text:
FAQ needs correction

What kind of questions should I ask here?
bitcoin - Stack Exchange is for people who like playing board games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing board games..

I don't think this is correct...

This has been repaired to use the site's description.

Bitcoin - Stack Exchange is for Bitcoin crypto-currency enthusiasts.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How should duplication between sites be addressed?
The question "Is BitCoin future-proof?" is a duplicate of the Stack Overflow question "Is bitcoin protocol future-proof?" with only a slightly different slant, and the same answer.  How should inter-site duplication like this be addressed?  Clearly, the question is on-topic here and probably would even have been asked here had this site existed at the time.  But it also seems odd to copy an answer from another location on SE (even if it is my own!).

Is this perhaps more suited for the main Meta.SO?  I'm not sure...

lol, I think you just asked a meta-meta-question.

Well luckily I think Meta.SO is also its own Meta.Meta.SO.  It's Meta all the way down :)

I've also been following the Economics SE proposal on A51, which I'm sure we'll end up redirecting some folks to once we're completed: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1618/economics

All bitcoin related question should be migrated from other Stack Exchange sites to Bitcoin.SE.
This means closing the questions on other sites (/flagging a moderator to do so), and editing it or commenting that a duplicate question exists here.

Right. BTW @Dori, how come you are a moderator? I kind of assumed I will be, given I proposed this on Area 51 :(

@Dori - http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-were-the-initial-moderators-for-bitcoin-stack-exchange-chosen

I think just giving an answer with a link to the answer elsewhere until we are public and can migrate the questions is the best way to go at the moment.

While it's not 100% clear, I think the question was discussing what our procedure will be AFTER we go public. Obviously we can't redirect questions on StackOverflow et. al. here just yet :)

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Are questions on how much Bitcoin does a person/business have fair game?
Should questions like "How much revenue Mezza Grill generated?" and the yet to be asked "How much Bitcoin does Mt. Gox have?" fair play?
I did ask the question about Mezza Grill, but in second thought I think such questions add little value to the site and should be off topic. What do you think?

On first take, they appear to have no long-term value:

they could quickly become obsolete
this isn't a problem that anyone is looking to solve

So I'd tend to close them as "Not constructive."

Funny, I'd more than tend to do that, I'd do that as a rule. :)

Agreed, however there are some important issues peculiar to bitcoin such as the large publicly visible accounts owned by the inventor, and others.  There are some legitimate concerns regarding these accounts and what cashing them out might mean to bitcoin.

I'd say that it's a judgement call, but I agree with Dori's bullet points as the terms of that judgement. If, for example, someone was asking how many coins were pre-mined on IXCoin by that fork's founder then the data will 1) not become obsolete and 2) clearly expresses a concern or problem that someone is looking to solve (i.e. "should I use IXC since someone mined tens of thousands of coins before even releasing it). I'd "tend" to close as "not constructive" too but I can see where there might be exceptions.

What could be a bigger question for a business considering adopting Bitcoins than how effective it has been for other companies that have done so? I agree that open-ended, vague, or fixed in time questions aren't constructive. But a more focused question like "Did Meza Grill experience an increase in business when they started accepting Bitcoins?" seems both on-topic and constructive to me.
I would make the same argument for questions like "How were the first Bitcoins mined before Bitcoin was well-known? Do we know who holds them, or held them, and how many?"

By temporally limiting your question with "when they started accepting bitcoins" and posing a definitively answerable question I think you've qualified as an exception according to Dori's bullet points since your answer will neither become obsolete and aims to solve a problem.


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How were the initial moderators for Bitcoin Stack Exchange chosen?
I found this question on how moderators are chosen for public beta and "open site". How were the moderators chosen for the private beta?

There are actually three different types of moderators:

Community Managers
These are employees of Stack Exchange, Inc, such as myself. During the earliest days of a beta, it's easy to tell who the employees are: we're the only ones with diamonds. Community managers are moderators ex officio and remain moderators so long as we're employed by SE.
Moderators Pro Tem
One of the things we like to see new sites do almost immediately is think about The 7 Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta. Of those, #6 is Who should the moderators be?
Shortly after the public beta starts (1-2 weeks, generally), the Community team chooses 3 pro tem moderators. They're selected (versus elected) based on a number of factors, one of which is community input from a "Who should the moderators be?" meta post—assuming one exists.
Moderators pro tem remain moderators until community moderators are elected.
Community Moderators
After a site is launched (that is, has graduated and is no longer in beta) and sufficiently active, SE holds an election. Anyone with a reasonable amount of rep can self-nominate, and the community then votes on who they want to be their moderators.

Does 'employed by SE' mean that one gets financial compensation for his contributions to the community?


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Should questions that are about a specific alternate blockchain be tagged alternative-blockchains?
E.g. should questions about Namecoin all be tagged alternative-blockchains as well?

Yes - that makes sense, and helps people find and distinguish related questions.

I m using namecoin and consider it a serious, long lasting fork, but still the "alternative blockchains" tag seems useful, bitcoin is still the main cryptocurrency, and all the forks, including the excellent namecoin, are still alternatives.

I think the answer to this question will change over time. In my view, it would be useful to tag questions relating to unproven alternative currencies with the tag "alternatives", but a longer lasting currency with a larger team of developers (like namecoin) should really be tagged with its own tag as well and in the long run won't need to be tagged as "alternative". Of course, then the name of the site might be best changed...

I think until Bitcoin becomes less than 80% of the "alternate currencies market" (which may never come, or may take a very long time), Namecoin should still be tagged alternative-blockchains, as well as namecoin.

Agreed... I tried to say that myself with the words "in the long run...". I've reworded it to try to be clearer.

I agree, though for slightly different reasons: I don't care much about the the market share, rather then about the actual currency goal.

I'm torn. I hate the idea that every question tagged Namecoin will have to also be tagged alternative-blockchains. But I hate the idea that people who search for the alternative-blockchains tag won't find questions about Namecoin.
My slight preference is that alternative-blockchains be reserved for questions about alternative blockchains in general. Questions about a specific alternative-blockchain should be tagged with the name of that chain, if such a tag exists.

Another sub-question worth asking - do we even NEED both tags or should we merge Namecoin, IXCoin, I0Coin, SolidCoin etc and just make them aliases of the alternative-blockchains tag?

@DavidPerry I would say no except maybe Namecoin (depending on namecoin question volume).  Looking at how few questions are asked about individual atl-coins I think using alternative-block chain with synonyms for individual chains (to improving searching) is sufficient.

I think the "alternatives" tag is pointless and harmful, and it would be better to have specific tags for each currency.
This is because it encompasses both currencies with a sane goal that make sense, like Namecoin, and stupid currencies with no other reason than to "play" like tenebrix and the like.
I don't think it's fair to put them in the same bag.


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Should these two questions be combined?
lemonginger asked What happens when I make a typo?,
and I also added the question Can a transaction be reversed? since it's fundamental to the bitcoin network.
Is it desirable to combine these questions since lemonginger asks in passing if she/he can get back typo-ed coins?  Or are they different enough that they are worth keeping, based on the likelihood that users will search differently to find solutions to these two problems?

They are different questions, in spite of having similar answers. One is about what happens when you mistype an address (which is probably not going to work because of checksums) and the other is about whether or not transactions can be reversed (they can't because of bitcoin's nature).
I vote to keep them separated.


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What does the 'basics' tag mean?
We now have 7 questions tagged 'basics'. What does this tag actually mean? In my opinion, it is too ambiguous and we should remove/change it.

Good catch.  This tag is an example of a "meta tag", and is widely considered a bad idea on StackExchange sites.  See e.g. The Death of Meta Tags - Blog – Stack Exchange.
The best approach available to us now is to nip it in the bud: remove the tag from all the questions.

Should this tag be replaced with 'faq'?

@ripper234 That would also be a meta tag, and is similarly deprecated.


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Are questions about other crypto-currencies on-topic?
Originally in Area51 the proposal was for Bitcoin, but then it was suggested to enlarge the scope to all crypto-currencies.  This idea seemed to have gained some traction, and the name and description of the proposal were changed accordingly.
However, it seems that a mere hours before the private beta launched, the name of the proposal was shortened and the description was changed to remove references to other crypto-currencies.  I'm not sure if that was really the intent of those last-minute changes to the proposal.
So would a question about Namecoin, for instance, be on-topic?

+1, we all need to completely understand the scope if we're to enforce it. I'd say they are on-topic but should be correctly tagged as per http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9/should-questions-that-are-about-a-specific-alternate-blockchain-be-tagged-alterna

also, what should users that signed on because of the crypto-currencies part and not the bitcoin part, do? If we think that bitcoin is just a crypto-currency and not something revolutionary, are we welcome here?

http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/89/have-the-faq-explicitally-allow-other-crypto-currencies

The trilogy sites do very well with very broad scopes. Making the focus of this site too narrow would mean reduced interest. As long as questions are appropriately tagged, I don't see any reason to narrow the scope...

