text:
Does the [coinbase] tag refer to the business or coinbase transactions?
The [coinbase] tag does not have a description yet, however seems to currently be used for both the business and in the meaning of 'coinbase' transaction.
Does the [coinbase] tag refer to the business or coinbase transactions?

On second thought, I think that was not the best solution then.
I would like to propose the following:

The tag coinbase.com should refer to the company Coinbase.
Examples:
How did Coinbase monitor BTC transactions?
How do I reset my TFA token in Coinbase?
The tag coinbase-transaction should refer to Coinbase Transactions.
Examples:
Who generates the coinbase transaction?
Must a Block contain a coinbase transaction?
The tag mining-reward should cover more general questions about mining rewards.
Example:
Why is the reward decreasing while the difficulty of mining is increasing?
The tag coinbase should be merged into coinbase.com, as it's the more common usage of Coinbase.

Any thoughts?

Just looked through the questions tagged with [tag:coinbase], then merged the respective old tags into the new tags.

The [coinbase] tag could refer to the business and the tags description would be updated accordingly. The description should clarify that questions concerning 'coinbase transactions' are tagged with [reward].


text:
Should the tag 'usage' be removed?
The usage tag has the following description: "General questions about how to use the Bitcoin client or related software and products."
That is a very broad definition and might be applied to any number of questions. It should either be changed to have a narrower, meaningful focus or removed.

I'm all for removing it.

So, this has been proposed about one day ago, and seen by 13 people, but gathered one vote. How does one decide whether there is sufficient support to go ahead with a proposal on meta? Or is it more a "saying sorry, is easier" than "asking permission" style of thing?

Nobody opposed it and this shouldn't be very controversial so it's fine to delete it. And I see now that it already is deleted. :)

alright, splendid ;)

I am a bit confused to see that "usage" is not deleted.

It's been burninated.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Off-topic posts and suggesting an alternative
Regarding cdecker's comment at https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/13413/how-to-change-uri-handler-from-bitcoin-qt-to-electrum#comment17221_13413
I don't mean to aim any criticism at cdecker, just throwing you under the bus as an example of something I wish would become standard practice. My thinking is when adding an off-topic comment, I think it would be very helpful to make it etiquette  to suggest and link an alternative stack site if one exists.
Thoughts? I know this cant be enforced in anyway but perhaps added to some guideline list.  At least until we can migrate more easily.  Speaking of which (going meta-meta now) this very topic might belong more in stackexchange meta or something.

Unfortunately, the question seems to have been removed, so I can't see what you are refering to. However, I think it would be nice to cut down off-topic questions as quickly as possible (as they are more likely to only be helpful to individuals), but to add a suggestion where to go for help when close-voting.

@Murch Hmm, looks like something similar is already possible.  See answer

OK, looks like there's already a good way to do this -- but not on a beta site!

Flag the question
Select "It should Be closed for another Reason"
Select "Off Topic"
Select "It belongs on another Stack Exchange Site"

Then it gives you a choice of a few alternatives which seems to be automated based on keywords in the question or something.

Can you give an example of a recent question on bitcoin.SE where you can do this? As far as I know, the migration paths that you're referring to are only available for graduated sites (and they're the same for all questions on that site. It's not based on keywords), but not for beta sites. Beta sites only include a migration path to that site's meta.

@JohnBensin Oh, I think you're right. Didn't realize that.

Right, so in this case, it's probably better just to flag it for moderator attention and use the Other box to give a custom description of where you think the question belongs and why.

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


text:
Is it okay to ask for money donations in an answer?
This answer has both a BTC and LTC address and asks for donations if the answer helped.
Is this acceptable? To me, this seems somewhat unprofessional; StackExchange is a professional Q&A service, and asking for money personally is... a little iffy.
Thoughts?

Soliciting users in that manner is absolutely not allowed. The content has been removed. If you see solicitations of any kind on this site, the post should be 'flagged' for moderator attention and the content removed.

Thanks for the clarification!

@Emracool That being said, unless I'm mistaken there's nothing agains putting a "tips" address in your profile.

@Lohoris you're correct, the guidance we were given by SE staff is that placing such an address in your profile is acceptable, but putting one in a post isn't. This is less about the fiscal aspects of such a thing and more about complying with the "no signatures" rule.


text:
Should bitcoin-qt and standard-client be synonymous?
Shouldn't bitcoin-qt and standard-client be synonyms? If not, what is the difference (so that the tag-wiki can be filled in)?

Done. Vote here.

Alright, I will suggest it, once I have 1250 reputation. ;)


text:
Remove [tag:math]?
I think that the math doesn't serve a clear purpose: The meaning of the Math-Tag seems to range from statistics, over exchange-rate to cryptograpy. It only appears as a single tag in one falsely tagged question.
Either the purpose of math has to be clarified or it should be deleted.

Removing it sounds good to me.

Alright, I will be getting right to it.


text:
What can be done about incomplete and inadequate answers? The quality of answers here is low compared to other stackexchange sites
I've asked a number of questions in the past and I generally get "okay" answers, but almost never does the question I originally asked get answered in full. It's often the case that I get an answer that's simply a brief surface-level explanation of one of the concepts and a link to another website.
This creates a situation where I feel I should accept the mediocre answer, or wait for a newer better one. Since the question is already answered by one person it falls off the front page and never gets visited again, even if I don't accept the answer.
I am in a situation where I feel like I must post the same question many times because those who are answering don't really know enough to answer what I'm asking, or don't go into enough detail at all. What can be done about this? I don't want to downvote anyone who answers, but I feel that mediocre answers are not acceptable.

Some questions could be better
I went through some of your questions and there were a few cases in which the question seemed to be based off of false assumptions. In those cases, the answers usually sought to rectify the information base that the question was derived from, and sometimes it occurred that by that the actual questions became obsolete.
There were also some questions that asked for verification of your interpretation of an issue. There I think that you might get more comprehensive answers if the question focused on formulating the issue at hand instead of attempting its own explanation.
There are also some questions whose title doesn't capture the content of your question well, or where you ask a number of additional question that don't necessarily are very closely related.
Lastly, there were some questions that could only be answered through someone writing a tutorial specific for your issue. Questions like that will probably turn potential answerers away, due to the amount of work to expect.
Few Experts
Additionally, I feel in general there are few experts in the bitcoin space, for whose attention there are strong competitors: Those people are busy building services, doing research, and discussing on the project mailing list or on bitcointalk.
Bounty
If you are especially interested in more comprehensive answers for some questions you might consider offering a bounty on those, specifying why the current answers don't satisfy you thus far.

Is it any way possible to add a BTC/LTC bounty add-on to this site? I'm assuming you mean the stack exchange bounty. I agree that a lot of my questions could be worded / formatted better actually.

I don't think that there is a built-in mechanism to offer a BTC/LTC bounty. I am not sure whether it would be appreciated either. If you wish to follow that idea, BTCTalk might be the path of least resistance. Offering a stack exchange bounty leads to a lot more visibility of your question, so that you might get the answer that you want. An interesting, well-phrased question might also earn back the bounty in upvotes. :)


text:
Let's get critical: Nov 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

Is it safe to keep a compromised private key in my wallet?
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

Cant click send on Multibit
Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)

What are the specific problems that Virtual Currency is solving? (in the Banking system, economics, and finance )
Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 2)

How is it possible that webservers with deterministic wallets can produce public keys without knowing the underlying private key?
Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)

how to stop bitcoin transfers from unknown parties?
Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 1)

is there a litecoin wallet website that does NOT store your private key serverside?
Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 1)

Does an increase in hash/s decrease the time it takes to obtain a block or does it increase the possibilities of solving one?
Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 3)

What does the US government do with seized coins?
Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)

How exactly can I generate a transaction id?
Net Score: -6 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 6)

Lost my BTC, though my wallet is still available
Net Score: -6 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 6)

I think the SE has declined a bit since last year. There appears to be a lot of new users in the community that don't bother following the SE format - they ask questions that have been answered, use answers as they would comments or forum replies and so forth.

Perhaps we should downvote questions more aggressively, as Jeff Atwood proposed in a SE-Blog article in 2011.

We also have a serious problem with people flagging answers because they're incorrect. That's what downvoting is for, people.

I think we could do better with tagging. We have a bunch of poor tags, quite a few tags that are missing descriptions and even when new poster's questions are edited, the tags often are not properly adjusted.
As the tags are important for the selection of related questions and making questions more discernible, that might be an area that would yield good reward for any work input.

I wonder if there is value in generalizing the topic from Bitcoins to cryptocoins, and having Bitcoins as just one (albeit the most popular) tag. In terms of usefulness to the e community, I think it may serve a longer and more meaningful lifespan if Bitcoins were considered just one component of a larger community.


text:
When to flag "not an answer"?
I have been flagging a lot of answers lately that were actually no answers, but comments or new questions - today one of those flags was declined, because "it shouldn't be used to flag wrong answers", in a case where I had clearly flagged a follow-up question. The flag description of "not an answer" seems to be indicating that this is the proper use of that flag.
Apparently, I am confused about how to use the "not an answer" flag. How is it supposed to be used?
Edit: The flagged answer can be found here: How to import my wallet?
The decline was explained with "declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer"

If sounds like you've been using this feature successfully up until this one case. So can you add a link to the post in question so we can discuss the specifics of whether it should have been declined (and why), rather than guessing about generalizations?

