most pressing issue of the Bitcoin Stackexchange and how will you approach it if elected as a moderator?
Moderators are called in when something is amiss. When you're elected, a noticeable portion of your time spent on Bitcoin.SE will be evaluating posts that other users flagged for your attention. You'll encounter junk on a daily basis, and on days when you're hard-pressed for time, it may be your only window into the site. Meanwhile, we're asking you to offer patient and diplomatic guidance to the users that tried to contribute. What's your motivation to run for such a job? Why is it important for you to be a moderator? What do you bring to the moderation team to complement your fellow moderators?
Given the highly political nature of this space, how would you deal with questions/answers/comments which use derogatory terms like Bcash or BScore, SegwitCoin or BizCoin? What about questions that knowingly or unknowingly promote certain client software for Bitcoin?
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?

MeshCollider

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?

Even if a member is super knowledgeable and active, they aren't excused from the 'be nice' policy or any other expectations of members on the site. I would contact the member informally in private first, and just give them a nudge in the right direction. If they continue to do so regularly despite a warning, I'd warn them more formally that if they continue I'd be forced to suspend them, and if necessary, follow through with that. In my opinion, having one less member giving good answers is better than one more member causing trouble and conflicts (although of course this is relative to how often they get into conflicts vs how active they are).

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would of course contact that moderator directly in private to discuss it. Simply re-opening/undeleting/etc the question publicly would be inappropriate without knowing why they chose to in the first place or letting them explain, and having a discussion about it may prove useful for both of us to improve our service in the future. Having a good relationship with the other moderators is definitely important, especially as I would only be starting out, so working as a team is better for the site as a whole. Of course if for some reason we could not work it out between us, I would probably seek the guidance of a stack exchange staff member to help.

What is the most pressing issue of the Bitcoin Stackexchange and how will you approach it if elected as a moderator?

I think one of the most pressing issues of Bitcoin.SE is the speed with which duplicates get closed. Most active members will have noticed the extremely regular "My transaction is not confirmed" and similar questions, popping up sometimes even multiple in a day. I think its important for these questions to be closed as duplicates as soon as possible so that they all point to a single good list of answers rather than having different answers in every question. But currently the speed with which they are closed is a little slow, because of the number of votes needed to close compared to the number of active reviewers. The power to perform such clear, uncontroversial actions as a moderator would be a huge help.
But also on the note of closing questions, as discussed a bit here, its becoming a little bit of an issue that people are too eager to close questions even if they might not need to be closed. So that issue needs to be discussed further too.

Moderators are called in when something is amiss. When you're elected, a noticeable portion of your time spent on Bitcoin.SE will be evaluating posts that other users flagged for your attention. You'll encounter junk on a daily basis, and on days when you're hard-pressed for time, it may be your only window into the site. Meanwhile, we're asking you to offer patient and diplomatic guidance to the users that tried to contribute. What's your motivation to run for such a job? Why is it important for you to be a moderator? What do you bring to the moderation team to complement your fellow moderators?

My motivation for being active on this site is simply the enjoyment I get from helping people out and seeing them learn, while at the same time being right next to other highly knowledgeable and intelligent members that I can learn from too (e.g. achow101, sipa, etc). But as a moderator I can do a step better than that, and help keep the site as a whole healthy and growing, so even more people are willing and able to come and ask, answer and learn. So even if I don't have time on a particular day to actually answer any questions, I still feel like I'm helping people. The only important thing about being a moderator to me is that it would help me be a more effective help on the site. In fact, Murch gave me the idea of running for this position because I was worried that after the reputation increases I would lose some of the moderation tools I've earned so far and wouldn't be able to help as much. I bring a solid grasp of the English language to assist with editing, a reasonable understanding of at least a few aspects of bitcoin and programming in general because that will definitely be handy, and an active and friendly attitude which I hope the other moderators would enjoy working with :)

Given the highly political nature of this space, how would you deal with questions/answers/comments which use derogatory terms like Bcash or BScore, SegwitCoin or BizCoin? What about questions that knowingly or unknowingly promote certain client software for Bitcoin?

If a comment or use of a derogatory term deliberately or otherwise causes conflict/harassment/belittling of other members' views, I would treat it in the same way as any other rude/antagonizing comment. I always try to make sure that I don't let my personal opinions on any matter get in the way of making the right decision (of course everyone makes mistakes). I think a lot of the more politically-natured questions would probably be 'primarily opinion based' anyway so there's no excuse for such provocative terms.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Of course I've read the theory of moderation, but I'll avoid just leaving the the "Ideally as little as possible" quote here. Moderators in my view just do what everyone else does - help keep the site clean and running smoothly. Everyone can earn privileges through reputation that allow them to assist in that, and moderators just have a bit more experience and power to speed things up when time is of the essence, and are trusted to make reasonable decisions in dealing with other members inappropriate behavior, which hopefully doesn't have to happen often.

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?

I know I personally have a lot of respect for the current moderators and ex-moderators, so I would be honored to have such a privilege. I'm confident that I have held myself to a high standard thus far on the site, and will continue to try and raise that personal bar even higher. As a new moderator I would definitely have a lot to learn from those more experienced than me, but I know that the guidance will be there if/when I need it so while it is quite a daunting prospect, it's one which I am excited about. And I would take great pride in knowing that the community had faith in me to help out in such a privileged position by electing me.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

As mentioned above, sometimes the ability to more efficiently close clear cases in a timely fashion would be a lot more effective than simply being able to cast votes. I still have a long (well, long relative to how far I've come already) way to go before I reach 10k or 20k rep and I have a lot of enthusiasm to help out which would have to wait out otherwise. I also think the ability to resolve conflicts and other issues would be much more effective help, and things for example like moving extended discussion in comments into chat rooms, which I have so far had to flag for the current moderators to do.
Thank you for reading and considering my nomination :)

"having one less member giving good answers is better than one more member causing trouble and conflicts" - no its not, that is how you kill a community. A few "disruptions" are a small price to pay for good answers and a vibrant community that tolerates heated discussion. Someone's "disruptions" should happen more than their good posts for a suspension to be justified, and only after a solid attempt has been made to discuss with that user. I can't support your bid for being moderator because of that. See my comment on Andrew Chow's questionaire.

Note that's what I said slightly before that, "If they continue to do so regularly despite a warning, I'd warn them more formally that if they continue I'd be forced to suspend them, and if necessary, follow through with that".

Murch

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?

Assuming that the arguments and flags are discussed on the user's posts, I would help keep the comments civil and constructive. If the pattern persists, I would message the user privately to point out what is happening and share some ideas what we would like them to change about their activity on the site. If the user doesn't change their behaviour, I would consider moving to suspend them only if their behaviour is sufficiently disruptive or likely to drive away other users. If most of their content is valuable and it's not too much effort to sanitize on a per post basis, I'd probably wait for the situation to develop further.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would ping the other mod in our chat to inquire about their reasoning to do so. I'd share my idea how the post could have been handled and ask what they think about that.
I'd seek this conversation more often in the beginning as we get to know each other better. Later, if I don't feel strongly about a post, I'd expect that I'd just go with the judgement of my peer as anything else would waste both of our time.

What is the most pressing issue of the Bitcoin Stackexchange and how will you approach it if elected as a moderator?

In the past years, we've been mostly suffering from low community participation in running the site. This has expressed in long review queues and low-quality content sticking around longer than necessary.
I would like to try to use the attention we're generating with the election to jumpstart our meta and chat activity. I think that both would also help people to feel a stronger ownership for the site and may benefit site maintenance.
While review queues could use a little more love, there has been a positive trend with new contributors and old ones returning in the past months. I think that we may be closing a bit too quickly in some instances lately, and we might want to have more discussions about some posts.

Moderators are called in when something is amiss. When you're elected, a noticeable portion of your time spent on Bitcoin.SE will be evaluating posts that other users flagged for your attention. You'll encounter junk on a daily basis, and on days when you're hard-pressed for time, it may be your only window into the site. Meanwhile, we're asking you to offer patient and diplomatic guidance to the users that tried to contribute. What's your motivation to run for such a job? Why is it important for you to be a moderator? What do you bring to the moderation team to complement your fellow moderators?