It seems clear to me that questions about alternatives that are as similar to Bitcoin as Namecoin are clearly on-topic here.  I think comparisons are inevitable to far-less-similar systems, and I think those are also clearly on-topic.
But I don't know about a question about details of e.g. the Open Transactions system.  To the extent that the bitcoin ecosystem expertise we develop here would be useful, I expect they would be appropriate.  But if it is more of a crypto/math question I'd suggest e.g. the cryptography.stackexchange site.

I agree that bitcoin alternatives are on-topic. As for questions about open-transactions, I think they are relevant as long as they relate to bitcoins in some way.

There's an up-and-coming Economics StackExchange currently in Area51 that might help alleviate some of those issues. If such a question has little to no bitcoin connection then it can probably be redirected there. (Economics SE is @ http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1618/economics)

If anything, I think this proposal should've been shortened to "Crypto-currency".  I'd appreciate Robert explaining why it was changed back to "Bitcoin", which seems to me to have a significantly reduced scope.

Crypto-currency is not shorter ;)I think that you have a good point, but 'Bitcoin' seems much cleaner than 'Crypto-currencies'.

The afterthought of adding "... & crypto-currencies" to the proposal seemed overly pedantic when +99% of the questions will be about Bitcoin. And lopping off the "BitCoin" moniker and calling it simply "Cryto-Currency" would only further obfuscate its purpose. @lemonginger is correct; If Bitcoin is eclipsed by a different crypto-currency, we'll cross that bridge when it comes to it.

@Robert Looking at the last 100 questions I wouldn't say it has been 99% bitcoin.  I think Crypto-Currency would be a better topic.   Given the beta has barely passing scores I think a broader scope would be better.  While people do post about alternatives if the topic was properly titled it may draw more traffic.  Also to uninformed user crypto-currency is more informative than bitcoin (which is more like a brand only having meaning if you are familiar w/ bitcoin).  A casual user is more likely to say "Hmm what is a crypto-currency"?

There's been sort of an explosion in altcoins lately and we've been getting a meaningful number of questions about Litecoin and (sigh) Dogecoin lately. I wouldn't argue against returning to the original "Bitcoin & Crypto-Currencies" name... maybe alongside a site redesign accompanying graduation from beta? (hint hint)

I was one of the people that recommended that the scope be enlarged to all crypto-currencies, but not all "alternative currencies". I think all crypto-currency questions are pretty on topic. I guess we will cross the bridge about what to do with the site if bitcoin is eclipsed by a different cryptocurrency if/when we come to it.

Are questions about other crypto-currencies on-topic?

Not any more.
Since about 1st July 2019 the scope has been narrowed to Bitcoin only.
See

Proposed Timeline for Scope Change
Proposal: Narrow topic of Bitcoin.Stackexchange to questions applicable to Bitcoin

Making this site about other crypto-currencies was proposed, and I think it is very valid:

It will open up the site to more people.
It will broaden the perspective for the development of each form of crypto-currency.

I also think the scope should include all crypto currencies. You're going to get those questions anyways and unless you want a part time job flagging them, I think we should embrace them.
I don't mind the name staying bitcoin for marketing purposes.

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How do we capitalize Bitcoin (or BitCoin, or bitcoin)?
In this question (where the topic includes the word "BitCoin") eMansipater writes the following in regards to capitalization:

The capitalisation thing is my own arbitrary convention to
  differentiate the technology (BitCoin), the open-source client
  (Bitcoin) and the unit of currency (bitcoins)

I believe that this is way too complicated and that it's better to stick to one way of writing it. Especially the "BitCoin" version seem unnecessary. I would like us to be able to quickly edit topics that use "incorrect" capitalization so that the site looks clean, but then we have to decide on something.
Please write you suggestion in an answer and we'll let the votes decide.

+1. I know it might seem pedantic to some, but we're promoting a product here, so just as the top execs at Intel used to insist that my spec docs say "600 MHz Intel Pentium III Processor" instead of "p3 600" we need to be a bit pedantic sometimes to ensure that our "brand" keeps a professional look.

One suggestion:

Use Bitcoin (with a capital "B") when talking about the concept/technology.
Use bitcoins (no capitalization) when talking about the unit of currency (4 dollars - 4 bitcoins).
Never use BitCoin or BitCoins

yeah BitCoin has always looked fugly

This is quite sensible. Other currencies don't get capitalized, but other project names do.

Where would "BTC" fit in to this, if at all?

@billpg BTC while not officially accepted it fits the role of currency code. Similar to USD or EUR Maybe someday BTC will be the iso standard abrevation for bitcoins http://www.xe.com/iso4217.php

BTC is the unit of currency, pronounced "bitcoins". "4 bitcoins" is ambiguous since it could mean either 4 BTC or 4 TBC.

Yes, this is consistent with the FAQ on the talk page for Bitcoin on Wikipedia.

Nowdays I am using only bitcoin lowercase, even for the technology because I think it's a common name now.


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What characteristics should our moderators have?
Time to get started on The 7 Essential Questions of Every Beta. So, what should our moderators be like? See this question for more info on moderators. Here's a quote from the answer:

Shortly after the public beta starts (1-2 weeks, generally), the
  Community team chooses 3 pro tem moderators. They're selected (versus
  elected) based on a number of factors, one of which is community input
  from a "Who should the moderators be?" meta post—assuming one exists.

See this question for the nomination of moderators. This question is for discussion about the desired characteristics of moderators.

@Rebecca When you changed the title, were you aware of this question?  That other question is the reason that the titles were written as they were.

@MichaelMcGowan, uhh no I was not.  The title does not correctly reflect this question at all then and could use an edit beyond simply removing tags from the title.  Do you agree?

@Rebecca Perhaps as a result of being asked too early, this question has become something more along the lines of "What characteristics should moderators have," but I don't think that was the original intent.  That other question was asked to get more to the point about specific nominations.  It was a coincidence that the way he chose to name this question ended up with a tag in the title.

@MichaelMcGowan your suggested title is kind of what I was thinking.  But I leave it to y'all.  Rollback or edit or whatever. (:

Michael is right, the answers don't reflect the original intent of my question, which is why the other question was created. It's OK for me to change the title of this one now to something that corresponds better to the answers. I'll change it to Michael's suggestion.

I would like to nominate David Schwartz. Most of his opinions on moderation topics match mine and his network profile shows some experience with stackexchange like sites. So I would guess that he's familiar with the rules of stackexchange.
A few words to the future moderators: IMHO Moderation should be focused on duplicate-closing, tagging and housekeeping. Every question that is beneficial for the bitcoin/crypto-currency community should be allowed. I'd like to start with  only a few rules and then add new if they are really needed to avoid questions that drift apart to far away from the bitcoin/crypto-currency discussion.

Thanks. I'd love to help moderate the site. I don't have all that much experience with SE, but I have a lot of administrative experience. (I am perhaps better known under the nickname 'JoelKatz'.)

Yes, David seems like a great candidate. Make your vote in the nomination thread: http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/108/who-should-the-moderators-be-nomination

We should keep in mind that the moderators aren't necessarily here to be experts on the topic, but rather to determine what is and is not within the scope of the site, what constitutes spam or abuse, etc. That's not to say that we should promote someone with zero knowledge of bitcoin, you need to know a fair amount just to understand the scope at all, but much like hiring an IT manager we need a blend of management ability AND technical skill.
To that end, I'd take a known trusted member of the bitcoin community with no previous StackExchange experience over someone with a 5-digit StackOverflow score any day. A high score might tell us they know the system, but it's much easier to teach a good mod how to work the system than to teach a good programmer how to be a mod.
Also since I'm a shameless self-promoter, let me take this opportunity to shamelessly self-promote: PICK ME PICK ME!!!

I think we should try to have moderators that are both experienced StackExchange users and experienced Bitcoin users.  Such people aren't too hard to find, so we shouldn't need to compromise too much on one or the other.  Not to say that I'm necessarily against having a particular moderator that is less experienced with either Bitcoin or SE, just that experience with both is ideal.

The only thing I'd change about your statement is I'd replace "StackExchange users" with "moderators" - it's not so important to me where a person has been a mod before. SE is a pretty straightforward system that takes very little time to learn, whereas actual moderation skills are not so easily won.

I agree with David Perry's answer. Also time commitment is an important element, and a general community policy to make the rules of moderation clear both for users and moderators.
I'd like to put my name up as well. I have been on the forms for a while.  I know a good deal about bitcoin both technologically and philosophically. I am somewhat less experienced with stackexchange as a moderator, but have been a user for a long time for software development reference.
I believe I can help keep the discussion focused.  I believe in having an open community where both pro and con arguments are addressed, and moderators work primarily to reduce spamming and duplication.  That being said my technical understanding gives me the ability to tell when a discussion is a legitimate concern or just noise.  Naturally I would follow the guidelines of the community.
Thank you for your consideration ;)

I actually disagree with the above, and prefer sharper moderation at first, and then loosen it up over time if it is working. It is much easier to moderate less over time, then it is to switch gears into moderating more content after very lax expectations have been set. Having to wade through a bunch of crappy questions everyday seems the surest path to driving our most interesting commenters away. There are many other places for bitcoin discussion and even Q&A....