"Not an answer" was created to address the issue of folks leaving commentary, or even additional questions as answers. It also applies when someone just typed an answer to another question in the wrong box in the wrong tab (that happens more than you'd think). You can also use it when something is completely out of left field and just bizarre in the context of the question, e.g:

Q: How do I calculate how many [something] my [something] did?

And then you see this ...

A: I like turtles.

You should not use the flag to indicate that an answer is inaccurate or just plain wrong, that's what votes and comments are for. If it attempts to answer the question, even if it's obvious that the question was misunderstood, it's still an answer.
If you think that it wouldn't be immediately obvious to the moderators that the answer you're flagging should probably be removed (generally, the usual course for valid flags of this type), use 'other' and elaborate a bit - make sure the moderators notice what you did.

I believe the answer to this is that what you flagged as "not an answer" can actually be seen as a somewhat convoluted and indirect answer phrased as a question of the rhetoric let-me-make-you-think-and-answer-it-yourself kind. I've tried to explain by adding a comment to it. Anyways, a certain number of people interpreting this grammatical question as a logical answer will naturally disagree with your flag.

Interesting point. But, after re-reading it again, I'd like to point out that the question doesn't state having 0 coins in the Mac wallet, so to me it still looks like it is a follow-up question or perhaps a comment on the other answer (following Stephen Gornicks remark). Hence, "not an answer" would still be appropriate.

I agree that this is one possible interpretation. Someone looking deeply at the logic to the point of not caring about the lack of literal inclusion may come to a different interpretation, based on overwriting the new wallet file indeed being close to, for a rational actor, assuming that it must have 0 coins. I suppose there is always room for interpretation, and hence for people to disagree if this particular "answer" deserves being called an answer or not.

Well, I would conclude that my understanding of the "not an answer" flag apparently was appropriate, and the matter resolves to diverging interpretations of the flagged answer's intention. To me, my question is resolved.


text:
localbitcoins Tag for LocalBitcoins.com
My suggestion is to create a tag called 'Localbitcoins' or 'Localbitcoins.com' for users with questions about the Local Bitcoins website. This could potentially conflict with the local tag, however I believe that the local tag could be broadened to cover all forms of buying bitcoins locally be it through a website or btc-otc etc.

I have added a localbitcoins, however most questions dealing explicitly with localbitcoins are not tagged, yet.

I'll start tagging those questions (well, suggesting that they be tagged)


text:
Suggestion to change the FAQ
In our FAQ it is clearly says that this site is not about politics. I just created a suggestion to open a site just for that.
Will it be rude for me to ask you to mention this site in the FAQ, as alternative to anyone who is seeking to discuss about Bitcoin politics?
Also I hope I am not valuating any rules by asking that.

Um, I don't want to discourage your effort, but the example questions you are listing would also fit here well enough, except that they are primarily opinion based and thus prone to incite discussion. Unfortunately, that is not something that the Stackexchange format facilitates. I.e. without even talking about amendments to the FAQ, which I honestly don't even know the procedure for, I don't really see how your proposal is supposed to work out on SE.

I don't agree with you. "How the New-Year-2014 is going to effect Bitcoin?", is a question about politics and does not feet this site, without speaking about it's prone to incite discussion...


text:
What is the tag "miner" referring to?
I was just looking through tags and was wondering what miner refers to, because it has no tag wiki, but is a fairly often used tag (56x at time of this question). Does miner refer to persons engaging in mining, to mining software, or to mining hardware?
Closely related: Difference between tags “mining” and “miner”

[miner] and [mining] have been merged.


text:
Is it acceptable to end a question with "Thank you" type statements?
I've seen questions that end in a variety of "Thank you" statements.
Some just a simple:
Thanks for your help.

To some that are fairly bizarre like this one (that I just made up):
Thanks in advance to all those who have worked tirelessly
to expend their efforts to help me.

My question(s): 1) is it acceptable for these "Thank you" statements to be included in a question? 2) When found, should "Thank you" type statements be edited out of questions? ... Or is it a matter of "extent" (as in the examples I've given)?
Personally, I feel that every (OK, most) question askers would like to thank those that help them, and those providing answers know that (in general), the askers' appreciate the efforts of those providing answers. And as "This goes without saying", it shouldn't be said, in the question. If desired, a "Thank you" comment to any helpful answers should be welcome and sufficient.
I have not always felt this way, and I may have even been guilty of including "Thank you" statements in my questions in the past.

These notes are removed on StackOverflow: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts

@ThomWiggers - According to a post by Jeff Atwood - http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/93989/200482 on that page, only "greetings" like "Hi/Hello" are automatically removed, and specifically states that "Thanks" statements are not removed. Does this apply to http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com?

"...with respect to our previous recommendation to use “Thanks in advance”. Some hackers feel this connotes an intention not to thank anybody afterwards" http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Questions and Answers on SE are not about interaction with other users, but about transferring knowledge.
Any unnecessary text should be avoided to make this knowledge resource as accessible and understandable as possible.
This includes salutations, humor, thank-yous, and any information unnecessary to get the question/answer across.
Instead, appreciation is usually shown by upvoting helpful contributions and accepting the best answer to your questions (if satisfying). It is also possible to reward exceptional answers by manually assigning a bounty.
Source:
meta.stackoverflow on that topic.

Yes, we hate fun (standard emoticons are implied).


text:
Bitcoin SE Twitter account
I'd like to follow the official Bitcoin SE Twitter account to keep up to date with questions here, but it looks like it hasn't been updated since May.
It's got over 1320 followers, so is probably a useful promotional tool for the site.
Is there a server somewhere someone needs to kick to get it auto-tweeting again? ;-)

You're looking at the wrong account. This is the Bitcoin SE Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/StackBitcoin
I don't know what is behind the link you are using. Apparently, it was something started by a moderator in this thread: Promotional Ideas?

Ah great, thanks! I'll let the mod in that post know that they might like to tell people to follow the other account.

Yeah, I was running an unofficial bot until we got our own official one. Now that there's an official account I've killed mine.

You should maybe notify the BitcoinSE followers of the new account. I see that it has far less followers that your old one.

923 followers by now.


text:
Build and Compiling synonymous?
Are the two tags build and compiling synonymous?


text:
Please don't hide information by editing Links to non-descript linktexts
Lately, there has been doing a lot of minor touch up editing, mostly adding code markers, removing of extraneous text and other improvements of readability. It is much appreciated.
One thing, however, might be counter-productive: There have been quite a few edits that suggest to set a link providing background information for a question under a non-descript linktext.
For example

I followed the steps for PC from here: http://cryptocur.com/litecoin/litecoin-mining/

becomes

I followed the steps for PC from here

Example taken from Miner seems to be stuck at receiving new blocks.
Such an edit hides interesting information: I'd rather see the source of (relevant) information without having to click an unknown link or having to move the mouse to hover over it.
A better solution would be to either put a sufficient description instead or to leave the link intact if it isn't too much clutter.

I personally prefer "hiding" all my links. It just looks prettier and reads easier.
As far as I know, every browser will show you the target link if you hover over it. If your only concern is to be able to see the URL, then there actually is no real problem. Users of every browser already can, whether the link text is the URL text or not.

If you're gonna hide them, "hiding" them behind descriptive text is a good idea. "I followed the steps for PC from Litecoin LTC mining guide, cpu." That way, you get more information than you would with just the URL.

There is a third option that I always use on SE sites:
In 99+ % of cases the page that you link to has a title.
Use the title as as the visible text. This is the essence of hyperlinks.
So instead of pointing here or to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin I point to Bitcoins, or in this case where the title is short and I want to add credibility, to the Bitcoin Wikipedia page

Ambiguous to demonstrate obtuse nature I agree Murch. It's one thing to click on hazards to your mental sovereignty, it's a whole 'nother can't of worms when it's a wormhole-hyperlink that's obfuscated by the innocuous "... Here."
I appreciate all of your continued efforts. I will do my best to submit answers in accordance with these and other shrewd guidelines that you faithfully set forth.
-YourGenesisBloke


text:
Should questions on bitcoin theft be closed?
As an example, this is a recent question - Bitcoin theft from Coinbase account being hacked
This is the second or third time I've seen this type of question. It's boils down to someone complaining that they lost their bitcoins. I don't see how this community can do anything about it.
Also, if they should be closed, what reason should be used when flagging/closing?

There's nothing inherently wrong with this question. It's going to be a common problem.
So why not write one definitive, killer answer explaining exactly what folks can (or can't) do in this situation? It may be true that this community (or anyone, for that matter) can do nothing about it, but that may be an answer in and of itself. Or perhaps there are some remedial steps that can be taken in this event.
But folks are going to be searching for this stuff… and when they do, I sure would like them to find this site.
This is what we call a "canonical answer", and it's a great way to direct all those problematic questions to a helpful resource you create here… instead of creating an all out moratorium on a perfectly valid issue.
That's the best way to help users without having to answer the same question over and over.


text:
A lot of sock puppet accounts on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange site
I am aware the the Bitcoin site has its own Meta, but that meta was last active on the 6th of January so am posting here also.
I'm more of a lurker on Bitcoin Stack Exchange than an actual user, but I was lurking (like I do) and I spotted these guys:

dalower
mony
jeme
musakhan
joli
moly
foysal

Update (15th of January), and these guys also, who have hit the Hot Network Questions list again with this:

kayer
jesy
luna
lina

If I was a betting man, I would wager that these are all the same person, just thought I would bring it to your attention!

"...but that meta was last active on the 6th of January..." So? The mods should still frequent it (if they don't that's a different problem).