There are few good sources of information about Bitcoin. Many tend to become outdated, or don't make the information available persistently. Bitcoin.Stackexchange.com is a site that provides quality information that is easily retrievable. As such it is a way for main contributors in the space to share knowledge efficiently while the effort of maintaining the integrity and quality of the information can be shared.
While the encounters with low-quality contributions, spam and trolls can be frustrating at times, I am strongly motivated due to my work helping other Bitcoin contributors to have more time for other things while at the same time facilitating an extensive learning resource for the broader community. Bitcoin.Stackexchange.com was my main source in learning about Bitcoin and I'd be happy to help provide this learning experience to more people.

Given the highly political nature of this space, how would you deal with questions/answers/comments which use derogatory terms like Bcash or BScore, SegwitCoin or BizCoin? What about questions that knowingly or unknowingly promote certain client software for Bitcoin?

I would like Bitcoin.stackexchange.com to remain as apolitical as possible. The site's community is self-governed in that it sets its own topic scope, enforces its own rules and elects its own moderators. If posts are on-topic they'll get appropriate attention with edits, answers and tags as any other that are.
Posts with the intent to provoke are covered by our "be nice" policy: as long as they are unambiguous in what they are referring to, they can usually be easily edited to remove any provocations. Posts that purely consist of provocation can be removed without losing any quality content.
In regard to posts that promote certain client software, foremost, questions need to ask something that we can answer objectively, and answers need to address the question, provide explanation and include evidence or arguments. As before, we should remove tangential information and distill valuable answers. Clearly, posts that are solely promoting software usage would be off-topic.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Moderators help maintain the frame in which the site's community builds a comprehensive body of questions and answers for the site's topic. We muck out the stable, fight off the broken window syndrome, and are human exception handlers when something goes amiss.

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?

When I first became a moderator on this site, it was especially daunting to me that people might be misled by old content I had created when I first started using the site. To that end, I've been reevaluating and improving such content whenever an old post of mine got new comments or upvotes. After being around for a few years, I am confident in my judgement about what topics I should comment on or not. I've also become more conscious about clearly communicating my level of confidence in information that I provide in posts. Finally, I rigorously add explanations and feedback when I interact with posts.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Being a moderator has allowed me to significantly improve our tagging situation in the past years. For example, I've burninated more than 50 tags, I've eradicated the tag mining by splitting it up into ten other tags and retagging more than 1200 questions, and made 66 posts about tags on meta.
I've cleaned up several clusters of duplicate trees and established some canonical questions.
By deleting almost 700 posts and closing more than 2000 questions, I've significantly reduced the time that other people had to invest addressing bad/duplicate content.

Andrew Chow (achow101)

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?

Although users who provide good answers are valuable to the community, if the user is not being civil in the comments or is being argumentative, then that behavior is not acceptable. Having good answers does not give someone an exception to being moderated. I would handle their comments and flags as I would anyone else. First, I would privately message the user to ask him to be more civil in the comments and to not start arguments. If he were to persist, I would move towards temporarily suspending him and possibly permanently if he kept up the disruptive behavior.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would first ask the mod as to why he performed that action on the question. He may have seen something that I did not notice and thought that the action was appropriate. Generally, I would just trust the judgement of my colleague and leave the question as is.

What is the most pressing issue of the Bitcoin Stackexchange and how will you approach it if elected as a moderator?

I think the most pressing issue of the Bitcoin Stackexchange is the low participation of users in moderation actions. I often see that the review queues can be fairly long and a lot of duplicate and low quality questions stick around for a while before they are closed or removed. Being able to take decisive action on topics that are clearly duplicates or low quality would allow me to help make the site better and friendlier to all contributors.

Moderators are called in when something is amiss. When you're elected, a noticeable portion of your time spent on Bitcoin.SE will be evaluating posts that other users flagged for your attention. You'll encounter junk on a daily basis, and on days when you're hard-pressed for time, it may be your only window into the site. Meanwhile, we're asking you to offer patient and diplomatic guidance to the users that tried to contribute. What's your motivation to run for such a job? Why is it important for you to be a moderator? What do you bring to the moderation team to complement your fellow moderators?

As I said in my nomination, I am a moderator on Bitcointalk.org. I am a moderator there for the same reasons that I am running for moderator here: I wish to help people, to be helpful to others, and to make the sites that I participate in better places. As a moderator, I can both make this site friendlier, more accessible to other contributors, and in general helping it grow to reach more people. I bring to the moderation team knowledge of the technical details of Bitcoin and prior moderation experience where I have dealt with many of the same trolls and spammers on Bitcointalk.

Given the highly political nature of this space, how would you deal with questions/answers/comments which use derogatory terms like Bcash or BScore, SegwitCoin or BizCoin? What about questions that knowingly or unknowingly promote certain client software for Bitcoin?

Although the Bitcoin space is highly political, I do not think that a Q&A site like Bitcoin SE should be political at all, rather it should remain neutral. So long as derogatory terms are not there solely to incite anger, troll, or flame people, I think that it would be okay to leave them in the question.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

In my opinion, moderators are here to help maintain order and cleanliness of the site, kind of like security guards and janitors. Moderators should only step in when users are being disruptive or fighting. Moderators should also be here to remove the spam, fix the things that need fixing, and generally handle the things that the community itself cannot organically take care of.

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?

Given that I have posted on Bitcointalk with a moderator and staff badge for over a year now, I am quite used to my posts be scrutinized differently. Many of the same posting habits and characteristics that I picked up while posting on and moderating Bitcointalk have carried over to here. I am confident that my posts are appropriate and I do and will continue to support my answers with sources and citations and will edit them as I receive feedback.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Being a moderator will allow me to clean up spam, close duplicates, and take action in a more timely manner. It would allow me to give people more time to participate in the community instead of dealing with moderation tasks such as closing questions and deleting posts. Being a moderator allows me to take punitive action against spammers, trolls, and disruptive users when I see them instead of having to wait for a moderator to take care of it (sometimes I will ask Murch in private to quickly deal with something I saw; as a moderator, I won't have to do that).

What timezone are you in?

I am in Eastern Standard/Daylight Time which is UTC-5/4.

Bitcoin enthusiasts are often anti authoritarian, and I count myself among them. As a moderator, you would be responsible for only using your moderator powers when there is consensus to do so - not just as your own discretion. "Disruption" is not sufficient for suspending or banning an account and must be always weighed against the positive aspects such a user brings to the community. Being always civil is not the goal of SO, it is providing a community with vibrant answers. Don't let your view of what is offensive make you just another asshole mod with a chip on your shoulder. Good luck!

According to many folks on r/btc, it is a big problem that the same folks have moderator power on bitcointalk, the bitcoin wiki, bitcoin.org and on the r/bitcoin subreddit.  I haven't spent much time on the bitcointalk forum, so not sure if it's true or not, but due to this criticism, I would propose not to vote for anyone having moderation power other places.

@tobixen That's a reasonable point

asterisk (Timezone: UTC +5:30)

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?

Well, we cannot judge a person or his intelligence with the number of arguments/flags he generate. It comes down to the question that, whether that user's arguments were right or not. And if it were right, then there should not be a problem at all. And in the case of those being wrong, as a moderator, we are here to help.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Well, if a moderator closed or deleted a question which was relevant according to me, I will put forth the reasons I had to tell the moderator why this question would have been a relevant one, as well as listen to the other moderator why he thought it was irrelevant.

What is the most pressing issue of the Bitcoin Stackexchange and how will you approach it if elected as a moderator?

Most of the users come here during hard forks or when they don't get a transactions confirmed in a certain period of time or so. For that, I have written myself many answers for the last BTC fork to BCH and there are already many answers for the unconfirmed transactions, which I can redirect those questions to. It is to be shown that this StackExchange is welcoming for not just the advanced users of BTC, but also for the beginners.

Moderators are called in when something is amiss. When you're elected, a noticeable portion of your time spent on Bitcoin.SE will be evaluating posts that other users flagged for your attention. You'll encounter junk on a daily basis, and on days when you're hard-pressed for time, it may be your only window into the site. Meanwhile, we're asking you to offer patient and diplomatic guidance to the users that tried to contribute. What's your motivation to run for such a job? Why is it important for you to be a moderator? What do you bring to the moderation team to complement your fellow moderators?

It was always great to help others. And with the whatever little knowledge I have about BTC, if I could help someone, I will be happy to do that. And that's what drives me. I have been trying my bit on editing and flagging and will continue to do so.

Given the highly political nature of this space, how would you deal with questions/answers/comments which use derogatory terms like Bcash or BScore, SegwitCoin or BizCoin? What about questions that knowingly or unknowingly promote certain client software for Bitcoin?