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What should our logo and site design look like?
Another one of the The 7 Essential Questions of Every Beta. Quoting the blog post:

.5. What should our logo and site design look like?
This one is pretty straightforward. Solicit contributions, throw out ideas, post
  preliminary (or finished) designs, and be supportive and respectful of
  other people’s ideas and creativity.
We have designers on staff who will actively help come up with site
  designs but, if an idea stemming from the community stands out as
  exceptional, we are happy to use it.

So, go ahead, post your ideas and let us comment and vote on them.

A relevant post (on this meta) by one of our designers from last week: Custom Bitcoin design and logo - Information gathering :)

Update: Your new site design is live!

Here's my (doubtless controversial) offering
Colour scheme
It may be worth paying attention to some of the information provided in this Colour Assignment article.
The following combination has the following apparent properties:

light blue - associated with trust, reliability, technology and finance
gold - associated with wealth and prosperity
black - associated with quality, authority and technology

Interestingly, the shade of orange used by the standard Bitcoin logo is considered by many to be their least favourite colour.
Logo
A gold Bitcoin with just 0s and 1s around the border based on this:

I'm undecided about having the currency symbol in the middle. I think we could easily do without it, but it may affect recognition.
Strapline considerations
Some of it distilled from this forum discussion

No Latin since it comes across as being pompous
No "In X we trust" since it comes across being US centric

Offerings:

"Strength in numbers"  - my personal favourite
"A new type of money"
"Money grows on Merkle trees" - joke!

Well, if we look at the official site and StackOverflow side-by-side it almost seems as if they were built by the same designer. StackExchange sites seem to be fairly minimalist and clean, which reflects a certain image - mainly that the content is more important than the choice of background image. There is a professional and educated elegance to white/light backgrounds and mostly monochrome interfaces and this also allows splashes of color to truly stand out so long as they are sparingly used.
In fact, it seems that most of the various StackExchange sites are essentially StackOverflow clones with slight changes to the color scheme, which helps tie the disparate sites together as a community and I for one think we would do well to continue this trend.
For color scheme I recommend we continue the use of pastel blues typically seen on the various official Bitcoin sites and our "color shocks" should be the bright orange of the official logo. Links and other elements deemed important but not worthy of "bright orange status" can use a darkened gold color which ties in quite nicely to certain features of the client and other common Bitcoin icons and logos - the color of the links on the "sketchy" theme we're currently using would work quite nicely actually.
Another important consideration is the logo. The default Bitcoin logo might work well enough, though it doesn't seem to "fit in" with many of the other StackExchange site logos. Glancing down the list, though, I do see a few logos that we could say the same of so perhaps that's not as big an issue as I first thought.

Yeah, I think that the default Bitcoin logo will work just fine.

We may want to have a modified logo anyway.  People tend to complain when Bitcoin sites just use the "default", as it becomes hard to tell browser tabs apart.

Yeah the favicon should be different, so I suppose if we want the favicon to match the logo then we need a custom logo.

I would definitely try to stick with blue where appropriate since it is associated with trust.

David Perry's answer suggests that we stick to general StackExchange design with minor changes, while it's certainly the path of least resistance there is also good examples of custom design, eg apple.stackexchange.com . We can start bounty and people like Eli, developer of Safebit Bitcoin Client, would be able to make the site look great.

+1 for designers to be involved in this. The Gaming SE design is also very cool.

My only argument is that in both cases presented, there is already a well-known aesthetic which is being mimicked in the site design. Bitcoin has no well-known aesthetic aside from a few well-known icons which we probably shouldn't use because everyone complains about their overuse.

How about a logo that is composed of a Bitcoin and a question mark?

Could work. Someone with graphics skills, post a suggestion!

I disagree. That immediately made me think that Bitcoin wasn't viable for some reason.

Now that you say it, I think I agree.

How about a logo consisting of bitcoin symbol and some symbology that implies exchange.
I was thinking something like bitcoin incom surrounded by circular arrows similar to recycling symbol.
Recycling Symbol:

But maybe something more like this:

or this (the one in upper right)

Maybe a modified version similar to arrwo in he bottom example but two "half arrows" each making their way halfway around the bitcoin icon.
These are just examples I found searching google images just kinda brainstorming ideas at this point.  The concept of using imagery to imply "exchange" both Bitcoin as a medium of exchange and the exchange of ideas.


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Promotional Ideas?
So how should we go about promoting the site, once it's live? I recognize some faces from the forums so obviously the links in our forum sigs worked, and I'm sure the link we placed on the Wiki did some good to, but that's not nearly enough. What other options can we come up with?

Including a link at bitcoin.org would be great. If the website proves to be helpful and builds a good community with high quality answers, we have a good chance of being accepted there. They used to link the bitcontalk forums.

I noticed that reddit also has some links on the right side. Does anyone know who is responsible for the reddit channel? Maybe we could get a "Bitcoin Q&A" link next to the "Bitcoin Forum".

used to host the forums...

I think that we can be a much better source for public knowledge than the forums. Where the forums were a place of discussion not necessarily friendly to "strong moderation" StackExchange has that in abundance. If we can keep the questions on-topic and downvote tinfoil hats and politically charged speech we should easily avoid the pitfalls that eventually separated the bitcoin forums from the main site.

+1'd because I've been a moderator on the forums for the past six months or so, and trying to create a productive atmosphere there is like trying to herd lolcats.

@eMansipater: Understandably more difficult! Forums are more conversational than SE (though less conversational than IRC) and should be more casual and chatty. It's not really the forums' fault, it's the nature of forums. We started this thing for a reason - not to slander the forums but to promote a different (separate but equal) environment for a different set of goals.

@nmat: Theymos is the moderator for the Bitcoin subreddit.

@Chris Acheson Thanks, I saw it now. Reddit's interface still confuses me a bit...

I think it would also be an excellent idea to have a channel that tweets interesting questions from the site with a link to them.  This alone would go a long way to getting people better informed about BitCoin, and I plan to do it if no one else does.

I love it! Does anyone know if SE has an API?

@David: It does.  The "api" link goes to http://stackapps.com/

Done: http://twitter.com/#!/BitcoinSE That's running off my work laptop at the moment but I can move it to a permanent home this evening assuming everyone approves. Also, I used the default Bitcoin logo until such a time as we decide on what else we're going to do for the site design.

Keep in mind that the site is still in private beta, so those links won't work for anyone!

Of course (well, unless they're also in the private beta). Just consider this twitter channel to be a "private beta" as well :)

Should I leave it at the default hashtag behavior, which is to use whatever the question was tagged as the hashtag or should I replace it with #bitcoin?

Probably #bitcoin should at minimum be added where space exists.

Hashtags have been changed and I've transferred the process to a PC at home. I'll try to get it a permanent home this weekend.

Is it possible to make it so that only questions with a certain number of upvotes get tweeted?  Otherwise it's just duplicating the RSS feed.

Yeah, it is, but only at 11+ votes which right now would give us something like 5 questions in the feed lol. Once public beta starts and the # of upvotes is more reasonable that can be changed in all of 5 seconds.

@David Probably a good idea to tweet those original questions again now that people can actually see them!

Good point, I'll delete all my old tweets and clear the twitterbot's memory when I get home tonight. Be prepared for a twitter-storm sometime around 6 or 7 PST.

@DavidPerry - I just asked a question about the Bitcoin.SE Twitter account. Looks like there's now an official one running - perhaps you'd like to tell followers at the account you created to go an follow the new one :-)

I think the biggest promotion will be simply in curating a site that is useful, drama and clutter free, and asks and answers interesting and important questions. I like the twitter idea, but AFAIK much SE traffic is driven by both search engines and regular users who return to browse.


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Should we allow question about the developers?
Should we allow question about the developers?
Where do we draw the line?

Fine line though. The question "Who wrote the Linux kernel?" can be found on the Linux site. The answer includes info about Linus, that he was a student and that he started writing it because he was unhappy with the current ones. "Who is Satoshi?", "He is the one who wrote the Bitcoin paper and implemented the first versions of the Bitcoin client. His name is a pseudonym". That's pretty much the same thing. But I agree that we shouldn't start digging into people's personal lifes.

@Dori Could you elaborate what the advantages of disallowing bitcoin developer related questions are? I'd really like to hear some arguments from the other side.

In my opinion, a security relevant and trust demanding software like bitcoin, justifies  that questions about the developers are allowed.. So I'm in favor to allow questions about the developers, if they

don't provoke an debate, have an clear answer
are related to the development somehow
don't get to personal

I certainly agree that questions about the devs should be allowed, but only to a point. If someone really wants to don the tinfoil hat that is their prerogative, provided they do their own research somewhere other than this site.
The question you cited in your question was closed not because it is irrelevant or because questions about the devs shouldn't/can't be asked but because it was a duplicate. Perhaps not an exact duplicate, but this specific question is a subset of another question requestiong Satoshi's bio. This question should have been posed in the comments on the original.
Per Robert Cartaino (one of our SE-supplied mods, until we elect our own):

It's off topic. This site is about Bitcoin. It doens't need to become fodder for Who-is-Satoshi-Nakamoto trivia. Any biographical information you feel the need to expound on can easily be contained in the other thread. No need to perpetuate this this content of dubious value through the site.