@TimeTravelingBobby Sure, it's just they seem to have hit the hot network questions list today twice, with basically just spam!

I've already flagged one of the posts.

Argh, please do not post exactly the same question on more than one sites, it unnecessarily splits the discussion and makes migration a PITA.

@Yannis This is something that needs to be dealt with ASAP, last time this happened there was a lot of cleanup involved. Bitcoin is pretty sleepy meta-wise and moderation-wise.

@Yannis Apologies, deleted the question on Meta Bitcoin.

@Manishearth 1) We aren't doing open heart surgery here, there's very little that needs to be dealt with ASAP. 2) Even if this is urgent, I still don't see why it should be cross posted. Posting on one of the two Metas would be enough.

@Yannis Hmm, true.

@JMK No worries, just avoid cross posting in the future. If you can't decide between two sites, just pick one. We can always migrate if you happen to pick the wrong one.

Is this really related to hot questions? @gnat

@hims056 yes it is, because 2 low-quality questions with low-quality answers have reached the hot questions section in the same time.

@hims056 see comment above - "it's just they seem to have hit the hot network questions list today twice", and the answer - "ring of users causing questions to hit the multicollider, reaching 200 rep, and then abusing..." Related? you bet!

..."That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there."

I wonder how many GPU cores it takes to run a Bitcoin.SE sock puppet bot ring.

@Bill I don't think it's a bot, looks like a very real and very human being who is either bored or angry at Stack Exchange so exploiting its weak spots.

Am I the only one that finds sock puppets on a bitcoin site highly ironic?

@RobertHarvey - Definitely ironic. It also kind of shows that there is still an aspect of exploitation as opposed to legitimacy with regards to Bitcoin.

The users appear to have been obliterated... Like kerpow and boom and 404.

@MichaelT Phew, sock puppets scare me!

I've cleaned most of this up. There were a lot more accounts... A few still remain, either because they hadn't done anything yet, or had done something potentially useful.
Thanks for the heads-up. If nothing else, this provided a good opportunity to identify some  deficiencies in my analysis tools. Also another good illustration of how conscientious members of a site can help to identify problems. Kudos, all.

Awesome, I'm happy I was able to contribute, if I spot any more I will update this post, cheers!

Thanks for taking care of that.

Two more for you: one, two.

Thanks, @Shadow

This has happened before, with a ring of users causing questions to hit the multicollider, reaching 200 rep, and then abusing the network bonus.
I suggest everyone flag the answers as spam.  Not sure if this is the right course of action, but this is best stopped before they reach 200 rep.
I've already pinged a community team member.

every answer? As in, not an "other" flag explaining the situation to  a (hypothetical) mod, like I've  done ~22 hours ago with a flag that's still active? OK...

@JanDvorak Every answer that's just a link. It's pretty obvious that this is a sock ring here.

The Bitcoin mods are less active, a custom flag may not reach in time

@JanDvorak I'm not sure of this though, it does seem like abuse of spam flags.

I've just flagged an answer, then realised that this guy's two questions were perfectly normal. I'm wondering if this was a correct flag.

@JanDvorak I'm talking about the link answers by the flower-gravatar users, not the questions

so, I shouldn't flag the questions? But I use them to find other spam answers

@JanDvorak No. Scratch that, don't flag anything as spam, I'm really unsure of that now

I've tried to crawl the site and I really don't know which of the (link mostly) answers I've found are legitimate. I've flagged cca only two posts so far. I give up.

@JanDvorak Oh, this doesn't look like a long term thing, I think the socking started today.

"Yet another indication of issues with current formula is how easy it is to manipulate hotness score... This is because any question vote is leveraged by amount of answers. Consolidated, 2-3 voters can "swing" the score by 30-50... Similarly, adding / removing an answer (any answer) in a highly voted question offers even more possibilities for cheating, because of it being leveraged by question score. If it was a game, I would call this somewhat boring because of poor game balance." (Once you know the mechanics it's quite easy to manipulate)

Looks like the ping failed, nobody dealt with the socks

@ShadowWizard I guess it's tricky because they ask ~passable questions, and then get good answers from other legitimate users, they're annoying me though hence the update!

@JMK it's obvious they upvote each other. That's illegal no matter what and at the very least all those accounts must be merged into single account that should then be suspended.

@ShadowWizard Totally agree with that!


text:
Are questions about alternative coins allowed?
Can we ask and answer questions about Litecoin, Yacoin and other types of altcoins?

related: Should this SE also cover questions about Ripple

Yes, Bitcoin derivatives and other cryptography based currencies such as Ripple are on-topic.


text:
What is the focus of the tag Software? Remove it?
It is not clear to me what the focus of software is supposed to be. Most software used with Bitcoin can either be specified more distinctly, as "wallet", "client", "miner", "website", "exchange", or one of the many tags that refer to specific programs.
software currently has the tag description "Computer programs relevant to Bitcoin or similar technologies". I think it may classify as a meta-tag.
Either the use-case of software should be clarified, or it should be removed altogether.

I'd agree, it's better to just mention the specific software that you're dealing with, this is a meta tag. It probably grows because folks sometimes can't create software specific tags if they're new, and it's there.
Thankfully, it's only on about 60 questions, but these need to be examined to make sure that we don't need to create a software specific tag, and then it can be burninated and blacklisted to the outer realms.
Once you're sure it's safe to burn, ping me and I'll look at getting it done.

Shouldn't the tag disappear by itself, when it isn't used on any questions anymore?


text:
When to flag low-quality, flag "not an answer", and when to downvote answers?
We have some strange low-quality flags most days, so I think perhaps a discussion on the best practice would be in order.
The Very Low Quality flag is intended to be used for posts that are beyond saving. Essentially, a VLQ flag says "This user is shitting all over the place and the post should be deleted immediately!" It is an offensive-lite flag, the "spam"-flag also incurs a reputation penalty and ban, when it is triggered on multiple posts of a user.
For a more comprehensive description please refer to Usage guide for very low quality flag.
If an answer is just not useful, i.e. talking about the right subject, giving good information, but just not really helping with the question it should be downvoted instead. – Don't worry about losing reputation for downvotes: When a post gets deleted due to accumulating downvotes your rep gets restored.
If an answer misses the topic completely, contains a new question, is a "thank you-statement", or a "have the same problem-comment", it should be flagged as not an answer.
What do you think, did I get that about right? Are some things handled differently on this SE?

It can be a bit of a subjective call.
If the answer is:

Wrong - down vote it, consider leaving a comment
Completely out of left field - as in someone posted the answer on the wrong question, flag as 'other', otherwise the mods might see what looks like a perfectly good answer and wonder what you're trying to flag
kdjhaskdjhaskhd, I am psychic and can fix your problems, best gucci bags - spam
An indecipherable blob of something that would take at least a Herculean effort to salvage - very low quality
I too have this problem, your answer didn't work - Not an answer
Thanks! - Not an answer
I too had this problem - read very carefully, see below

Sometimes the difference in 'have' and 'had' can throw you off, so when considering NAA, make sure they're not actually answering the question perhaps while trying to ask another - favor editing if that's the case and let them know they can ask a new question in comments.
For the most part, if someone is at least trying to answer and appears to have at least read the question, voting and editing are the best tools.

So, what would you do, if someone is talking about the right topic, just not actually addressing the question? For example this answer: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4036/is-there-a-maximum-factor-by-which-difficulty-can-change/21469#comment24367_21469 or this https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/21275/is-there-a-standard-procedure-for-refunding-bitcoin-transactions/21325#comment24405_21325, i.e. not wrong but just not useful? --- So far I have been downvoting those and explaining that they are not addressing the question.

If it doesn't answer the question, but seems more tangentially related to it - then it should be flagged NAA. Mods can (at their discretion) turn potentially useful bits into comments, but that should be somewhat of a rarity.


text:
Bitcoin SE Needs YOU! - A call for moderators
We're looking for a few good mods!
Bitcoin Stack Exchange has been growing at an exponential rate. You've done a fantastic job of positioning this site as an authoritative Q&A for not just Bitcoin, but crypto currencies in general. Depending on what's in the news, which lately has been quite a bit, this site sees huge spikes in traffic and participation.
Your ever faithful moderation team has been hard at work to stay on top of this, but I fear that if we work them any harder we might start violating some kind of regulations, and possibly the Geneva convention.
To that, I'd like to recruit three additional moderators from this community. Yes, three is a bit, but the spikes this site sees takes it to huge scales, albeit temporary.
A bit about the job, and what we're looking for:
Ideal candidates should:

Want the responsibility, and have at least a few hours each week to give on average
Be consistently patient and fair in their dealings with the community
Be knowledgeable enough about the topic to be able to judge the quality of posts, and identify cleverly crafted spam
Be ready to lead the community to help you do your jobs. Teach people how to flag properly, encourage a culture of editors and strong reviewers
Work directly with me and the rest of the SE community team to make sure this community is getting its needs met from us
Understand and embrace our theory of moderation

Are you interested? Great! Leave an answer to this question to indicate your desire to be considered, and feel free to expand on what you think is a priority for the site right now. While I will consider third-party nominations, I'd rather see nominations from folks enthused enough to step in and write something down.
I hope to have three people appointed by the end of the coming week, so don't hesitate to jump in if you're interested.
Update 2/19/2014
I'll be reaching out to folks over the next two days, and hopefully have the additional mods appointed by the end of this week. Stay tuned!
Update 3/4/2014
Murch has graciously accepted his nomination, and has been appointed. I'm waiting to hear back from a few more folks to finalize the rest of the additions to the team, once I have, I'll be adjusting their access and making a formal meta post introducing everyone.
Update 3/13/2014
Jacob Torba has also graciously accepted his nomination, and has been appointed. There's one more I'm waiting to hear back from (do you people even check your email?), but I'll have a formal announcement up tomorrow either way.
Thanks to everyone who has expressed interest so far, it won't be long and please - check your email :)

Hi Tim, I was hoping that you could update us on the status of this endeavor. – I was considering to promote this topic some more, as it didn't get too much attention. However, promoting would only make sense if this issue remained an item beyond the time plan you outlined. On the other hand, I would be fairly excited to move forward. ;)

Oh, also, do all Bitcoin.SE moderators have to change their first name to David when they take the job? ;)

@Murch You don't have to change your name, but you should get some sticker name tags, write "David" on them, and wear them while moderating (for safety reasons, of course!)

related: Bitcoin SE - Seeking Community Moderators To Help This Site Stay Awesome!