I have a small background of being a marketer and advertiser for some time and I am good at knowing these kind of things when a person intentionally advertises and when he is genuinely asking something. So, in these situation, I can be really good sometimes.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Simply saying? They keep the StackExchange clean :)

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?

With great power comes great responsibility. I see that as a responsibility. I would be more careful on how I respond to an answer and give my 100% as I have did always.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

The commitment of being here whenever the StackExchange needs me makes this more effective than high rep.

WRT question 1: Is it possible for a user to be correct and rude at the same time? If so, if someone is both, how would you deal with that?

Yes, it is indeed possible that a person can be correct as well as rude at the same time. In that case, we can let them know about the friendly policy we have in all StackExchange, and in the case he still does not understand, we can always edit the answers to remove the unnecessary and keep the rest.


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Community Wiki for Bitcoin
I noticed that on some popular stack exchange sites there are community wikis such as StackOverflow and Unix StackExchange.
Since we've graduated from beta, do we also get to start a community wiki?

I think we'll only graduate with the end of the election, and according to an answer on a related question a while back, it seems like they didn't like the results they got with it on Stackoverflow: https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/829/5406

@Murch, I guess I was asking this because I saw a question like that in the Unix StackExchange https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/399626/why-is-kali-linux-so-hard-to-set-up-why-wont-people-help-me. And I thought we should have something like that for "Why my transaction isn't confirmation?" type questions.

I think you may be looking for this meta topic: https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/697/5406? ;)

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


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How should you handle questions formed with "flags" like (HELP!!!) (CRISIS!!) etc?
Some questions have additional flags that do not really contribute information.
Many times due to loss of funds. How should these questions be handled?

If they are legitimate, original questions we should answer them.  However, those "flag" words should be edited out of the title and body of the question.  New users don't realize that they only distract from the question they are asking.
Most of these questions, however, tend to be duplicates of our canonical questions.  In this case, marking them as a duplicate should be the best course of action.  It wouldn't hurt to edit out all the flag terms in this case too, since the question may differ slightly from the suggested duplicate, and may not be closed.

+1 and added a link to our collection of canonical questions

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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A tag for questions where coins are sent to a different cryptocurrency by mistake?
eg when BTC is sent to a Litecoin address, or to a Bitcoin-Gold or Bitcoin-Cash address. These kinds of question are becoming quite common.
We have tags for wallet-recovery and recover-private-key, but nothing that really seems appropriate. Any ideas for an appropriate tag, perhaps something like funds-sent-to-wrong-cryptocurrency ?

How about cross-chain-recovery? If you create it, please add a tag-wiki excerpt to explain it and add it to at least a few likely questions!

Thanks; I've used that tag name

Are there really a lot of different questions that would use this tag? Or just the ones which get closed as duplicates of the few original questions? For example, I've seen a lot of BTC <-> BCH questions which are just duplicates, and therefore closed. Hopefully we aren't going to keep seeing more and more forks, so S2X, BCH, BTG and BTC are hopefully the only pairs which might commonly get confused, and therefore there's only a limited number of original questions of this type possible right?

While the site remains open to altcoins, there are likely to be ongoing issues from other hard forks. Besides, the similar naming of Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold may mean this is an ongoing problem for Bitcoin too. If most questions were duplicates, I wouldn't bother, but there are a lot of different circumstances that affect a solution.


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2017 Community Moderator Election Results
Bitcoin's first moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 3 new moderators are:

They'll be replacing the pro tempore moderators shortly - please thank both crews for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice with the new crew 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.

Congrats to all of you :)

Thank you too @asterisk for running!

Congratulations guys, and thanks for volunteering!


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As of 2017, are altcoin-specific questions off-topic?
To be clear, I am referring to questions which have nothing to do with Bitcoin like this:
What does one need to do to earn Decred through PoS?
Considering the author (@highly-irregular) has been active here for many years, I'm a bit confused about why this was not even tagged "alternatives", etc.
I have looked through this ancient thread from 2011: Are questions about other crypto-currencies on-topic?, but wonder how relevant that discussion is after 6 years.  This recent discussion on SE naming seems to suggest a tendency towards deprecation of alt-coin related questions.

It has the tag [tag:decred] though?

Thanks @murch, I missed that.  Since we have tags for specific altcoins, it now seems to be pretty clear that such questions are not off-topic.

For the past years, it has been our policy that questions about other cryptocurrencies are on-topic. Since Monero and Ethereum each have their own SE now, we migrate questions about these there.
As you've noted, there's a discussion going on that touches on the scope of this SE: What should this site's name be when we get our new design?
I wouldn't consider the sentiment expressed in some answers of that question to be binding for the scope's site yet, as changing the scope would imho require a topic that explicitly aims to discuss the site's scope.

Properly tagged[1] questions for specific altcoins are not considered off-topic even if they are unrelated to Bitcoin.
[1] Question using a specifically-named tag such as "decred", generic "altcoin" or "alternatives" tags.


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How to handle answers with security issues?
The most upvoted answer here appears to be quite dangerous advice. Exposing your wallet seed to an online tool might lead to all sorts of trouble, no?
What to do in cases like this? Comment/downvote/flag/meta post?

I'm not sure why it is particularly dangerous.  It involves getting a piece of code from somewhere and running it.  If the code is honest, you are ok (by design the code runs locally in the browser and doesn't send the wallet seed anywhere).  If the code is dishonest you are screwed.  The same would be true for any other piece of software you might download to accomplish your goal.

I agree it would be bad to use a truly "online" tool where you submit your seed to a server and it computes the address for you.  But this isn't that, although it presents a similar interface.

I would suggest editting the post with a large warning before the dangerous part, explaining the risk involved. If there is a large concern of safety and there is a safer alternative, I would also downvote the answer, and upvote the safer option. If the answer is outright and obviously destructive, you could flag it for deletion.

I added warnings as you suggested to two answers in that thread (suggested edits since I don't have enough rep, we'll see if they'll get approved).


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Easy questions = More answers?
So I asked a day ago about how to monitor traffic and connections from and to my daemon and I got ZERO answers.
But I look at the main page and absolute beginner questions like: "What happens if I buy Bitcoins and the price goes down?" get 10 Answers, "GH/s is bigger than TH/s" gets an answer and stupid questions like "how to transfer to wallet" "or How to make totally secure Bitcoin transactions?".
This is depressing. Is there a lack of people who know this stuff? What's going on?

The "be nice" rule would seem to imply perhaps you should edit your title to remove the word "retarded".  Perhaps "simple" would be more concise and less rude.  And yes, I did notice your username.

@Max Some questions are just so simple as to be contemptible. I down vote them.

Since it's obvious that beginner questions draw on a larger audience that can answer them, it's pretty obvious that they'll get an answer more easily.
So, what can we do to get interesting questions more visibility?
Please Vote early, vote often!.

Upvote interesting questions.
Don't upvote boring, easy, or lazy content.
Close vote repetitive questions as duplicates.
Downvote bad content.

Some questions that are more technical require technically inclined people to answer them. Questions such as yours require people who actually know what they are doing, and there are far fewer of these people than just random people who can say something about the Bitcoin price or unit conversion. So yes, the simpler and more idiotic questions will get more answers as more people can answer them, and complicated technical questions will get less as fewer people can answer them.

Not to mention certain questions get on the HNQ ;-)

Unfortunately, I have the same problem. I asked a question about cryptography and got zero answers.
I indeed think that easy questions generate more answers.


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How many of you with addresses in your profiles have actually collected tips?
For many years now, it's been popular to post a crypto address for "tips" if you are participating in any online bitcoin community.
I've seen a few of the users here do it. I'm wondering if any of them have actually collected any tips.

This is basically a straw poll, so I figured meta would be okay.


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stackexchange for litecoins?
...Repost...
Is there any stackexchange forum for litecoins like bitcoins?
I would want to know about its mining process and all from credible sources on exchange.Yes, there are blogs and sites which help you do it but lets say i have been fooled more than once in it!

Given that you are even using the [tag:litecoin] tag on your post, this question seems rather confused. In case it wasn't clear: Litecoin is on-topic here. Perhaps you'd be interested in having a look at our [tour].

hi...yes, i did see the tag, was just wondering for a dedicated exchange site.In this case, i am posting a litecoin question on bitcoin exchange and these are 2 different crypto-currencies! :)

From the help:

The Bitcoin stack exchange is for users and enthusiasts of Bitcoin and
  related technologies. If you have a question about […] a
  cryptocurrency or technology derived directly from Bitcoin such as
  Namecoin or Litecoin […] then you’re in the right place to ask your question!