I get your point. But how can something be off topic if it's allowed in another question? So the question would be, do we wan't to merge everything, for example, satoshi related in one big question? I don't see how having a few separate questions about satoshi around is any worse than having one big one. In fact, I think it's the better and clear solution.

The problem is that we won't have a few Satoshi questions. When you have a "mysterious figure" like this involved in anything so potentially disruptive as Bitcoin, we are going to get a constant influx of Satoshi questions. If we consider "Is Satoshi involved with CIA" to be different than "Is Satoshi involed with FBI" (which it technically is) this will quickly cease to be bitcoin.stackexchange.com and become satoshi.stackexchange.com. We MUST have stronger moderation than the forums. No tinfoil hats, no politics, no chitchat.

How is "Is Satoshi involved with the CIA" any better or worse than "Are Bitcoins poisonous"? They're both stupid questions, but it's because they're asking if made up nonsense is true, not because questions about Satoshi Nakamoto are off-topic.

If only there were a "this question is stupid" option to close. Would that qualify better as "not a question" or "not constructive"?

Questions about the developers are some of the most frequently asked when I talk about Bitcoin. Closing threads of this nature only prolongs the amount of time it takes for people to find answers...
It's counter-productive to obscure this information when it is one of the most commonly asked questions!

Yes. The crappy part about that question was the CIA speculation, but that has been removed. Let's reopen it.

Flow is right.  Bitcoin is highly dependent on the skills and ethics of the developers.  Questions that are otherwise on topic but also relate to people like developers who have significant influence over bitcoin should not be arbitrarily ruled out.  Linus arguably has less influence over the Linux kernel than some of the bitcoin committers do over bitcoin, since only a small percentage of Linux users directly run the actual "mainline kernel".
But of course we should be careful about how such questions are worded.

one hopes that changes as bitcoin grows though. Linus certainly had a lot of control over the kernal when he was the primary developer.

Re: David's recent question - https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1274/is-this-google-account-the-real-satoshi-nakamoto - I voted to close, I think this is getting a little close to speculation and irrelevance. Especially when it is clearly just a troll account.

This is a good example of a question that is clearly off-topic, because it is very unlikely to be answered with comprehensible facts. But other questions about satoshi, for example mine, where the answers can be backed by references, links etc. should be on-topic


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Vote early, vote often!
An essential point raised in another StackExchange beta I participated in was that at launch a community pretty much sets the "level" of voting that occurs.  For example, on some sites a good question or answer might frequently get 30+ votes, while on another site 20 might be considered outstanding.  Once people have a certain level in their minds as representing a good or excellent question, they're much less likely to vote when the score already reflects their existing opinion of a question or answer's quality.
During the beta we have the chance as a community to, as Jeff Atwood recommends on the Stack Exchange blog, vote early and vote often.  In so doing, we increase the effectiveness with which we distinguish between different questions, and also help to encourage participation because people who contribute something useful feel rewarded for doing so.  Setting a "high" level of voting where good, great, and outstanding questions and answers receive a large number of points will produce great advantages for the community in the future.
With this in mind, I've decided to browse back through the full list of questions sorted by  votes, and vote up all those questions and answers that are good, great, and outstanding; and I'd advise others to do the same.  By creating a culture of frequent voting now, it will be far less of a chore to encourage the community to be active in voting later!

Good observation. I've been doing the same as best I can.
My voting rules are loosely like this:

If a question deserves my answer, it deserves my vote
If an answer is useful it gets an upvote, even if it is competing with mine
If someone takes the trouble to answer one of my questions, I visit their profile and trawl their other answers looking for upvote opportunities. This may even be across other SE sites.
If I downvote then I justify my reasoning, allow time for clarification edits and withdraw the downvote if appropriate
I perform regular question trawls looking for voting opportunities as part of widening my subject knowledge

I've been doing similar. It's a good plan.

Voting is indeed very important; it's important for there to be a means for the great, good, mediocre, and poor to be differentiated.  Many people like to to simply upvote good answers, but it's important to also vote for questions and also to downvote when appropriate.  Downvoting questions no longer even costs you rep!
Also note that you get a badge if you vote 30 times in a day.  If you vote for lots of questions you can vote up to 40 times in a day, and that gets you another badge!

I believe that down voting still costs reputation. Only the first down vote is free.

I'm pretty sure downvoting questions is free; answers still cost rep...

You are right. My mistake.

I agree that people should downvote more often. Especially on questions that are obviously trying to grab rep.

@Artem meta-evaluations like "trying to grab rep" aren't really a good reason to downvote.  It's far more important to evaluate whether the question will be useful to the internets at large.  On stack exchange, "trying to grab rep" is considered a good thing.  Don't let a competitive spirit obscure the overall purpose of the site:  reputation only exists to serve that purpose in the first place!

@eMansipater my bad, I meant as in quick questions that show no research insight  (like require a simple google search) and are thus there just for rep and not because the users actually wants to know the answer. Those are the kind I tend to downvote.

If the question is about public knowledge that remains stable in foreseeable future and hasn't previously been answered on our site, I don't really see a problem with adding a sought-after question-answer pair on the site.

I would additionally like to point out the cleansing effect of downvotes on questions:
If a question is more than 30 days old, and...

has -1 or lower score
has no answers
is not locked

it will be automatically deleted by a script that checks daily.
If you feel that we have too many low-quality questions that "do not show research-effort, are unclear, or not useful", save your fellow users some time and click "downvote" after reading the question. Downvoting on questions doesn't even cost you reputation.
While it is nice to leave an explanatory comment, it is at your own discretion to decide where such is deserved or not.


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Waiting time before accepting answers
I usually wait one day before assigning a correct answer to my questions. I think that accepting correct answers too quickly is a mistake because

It may demotivate other users to answer
A new better answer may come along

Obviously this depends on the questions. There are questions with very simple direct answers.
Yesterday there were a lot of questions asked and a lot of first answers accepted in minutes. Do you also think this is a bad practice?

I agree that quick answer acceptance is bad. Particularly with Bitcoin vs. say programming, many people have fundamental misunderstandings about it, and it is diffeacult to tell the difference without already knowing the answer.
With programming questions, usually you confirm the correctness of the answer in your own code before marking the answer correct. It's very difficult to do that with Bitcoin answers. I would recommend that one NEVER mark an answer correct unless they have independently confirmed it correct.  Or have a priori knowledge when asking.
Even then it does not guarantee that the answer is complete. For example there is a question about Bitcoin address typos that has an approved answer that does not mention the fact that addresses have checksums. People get the correct information that their bitcoins would be destroyed if they sent them to a bad address, but miss the information that such typeos are difficult to make. This leaves a bad and incorrect impression of usability.

I'm not sure if this is a trivial point or not, but one cannot mark an answer as "correct," one merely marks an answer as "accepted."

I think it's a trivial point, but it's just an example.  The impression a reader guts is that the accepted answer is the "correct" answer. People may not realize that the standards are different between programming q&a and bitcoin q&a.

that isn't true. the answer I approved to the typo question very clearly mentions and links to the checksum. but, TBH I wish the whole concept of marking an answer "accepted" went away, and answers were just ordered by upvotes, period.

Sorry, could have sworn the accepted answer was different before. Consider my comment a hypothetical.

I think things that have easy and verifiable answers (Is there a website where I can see XXX) for example, one can mark them closed pretty quick. Otherwise I have been trying to wait until at least 3 answers are posted.
Not sure what to do it situations where two answers are both "correct" but the best answer is those two answers COMBINED....
any thoughts? New to SE/SO...

I usually try to choose the one that better answers the question. If the other one provides good additional information I leave a comment pointing there. I also assume that most people won't stop reading at the accepted answer...

Definitely comment on your choice of answer if it seems controversial or not immediately obvious.


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Closed as "exact duplicate" due to significant overlap
Is it okay to close a question as an "exact duplicate" when it is not in fact an exact duplicate? I'm not suggesting that word for word identical questions should be required, of course.
My question was prompted by How do I safely accept Bitcoins without waiting for confirmations which was closed as an exact duplicate of How to accept Bitcoin payments at a real world store. Aside from the obvious issue that confirmation delay is just one issue in accepting Bitcoins at a store, the questions aren't even really overlapping. For example, the question closed has a completely different set of requirements since it isn't about face-to-face transactions while the other question definitely is.
I guess I have two sub-questions:
Was this question closed by mistake, given that the really are quite different? One is about a retail store specifically and included other issues than just confirmation delay. The other was specifically about confirmation delay only, not limited to face-to-face transaction, and focused on using third-party arbitrators to avoid it.
In general, should a question be closed as an exact duplicate if it is not an exact duplicate? If the question differ in circumstances or one only includes parts of the other, shouldn't some other closure reason be used? (Assuming it even is proper to close a question just because it overlaps a previous question significantly.)