I would like to express my interest in becoming a moderator.
Introduction
My name is Mark, I am working on my M.Sc. in Computer Science with a focus on Automatic Speech Recognition and working as a part-time programmer. While I am neither a die-hard Bitcoin expert, nor a financial expert, I believe that I have achieved a solid understanding of Bitcoin.
There still regularly are some questions that are just beyond me, but I think I don't have to be able to answer every question to help with moderation.
In the past six months, I have

answered 128 questions
raised 380 flags (8 declined), reviewed 1,015 flags
cast 1,684 votes, left 535 comments
edited 310 posts

Also, I was probably the most active user on meta this year. (Which unfortunately, is less of an achievement than I would like it to be.)
While I am from Germany, I have a solid command of English. Except commas – they tend to crop up in weird places sometimes! ;)
I am currently the room-owner of the chat room Bitcoin Lounge associated with our SE. (Drop by for some coffee!)
Most pressing topics

Waning community

Looking through the user roster and old meta discussions, it seems to me that the Bitcoin.SE used to be a lot more lively. People used to know about other users "getting married".
I have met one other Bitcoin.SE user at a Bitcoin meet-up, and a few people have dropped into the Bitcoin chat, but it feels like the community had dispersed before I started coming here. We've dropped down to mechanically doing our parts on the exchange, but the discussion about it, and the social experience has waned mostly. I would support efforts to get more life into meta, and again would like to invite you to drop by the chat any time. I am considering to commence a weekly "Bitcoin hour" in chat to get together.

Flood of low-quality questions getting answered

There are dozens of questions closed as duplicates that have new answers. This dilutes the quality of our database: The best answer might be on any of a set of duplicates. Duplicates should be closed as such more quickly and should perhaps also be consolidated in some cases. There are also some chains of duplicates i.e. Question A ---dup---> Question B ---dup---> Question C.
In other categories, this leads to people asking for clarification and/or downvoting a question, but it still getting answered before the ambiguity is addressed. By not closing or even deleting quickly, we are fostering a breeding ground for low-quality questions and answers, wasting our answerers time reading through these questions and wasting our visitors time by keeping them.
Our guidance on which questions are worth keeping should be reviewed and enforced more consistently. This especially relates to the required "previous research", "off-topic", and the general quality of questions we accept as worth an answer. For example, I support the answers of Artem and Chris on Can we remove "based on actual problems that you face." from the FAQ? in this regard: Questions should leave the impression that somebody is seriously thinking about them.
As a relatively new user, I find that better guidance on our quality requirements would help new users a lot to support moderation and allow advanced users to apply it more consistently.

Edits only fix part of the problems

This is somewhat of a nuisance: Very often edits only fix part of the problems with a post. For example, a few typos are fixed, when others remain, or just the title of a question is rephrased, while the tags remain completely wrong. We could generally do a better job fixing posts completely instead of partially. This should be especially kept in mind by people accepting suggested edits, that they use the "improve" button more often.

Plea for guidance

One thing about the prospect of becoming a moderator I am fairly uncomfortable with: My votes would become binding. From exploring the questions, this seems to have grossly changed other moderators flagging behavior. (Some moderators were lauded for their flagging and voting before they were selected as such, now it seems less hands-on for many of them.) I am a fairly opinionated person, so I actually find it easy to flag things for moderator attention when I think it is worth a look. However, with binding votes, I would be "passing judgment" instead of starting a collective review. I am very divided about this: On one hand, I think that the Bitcoin.SE would benefit a lot from stronger moderation, but on the other hand, this kind of action would perhaps raise dictatorial impressions with users. My first instinct would be to ask guidance from other moderators, however, this seems to dispensed sparsely these days or invisible to regular users. I would hope that there would be more access to the other moderators to discuss ambiguous cases.
Thanks for reading, thanks for your consideration.

Remember that no binding vote that you cast is without oversight of the community or final. If a mistake was made, you can fix it, and you'll have five other moderators you can lean on for their thoughts when you need them. There's also a private chat room for all network moderators where you can go for advice if you're not sure what to do - at least 20 people active there most times of the day.

That's reassuring. :)

dont agree on trigger-finger closing questions without at least marking the duplicate in the comment. also over preoccupation with "question quality" is not really supported by official stackexchange stds. also the official se moderation policy is that it is ideally as minimal as possible

Hello vzn, thank you for taking interest in my application. I too, believe that closing questions should be deliberately considered, and cushioned with helpful referrals. However, we are gaining questions daily that are considered off-topic by community decision, many of which have been answered dozens of times before in marginally different variations. Oftentimes, they still get new answers of doubtful quality as more established users tend to close-vote instead. In a perfect world, moderation duty would be unnecessary, yet, our SE could profit by directing answers to more valuable content.

so are you in favor of putting the link to the duplicate question in comments or not? (agreed se mechanisms for duplicate questions are awkward... that seems to be the only/best approach). re TP's 1st comment above, it seems to be very rare in general that se mods ever overrule each other, its a benefit of the doubt type situation in general.

I am not sure I unterstand what you mean with marking a duplicate in the comments? When you vote to close as duplicate a comment is auto-generated containing the link and when a question is closed a link is placed above it.

Too many mod closed questions is not a problem we are suffering from currently as far as I can tell.

// , I am in agreement with Murch, here, for what little it's worth. It is easier for questions to get in than it is to get them out. Much of the superiority of the Stack Exchange model comes not from what it adds, but what it takes away. <insert obligatory Saint Exupéry quotation here>

While I cannot compete with Murch's amazing contribution to this community, I do think we are in need of more moderators and as such I am volunteering as well to be a moderator for this community.
What I have to offer
I'm mostly a developer with tons of experience with Bitcoin. I mostly work with JavaScript and its Node.js component developing the backend for services, usually dealing with receiving/sending bitcoins, keeping a balance, and having a fast system. I occasionally dabble in C++ and have thorough knowledge of techniques and traits of the Satoshi implementation of the Bitcoin protocol. What I'm trying to get across is I know the technical aspects of what Bitcoin is doing 'under the hood'.
I've been patrolling this SE community eagerly answering technical questions that are within my scope with solid and detailed answers. I've haven't been participating as long as others but I've provided many answers to questions with the knowledge I've built up from my own work and hobby.
Important issues and topics

The "Dogecoin" crowd

A lot of newer people have been brought in to Bitcoin after hearing about Dogecoin's success or similar events that relate to Bitcoin. These newer people turn to this particular SE to get answers to common and/or real questions. A side effect of this is that they tend to leave lower quality questions or simply do not understand the Question-Answer mechanic of SE. This creates a problem of duplicate and legitimate questions that are camouflaged by ineptitude. Something we need more people to combat.

The general scariness and roughness of Bitcoin ideas

There are some real questions concerning the most hardcore Bitcoin ideas. They often concern rough stuff like Cryptography, the pitfalls of Bitcoin, and merging Bitcoin into a commercial environment. There are users who need legitimate and truthful answers that is technically sound. Due to the nature of SE, anyone can answer and suggest particularly dangerous things. An inappropriate answer can mean financial loss to a user, and risky answers are something moderators can prevent. Not to mentioned badly answered questions will show up on Google searches.

Questions misinterpreted by the community

Sometimes a user's question will be plainly turned down by the community through inappropriate close votes. This can frustrate the user if a closing is unjust and confuse those who reach the question through searching. An improper closing can create a "dead end" for information and there will always be duplicate posts that look and sound similar but aren't always right. A technically-proficient moderator can quickly rectify these kinds of circumstances.
It'd be great to have a little more ability in this SE community, providing more guidance in a newer community leads to prosperity of the community in whole.

Hi Jacob! I like your note about questions being misinterpreted. Since I've been helping out in the flag queue, I've seen a few instances of this. One thing I'd like to ask, part of being a mod means giving folks a hand here on meta, is that something you plan to work into your time on the site if appointed?

@TimPost Certainly! I see that Murch is practically running it by himself, and I realize that it's under-appreciated and in need of people.

I strongly believe in Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow based communities, and I'm especially passionate about distributed technologies such as Bitcoin. I've been a member of Stack Overflow since almost the very beginning, and was always interested in systems structured around measurable reputation.
I must be honest, I do believe in a future where these systems would also become entirely decentralized. Your reputation would then allow you to express votes for actually changing your country, implement policies and improve decision-making.
In any case, I would love to participate in the moderation and improvement of this system. I have time available to dedicate to this because I'm passionate of the Bitcoin community and strongly believe that Bitcoin Stack Exchange could be a leader in generating knowledge for the Bitcoin community.