So although there is no dedicated Litecoin stackexchange, you can ask your questions here.


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Are questions about trading on-topic?
I've noticed some trading questions that ask about topics that cannot be closed as off-topic because they are about bitcoin, but where the real question is only incidentally related to bitcoin and can be answered in general non-bitcoin terms. For example:

Questions about how to calculate profit/loss
Questions about the effect on one's assets of an increase or decrease in price
Questions about the effect of trading between crypto-currencies
Questions about trading techniques such as margin trading, shorts, etc.

I feel like I would like to close these with a reason of "this question does not fundamentally relate to bitcoin and can be explained using general concepts from other disciplines including mathematics, accountancy, financial trading, security, etc.". This is not the same as blatantly off-topic, because the questions are usually in the context of bitcoin.
So my questions are:

Are these questions currently on-topic?
Is the above reason a legitimate reason to want to close issues?
Considering questions 1 and 2, how should questions like these be handled?

funny no one has touched this one.

I think they are off topic. Because how a crypto currency trades with another currency is not related to the crypto currency technology. In fact most currencies don't even have any notion of currency exchange built into the technology. So it's really traded in any way someone wants to and implemented in non crypto technology. I'd say the ball is really in the defense of such questions viability. An argument about how it is related needs to be posted.

How is trading bushels of two kinds of wheat any different?

Or if this sight is seen as a non technical general crypto currency use site, then other technical questions off topic perhaps encryption on the crypto se and not here, software on regular se. Or for sake of asker, handle it softly here. Let it stay but just really let user know, if it involves some hard core economics or math, they might get better answer or quicker answer there, than here.

I for one will generally refuse to answer such questions, because i believe a basic person should be able to abstract real problems and then post them appropriately but is it still further to punish askers of such questiosn?

One of the off-topic reason is "This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network". This seems like a relevant descriptor for these kinds of questions. Perhaps the description  can be expanded a bit.

According to the Help Center:

...and [the question] is not about …
programming
technique
investment
advice
politics or philosophy
a site or software recommendation

I'm not sure but I think these questions may be better suited for Money Stackexchange


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Is it safe to mention bitcoin/other coin related information on this forum?
Although nobody shares their private keys, I have seen so many people sharing their wallet information, bitcoin transaction ids, amounts transferred and to which exchanges/wallets and so much of information related to what they are doing with bitcoins.
Can this lead to any privacy or security breach to the respective owners or the bitcoin ethics/security?

This may be a better question for meta, do you agree it should be moved?

I'm ok with that. Does it remove the post from here? I felt like meta is a more generic one.

I disagree. The question could be rephrased as "What information is safe to share on a public forum and what are the consequences of sharing it". This way it is much on point with Bitcoin and not specific to SE.

@sanket1729 both should happen TBH. The question, as it exists, should be moved to Meta.

Keep in mind that it's HNQ now. (That would either speed up or delay a decision.)

I think this is a main site question first, then if we feel like we need a policy, we can post again here in meta. I personally favor no policy on this issue. If you want to dox yourself, go for it. We're not your mama.

The Stack Exchange sites are not forums (see e.g. http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92115) (fora?). They are think tanks (ref. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/325681).

Well yes and no. Sharing an address here could link that address to your account, yes. But there is also no way to be sure someone owns an address just because they post it here. If people share information publicly on a site like this, we assume they do not mind it being public knowledge (although it also has an impact on the privacy of those who they send the coins to, etc.)
Sharing an address here doesn't compromise the security of that address though, only privacy

Privacy is generally considered part of security. I think what you mean to say that the publication of walled IDs doesn't violate their integrity which is also part of the concept of security.

Yeah I mean security in the sense of protecting private keys from being stolen, etc

Note that all of the information you're asking about -- your wallet id, transaction ids, and amounts involved in those transactions -- is already public knowledge, because it's stored in the blockchain.  All you're doing is attaching a name to it: the question is, are you comfortable with doing that?  If not, perhaps you should consider posting anonymously.

Note address is usually different from Wallet ID, wallet ID is generally a term used by online wallets such as blockchain.info to log in, and should not be shared

Rule number 1 - Do not share your private keys anywhere.
Rule number 2 - FOllow Rule number 1.
Access to your private keys = Access to your coins.


text:
Should we burninate the tag [alternatives]?
The alternatives is to be too broad and unfocussed to be useful. I suggest it's burnination.
Questions tagged with alternatives should be retagged to the following other tags:

altcoin-development: For questions that refer to mucking about in the codebase to create a new altcoin, or for discussion of algorithm tweaks such as different difficulty adjustment algorithms, or reward schedule changes.
altcoin-trade: For questions about trading non-bitcoin assets.
altcoin: Bucket tag for questions about a distinct cryptocurrency that doesn't have its own tag on our site.
More specific tag that fit on a case by case basis: proof-of-stake, reward-schedule, checkpoints, genesis-block, new tag with the specific cryptocurrency's name…

Please give input: Yay or nay? What other tags would be good replacements? Would you like to commit to do a portion of the work?

Also see: https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/342/5406, https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/714/5406, https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/9/5406, https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/513/5406

That qualifies as a meta tag. Burn it.

Yay from me, having both altcoin and alternatives is definitely confusing, and I'll certainly commit to doing a portion of the work.
Unclear what the deciding factor in making a new tag for a specific altcoin is though, we have litecoin, namecoin, ripple/ripple-* and ethereum despite Ethereum having its own SE, we also have nxt, dogecoin, ardor, zcash, peercoin, Monero, dash, quarkcoin, primecoin, rootstock, vertcoin, iota, ........ Is the only requirement for a new tag that there are a few questions using it?

Tags that aren't used by multiple questions disappear by themselves after a while. And if they are being used by multiple questions, they would probably be useful in some fashion.


text:
2017-12-23: On the first day of Christmas break, my mods gave me…
A nice little Christmas cleanup:

Retagged all questions with untagged
Renamed deterministic into deterministic-wallets
Added tag info to private-key-export, fragmentation, inventory, transaction-capacity, proof-of-stake
Burninated formatting because it was used for address formats and for questions about backups before formatting a hard drive.
Merged address-shortening into address-format
Renamed future to futures, added tag info, removed it from all questions referring to developments that may still come to pass, added future-proof where applicable.
Merged scaling into scalability, created synonym
Merged installing into installation, created synonym
Created utxo-set.
Burninated video, because it was used for gpu-mining and to inquire about a viral video.
Burninated reporting as it was only on five questions that were concerned with five different topics.
Merged ppcoin into peercoin, created a synonym
Burninated conversion

Also merged PPCoin into peercoin and created synonym :)

@MeshCollider: Added it. :)

Impressive cleanup though Murch, thank you!


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Clean up "Coinbase transaction" duplicates
I came across a recent question that was esentially "what is the coinbase transaction?"  I figured a duplicate question existed so I went searching. I found far more than just a few that could be a duplicate. Instead of submitting a close vote for all of them I think a moderator should do the corrections. Most or all of these should be marked as a duplicate of a canonical version of "what is the Coinbase transaction and what does it do?" There's a few in there that can serve well as that canonical question.

How does the bitcoin transaction fee get paid to miner(s)?
Where do the mined bitcoins go?
How does bitcoin reward who find the block?
Who issues the transaction of reward when a miner solves the block?
Is the reward for successfully mining a block a transaction on the bitcoin network?
How exactly do new bitcoins come into existence?
When creating a block, who actually generates the 25 bitcoins that act as a reward?
Transaction marked as "Newly generated coins" on Blockchain.info
How are bitcoins generated during mining?
How do miners receive transaction fees?
How does a miner collects the fees?
How does the network apply credit for created blocks?

These are just the questions tagged coinbase-transaction. There are probably more.
While you're there, several of the questions tagged coinbase-transaction are actually about coinbase.com transactions.  This misuse might be prevented if the coinbase.com tag was changed to coinbase-company. Or maybe the coinbase-transaction tag except needs to state clearly "do not use for questions about coinbase.com".

This could be a very nice cleanup. But IMO "how do the miners collect fees" should remain as a separate question to "how does bitcoin reward who finds the block", because to new users the block reward and transaction fees may seem quite unrelated and thus a weird thing to close as duplicate. The former type of question can include more information on how the transaction fees from each transaction are calculated per-block and validated, while the latter could include info on what data the coinbase transaction includes.
Edit: it appears What is the coinbase? may be a suitable question to link to
And please feel free to suggest edits to the questions which have the incorrect tags!