Note that you are free to vote to reopen the closed question if you agree that it was not an exact duplicate.  I notice there are 5 upvotes but only 3 have voted to reopen...

My personal opinion is that some people have gotten a little mod-happy, and have been closing questions zealously. I'm against this zeal, and more so against the deletion of questions.

I would suggest solving this problem with set mathematics which probably sounds more difficult than it is. If a non-exact duplicate question is entirely contained as a subset of another question then it should be considered duplicate. If even a small portion of the question's subject matter is not entirely contained within the suspected duplicate then the question should not be closed.

I think an exception could be if the older question is extremely broad and the current question is narrower and wasn't covered in the answers to the older question. "What's a good X? What's a bad X?" "Is Y a good X?" (Assuming the answers to the first question weren't about Y.)

I see no problem with making exceptions. It's a judgement call, but that's what mods do: make judgement calls.

I think the refinement is that you have to take the answers into account too. If the previous question and its answers (including expected answers not yet given) have the present question and its expected answers as a full subset, then the question should be considered the same question.

As a reminder, slight variations on questions can serve as useful gateways to older questions.

In this case, maybe it was my fault. I asked the How to accept bitcoin payments at a real world store? question last night and user9704 downvoted it (he claimed it was not a question) and cast a close vote. Right afterwards he asked How do I safely accept bitcoins without waiting for confirmations?. I felt kind of cheated so I flagged his question and some moderator must have closed it.
I am aware that these are different questions so maybe his should be reopened.

Ah, okay. So maybe this was just an unusual situation and there isn't an actual problem with use of this close reason.

My apologies for your feel of being cheated, my intentions are to have clear communication above all else.

@user9704 No problem, but creating a new question every time you want to correct a user's grammar is not a good practice. You could have suggested an edit for example. I tried to provide a background to my question so that the answers could focus on how to solve the problem in that particular situation.

I'd actually have a look at the answers, too: If one of the most visible answers already completely answers the narrower question, I'd suggest closing it as a duplicate. (If the narrower question is younger.) Otherwise I would just post the other question as "related: [link]", making readers aware of the connection.

I posed my question in effort to distill the nuts and bolts of using bitcoin as a currency in a non organizational fashion and in a situation where neither party may have recourse given the rise of an issue due to possible faults with the currency itself. These are different set of issues then a retailer with a store front might have. I did not like the fact that it was not in the form of a question so I used the tools available to make my opinion clear.
My question was objectively different from nmats. Doris' un-involvement with the bitcoin stack exchange shows that her decision was made with no due respect to the topic at hand. Her hasty move to shut down the thread as an exact duplicate shows reckless ignorance to the process we have all subscribed to here.

I think that's phrased more harshly than necessary. But it does point out up one of the reasons moderators need significant familiarity with the subject area. I think the "exact duplicate" close reasons should only be used for very nearly exact duplicates, and these two questions weren't even that close, IMO.

It might be best to take this commentary in stride, and do some more observation of the site before reentering the meta discussions.


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Questions with different answers depending on country/region
There are a couple of question on the site now which could have a lot of different answers depending on what country you're in.

What is the current legal status of Bitcoin around the world?
What are the legal processes that someone would have to go through in order to get a Bitcoin exchange operational?

Should questions like this be split into one question for each country or should all answers be collected in the same question?

I also posted such a question http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2783/do-you-have-to-pay-taxes-on-bitcoin-revenues

For now, the answer is equally vague for all countries, so there isn't really a point in asking multiple questions.
I say we leave it at that for now, and if the global question becomes too cluttered we can split it up later.

+1 to this. Right now, the answers for legal questions are always something like "there aren't any laws". There's no need for 100 threads of those...

Makes sense I guess. But does this mean that a question about the legal status in a specific country would be closed? There could be some good answers to such a question. "I have been in contact with [some authority] and they told me that...".

@D.H. - Let's see when we have such a question, and more importantly and country-specific answer.

Here's my own opinion. By collecting answers for all countries in the same question we make it harder for users to find good answers. A person looking for an answer to one of the above questions will be interested mostly in the answer regarding his/her own country ("Am I allowed to open an exchange?").
If all answers are collected in the same question there could be 100 very good answers to the question. The top 5 might be about the U.S. The good answer regarding Bolivia might be answer #50. The StackExchange concept should enable people to find the best answers by simply browsing the top ones.
So: Split up the question if the answer depends on geographic region.
Note: This doesn't mean that you can't have a question/answer summarizing the legal status around the world.

I think the defining point, realistically, is what level of clutter the question will provide. If someday 5 countries outlaw bitcoins and the question is "What countries have outlawed bitcoins" a bulleted list of 5 countries isn't cluttered at all. If over 200 countries have adopted Bitcoin-centric legislation and the question asks for a summary of all of them, that's too much. This is a rough question because it requires a judgement call with no easily defined boundaries.

Yeah, I think that the "What countries have outlawed bitcoins" falls under my last note of a question summarizing the legal status. Do you agree though, that the "What are the legal processes that someone would have to go through...?" is a typical question with high clutter potential? There clearly has to be one answer per country.

We should also probably define what legal questions or general economics questions are actually within scope too. "Is Bitcoin legal in Germany" is clearly a constructive question, but beyond a certain point we aren't (most of us) lawyers and this isn't legal.stackexchange.com (which I don't think exists yet). We clearly need some criteria for certain specific cases that we all know will come up.

There is also the issue of a question becoming too localised. Once of the reasons to close a question is that it is too restricted. I gave serious thought to making the "Legal Process for Exchanges" question a Community Wiki entry. This might have promoted a single answer per country with multiple contributions from local experts which would keep the answers local and relevant for people looking over them later. However, I was swayed by the fact that the forum is still very young and people would prefer to answer questions that garnered reputation.


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To what extent are out-bound links acceptable in this forum?
Sometimes links are necessary for references or other purposes, given that a large number of questions have already been answered in the original forums does this type of behavior belong regularly in this forum. For instance one might pose the question "What miner's are available for use?", a user may answer with a link and nothing else.

The link is acceptable if it's needed. For example, if someone asks what X's position on something is, linking to X giving their position is better than saying "X said XYZ". (Consider: "Does Mt. Gox allow the use of trade bots?")
But you should always summarize the point in sufficient detail to actually answer the question. Links should be for credit and reference purposes, not to complete the answer unless there's no other choice.
For one thing, links have a tendency to move or go away. Heck the semi-official Bitcoin forums recently moved.

I think that we should try to build a relatively independent knowledge base. If a user answers with a single link and if that link disappears for some reason, his answer becomes useless.
Out-bound links are acceptable and recommended as long as you provide a brief summary of what is expected to be found there. Use them like citations.

Given the way StackExchange's markup puts the URLs all at a list at the bottom, I can't help but think of them like citations. I practically demand that most questions be answered with some source other than "personal knowledge" but I also agree that an unexplained link is inadequate.

True, I still think that particular format really reminds folks that links are best used for citations though.


text:
How do we improve question and answer quality?
I've noticed a few questions on here that are pretty, well, chatty, and a lot of answers where people are just offering their opinion on the poster's question.  Since we want this to be the premier site for concise, answerable, fact-based questions, can we work hard and try to nip this in the bud (especially since lots of high rep users are part of the problem instead of the solution right now)?  I suspect that we have a lot of new-to-Stack-Exchange users coming from the forums, and we will want to make sure that this site keeps a clearly different "feel" from there.
Some examples:
This sounds more like a marketing meeting or a brainstorm than a Q&A site.
This is way too open-ended and invites subjective suggestions.  For reference, sites like Gaming prohibit shopping advice and recommendations.
The accepted answer for this one starts with "my predictions are", and the question itself is pretty useless.  Predictions?  This is supposed to be expert Q&A.
The answers to this one are totally uninformed, possibly even dangerous.  You should not be answering a question like this unless you know exactly what you're talking about (probably the question needs to be on a legal site anyways).
etc.
Remember people, you should not be answering a question just to offer your opinion or input.  Stack Exchange sites are meant to offer expertise where accepted and high-scored answers can be trusted to basically be "the final word" on the subject.  This isn't a forum, and it isn't a strategy meeting.  It's a place to compile verifiable, referenced facts for the use of the internet at large.
My apologies if I come on a bit strong, but I don't want to go through downvoting tens or hundreds of questions and answers when there's a much better high-level solution--all of us getting on the same page.

there is also a lot of double answering. Somebody gives an answer and then somebody else gives almost exactly the same or ever so slightly different answer 30 minutes later (instead of just commenting on the previous answer). I don't know if this is common practice on SO and other SE, but I know that on cstheory.SE this would be met with downvotes or community/moderator action.