Hey Luca, thanks for your interest. Could you perhaps expand on what you bring to the table as a potential moderator and what you think the most important issues of Bitcoin.SE are?

Since you didn't reply to my question, I just had a look at your profile myself. I find commendable that you have provided many good answers in a short time, and also maintained those through further improvements. However, as far as I can tell, so far you have contributed little to moderation: You just raised your first flag on February 11th (two days after this post), performed 0 reviews, suggested 0 edits, and all your 31 revisions were on your own answers. (cont.)

I see that you have the badges for first upvote and first downvote, but no other voting badges. As you already have access to quite a few moderation tools, I am afraid I don't see "I would love to participate in the moderation" reflected in your profile. I certainly see that you are knowledgeable about the topic, but I don't see that you are very interested in performing the plumbing here - which essentially is what the moderators do.

I don't think the amount of upvotes/downvotes have anything to do with being an appropriate moderator.

It's true, upvoting and downvoting are two of the less important activities of a moderator, however, they are one of the first moderation tools available to any user: They allow one to help improve the site's content by highlighting good posts and dimming less useful posts. However, what I am asking is, what do you think does "being an appropriate moderator" mean?


text:
Weeding out bad tags initiative 2014
During the process of burninating [tag:software], I found other ill-defined tags. I have collected them for us to tackle together. It's time to sort out this tagging mess. Let's get this started.

What are good tags?

Does the tag add valuable information when it is added to a question?
Can the tag be the only tag of a question?
Does the tag commonly mean the same thing for different people?
Does the tag create a specific, well-defined category?
Can you see anyone at some point subscribing to the tag or searching for related questions by using the tag?
Can you see anyone using this tag to ignore a topic?
Is there a very similar tag that is more popular which could be applied instead?

If a tag's usefulness is contested, think about whether its name or definition could be improved and rather err on allowing it.

Tagging-Guide
Applying that logic, some examples for good and bad tags:

Software tags – GOOD

multibit
bitcoind
cgminer

Service tags – GOOD

bitstamp
coinbase
blockchain.info

Altcoin tags – GOOD

dogecoin
litecoin
auroracoin

Cryptocurrency specific terms – GOOD

difficulty
mining
block

Tags that describe the question, not the content – BAD

best-practices
definition
opinion

Tags that mean different things in different topics – BAD

earnings
data-quantity
computing

Tags that could be used on (almost) any question – BAD

usage
workings
comparison

Tags that are off-topic – BAD

hosting
sd-card
ip

How to help?
Pick a tag that you are familiar with and look through questions tagged with it. Fix the whole question, also fix:

grammar errors
bad titles
remove inappropriate tags
add tags that should be on the question.

Anyone can suggest edits! Feel free to join us in the Bitcoin Lounge. :)
If you feel that a tag on this list should rather be kept unchanged, move it to the disputed section, and post an answer why it should stay.

Tags to be evaluated and processed
alternative-blockchains
alternatives
amazon
build
compiling
control
conversion
crypto-2.0
crypto-currencies
deterministic
development
diskspace
dns
donation
earnings
education
electricity
encoding
error
exploitation
export
formatting
forum
fragmentation
future
governance
hacking
hash
hashing
hashpower
hosting
hybrid
identity
incentive
installation
installing
irc
job
ledger
library
license
limit
linode
live-data
local
logging
loss
lost-transactions
market
market-depth
marketplace
media
mining-pools
novelty
oracle
orphaned-block
ownership
packets
people
performance
phishing
politics
portable
power
probability
race
random
restore
retail
reward
rsa
safemode
search
security-key
services
shops
speed
spending
stability
stale-block
standardization
stocks
streaming
support
terms
ticker
trade
travel
uk
uri
usa
value
value-add
video
virtual-currency
visa
volume
voting
warmstorage
website-development
websites
wiki
wikileaks
wireless
I previously had my preliminary notes in the above list, but that made it completely unreadable, so I moved it to this >> tag overview table.

Tags to delete
Don't just delete the tag from the question and ignore everything else.
If a question also has grammatical errors, terrible title, et cetera, then fix that along with removing the tag.

Tags to fix
Either these tags have been re-defined or were being used inconsistently. Questions marked with this tag need to be checked and retagged accordingly. When a tag from this category has been cleaned, please add it to the Fixed section at the bottom, so no one else spends time on them.
accounts
altcoin
lost

Disputed Tags

Cleaned
Burninated
academic
best-practices
bug
calculations
command-line
communication
companies
comparison
competitor
computing
configuration
crash
custom
data-quantity
debug
definition
delivery
design
files
generation
gui
idea
innovation
international
ip
list
maths
measurements
mistake
monitoring
morality
non-standard
notation
opinion
person
read-only
reference
release
resilience
resources
sd-card
software
source-code
start
statistics
upgrade
usage
version
wireless
write-protect
workings
Merged

debit → debitcard
download → synchronization
error-detection → security
gateway → ripple-gateways
halving → reward-schedule
graphs → charts
jargon → terminology
notation → terminology
science → academic-research
resilience → weaknesses
stability → price-volatility
terms → terminology
vocabulary → terminology
volatility → price-volatility
vulnerability → security

Fixed

Hmm, that shiny new diamond looking thing next to your name might help a bit with this ;)

Cool. :D I'll see that I get on to it a bit later today, once I get home from work and get a handle on all this new information I am seeing. ;)

Damn! You put a lot of work into this. I'll have a crack at a few of these.

@fredsbend: Don't miss the "tag overview table" which gives some reasons and thoughts about why some things are bad.

Please use the format
tag – Offense (reason to be deleted)
For any tags that aren't obvious perpetrators, please open a new post and link them here.
Candidates for Burninating

software – meta tag
usage – Unfocused
alternatives – Unfocussed

Ongoing discussions

code, source, source-code, development – This discussion doesn't seem to be resolved yet: Discussion here
configuration – Should be removed as a meta-tag?

Comments on how some tags might be handled

upgrade – Delete,  seems to be a meta tag. –Murch
comparison – Not well-defined and specific enough. Should be removed. –Discussion between @DavidPerry, @Murch
altcoin – needs an in-depth discussion –Discussion between @JacobTorba, @DavidPerry, @Murch
datacoind – Synonym of bitcoind? –Murch
data-quantity – Meta tag? –Murch
ddos – Merge into attack? –Murch
debug – Not specific, well-defined category, remove? –Murch
definition – Not specific, well-defined category, remove? –Murch
delivery – Refers to questions concerning delayed mining equipment. Off-topic? –Murch
design – Domain should be clarified –Murch
deterministic – Should perhaps be changed to deterministic-wallet –Murch
diskspace – Should be defined as diskspace used by the blockchain specifically, but then would be covered by blockchain? –Murch
dns – It isn't clear how this tag refers to Bitcoin. –Murch
donation – ranges from charities to legal –Murch
download – seems to be a duplicate of synchronization –Murch
earnings – Unfocused: Refering to "earning bitcoins", "profitability" and making money through trading
education – Unclear: Referring to university and educating new users.
electricity – Unfocused: Referring to Cost of mining, power-surges, and power requirements of ASIC
encoding – Should get a tag description at least.
exploitation – Duplicate of attack?
export – Should be specified, perhaps to "private-key-export"
files – Meta-Tag?
formatting – Unfocussed.
forum – Off-topic?
fragmentation – Seems to refer to "Coin selection" and "splitting of outputs", not sure if it is useful.
future – Seems to collect questions concerned with things that may still come to pass, and futures contracts.
generation – Just no distinction at all: Bitcoin generation, transaction generation... Should be deleted.
novelty, academic, alternative-blockchains, alternatives,
amazon, best-practices, bug, build, command-line, communication, companies, compiling, computing, control, conversion, crash, crypto-currencies, custom,...

list to be continued starting from "E".
DONE

idea,innovation – both together just on one question, describing something previously known. Just removed them. ;) -> DONE.
error-detection – Replaced with security in the one instance it was on a question. -> DONE.
article – Should be merged into the encompassing news –Discussion between @DavidPerry, @Murch -> DONE.
competitor – "that one just needs to get burned" –@DavidPerry --- manually edited -> DONE.
charts&graphs – Should be merged perhaps? --> merged as proposed.
debit – Merge into debitcard –Murch --> merged
gateway – Seems to be a duplicate of ripple-gateways --> merged

I would like Transaction-Maliability and Tx-ID to be merged and or an alias created.

@makerofthings7 See: http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/521/5406

Suggestion: Merge miner into mining.

[miner] and [mining] have been merged.


text:
"Graphs" and "Charts" are pretty similar tags, should they be merged and in which direction?
"Graphs" and "Charts" are very similar tags. Should they be merged? If yes, in which direction?

Proposition: charts should be retained and graphs merged into that.


text:
Theme for Bitcoin Stack Exchange
It seems as though Bitcoin Stack Exchange is in top 30 of most trafficated sites: http://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic
Most sites in the top 30 have a custom theme. Also people might get thrown away by the "Beta" in the logo.
I was wondering, when can the site get its own theme?

Related: What should our logo and site design look like?

dating more than 2 years ago. wonder why nothing is being done in this regard.

six to eight weeks.