I see your point. There should probably be a divide there.


text:
Why did my answer get deleted?

I have a question about my Bitcoin Stack Exchange post: Bittrex API rate limit

My post answered the question "what is Bittrex's API rate limit". Specifically, my answer stated: "...to limit to 1 request per second" which answers the question.
The moderator (perhaps a bot) deleted my post stating "This does not answer the question but rather appears to be commentary."
Was my answer too verbose? Does the information given somehow not answer the question? Why did my answer get deleted?
Also note that I cannot actually post comments because my reputation is currently too low. But in any case, I think what I wrote is more appropriate as an answer rather than a comment (cf this meta post).

The wording of your answer made it sound like you were talking about the OP of that question which thus sounds like commentary. The usage of "they" was a bit vague (generally I think it's clearer to refer specifically to a person rather than use a pronoun, e.g. "the poster") and I didn't quite catch what the answer actually meant.
Further review of the answer shows that it should not be deleted. I have undeleted it.


text:
Is it "frowned upon" to ask a lot of questions and not answer other people's questions?
I guess my question doesn't get much more complicated than this: Is it "frowned upon" to ask a lot of questions and not answer other people's questions?

Not at all. Not everyone knows enough to be able to answer other people's questions so its perfectly fine to not answer any questions. Of course if you can answer questions, then that's great, but if you don't know the answer, then it's fine to not answer.
If you do have a lot of questions though, you should first see if someone else has asked the same question before you make a new question.

Absolutely agree


text:
Signed up to help some individuals in need with some information
What is the fastest way to get the 50 reputation so I can add a comment to a post that I believe would be valuable

write good answers to (other) questions.


text:
Why are alt coins not related to Bitcoin allowed here?
I see questions related to Bitcoin Cash and other forks of Bitcoin. Given that they are not Bitcoin, why are they allowed here?


text:
Why is the bitcoin tag not allowed?
If the question is related to Bitcoin and not altcoin then the bitcoin tag should be allowed, since questions related to altcoins are allowed on bitcoin SE it is not redundant to specify.

The vast majority of questions here are about Bitcoin as the title of the site suggests, so the absence of the altcoins tags is enough to assume the question is about bitcoin

Exactly. A tag that would be on 80% of the questions would not do anything to specify a topic.


text:
Community Promotion Ads - 2018
This site graduated last year, and so as we're rounding out to the end of our first month of the new year, we'll be starting Community Promotion Ads for this site!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

the site's twitter account
handy cryptocurrency related resources
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

The example specifies alt-text. To get the tagline to show on mouseover you have to specify the image name e.g. ![alt text](https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/raw/master/src/common/images/icon48.png "Logo Title Text 1") - both are important.

To work correctly it needs to be in the form (difficult in comments..) `

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting

In the view of demonstration posts, I saw a nice demonstration ad over on CodeGolf.SE that I believe Bitcoin.SE could benefit from. Unfortunately, it is not possible to define within the given scope of this thread. This is the image for it if Bitcoin.SE could use the same: https://stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/codegolf.stackexchange.com/bounty.png


text:
I had a flag declined - not a big problem but claification
I had a rude or abusive flag declined - not a big problem - but is shitcoin allowed terminology now?
Cryptocurrency exchange needs more info than any bank or brokerage firm?

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22232/are-expletives-cursing-swear-words-or-vulgar-language-allowed-on-se-sites says profanity is generally forbidden.

"Rude and abusive flags" are meant to bring moderator attention to a post, e.g. to delete it and/or to have a serious conversation with a user. Abuse against other users or use of profanity and expletives should be flagged for moderator attention.
In some cases, crude language embedded in otherwise useful content can be treated by suggesting an edit. I don't know why my colleague decided to dismiss your flag in this case, but I'll bring it up in our chat meeting as a topic.
Update:
We mods have discussed your case and clarified our understanding and handling of the "rude and abusive flag". Thank you for bringing it to our attention.


text:
What happened to the off-topic because this is a basic programming question flag?
What happened to the off-topic because this is a basic programming question flag? What are we supposed to flag / vote to close programming questions where the answer is writing or explaining code?

You can use a custom closing reason

Please flag as off-topic. If it's a good question but off-topic, you can flag it as "belongs to other stackexchange site".


text:
I believe my question should be reopened
I had a question closed for the reason that "Questions on current or future market values, energy costs or service provider availability are off-topic".
Of those 3 possible reasons, it seems my question was closed for the "current or future market values" reason.  Based on how my question was originally worded, I can understand why it was closed for that reason.
However, my question wasn't really about why GBTC and Bitcoin moved a certain amount in one particular day.  My question is about why GBTC doesn't do what Grayscale says it is supposed to do on most days.
I have edited the question to reflect that, and I believe it should be reopened.
EDIT: I have found an Investor's Business Daily article that discusses why GBTC does not track Bitcoin.  If my question can be reopened, I will post an answer citing the article.

I was not responsible for the leave closed/reopen decision, however, I doubt your question would attract more than low-quality opinion-based answers. It is really a question for Grayscale, even though you say that they have declined to respond.

If my question is on-topic now, then it should be reopened.  There are ways to deal with low quality answers if they show up.
Also, there are articles that discuss how GBTC does not track Bitcoin exactly.  If no one else answers, I will post my own answer using information from this article.

@pacoverflow May I suggest if it is reopened that you may wish to post what you have as an answer anyway.


text:
Possible canonical question: "I sent coins but recipient won't credit my account"
We have a lot of questions recently along the lines of the following:

I sent coins to service X which was supposed to credit them to my account (or deliver a product, etc).  The transaction is confirmed but they haven't credited my account.  What can I do?

In principle such questions could be closed as "customer relationship" but I think a major problem is that askers don't realize that this is a customer relationship question; they think there might be something they can do unilaterally.  So perhaps we could have a canonical question along these lines, with an answer that explains why there is nothing to be done except to try to work with service X.
Some topics that might be useful to address:

How to see on a block explorer that the transaction is confirmed
Why "confirmed" is not necessarily the same as "acknowledged by recipient"
Whether it is relevant that the output shows as "spent" or "unspent" (it isn't)
Possible reasons why the service might not be crediting their account (incompetence, software bugs, inadequate customer service staffing, expired receive address, outright fraud)
They should be prepared for the possibility that they might never be able to get their coins back

Does this seem desirable?  Anything else that should be in such a question?

Sounds good to me, I think an emphasis on patience would be good :)

I'd say that "spent" means that the recipient not only received but implicitly acknowledged the transaction output. But besides that, this sounds great to me as well.

Nate, are you going to make this question or would you prefer if someone else did?

Someone else is welcome to.  I may not get around to it soon.

related: https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1023/5406

That certainly seems desirable and I did not note any additional areas to cover.


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Let's get critical: May 2013 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Bitcoin Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

I see one problem in this site: there is more and more spam messages and advertisement. I think that such things should be deleted, not downvoted and closed.

Final Results

I ran out of space while synchronizing, how do I get my private keys & find my balance?
Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 1)

Can someone saturate the network?
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 1)

Is Namecoin actually being used for anything significant?
Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)

Why do the creators of ASICs not just keep them for themselves?
Net Score: 7 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

How does vanitygen calculate difficulty?
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is it possible for the network to stop finding valid blocks?
Net Score: 7 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

How can I measure the "health" of Bitcoin?
Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 1)

How to configure CGMiner with CPU?
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

What's the alternative to bitcoins that can be profitably mined by beginner?
Net Score: -3 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 3)

Benefits of bitcoin as national currency?
Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)


text:
Should we split up posts that ask many questions at once?
As an example, let's look at this post. It asks, essentially, 3 questions:

How do Bitcoin nodes know which hash to work on?
What determines what a valid block is?
How do I submit a valid block to the network?

The problem is that some of these questions have answers on this site, and others don't. It we mark it as a duplicate of something that answers question 3, then that still leaves the others unanswered. If we answer it, then we have information that's difficult to search for.
There's a second problem too - if I know how to answer 1 & 2, but not 3, then I might avoid answering the post altogether to avoid seeming rude.
Here's what I'm proposing: when a post asks many separate questions, edit out all but the first one. (Alternately, leave whichever seems most important.) Then, leave a comment along these lines:

I've edited your post down to one question. I did this because making posts cover fewer topics makes them easier to search for. It's OK to [re-ask](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/ask) your other questions. You can look at the edit history to see the removed part instead of retyping it.