Yes, agreed.  You should not be adding an answer unless you have something distinctly more helpful to say than the existing answers.  We also have to catch these early, because after only a few hours you can't tell which answer was first.

if you mouse-over the "answered yesterday" part it will show you the exact time of answering. So a user can always compare the time in of these answers, it just requires a bit more effort.

Great tip--I didn't know that.

The site is brand-new, and a lot of users here don't have experience on Stack Exchange—and so, may not have read the FAQ.
Here's the relevant bits:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?
You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.
Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.
If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)
To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”
your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”
there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”
it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”

If you see any of the above, please flag them!

My question, about which weaknesses affect market/mind share was an attempt to gather information about perceived Bitcoin weaknesses and prioritize them. It was in fact in response to an actual problem I have -- I'm not sure which Bitcoin weaknesses most need work, and working on those weaknesses is one of the things I do.
The question about mining pool payout models seemed to me to be more about which payout model makes the most sense for a casual miner. If he's a casual miner, he has to select a pool. There are a lot of payout models, and they're not always easy to understand. Rather than understand every payout model (some of which are mathematically complex), he'd rather see the ones that are best for most casual miners explained to him. There are a lot of casual miners, so it's useful for reference too.
I see these two questions very differently from you. Maybe I'm just trying too hard to see the good and ignoring the bad because it's bad. But maybe to some extent you are doing the reverse as well. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I understand that we share the goal of making the site as high quality as possible.)
Update: I realize I may have misunderstood you. You are talking about question and answer quality. My answer was addressed under the assumption, likely incorrect, that you were talking about question quality.

I was thinking mainly about answer quality, but questions that have no criteria by which to measure the answers aren't really suitable for the Stack Exchange format either.  How is one supposed to know which weaknesses "are probably most serious"?  I can't think of any meaningful way to measure this, so people are just going to end up voting for "this question because I like it".  The point of Stack Exchange sites is for correct answers to rise to the top, not well-liked ones.  Regarding the mining pool question, how are we supposed to measure what "better payout models" even are?

I think you're also missing the fact that just because a person has an actual problem doesn't mean Stack Exchange is the best place to get feedback on it.  The voting to differentiate answers is core to how it works.  If you're just looking for a wide range of subjective feedback, you should be asking in a forum.  If the pooled mining question were instead changed to "which payout model is most mathematically advantageous" it would become immediately clear how the best answers might be measured, and all of a sudden this is perfectly SE-appropriate.

I don't know about that. Even if you can't offer an exact criteria by which something you can be measured, you can offer the pros and cons and let someone else make a decision. Saying we have to be able to quantify an answer for it to be appropriate seems a bit overboard for me. You just lay out your assumptions, "If by best you mean X, then Y." "If by best you mean A, then B"

I agree in principal, however I think there are some logistical issues with being overly strict.  As I pointed out elsewhere unlike programing Q&A where there is a fixed and known answer that is testable by the asker bitcoin has a lot of 'fuzziness'.  People will be justifiably interested in the pros and cons of different mining pools for example, and at least an answer that explains what the differences are and how they work is useful (but not of course opinion on one viruses another).
We can always vote to close ones that are truly off topic, and down vote opinion based answers, but I'm at a loss to see how we have any other influence on the quality of of the Q&A.  Open to suggestions though, because I agree with your concern.

I'm inclined to disagree that Bitcoin has any more fuzziness than topics like photography or english, and it has a lot less fuzziness than something like parenting or christianity. There are enough concrete, answerable questions surrounding Bitcoin that we should be leaving the "fuzzy" ones for forums, etc. If someone comes here and sees a lot of opinions being thrown around, they aren't going to be confident the answers are authoritative.

I agree, and I like dori's answer for pointing out the FAQ, but there are still questions like "Is bitcoin a ponzi scheme?" Which are worth asking and answering, but it can easily be argued that none of the answers would be 'authoritative.'  So then we have the problem of people giving opinionated answers, but also opening up attacks on the question itself under these guidelines.

Actually, a ponzi scheme is a well-defined system, so it's trivial to break down what it is and show objectively why BitCoin doesn't qualify.  You won't find any "I don't think it is" in the answers to that one, and if you did they should be downvoted.  Instead, an effective answer clearly breaks down the question and answers it directly by clarifying the difference between a scam and a risky investment.  That's exactly the type of expert analysis Stack Exchange is designed to identify.

And that's why StackExchange has community moderation through downvoting, reporting and editing. I think this is why choosing the right moderators is a BIG deal: there are some questions for which a reasonable examination of opposing opinions is not unreasonable, and the job of the mods is to remove only that content which is not constructive. Bad mods might be tempted to simply remove content that opposes their own opinion and that can't be allowed to happen here.

eMansipater, my point is that people would argue it.  As I said it could be asked and should be answered, but a question like that could qualify under the FAQ list of "What kind of questions should I not ask here?" but I think they probably should be allowed. So I agree with David Perry it'll come down to good moderation in those edge cases.


text:
Are questions about economic impact allowed at all?
There have been a few questions about how Bitcoin can effect the economy:

Effect on economy if Bitcoin was widely adopted
Could Bitcoin work as a world currency?
Can the price of Bitcoin ever be stable to the USD?

And they all have close votes or are closed.
When asking economic questions, what should be avoided?

One thing to avoid is a question that's a good debate starter. If there's equal and valid arguments on both sides of an issue, a question will just get "Yes it is" and "No it isn't" replies that will be argumentative and subjective.

While it's difficult to avoid politically charged questions (or answers) with a technology as potentially disruptive as Bitcoin, economics is at the core of the Bitcoin concept so economic questions are almost certainly on-topic so long as they reference Bitcoin in some regard. Those questions all have close votes or are closed because they are unanswerable, at least at the present time. In short, we're not downvoting or closing them because they're off-topic or politically charged, but because they aren't answers and they're likely to incite argument.

One way of phrasing these types of questions would be something like,
"When people say that hoarding bitcoins is bad, what set of assumptions are they using?"
That avoids the Is X good? type questions which are a debate and instead just asks for what the arguments are for one particular side of an argument and what the assumptions people making those arguments are using.


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Too many closed questions?
It is hard to know what should be closed and what shouldn't and we are still in the process of finding that out. There have been a couple of closes that I don't think that are that obvious so here it goes.
If I convert my US Dollars to Bitcoins, will its value likely depreciate?
Well, this has a clear answer: "it depends on whether the price goes up or down". What is exactly speculative about this?
Is mining still profitable?
This is probably the most asked question ever in the bitcointalk forums and I think it can be answered "timelessly" - this one is really similar. Besides, the too localized argument fits half of the questions asked here (but that would be whole other topic...)
There are a few others, but these caught my attention. Anyway, it's just to say that sometimes a question may seem really vague and ambiguous, but it can have a good answer.
So, are we being too harsh on close votes or should we keep a really strict policy? (this was just to avoid closed as not a real question ;))

Downvoted, cause I don't agree with the opinion stated in your question, not that I don't think the question is OK (this is common meta-practice if I have understood things correctly).

@D.H.: I'm not sure if downvoting the question is such a good idea.  Shouldn't votes on meta questions reflect the importance of the question?

@nmat: Perhaps you should edit your question to remove your opinion, and put that in an answer instead?

I know that on the StackOverflow meta it is common practice to downvote questions if you disagree with the opinion expressed. I don't think that it's ideal but if a question expresses an opinion and an answer opposes it, the only way to have users vote on those two opinions is to treat the question the same way as the answer. You can get around it by making your question neutral and then writing your opinion as an answer to your own question.

@Dori, thanks for the links. Well, this is pretty much answered... I will leave it that way for now.

Just a note for those confused, I think Dori meant to link here for "How to Ask in Private Beta".

I would argue that "It depends on whether the price goes up or down" is a rather obvious not a very helpful answer, while realistically the majority of answers would be discussion and opinion. This question falls solidly in the FAQ "What kind of questions should I not ask here?" as:

we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”

"Is mining still profitable?" is just poorly formed.  A better question is, "How can I compute mining profitability?".  In fact I just re-asked it. For that one a better explanation of why it was being closed, or a suggestion to rephrase the question might have been better if it was caught quickly.
You might be interested in the discussion here for more on this.

+1. If "it depends" is an acceptable answer then nothing would be considered speculative. "When will the world end?", "It depends on...".

A common pattern is someone saying "Why is X a bad question? It has this really good answer, Y." The answer, most of the time, is that X is a bad question because it invites bad answers. Adjusting X to invite Y fixes the question. "Is mining still profitable?" invites bad answers. "How can I calculate mining profitability?" invites good ones.


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Are there any interesting questions we could ask about GLBSE?
I think it is one of the more interesting questions, yet it hasn't been mentioned here. Can you think of interesting questions to ask regarding GLBSE?

Wouldn't GLBSE be off-topic?   It is an exchange that happens to have shares denominated in Bitcoin but it isn't using Bitcoin technology necessarily.

@StephenGornick - It's primarily Bitcoin, so I consider it on topic.