@DavidPerry said in chat on February 8th:

"We get a special design when we leave public beta, which is basically at SE's discretion.
Last I heard we were in the queue for graduation but there were several other sites in front of us and they just have the one designer.
I'll ask again next time I talk to an SE employee" (see Bitcoin Lounge transcript)

great! so there's a process of graduation :) let's hope they do something soon as we're the only ones in the top 30 still in beta.


text:
What would be better tags for "What is Bitcoin?"
What is Bitcoin? is currently tagged with exchanges, which doesn't seem very fitting. What would be better tags for the question?

A while ago, a new tag introducing-bitcoin was created. It is aimed at collecting "questions about methods and resources used to present Bitcoin to a person without prior knowledge of Bitcoin."
I've tagged What is Bitcoin? with introducing-bitcoin which is a better fit than exchanges, although it is not a perfect match.


text:
Three tags for Transaction Malleability
We currently have at least three tags for transaction malleability:
txid-malleability, malleability, transaction-malleability.

They should be merged into one tag. My suggestion would be transaction-malleability as, while it may be the transaction id that is changed, I haven't seen it called transaction id malleability so far.
Update:

txid-malleability, malleability have been merged into transaction-malleability.
txid-malleability has been added as synonym for transaction-malleability


text:
Do tags for specific countries make sense?
I have just been scanning the newest tags and we now have bulgaria, australia, uk, eu, and probably a bunch more.
As far as I understand, we consider questions about "how to buy coins in specific countries" as asking for "product recommendations". On the other hand, legal questions are usually met with the suggestion for the asker to seek out legal advice.
What would then be any valid case in which those tags should be applied?

The only real use case I could see is countries making the news themselves when it comes to crypto currencies. For instance, Hong Kong indicating that they don't find them legitimate, or perhaps if a country tried to block / outlaw the use of them (great wallet of China?)
At that point, they become relevant. Otherwise, they (as you noted) tend to lead to smells.

I'll see that I add them to my review then, all of the above actually seem to be smelly.


text:
Let's get critical: Feb 2014 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

Do bitcoin clients automatically add more fee than specified?

Net Score: 7 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Detecting generation transactions

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 0)

Will bitcoin's value be affected by other digital currencies?

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 1)

How to scan QR code with multibit wallet application?

Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

What is the queue position?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)

Displayed transactions may not be correct!

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 2)

Can someone explain to me how do you read the blockchain.info transaction data?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 1)

How to get a history of incoming and outgoing transactions for a certain address?

Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 2)

where is default Bitcoin-Qt data directory?

Net Score: -5 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 6)

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/20086/what-companies-actively-sell-miners

Net Score: -6 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 7)


text:
How can we increase participation in Meta?
Dear lost soul that you stumbled over this post. ;)
Meta participation is more or less down to zero. - Unless it is just the tag discussions that nobody is interested in. ;)
Do you have an idea how we can promote meta? Should we offer some bounties? Free t-shirts? Cookies?

I don't think the Bitcoin SE is large enough to accommodate an active meta yet. But it looks like participation is growing.

We have about 1.5 times the users as rpg.SE, yet they have 3x as many questions in meta, while they have only about the same amount questions on the main page. I don't think it is related to size.

@Jacob I agree with Murch. Compared to my experiences with the other SE sites, the meta here is a very quite place.

I'm going to continue to monitor meta activity, and it is improving. Remember, you have the 'featured' tag you can apply which causes questions to appear in the community bulletin, and that does attract a bit of attention.
When we get close to a tipping point where discussions here typically get at least two or three answers, I'll throw a fun mini-contest for some swag (or a short series of them). Also, 'bike shed' questions tend to attract a lot of attention and serve as a great on-board to get folks participating here. Questions where every opinion would be equally correct and interesting do a great job of this.

I would say often times people are scared to participate in Meta discussion, or really any sort of discussion on SE, especially beta sites. I'll explain why.
I made an account awhile ago, but even before that I lurked on the site for quite a bit before I decided to create an account. Why? Because SE in general can seem a little pretentious at times. I personally don't feel that this site is, but I can sense why individuals used to a more "forum-like" environment would.
I totally understand the strict moderation though. I love it. That's what makes SE so outstanding from forums. People shouldn't be scared to participate, but they are. As a noobie I can attest that to this: Seeing all of these people with 2,000+ rep is frightening! Now, obviously the point is to learn, and answer questions but the rep is like--SUPER COOL! There is a sort of intimidation factor there. That's why (I think) the people that participate in discussions, or in Meta, usually have more rep. A guy with more rep can get away with making witty, less-than-on-topic comments.
Don't get me wrong. He isn't getting away with things because he has high reputation! In fact it's quite the opposite. It's because of the high reputation that you know he's just an active member whose giving you a hard time right now. The rep is working! It does what it is supposed to do, and does it well! But it can be a little scary to us new guys. Because we "can't get away" with as much. Which is great. We shouldn't be able to.
I'm sure this is the case on every SE though. But I feel like it's especially applicable on sites like Bitcoin.SE, Math.SE, Physics.SE, etc, because they are "mysterious." People are coming to the gods of these subjects to seek help. Where as (as you mention) RPG.SE is inherently a little more laid back.
Maybe this is all just in my head ;) I don't know.
Basically, I don't think it's anything the community can do, or the moderators. I think it's just a simple fact of having a lot, in fact of majority, of traffic from less-than-experts, talking to "experts." :)

Thanks for your answer, I think you have a point there. Though, I hope you are wrong about the part where there is nothing that we can do. ;) To be honest, I don't feel much like an expert either, I gained all my knowledge from reading and posting on Bitcoin.SE – a year ago I had no clue about Bitcoin. I still haven't done a lot of things other users on Bitcoin.SE have done. For example I have never mined.

Participation in meta is always difficult to encourage when it is low.
Typically, I find that the more controversial sites, the ones where people get religious about the topic (that includes the religious sites) have very active metas, and naturally so.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is not terribly controversial. Actually, it is closer to intriguing for the average user, than anything else. People just don't have an opinion about it. They don't know enough about it, thus, their compulsion to define terms, retag questions, debate points, lay down site guidelines, etc. is lackluster.
This, combined with the high volume of new, noobie questions, combines to make the low voting problem (if we should call it that).
Participation in meta is difficult to encourage when it is low because it is low for reasons that you simply can't affect.
I'm not saying this won't change and I am also not saying that you/we can't do anything about it. The fastest, easiest way to encourage meta participation is to post controversial questions that challenge the current site policies. Maybe not the best thing to do though ... but it's the best I currently have. The option is wait. Maybe years even, when the average knowledge about Bitcoin has increased to a level where there will be differences of opinion.


text:
Option to migrate to Ethereum SE, Monero SE and IOTA SE
Lots of questions belong to these subs. It'd allow these questions to be answered.

I do see the option to "close as off-topic" > "this question belongs on another site" > text field to put which one. Are you sure that it's not just that the question is older than 6 months? Questions older than 6 months cannot be migrated to other network sites.

@Murch I think that text field is only for moderators

I think Ethereum would be a good candidate for a migration.
There is no ripple SE site, perhaps you meant Monero? Note that Monero is still in Beta and thus can't be added as a migration unfortunately.
Another good migration would be to crypto.SE in my opinion


text:
Totally fanatic questions from US-Canada answered but others tagged as opinions. Racism stacking up for treatment?

I have a question about my Bitcoin Stack Exchange post: Without world denuclearization and privileged accepting transparency, can BItcoin have a future?

I've had a look at the linked question and see no indication that it was closed for any other reason than the cited speculative nature. If you see other questions that should be closed as primarily opinion-based, please feel free to flag them for review as well.
I've also removed your comment calling another contributor names for no reason.

The preacher is here defending his folks

As far as I can tell, all the issues I've looked into started at your end: You insinuated unfair behavior in others where there was none while being needlessly rude. Further, you followed another user around and harassed them. Now, you're getting in my face after no provocation by myself. This behavior is not acceptable. Either adhere to our "be nice" policy, or see yourself removed from this community. Thank you.


text:
Possible canonical question - My Bitcoin Core {bitcoin-qt|bitcoind} is slow to sync - nomination
There seems to be a number of questions along the lines of:

My Bitcoin Core {bitcoin-qt|bitcoind} is slow to sync?

I have created a wiki-answer in response to one such question a while back and have found myself several times marking questions as duplicates and referring the asker to that answer. Like any answer, it can still be improved.
Nomination: Sync with bitcoin-qt very slow (0,01%) (if accepted, it may be worth considering making the question heading more all-encompassing)


text:
Any criteria for flagging “no longer needed” for comments?
Generally, I think stackexchange sites treat comments as a sticky notes, which is better to be removed if it can be.  Reference:  How do comments work?
I’m asking this question because I came encountered a comment which I think is “no longer needed” but such flag was declined.  Namely, this comment: How do Bitcoin clients find each other?
A comment to indicate the comment-poster is also curious, can be substituted by an action of upvote for the question.  If so, I thought such comments are almost always “no longer needed”.
… Or am I missing any view points..?

Related: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment

I agree with both of you that unnecessary comments should be removed, but would actually rather encourage that people continue to flag such unnecessary comments, even if there is only a single one of them.
Unnecessary comments add visual clutter and cost visitors time to find what they're actually looking for. Globally seen, it is the vastly preferable outcome that such comments are flagged and removed quicker, rather than not reported and removed later.

I agree, comments can and should usually be removed if they don't add anything useful to the question or answer. In the case you linked, I removed the comment because I agree it doesn't add any value. In general though it is probably not worth reporting comments unless there are a lot of them on one post or they contain insulting/inappropriate language :)


text:
What should we do with blockr.io links?
Blockr.io has been discontinued by Coinbase and now all links pointing to this explorer redirect to Coinbase.com. Should we edit past questions and answer that used this explorer to point to another one?