However, we wouldn't do that if the questions are closely related. For example, the questions, "Do I need to encrypt my wallet?" and "How do I encrypt my wallet?"  are closely related: if you want to know one, you probably want to know the other. In the example question, I'd put 1 & 3 in the same post, and edit out 2.
Thoughts?

I think we should split those questions up. First, remove all the questions that were answered already, linking them in the comments "Your question 2 was answered here...". If there are more than 2 questions left, keep the first one and create separate questions for remaining inquiries, also linking them - "I narrowed down your post to one question and re-posted the second and third here and here..."
This way we have clean posts and all questions have been answered.


text:
Should we tolerate questions about buying illegal drugs or similar stuff?
Recently the question https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/12007/2355 was asked. It is about using Silk Road.
Should we really tolerate questions about buying illegal drugs or similar stuff? This is justly illegal and already giving Bitcoin a bit of a bad name. I think it's a very bad idea to help people to abuse Bitcoin in ways like this.

IMO: No we should not... it is illegal. stackexchange has a us server which means they fall under us law which says it is not legal to buy drugs or discuss how to.

Related: http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/429/2355

I think you guys are looking too hard at the legal angle. Hell, Amazon sells a book called "Practical LSD Manufacture". StackExchange is unlikely to get a call from the US government unless it links to Silk Road directly.
The more important angle is the cultural one: the kind of content you have on your site affects who you attract and what kinds of questions get asked. I think that the Silk Road questions should be removed, because it's likely to attract bad contributors and content.

I was not really worried about StackExchange being seen as illegal. I am worried about that we just shouldn't help people doing crimes. Especially now that these crimes are already giving Bitcoin a bit of a bad name. Glad to see I'm not the only one thinking we shouldn't allow these questions.

Well said, this is about culture.  The grandstanding in most of the responses is stupid: this is a Q/A site about the underlying tech, not on particular product or use-case.  Tor goes out of it's way to only talk about the positive side of Tor because the bad image can ruin the positive image quickly!

I'm not a lawyer. I'm not your lawyer. I'm not StackExchange's lawyer. That said, so long as there is even one legitimate product that someone could feasibly purchase without violating state or federal law anywhere on the entirety of Silk Road (which there is) then it's possible for someone to be asking a perfectly legitimate question with no legal implications. Unlikely, sure, but possible. This limits our liability and should always be the guideline when deciding if a question or topic should be closed/banned.
Similarly, recall that while Bitcoin is a massive multi-national distributed network, StackExchange is not. Their servers, offices and staff are located in New York and this modifies a number of legalities. See this question about growing marijuana over on gardening.SE, for example.
Given the precedent set by other sites I would say that Silk Road questions would be both allowable as long as they do not contain explicit references to illegal activity (i.e. "How much BTC should an ounce of heroin cost"). If you would consider the question on-topic if it were about, say, BitcoinStore or Blockchain.info then it should be on-topic for Silk Road as well.
Of course this could be tainted by my own personal viewpoints on the subject, so feel free to vote your conscience.

Can you give me an example of a legimate product on Silk Road?

Legitimate regarding which jurisdiction? I think the point of David is, that it is very likely that there exists a product on Silk Road which can be perfectly legal acquired in at least one of the hundreds jurisdictions of the world.

OP is asking about a typical bitcoin withdrawal process that is nearly identical on most bitcoin related sites. I fail to see why this shouldn't get handled here.
Also keep in mind that your jurisdiction may not be the same as the on of somebody else: What could be illegal (e.g. to buy, posses) in your jurisdiction may be legal in another.

"What could be illegal (e.g. to buy, posses) in your jurisdiction may be legal in another." Also, people should be protected against theirselves; consuming drugs is extremely unhealthy, illegal or not.

"Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

This Q&A site should not (and can't) be judge of what are the good uses or bad uses of money (and this goes far beyond the matter of buying drugs).
It should however comply with common restrictions that apply when publishing content on the internet.


text:
This site should be renamed
Given that questions about Ripple and other crypto-currencies are considered on-topic: Should this SE also cover questions about Ripple?
I think this site should be renamed to something like "Crypto-currency" or "Digital currency".
Someone in the comments said "I wonder if Bitcoin will become a pseudonym for cryptocurrencies in the public mind? Similar to iPod for mp3 player. If so, then this is a good name." but that's something to avoid as long as possible, it only causes confusion.
I'm aware of the "Actually, before the launch of the Beta the proposal was called "Bitcoin & crypto-currency" but SE staff decided to name it just Bitcoin." comment there, but I think that's a bad idea for that reason.

At the time the decision was made to name the site "Bitcoin", Bitcoin was the dominant crypto-currency. That is still the case. So it really comes down to whether you agree with the original decision.

Technically, since mp3 players can play other formats like .wav and .ogg, "mp3 player" is a pseudonym too.

I say we keep the current title. "Digital Currency" would also apply to Paypal and E-Gold, and "cryptocurrency" is a term that's not widely understood outside the cryptocurrency community. For example, since Paypal uses SSL, does that make Paypal a cryptocurrency?

"Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies" is a bit long

"Math-based currency" or "math-based payment systems" are fairly accurate and not overly-long, but they don't exactly roll off the tongue.

Cryptocoins works well.  With the rise of Litecoin and innovations on use seen in offshoots like Ripple and Namecoin, this is a legitimate point.  Do we want to be an investor and troubleshooting support Q/A for Bitcoin or a technological Q/A for Cryptocoin movement?

It has kinda annoyed me that the section is named "Bitcoin" yet deals with more than just Bitcoin questions.

I agree it should be renamed. I was about to ask a similar meta question. Please rename to crypto or cryptocurrency or cryptocoin. Bitcoin isn't even 50% market cap any more.

Since bitcoin is the first blockchain application, you should not consider a rebranding to Crypto-Currencies but rather to Blockchain. A blockchain Stack Exchange network site could benefit from a lot of professionals and experts working in financial technology and systems engineering which would not limit the scope to currencies at all.
That said, it might be a bit late to consider this drastic change. In my eyes, you should stay with the very clear scope (and name) of Bitcoin and work on promoting this site better on other platforms for the community.

What if another cryptocurrency doesn't use a block chain? There could be centralized tokens like Amazon Coins. I think they will all have cryptography in common though.

I would suggest keeping Bitcoin in the name and perhaps adding a second keyword to communicate inclusiveness (keep it short).  "Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies" for example. I would recommend against dropping Bitcoin at any time, for search-ability and 'brand recognition' reasons. It also helps a person confirm they are in the right place, and not in a one off subgroup that is less established or has a different focus.
P.S. Do you use the word 'kleenex' or tissue?

But are we looking to be a support site for newbie Bitcoin users or attract developers and researchers more broadly?  The latter users are the ones who stick around and make the place more interesting.  It's akin to the difference between SE proper and security.se, I much prefer the latter.

@Indolering "It's akin to the difference between SE proper and security.se", agreed.  And yet there are both.  I'd say this se has already established itself as the 'Bitcoin' 'proper' by answering quite a few 'newbie' questions, while something like cryptocurrency.se would be the security.se equivalent.  At this point, several years in, what we are looking to be yields to what we are.

At the time the decision was made to name the site "Bitcoin", Bitcoin
  was the dominant crypto-currency. That is still the case. So it really
  comes down to whether you agree with the original decision. @DavidSchwartz

This rational pops up here and in related comments and I strongly disagree.  Dogecoin, Litecoin, etc. are pump-n-dump sideshows but coins like ZeroCoin, Namecoin and Ethereum all experiment with new technologies and tackle new problems.  Experimental currencies are very important proving grounds for new ideas which can be imported into Bitcoin proper and are thus important to the Bitcoin community as well.
The choice between bitcoin.se and crypos.se (or cryptocurrencies.se) comes down to whether you want this to be a Bitcoin only Q/A site or if you want to attract talent from a broad range of research currencies.  While there will always be some overzealous marketers from new currencies, I think the change would improve the the depth and breadth of discussion here.

I am a bit unhappy about the renaming as well, but it has been community consensus for a long time, that questions about all cryptocurrencies are on-topic. We have 70 questions with [tag:namecoin], and two questions with the word "zerocoin". Twelve questions mention "Ethereum". Perhaps they are just not as much of a topic for most users?