Well, the basics are always a good place to start: "What is GLBSE", "How do I use GLBSE" etc. It is one of the more interesting topics but unfortunately so few people use it or know about it that most don't even know the questions to ask. I'm sure even posting an intro question or two will spark others to look into it and ask more questions though.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/498/what-is-glbse-how-does-one-use-it


text:
Should we have a bitcoin-canon tag?
While looking over this question, it occurred to me that not every one would have heard of the famous "Bitcoin pizza" event, and so I suggested to @David Perry to add a link "to build up the Bitcoin Canon". I'm following the general idea that Canon is the formative material that shapes a given subject. Wikipedia has an example of Western Culture Canon that illustrates the kind of content that qualifies.
Since we are expecting this site to become one of the definitive resources about Bitcoin, it might help future researchers looking over old posts to be able to identify, or subsequently tag, significant Bitcoin moments and references with a "bitcoin-canon" tag.
Maybe it's all a bit above our station, but I thought I'd put it forward for discussion.

just a meta note. seems like the downvotes here are downvotes against the idea, not the question about the idea. Could be a good question even if you disagree

Such a tag would seem appropriate for a discussion forum, but not for a Q&A site like this.

I don't this is useful. I think we should focused on building a knowledge base and expert community first, leave the canon to the wiki/forums/reddit.
I'm not saying we should close questions like "How much did the first Bitcoin pizza cost", just that there's no need to make a fuss about it and tag it as canon.


text:
Can we remove "based on actual problems that you face. " from the FAQ?
The FAQ contains this sentence:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual
  problems that you face.

I think a lot if not most of the questions right now don't fit this criteria. I personally think questions that don't direct fall under this should be allowed.
Can we remove this part from the FAQ?

My personal opinion is that the policing should be lax, especially early on. I don't think we necessarily have to remove that FAQ, we just don't have to enforce it. As a guideline, it's a good policy. If the mods get edit crazy over it, then maybe.

I wouldn't want that part of the FAQ in the future as well. Changing this to a support tag.

cstheory.SE has a great version of this:

You should only post questions you're actually seriously thinking about. Users are expected to do their part and try to answer their question by themselves before posting them on cstheory and asking for help from others. Search to see if your question is already answered somewhere else (e.g. Wikipedia) before asking a question. Try to make your question interesting for others by providing some background knowledge. Remember, questions should be based on knowledge sharing, not on shirking. Shirking goes against the spirit of the site.

I think something like this should be in place and enforced. A lot users are treating this site like an extended bitcoin FAQ, asking questions (like Is Bitcoin a scam? for instance) that they THINK SOMEONE MIGHT WANT TO PROBABLY ASK, but already know the answer to themselves or don't personally care about the answer to. If this question really is going to be important to someone, just wait for that someone to ask it. It is important to seed the site with good, technical, and high-level questions to set the tone; instead of asking obvious FAQish questions.

I'm definitely for asking "stupid questions" as well, that someone will find interesting. People google for "is bitcoin a scam", and it's good to have a SE question as one of the top result.

@ripper234 but we are not an advertisement site for bitcoin... we are a question and answer site for questions people actually have...

"questions actually have" include "is bitcoin a scam". This is beta, we need to seed the site even with questions that are generally useful, even if not to us.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/area-51-asking-the-first-questions/
My favorite line: "To attract experts, you need a site where people are asking very interesting and challenging questions, not the basic questions found on every other Q&A site. Remember, the pro sites WILL attract the enthusiasts, but not the other way around!"

I'm all for interesting questions, I just don't want to ban the basic ones. Bitcoin is a complicated topic, and even basic questions will be interesting to new comers. Since this is beta, I think seeding the site with all sorts of questions only helps.

I have to agree with ripper234 here. With a topic like Bitcoin we can't really aim for just the experts. The number of Bitcoin experts in the world are so, so few, and many of them are already here. StackOverflow is defined as being for "professional and enthusiast programmers". We want the Bitcoin enthusiasts to come here! Even the ones who are about to become enthusiasts.

@Artem any question I've seen asked over 100 times on the forums is well worth adding to a Q&A site that aims to be authoritative.

I like the wording of "seriously thinking about" used by SE.  There are many questions in which I am not facing a problem but I am "seriously thinking about".  The alternate language widens the scope without completely losing all scope.

on the other hand theres a concept of a "reference question" which is used on other sites eg cs.se etc

It should be enforced rather than removed.  The rule is there to ensure high-quality questions are asked.  See also:

Area 51: Asking the First Questions
How to Ask in Private Beta

This isn't BitcoinTalk, and we shouldn't be trying to turn it into BitcoinTalk.

This can be a good Q&A site even without this restriction.

+1 without this restriction (or something similar) the site runs the risk of just being an advertisement for bitcoin, instead of a serious Q&A.

Here is a question I asked, that got 7 votes, yet is not "based on an actual problem I face". Should I have not asked this question? Is it an advertisement for bitcoin? http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/176/is-there-a-list-of-core-bitcoin-committers

That question could have been based on an actual problem that someone else faced.  It would probably have been better to let said person ask it, rather than going for the low-hanging fruit right away.

I think that "based on actual problems that you face." should be removed. Having something there, which we do not enforce will only create confusion and hinder new users asking questions.

I don't think "based on actual problems that you face" is appropriate for this site. But we need to put some serious thought into what should replace it to ensure that we do get high quality, answerable questions.

It makes sense to remove it, the sentence was probably constructed for StackOverflow which is more of a problem solving Q&A. More importantly though, I think we should work on the first section: "What kind of questions can I ask here?". That's a topic for a separate question though.

Please add a comment for the downvote so that I know what about it that you don't like.


text:
Why can't I set a bounty for my own question
Recently I wrote this question and I've had a couple of interesting answers but it's all gone a bit quiet. I'd like to offer up some reputation as a bounty to encourage more activity but I'm not getting the link. Another question that I asked is offering the link so I'm wondering what the rules are?

I believe that you have to wait for two days (after asking the question) before you can start a bounty.

Correct.  Stack exchange will even indicate this where the bountry button would be saying "you must wait 2 days to place a bounty".


text:
What should our FAQ contain? Part 1 - "What kind of questions can I ask here?"

Bump January 26, 2013. I have added eMansipater's suggestion to the FAQ. /D.H.

It's time to start working on our FAQ which is one of The 7 Essential Questions of Every Beta. The first section of the FAQ, "What kind of questions can I ask here?", is probably the most important but it is very thin right now. Please post your suggestion for what the section should look like here. For a good example of what the section might look like, here is what it looks like on SuperUser:

Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a
  question about …

computer hardware
computer software

and it is not about …

videogames or consoles
websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress
electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer
a shopping or buying recommendation …

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

Thanks for taking the initiative with this... I think we are still feeling out what kind of questions are appropriate. There is a pretty wide spread of topics and question styles still. Maybe we can keep this question going for a while.

We need to decide what to do about the disappeared '& other crypto-currencies' part of the proposal. Are only bitcoin related questions (i.e. comparisons of other crypto-currencies to bitcoin) allowed, or do we also allow questions about other crypto-currencies in general that might not resemble bitcoin at all, apart from being a crypto-currency (say ones from the academic literature, for instance).

@Alex Waters: Yeah, I think we can keep it going for a while but feel free to start adding ideas if you have any.

We need to reach some consensus on this.  Questions like this could really use an FAQ saying what's on- and off- topic.

It's easier for me to reason from examples, rather than thinking in abstractions...creating a new thread..

Here's a starting one:

The Bitcoin stack exchange is for users and enthusiasts of Bitcoin and related
  technologies.  If you have a question about …

how to use or accept bitcoins
the Bitcoin network or protocol
the open-source Bitcoin client or other Bitcoin software
a cryptocurrency or technology derived directly from Bitcoin such as Namecoin

and it is not about …

programming technique
investment advice
politics or philosophy
a site or software recommendation …

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

I think question like these should be allowed as well. http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/587/how-do-i-build-bitcoin-source-in-windows-7 http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/416/how-do-i-build-bitcoin-from-source-in-linux

Building Bitcoin from source qualifies as being "about the open-source Bitcoin client."

having a cryptocurrency being "derived directly from Bitcoin" seems like a pretty straightforward criteria right now - given the very tiny modifications being made. May become a harder judgement call in the future. And in a way, all cryptocurrencies will be derived from bitcoin, since bitcoin is the first large scale proof of concept of a viable cryptocurrency

Going by analogy to operating systems, it has remained a reasonably clear call to identify an operating system as "derived directly from Linux" or not despite the proliferation in that field.  With open-source software, it basically boils down to: "Was any nontrivial portion of the code used in the other project?" and ends up pretty easy to track.  Just as Linux wasn't really the first FOSS operating system, Bitcoin isn't really the first cryptocurrency; but both were early enough movers and shakers to heavily impact ensuing efforts.  Any particular reason you think it will be a hard call?

no, that makes sense to me. I don't mind the recommendation-type questions (and they tend to be by and far the most popular across the SE sites from what I've seen. "Name your favorite OSX app" "Name a gadget you can't do without" etc...but I'm fine figuring those out as we go along in terms of "What's your favorite client app" etc

Do you have an IRC channel? ...If you would like a real-time feed of BSX in IRC - check out #bitcoin-stackexchange on freenode.irc.net

Regarding other cryptocurrencies, this question is popular and with no close-votes. It is not about something derived from Bitcoin but about other cryptocurrencies. I think that we should allow it.