Generally, dead links should be fixed where it is easy to do so. If it cannot be fixed, the link should be removed. If the question becomes obsolete without the link, it should be removed (e.g. via being flagged as "very low quality" or "not an answer").
If you have the time to do so, the replacing of the broken links would be appreciated, but I'm not sure if it's important enough for anyone to manually work through all of them.


text:
Canned responses
Any chance of starting a discussion about the possibility of SE having canned responses for comments?
I often find myself typing the same resposes, e.g:

Welcome to Bitcoin.SE! You can help the site by marking answers as accepted if they are correct and address the question so that the question does not remain as "unanswered".

Or:

Welcome to Bitcoin.SE! Your question can be improved, please see how to ask for assistance.

Ideally, it would be useful to have user-configured canned responses.

I use the AutoReviewComments script for some of the responses that come up again and again: https://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se

Looks like what I want. Needs an update. Not compatible with Firefox Quantum.

@Willtech I use it with FFQuantum, works fine for me, using Tampermonkey :)


text:
Questions about the Bitcoin market are off-topic here, right?
Looking here
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
and here
Are questions about trading on-topic?
I conclude that questions about the Bitcoin market are off-topic here, right? I'm not talking about investment advice - more things like "are there multiple Bitcoin markets? Do we buy Bitcoin as a currency or as stocks of some fund?" etc. Still, if I understand correctly, this site is about Bitcoin techonology, not about the economics of Bitcoin.

I would say that any bitcoin-specific question is on topic if it follows the other guidelines like not being opinion based or discussing future price trends.

Thanks, then I may post my question here next time.


text:
I have a question for a post on the Bitcoin site. Can I post a long FAQ Q&A on bitcoin and cryptocurrency?
Well, as the title says, am I able to post a long FAQ Q&A on bitcoin and cryptocurrency? I feel like it could help some people.
Would it be considered off-topic?
Example:

Why does X happen?

Well, x happens because....

As far as I understand you, you're trying to do something like Andrew Chow did here in this answer: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/54457/5406
If that's the case and the content is relevant to our topic, please feel free to post your FAQ as an answer to a relevant question or ask your own question to answer it with your FAQ. Kindly, when you do, post a link where to find it, because I'm curious what you've got for us.
Thank you. :)

Alright, I will brainstorm some stuff for it. Thanks so much!

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/73803/bitcoin-frequently-asked-questions-with-answers here it is, it is not very long though.

Ah… I see. I thought your questions were all about one topic. I'm afraid, I agree with Pieter, it's a bit of an ill fit how you've posted it. I think however, that it would fit decently as an answer to https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/22796/5406, what do you think?

Alright, @murch I will post it.


text:
Is a question about the difference between Bitcoin Wallet and Bitcoin Exchange in-topic here?
I would like to ask the following question on this site:

"What's the difference between a Bitcoin Wallet and a Bitcoin Exchange"
I want to invest a small amount of money in Bitcoin. Reading this, I discovered that one should create a Bitcoin Wallet before buying Bitcoins on a Bitcoin Exchange such as Coinbase or Kraken. I don't understand why I should do that, isn't enough to download the Coinbase app, for example? Also, the link says that
While exchanges offer wallet capabilities to users, it’s not their primary business. Since wallets need to be kept safe and secure, exchanges do not encourage storing of Bitcoins for higher amounts or long periods of time. Hence, it is best to transfer your Bitcoins to a secure wallet.
What's the reason for that? It seems very weird to me. If I buy stock options, no one would object to me keeping them invested for years. Then why can't I leave my investment on a Bitcoin Exchange for a long period? Do I risk that the Exchange goes bankrupt or something like that?

Your help page says that investment advice is off-topic here, but I don't think this is precisely investment advice, though it is of course tangentially related to that.

I would say this is on topic, as an answer would cover fact-based, technical differences between a wallet and an exchange. The question relates to Bitcoin and crypto, and does not require opinion based answers.

What's the difference between a Bitcoin Wallet and a Bitcoin Exchange

So the diffrence is,Exchange provides you trading option where you can trade your BTC whenever you feel like its profitable for you.
And Bitcoin Wallet is a software program which stores  btc address where bitcoin are stored. You can store your btc in exchange wallet for as long as you want, there wont be any restriction.

exchanges do not encourage storing of Bitcoins for higher amounts or
  long periods of time

This is because of Pvt key associated with each of your bitcoin address. Exchange have to take care of each users private key which is very risky for them because of security reasons. So they recommend  you to keep your BTC in your cold wallet if you are goin to HODL so that you are responsible for your btc pvt key.
 If I buy stock options, no one would object to me keeping them invested for years

There is diffrence between Stock and cryptos. If someone hack your exchanges and took all of their pvt key than  you cryptos are gone. There is no way you can bring them back. But in case of Stock the case is diffrent. Your record is kept secure in some database of bank or companies.
So now you might be thinking Crypto world is insecure
Its not insecure, but its decentralized. You can do P2P transactions with out any restriction, without any limit and you tranasction is safe,secure and faster than any of the traditional way.

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


text:
Auto tweeting activity
Was I wrong that I saw a banner/notice somewhere for a user to setup auto-tweeting of their activity on Bitcoin.SE to their Twiter account?
Where can this be setup (or was I seeing this on another site somewhere)?

Activity is auto-tweeted on this account: https://twitter.com/stackbitcoin

The newest tweet is May 7, 2013. I was, in any case, referring to user-specific functionality, which I probably did not make clear enough.

It looks like what you were referring to is now on https://twitter.com/stackbitcoin

Oh apologies yes, @stackbitcoin


text:
Sort RSS feeds by date?
Looking for info on formatting RSS feeds - I found mine but is there information somewhere on formatting the feed? I would like it by date rather than by type.
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/feeds/user/75001

I might be able to work around by using several individual feeds for action types if I can find them.


text:
OT concerning customer relationship?
Does anybody have contact details for tradebot.bid?
I refrained from asking anything remotely like a customer service question and instead asked if anybody has contact details so that I can take my customer service question to the appropriate channels. How can this possibly be OT?

I agree that it probably shouldn't have been closed as off topic. People can just get a little trigger happy with that closure reason once one person reports it :) I've reopened it, if anyone disagrees with it being reopened we can discuss it here

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


text:
Should tags zmq and zeromq be merged?
tags [zmq] and [zeromq] are different names for the same thing.
Should they be merged (e.g. zmq made an alias of zeromq) and given a description?

I agree they should be merged, but "Yes." is evidently too short an answer

Thanks for bringing that to our attention. I've merged zmq into zeromq!


text:
Low upvote rate and number of answers?
I've been wondering for a while wether the upvote rate and the number of answers per question is low compared to other SE.
I recall seeing in the Area51 site, when the Bitcoin SE was in beta, that the number of answers was just Okay (bellow 2 per question). Is this still the case?
Regarding number of upvotes per question, am I the only one who thinks so? Even top 3 year contributors (Andrew Chow, Pieter Wuille and Murch) have 0-3 upvotes in their answers for the last couple of months, most of them not even accepted (with Pieter performing slightly better).

Accepting the answer is the job of the asker. It seems anecdotally that many askers have little reputations and perhaps do not appreciate the subtle benefit to the community in accepting answers or, perhaps do not realise that this is their responsibility or maybe even how to do so.
As for upvotes, there seems to be some evidence that it depends on how broadly appreciable or relatable a question is to the reader, not just how well written an answer is. Personally, I have been on Bitcoin.SE for only a few months and am surprised at how much reputation I have picked up in that time, this represents in part upvotes on answers.
Often, if I do not find myself well versed in the particulars of some specific answer, I will avoid upvoting it if it is complex to my understanding. This is because I only believe in giving genuine upvotes where I can fully validate an answer myself.
This is, of course, only my experience and cannot be applied as a guide to the experience of others. It is, at best, an anecdote.


text:
Should mastercoin be renamed to omni or omnilayer?
There is currently a mastercoin tag. However, mastercoin renamed to Omni quite some time ago, and is no longer used. Most users who started in recent times simply know it as Omni or Omni Layer.
I suggest that we merge the mastercoin and omni tags in light of this.

Looks like you're right

Thanks! I've

merged mastercoin into omni
kept mastercoin as a synonym for omni,
added omnilayer as a synonym for omni,
and added a brief description to the tag:

Omni is a second layer protocol on top of Bitcoin that uses
  OP_RETURN outputs to track payments. Omni was previously called
  Mastercoin.

Thank you! Might also be worthwhile to create an omnilayer synonym. I tried, but I don't have a high enough tag score to propose synonyms yet.

@RaghavSood: Done. ;)

Makes sense to me.
I'm assuming that merging them will result in old mastercoin tags simply being replaced by omni tags?
Would searching for mastercoin on the site redirect users to the omni tag, post-merge?.
Doing a quick search on the site, mastercoin returns 61 results, while omni returns 16 results, for whatever thats worth.

I believe that's how it works. The recent zmq->zeromq merge resulted in zmq redirecting

When we merge one tag into another, we have the option to keep a synonym or remove the old tag. In this case, I'd keep the synonym.


text:
Should Bip141 be a synonym of Segregated-Witness?
Could someone please merge bip141 into segregated-witness?