@Murch, as a Namecoin dev, I can say with certainty that we would redirect all technical questions from the forum to this site if it was not Bitcoin specific.  Being technically on-topic does not mean it's a normal topic of conversation.

While most of our questions are about Bitcoin, I've been working towards making Bitcoin.SE more welcoming to other Cryptos. Experts on namecoin such as yourself could be a major help by subscribing to the tag, so that you get a notification if there is a new question about it. It's a bit of a catch-22 before that: People feel it is not on topic, means few questions, means few experts, leading to this conversation. ;) I would welcome your input on What can we do to better support questions about other cryptocurrencies?

Yes, this site must be renamed. I propose Cryptocurrency (or crypto-currencies or another small variation) with the url cryptocur.stackexchange.com because:

We cannot retain the current name, which makes proponents of iota, sia, etc. think that they need their own site for their best currency since sliced bread, thus causing a cryptocurrency site bloat which is already clogging up the hot new proposals section of Area51. I'm sorry to say, I contributed to the problem by following iota, but I mainly did it because I didn't realize those questions were on-topic here and have their own tag. Case in point.
We cannot name it Blockchain, because some currencies like iota do not use the blockchain.
It might be imprudent to name it CryptoCoin because someone might make a new currency by that name (though they are unlikely to name one Crypto-Currencies!).

When I speak with other persons, many times I use bitcoin as a pseudonym.
Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency and many people only know this currency. The point of this is that although it could be good to be precise it would be worst in meaning of web search and so will make the site less visible and then less useful.
So I said that is better to maintain it as it is.
Of course this my opinion and based only in my experiences with it.

As it is, this is the linked support destination for Bitcoin Core. There is nowhere else with a reasonable standard to go for support for the Bitcoin protocol apart from the bitcoin-discuss list, and I think they discourage support and refer people to bitcoin SE?
Apart from that, IMHO each altcoin should have its own SE as necessary. I know that this is more work, to maintain a separate SE each but, as it is, it is difficult to remain focused and the nuances, topics and, current issues of each altcoin are so unrelated and so varied. People looking for information about Bitcoin do not need to be distracted by unrelated information about altcoin, and I am sure that an amount of people interested in altcoin feel the same.
Or, keep bitcoin.se and create a seperate cryptocurrencies.se and see where people drift.

It's like to say "StackOverflow" should be renamed, because it isn't only about "Stack Overflow"! It should be something like "Computer"!!

flawed analogy


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Aren't recommendation questions off-topic?
I've recently joined this site due to my growing interest in Bitcoins, as well as to fight the flood of spam that's been coming in.
In the meantime, I've been going through old questions, and came across these four:

Which notable Bitcoin-related sites offer referral rewards?
Where to earn bitcoins?
Where can I trade BTC/USD with a small transaction fee?
Where can I trade my altcoins?

I flagged all four as being off-topic for asking for recommendations, and all four were marked as "Helpful", but they all still exist, and have not been closed.
Aren't questions asking for recommendations verboten on Stack Exchange sites?  Or does this site have a more lax policy?  If so, is that such a good idea?

 So, is this thing on? Any moderators care to comment? Is there even anyone here?

i said it before but one mod hasnt been a round since jul 19 but has been on stack overflow yesterday. i made a post about it (http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188815/whos-supposed-to-stop-spam-on-the-bitcoin-se-site)

@BitcoinFan - yeah, it's pretty disappointing that the moderators don't even check the Meta site... general users I could understand, but this?  I know moderators are people too, and they have their own personal lives to attend to, but two days and no answers from anyone?  Despite Area 51 showing 4000+ visits a day to this site, I'm getting the strong impression that those are all hits from spammers, and there's no one really here.

i want to find a site thats good and not bitcoin talk and i was happy to find this one, but, i see all the spam and peple that dont seem to care so i thought ill just stick ot bitcointalk. its too bad bc i love stack overflow to ask programing questions.

@BitcoinFan I've tried to answer this now, hope that it helps.

Yeah, I agree that questions asking for recommendations are usually off-topic.
In the Bitcoin world though there might just be one or two sites that do what you ask for and in that case I don't see it as asking for recommendations. I remember myself in the early days of the site asking for an online service that lets me sweep a private key. At that time I couldn't find such a site at all, so I'm not looking for people to rate different sites for me, I'm just trying to find any way to solve my problem. That's on topic in my opinion.
Regarding the questions above, I hope that the community can decide what to do without moderator intervention. Feel free to link to this meta question though so that more people join the discussion.

I'd say in the strictest letter of the sense, they are recommendations, because they're asking for a list of things.  They're also the kinds of questions that can most easily become out of date when new services/sites/applications becomes available.  As for letting the community decide, being an ex-moderator (Board and Card Games, which is still in Beta after almost three years), if you let the users do what they want, they won't close a thing.  But I appreciate the answer nonetheless.

Yes, it is a question about how strict we should be. We have tons of questions on this site that can easily become out of date and part of it has to do with the fact that the site is entirely about emerging technology. There is bound to be more such questions here than on e.g. Seasoned advice. I'm sure we haven't quite figured out where to draw the line yet so your input is very welcome.

Since unfortunately I don't think that there is a way to mark questions for more frequent review, we'll just have to do our best to update outdated information whenever we come across it. Since there aren't many comprehensive and encompassing resources yet we should not yet exclude information that might outdate. We could however do a better job consolidating duplicates.


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Let's get critical: Aug 2013 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Bitcoin Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

Getting an online Litecoin wallet
Net Score: -3 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 4)

Different balances Bitcoin-Qt vs. Blockchain.info
Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 2)

Why does the Bitcoin conversion rate change wildly?
Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

Countrywide Internet isolation, inevitable fork
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 1)

How do I investigate an address or transaction?
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

Get the number of confirmations for an external address
Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)

Are there alternatives to ButterflyLabs?
Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 1)

How do I use electrum on multiple computers?
Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

What's next after scrypt?
Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

gcminer with ATIRADEON HD3600 on ubuntu 12.04 64bit headless won't detect GPU
Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)


text:
How to handle hidden spam?
I just noticed that there are a few users that are systematically going through the list of old questions for a tag and add answers that while not technically out of scope User 6579 which repeatedly advertises a difficulty calculator on an exchange:

How is difficulty calculated?
Is there a maximum factor by which difficulty can change?
Can casual people still mine for bitcoins, now that the difficulty is much higher than it was?

How should we handle these kind of replies?
I don't think it actually drives any traffic to the site because of the rel="nofollow" SE applies to all posted links, and old questions do not get much traffic that would manually click on a non-accepted answer. But nevertheless it's annoying.

This question appears to be a magnet for answers like this.

I'm active on another beta site that has migrated several questions to this site, and our usual course of action in cases like this that appear to be blatant advertising attempts is simply to flag the post as spam. You could also flag the post for moderator attention and explain the situation, but flagging for spam allows other non-mods to take a look too, and action may happen quicker this way.
If the user only includes the link on one, fairly well-formulated answer, I'll usually flag it for moderator attention, explain the situation, and write a short comment explaining to the user that they need to disclose any affiliation. However, in cases where the user has just joined and immediately added the link to several old posts, I think it's a safe assumption that they are just trying to advertise. SE's policies may differ from other sites, but I wouldn't think immediately posting your link on multiple old posts is tolerated many places either.
If the link is to a site I recognize, e.g. github, and affiliation is properly disclosed, I usually won't flag it. I assume other users that are more familiar with what's out there will take a look at it too, even if it passes my quick glance.
Of course, my experience is on a different beta site, so we may be more or less tolerant of links than active users on this site. One thing you shouldn't do, however, is edit the post to remove the link. That makes it harder for mods and other users to quickly detect possible spam.
In the specific case you're referring to, it seems pretty clear that the answers are spam because

A cursory google search on the name of the user you're referring to yields a personal website he designed, which links to btc-trade-center.com as a recent item in the news feed. This indicates to me that it's a relatively new site that they're hoping to promote.
The whois record indicates that the domain was just registered two weeks ago. This is further evidence that it's a new site that someone is trying to promote.
A user with the name of the personal website referenced earlier just made an account and posted a similar answer on yet another old question. Even the picture for both accounts is the same, so this clearly looks like someone seeking to advertise their new site.

I would like to hear from high-rep users and/or mods about this as well, just to make sure that I'm articulating the site's policy correctly.