I've merged bip141 into segregated-witness.


text:
Should tag [btc-trading-corp] be removed
I noticed a recent question used the tag [btc-trading-corp]
There are currently seven questions with this tag. It seems to have started with this 2013 question about a now-defunct company BTC Trading Corp.

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL EX BTC-TC TRADERS
BTC Trading Corp has partnered with TxQuick to relaunch the website as a crypto to crypto blockchain trading platform. The demo site is now live. Feel free to sign up and give it a spin.

All the other uses seem, from a superficial glance, to be errors where perhaps the OP selected any tag that came up when they typed "trading".
I suggest this tag be removed.
I would have suggested replacing current uses with [trading] - but I'm not sure [trading] is a particularly useful tag.

I've edited the tags of all seven questions that were previously tagged with btc-trading-corp to remove it.
I would further agree that trading is a fairly broad tag. It and a few of its friends such as e.g. trade and market should be revisited at some point. ;)


text:
Some tag synonyms I found
bitmain -> antminer
bip-37 -> bloom-filter
bip-70 -> payment-protocol
wif -> wallet-import-format
fraud -> scam
seed -> deterministic-wallets
hacking -> hack
On the contrary, I still don't have the Synonymizer badge :(

On first look, I only disagree with the seed->deterministic-wallets change. I can see both tags being useful on their own, it is possible to ask a question about seeds without any reference/relevance to an HD wallet, and vice versa.

Did you know that you can propose synonyms directly on tags?

Other users can then vote on your synonyms, they don't have to be created by mods necessarily. ;)
In case you had done that already and nobody noticed yet, I'll have to look into how proposed synonyms get voted on. Anyway, I can take a look at these a little later today, although I think some of them should be switched in direction.

Update:
I've created the following synonyms:

wif -> wallet-import-format
scam -> fraud

I've merged the following tags:

bip-37 & bloom-filter -> bip37-bloom-filter
bip-70 & payment-protocol -> bip70-payment-protocol
bitmain -> antminer

I've also cleaned the questions for which the tag improvements weren't fitting. I have not adopted the seed and hacking changes yet, I'm not sure they are improvements.

"Creating a tag synonym requires 5 score in this tag" for all of them. So, I couldn't merge any of them.

Ah, thanks, I didn't realize.

Would suggest hack -> hacking rather than what was originally proposed.

Yeah, that one as well as scam and fraud were the one that I meant should be switched in direction.


text:
Off-topic Qs: Service reviews that are obviously scams
I'm posting in regards to this question
By the strictest reading of the site rules, asking for a review of a website/service is off-limits.
However, in the example above, I think it is quite obvious that the site posted is a scam (see my answer on the same question for my reasoning). You can disagree with me on this, but I think there still are a couple of points worth discussing here, which are relevant to the meta of the site:

Specific site reviews should be seen as off-topic, but a general review of a category of site/service seems reasonably on topic. For example "Is MtGox.com a good exchange?" is not within the scope of bitcoin.SE, but "Is a centralized exchange a good place to store coins?" is.
I don't really feel good about closing a question just to uphold site rules in the strictest sense, if it means that the user may get scammed. Obviously there is a very large, subjective grey-area of 'what qualifies as a scam', so I don't think my opinion really ultimately matters much here, I just mention this because I feel that perhaps there is a way to better handle these sorts of questions, that keeps answers as objective as possible, while also helping mitigate against potential damage/attacks/scams/whatever.

Would a canonical question be a good way to handle this? For example a quick search found this question, but as you can see it remains unanswered, and the comments on it echo my (obvious) worry about subjectivity.
Nonetheless, I can't help but feel that there is some sort of Q/A that we can point (new) users to, in an effort to help keep them safe. Please excuse me if one already exists, my quick search didn't seem to find anything extremely similar/relevant.


text:
Spam is sticking around way too long. What can be done about it?
I've been lurking the site for a while, and I've noticed a disturbing amount of spam that shows up on this site. That alone isn't too worrying, Bitcoin is a new monetary system and there are a lot of people trying to take advantage of this newness to trick gullible and ill-informed people into giving them money.
The worrying part is that this spam is sticking around on the new questions page for far too long, to the point that it feels like I can't view the new questions without at least one obvious spam question getting in the way. The bit that hit me particularly bad today was the following:
[ANN][AIRDROP]⚡⚡Millions of TTC token airdrop⚡⚡

At the time of writing, this has been up, viewable, and on the New Questions list for 7+ hours. Counting my spam close flag, the comment's assumed spam close flag, and the downvotes, we have at least eight people that saw this question, knew it was a bad question, but didn't bother to flag it.
While this specific instance is pretty egregious just because of the obviousness of the spam and the sheer amount of time it's been up, I usually expect to see at least a couple spam questions every morning. By consequence, new Bitcoin users would get exposed to these links as well, from a site that superficially borrows a ton of clout from the Stack Exchange network. We are not Quora or Yahoo Answers. People trust us.
If we want this Exchange site succeed, we need to do better. There's the obvious suggestions: if you see spam, flag it. Flag corner cases and dumb product recommendations more readily. But I assume people already know that. Is there additional work that can be done to protect the site against spam?

Presumably most people already know, but it's worth repeating that people should definitely not be voting to close spam (as was the case with that custom comment); that's a waste of time. Always, always flag spam -- 6 flags destroys it instantly.

@quartata I don't think we can make that assumption. The user in question that left that comment is listed as being in the top .95% contributors to the site this year, far more active and experienced than most users on this site. If he doesn't know, how could anybody else be expected to know?

There's a community project that is really good at killing spam, usually within a few seconds or minutes of it being posted.
All we need are examples of the spam you're seeing. When you see these, just drop a message in this chatroom with a link. We can take care of the specific instance quickly, and after a few examples can build it into our realtime filters that automatically flag spam.
We've already archived this instance for future analysis.

Cool, I didn't know about this system, I'll try to make use of it. Is there any way to make this more visible to regular users? Maybe attach it to the spam flagging functionality somehow?

@GGMG Unfortunately, there isn't a great way to expose what we do to regular users (that we've thought of, at least - open to suggestions!). We try to work behind the scenes, although there are efforts to make things more visible / discoverable to moderators. There are occasional big meta posts (like the one I linked to) that get featured across the network, but not everyone sees / opens those.

When you see spam, please use the flag link and flag the post as spam. Posts flagged as spam appear in the moderator queue and we will handle those as quickly as possible. If a post has enough spam flags, it will be deleted automatically. Additionally, if you have enough rep, vote to delete spam questions and answers. I also recommend that you participate in reviewing posts where you can help flag, vote to close, and vote to delete spam and other unwanted posts.

Is there any way I can participate in the reviews with a low reputation? Currently I'm not even capable of downvoting the spam, I can only flag it.

Unfortunately, no. Moderation tasks require more reputation.

You can see the list of privileges and how much rep you need for them here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/help/privileges


text:
Should MathJax be enabled on cryptocurrency sites?
Even Code Review, Game Development, furthermore, World Building has MathJax "Latex rendering". I believe it'd be really useful if it was enabled on Bitcoin SE.
For the full list: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216607/360277
Possible uses
1) Elliptic curves: I know $dG$, how can I find $d$
2) Amounts paid: Alice has $5$ dollars
3) Tables
4) Selfish mining formulae: $\sum_{k=0}^\infty\frac{\lambda^k e^{-\lambda}}{k!}\cdot\begin{cases}(q/p)^{z-k} &  k \leq z\1 & k >z\end{cases}$
Note: If you're going to enable it, don't enable $, we need that as dollars. \$ would be great.
Answers: What can be added to the list above?

related: https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/648/5406, https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/q/563/5406


text:
Some possible synonyms I've found
.net->c#
accounting->accounts
bech32-address->bech32
bip39->mnemonic
eu->europe
nxt-2.0->ardor
p2pubkey->p2pk
(Rename) raiblocks->nano
user-base->user-data
And, maybe removing virtual-currency, as it's what this website is about
confidential-transactions->zero-knowledge
Could you please make each of those synonyms if you agree with me about them being synonyms?

.net->c#

Never worked with either, but I thought that those were two not completely overlapping things.

accounting->accounts

The tag accounts refers to a specific feature of Bitcoin Core which finally is being removed. Accounting is about the process of keeping track of stuff. Gonna rename accounts to bitcoin-core-accounts.

bech32-address->bech32

Merged.

bip39->mnemonic

Merged into mnemonic-seed

eu->europe

Merged.

nxt-2.0->ardor

Merged

p2pubkey->p2pk

Done

(Rename) raiblocks->nano

Done

user-base->user-data

These two don't quite seem to match up. user-base is more about adoption, while user-data seems to be more about blockchain usage and storage footprint.

And, maybe removing virtual-currency, as it's what this website is about

Agreed, but I don't have time right now. I'll put it on my list of things to do. :)

confidential-transactions->zero-knowledge

While confidential transactions are an application of zero-knowledge proofs, they seem to have a mostly separate topic body on our site, so gonna leave that one be.

Could you please make each of those synonyms if you agree with me about them being synonyms?

Thanks for your report!

Update 2018-11-01: I've merged virtual-currency into currencies.


text:
5 duplicates, which one is the best?
There are five duplicates. Which of them should stay, which of them should be duplicates?

json-rpc api works locally but getting "Connection Refused" remotely
rpc error: code = Unknown desc = dial tcp 103.102.44.207:9735: connect: connection refused
Bitcoin RPC ECONNREFUSED
RPC connection ECONNREFUSED
Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:8332