This is basically it - just keep an eye out for things out of the ordinary. We don't expect users to do a lot of detective work - these spammers tend to make themselves obvious rather quickly.


text:
How to handle recurring questions?
This week alone, I have seen at least three questions that boil down to "How do I use a paper wallet in order to store bitcoins offline?"
Since there seem to be several FAQ like that which keep coming up again and again, it would be great to create one extensive answer for each of them, to which then could just be referred. (Or hopefully, they would even be found before the question gets asked again.)
So, I was wondering: What is the proper way to go about that? How do other SE handle that sort of question? What would be the best way to refer all these questions to one best answer?
Edit:
Here are some examples for the mentioned question.
Secure way to store BTC over a long time - and its risks?
Backing up wallet with pen and paper, destroying electronic copy, restoring from keyboard -- how?
How do I make a Bitcoin "memory wallet" (or paper wallet without paper)?
Is it possible to make a paper wallet out of a bitcoin-qt wallet?
Write down bitcoins on a piece of paper
How to save bitcoins as paper?

I guess, basically I am asking whether there are some good case practices how to make this SE more readable. :)

Links to examples would be helpful, but if it truly is a case of the same question over and over, simply vote to close the new questions as a duplicate of the original (or flag if you don't have vote-to-close priveleges yet).

Thank you, I added a bunch of occurrences of the recurring theme. :)


text:
Why don't people reference source-code?
Why do people so rarely reference source-code when responding to questions. It's like giving lemonade to people looking for lemons.

Probably because questions hardly ever ask for source code, or often when they do, the requested code doesn't exist yet?

Whoever downvoted please explain why you did so, so that the question can be improved.


text:
Nobody is participating in the review queues
I'll be blunt:  Why is the review queue completely stagnant?  Do people not take pride in this site?  Do people not like keeping it clean?  Do people not want to improve it?
I can't participate in any of the queues because I don't have enough reputation, but a quick review shows that there are currently:

72 reopen votes (0 reviewed today)
47 close votes (0 reviewed today)
20 first posts (3 reviewed today)
11 low-quality posts (0 reviewed today)
7 late answers (0 reviewed today)
0 suggested edits (3 reviewed today, all by a non-Bitcoin moderator)

I don't get it -- I've had close vote flags sitting in the queue since July 29th.  There are over 100 people on the site with enough reputation to participate in the review queue, so how about it?
Sorry for the confrontational tone, but when spam still sits around for hours at a time, and items sit in review queues for months, it's kind of frustrating.
(I don't even have enough rep to create a new review tag, otherwise I would have added it)

I'm 99% certain you're aware of this, but the reputation threshold for using the review queue was just increased to 350 on beta sites for first posts and late answers, which probably excluded at least a few active users of the queue.

@JohnBensin - yeah,  I saw that, which is really unfortunate.  There's still dozens upon dozens of people with enough reputation to handle the queue.  The fact that this question only has one upvote (presumably from you) and 12 views tells me plenty about the current state of user involvement here.

Hopefully as the site ages, more users will start using the tools, even though on a small site, it may not be necessary to use some of the review queues, e.g. it's easy enough to pick out first posts just using the activity tab. That doesn't apply to close votes, though. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any ways to encourage people to use the review queues, apart from badges (which don't seem to be enough at the moment). Maybe higher-rep users and mods will have more ideas.

I seems to me that Bitcoin.SE members got a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work that they were stuck with. Fact is that there are few active experts, but a disproportionate amount of dabblers that come to ask one question and zip away again. There is a very small middle-ground, the people that would help by raising flags and voting. When I rediscovered Bitcoin.SE for myself a few weeks ago, I had the impression that this SE had slowed down and fallen to disorder in some degree. I think that if a handful people restart it by putting a bit more effort into cleaning house, working through review queues, consolidating duplicates and voting this site could quickly would regain momentum.
It is somewhat of a self-sustaining cycle:

Good questions and answers hardly stand out of the flood of mediocre and localized questions¹
-> the page first confronts you with what looks like a mountain of work²
--> people aren't motivated to stick around³
---> there are few people that vote and sustain the quality
----> Good questions and answers hardly stand out...

Since I started coming here about a month ago, I have cast more than 400 votes, raised more than 50 flags, and done more than one hundred reviews. I am sure that I won't be able to keep up the pace (I have a lot more time currently than I usually would), but I'm hoping to help clean up, inspire others to do the same and perhaps initiate the breaking the aforementioned vicious cycle. By the way, I think it would also help, if there were more interesting questions. Most questions that currently crop up, are localized, duplicates or low hanging fruits – so if you have any, hit us!
¹ Currently, you get what, maybe one or two votes for a well-researched in depth answer? And most times the asker doesn't even bother to accept anything.
² Hundreds of unanswered questions, even more questions without an accepted answer, tons of duplicates
³ Nobody ever hangs out in the chat, praise for effort put in is scarce
So, let's just do this. :)

Oh snap: http://xkcd.com/810/

It seems to be even worse now.

@fedorqui: I beg to differ. We're currently somewhat overrun with First Posts, but tagging is much improved, other review queues are usually practically empty, and we have a few experts that participate in answering questions. What you see is a current run-up due to congestion on the network and peaking interest due to the recent price-rally.— Feel free to help out though, we sure could use more help.

First of all: I am sure you are doing a great job :) I suggested an edit to a post in the HNQ. I noticed there were no reviewers after a lot of hours, which I found strange compared to other [se] sites. Upon searching, I found this question as well as checked the numbers in the review page to see they were quite high for a small site. There is probably a need to have more active users in moderation-related issues. Area51 stats look ok, but sometimes they do not show the full picture, specially on users that are not active anymore.

@fedorqui: Thanks. Yeah, unfortunately, we're a pretty tiny site with lots of drive-by askers and a small number of regular contributors. I think I may be the only one that looks at the review queues every day. ;) In times like this price-rally (Bitcoin went from ~$1300 to ~$2700 in a few weeks, suddenly there is a lot more interest. I think we've done a lot to clean up the site since this post three and a half years ago, but the community of regulars is unfortunately still a similar size.

I saw a fresh, related discussion in Meta: Is there any way for “outsiders” to help a site with a full edit queue?. And me myself being mod in another small site I see it ver often to have mods being almost the only ones taking care of review queues. So yes, probably the key point here is on how to get those drive-by askers and answerers to return to the site. I don't have the formula, but I noticed that commenting and pinging them tends to work... sometimes. Success!

@fedorqui: It does work for people that are active on other sites, however a huge amount of our askers come directly from the web, many don't even have accounts. It seems to me that those tend to not return and especially not accept an answer. I think the way to retain a better community would be to actually reject more of those low-quality questions. That would make the frontpage more interesting to experts and confront them with less boring content. However, this obviously also creates a backlash in the wider community, and requires more presence and energy than I can bring to the table.

I'm kinda doing my best to clear the review queues every time I come here. But heh

Thank you for reviewing 20 Close Votes today; come back in 9 hours to continue reviewing.

So, that's all for today.
FYI. I don't come regularly because this site is not helpful to me. Very poor quality due to the lack of participation from experts. Less than 20% of questions are tagged properly, which makes it impossible to find duplicates. And as Murch said, “good questions and answers hardly stand out…”. This site clearly lacks a core group of active competent users that are motivated enough to improve the quality and clear the crap out.


text:
Squash 90% of the exchange questions?
One of the most asked questions in the bitcoin 'verse is the one of "Which exchanges? Where to buy?" According to the FAQ these questions are deemed as off-topic, however, it would provide value to the community if we could offer a generice answer to it.

Not to mention that all of those questions could be closed as off topic because of "Questions on current market values, energy costs or service provider availability are off-topic as the answers are changing too frequently to be useful to others" or "Questions seeking product or service recommendations are off-topic because they tend to become obsolete quickly", but inevitably never do, even when flagged for moderator attention.

I agree, and I have been flagging and voting thus, while trying to give an answer at the same time. I'd like to get the best of two worlds: Have something that is helpful to the asker and still be able to throw their question out.

Somebody was thinking along the same line a long time ago already: What is a good resource explaining the best ways to buy bitcoin noob friendly

I have offered a bounty on http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/91/how-do-you-obtain-bitcoins"

We already have a question that tries to address this topic in a generic way: How do you obtain bitcoin?
I have created a bounty to update answers to this question to cover:
What are the ways to acquire bitcoins? Is there a website that gives an extensive overview of the operating exchanges (As in customer satisfaction, offered features, traded currencies, fee schedule, location and so forth.)?
Should this effort produce an excellent answer we could consolidate the existing duplicate questions and relay any future questions to it.