The reason that question would be allowed is simple--it's about Bitcoin.  If the question was "which cryptocurrencies predate b-money?" it would be off-topic.

@eMansipater: That's a bit of a stretch. The question is not about Bitcoin, it's about other cryptocurrencies. It asks about the properties of other cryptocurrencies (by asking how they differ from Bitcoin, but the answer will be basically the same as when asking a general question about that other cryptocurrency). I could ask a similar question about cryptocurrencies invented after Bitcoin and we'd have them all covered. It seems silly that I have to mention Bitcoin for it to be allowed.

Because the question asks for specific comparisons to Bitcoin, it remains on-topic.  If the question were simply "What are some other cryptocurrencies?" I would personally vote to close.

I asked a question at the chat. There are a lot of comments here...

I think it would be appropriate to allow "What (if any) software can achieve this?" but not "Which software is the best at doing this?"

I think questions regarding the legal aspects surrounding Bitcoin and similar crypto-currencies should be permitted, as well as questions regarding the history of Bitcoin. Examples that come to mind for the latter include "what was the first recorded transaction in the blockchain?" and "what was the first Bitcoin to USD exchange to appear?".

Here are my two bit-cents:
Questions in scope:

Any question regarding the Bitcoin project and bitcoin as a form of currency
History of the Bitcoin project and related projects
Technical side of the Bitcoin Protocol, Network, Clients, APIs, as well as any software and hardware directly connected with Bitcoin
Questions relating to non-Bitcoin digital currencies only when they relate to Bitcoin directly (comparison of currency X to Bitcoin for example)
Any question relating to services that operate using Bitcoin, as long as the question is not case specific ("what countries does service X ship to", as opposed to "my shipment from service X did not arrive")
Any question that fits any of the above and is related to any digital currency that works just like Bitcoin (Litecoin, Namecoin, etc)

Questions out of scope:

Technical question not relating to Bitcoin (such as cryptography in general)
Questions relating to digital currencies neither working like Bitcoin, nor relating to Bitcoin

What about third party services?  Like, a question about what style of play maximizes winnings on bitZino blackjack?   Or, perhaps a question inquiring as to which countries does The Swiss Pharmacy ship to?

@StephenGornick Hmm, on one hand I guess those questions are welcome, but on other hand in the future we should be cutting down on those. I'm afraid those questions would either become too specific, get outdated fast, or encourage some list or subjective answers. Added the category anyway.


text:
How is the privileges list made?
I noticed that privileges here on our website can be acquired with a significant lower score than on other SE sites (ex: a trusted user at StackOverflow or Superuser requires 20000 reputation while here it only requires 2000).
So how are these values defined? Do they change when beta ends?

On private beta sites, some privileges require less rep than they do on public beta sites, and ditto for public beta sites versus graduated sites. So, for instance, where anyone can now create a new tag, you'll need 150 after the site goes public, and 300 after the site launches. What rep is required to do what can be found on the FAQ and on the list of privileges, but as a help it's posted below.
Don't be surprised when this happens—yes, you may lose some privileges when the site shifts from private to pubic beta. The only way to restore lost privileges is to keep asking great questions and writing great answers (and voting. Always vote. You have 30 votes a day. Use them, please).
How do we get people here to have higher reputation scores? Keep voting up those good questions and answers, that's how. Edit questions and answers into shape when they need it, so that others will vote them up. And please, don't forget to vote on questions.
(PS: you get up to an extra ten question votes per day if you vote on enough questions, too)

Table of reps and privileges:
                                      Where you'll be shortly
                                 Where you are now ↴        ↓
Action                                     Private ß Public ß Launched     SO
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Ask and answer questions                           1        1        1      1
Ask and answer questions on meta                   5        5        5    N/A
Skip lecture on how to ask                       N/A      N/A      N/A     10
Add images, 2+ link, answer protected questions    1       10       10     10
Create community wiki answers                     10       10       10     10
Vote up                                            1       15       15     15
Flag posts                                        15       15       15     15
Talk in chat                                      20       20       20     20
Comment everywhere                                 1       50       50     50
Set bounties                                      75       75       75     75
Create chat rooms                                100      100      100    100
Edit community wiki w/o approval                   1      100      100    100
Vote down (-1 rep on answers)                      1      125      125    125
Vote in moderator elections                      N/A      N/A      150    150
One time +100 rep to all linked accounts         200      200      200    200
Reduced advertisements                           200      200      200    200
View close votes                                   1      250      250    250
Vote to close, reopen, or migrate own questions    1      250      250    250
Nominate for moderator                           N/A      N/A      300    300
Create new tags                                    1      150      300   1500
Retag questions                                    1      200      500    500
Show total up and down vote counts               100      750     1000   1000
Create a gallery chat room                      1000     1000     1000   1000
Edit other's posts w/o approval                  500     1000     2000   2000
Approve or reject other's edits                  500     1000     2000   2000
Suggest tag synonyms                            1250     1250     2500   2500
Vote to close, reopen, or migrate questions        1      500     3000   3000
Approve tag wiki edits                           750     1500     5000   5000
Access moderation tools                         1000     2000      10K    10K
Reduce captchas                                 1000     2000      10K    10K
Review chat flags                                10K      10K      10K    10K
Protect questions                               1750     3500      15K    15K
Trusted user                                    2000     4000      20K    20K
Painting of unicorns, signed by Jeff and Joel                     200K   200K

Thanks for the table. I so want a painting of unicorns! It definitely beats any other privilege ;)


text:
Have the FAQ explicitly allow other crypto-currencies / bitcoin forks
The Area 51 proposal originally included "Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies". I think the FAQ should be changed to include this explicitly.
The ones I'm thinking of are currently Bitcoin forks (Namecoin et al...), but perhaps other crypto-currencies that are not forks would be acceptable as well? Is the the set of crypto currencies that are not forks an empty one?

note that there are many crypto-currencies in the literature which do not resemble bitcoin at all (for instance they are not decentralized). There are also crypto-currencies that existed before bitcoin. Thus, the set of nonfork cryptocurrencies is non-empty, and a lot of them don't resemble bitcoin at all.

@Artem - I would want this SE to be about forks and "design forks" - meaning all crypto currencies that take a significant amount of inspiration from BItcoin. Being decentralized is a key factor in all such crypto currencies.

then you should not allow other crypto-currencies, but say something explicit like "bitcoin forks" or "decentralized crypto-currencies", etc. It is best to be precise, to avoid people who might become confused as their legitimate-seeming non-bitcoin related crypto-currency questions are closed. Also, in this case you might want to include a link to crypto.SE in the FAQ, so that users know where to take general crypto-currency questions.

@Artem - added "/bitcoin forks" to the title.

eMansipater has a good suggestion here: http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/85/what-should-our-faq-contain-part-1-what-kind-of-questions-can-i-ask-here/95#95

@Chris - I'll upvote if he takes my comment there into account.

See also the question Are questions about other crypto-currencies on-topic?.  The conclusion so far is that not only should forks be included as on-topic, but also comparisons to far-less-similar systems, and perhaps more than that.

I agree. This would follow the line that it is the Bitcoin protocol that is important, and not specific uses of it. Should other variations of Bitcoin that support other types of distributed signed tokens occur then there will be useful reference site ready for them.

If you agree, you should upvote.

@ripper234 I've been trying but for some reason my network wasn't allowing me certain activities (voting, answer acceptance etc) on any SE sites. Anyway, working now... :-)

Should this site include barter currencies, as per the original proposals on Area 51?
While bitcoins are a uniquely successful alternative currency, the system was built on other currencies, and could benefit from parallel discussion on those other currencies.

Hmm, I don't think we should be including all barter currencies. For example, I don't think trading goods for gold would be too relevant to the community. However, if the currency was to be digital and notable, I could see it being incorporated into the SE. I think we could accommodate some additional topics without diluting the focus on Bitcoin too much ;).


text:
Why are 'wallet' and 'e-wallet' tagged as synonyms?
I admit I don't fully understand the tagging system, but we seem to have 'wallet' and 'e-wallet' tagged as synonyms. They have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. The tag 'wallet' is for questions about the Bitcoin wallet system used by the client, or at least that's what its description says. Whereas 'e-wallet' is the name used for services that provide you a notional wallet with a web-based (or text message or whatever) front end.
Is this just an error? How can it be corrected?

Certainly looks like an error. I don't know how to correct it though. Dori?

Synonyms.
Ask Dori ;-)

I also disagree with code → development synonym. (But it's not finalized)

That's a fair point. "Development" can refer to development of algorithms or methods as well as code. And questions about why existing code does a particular thing should be tagged "code" but doesn't have much to do with development.

I think source/programming should likely be synonyms. Development could go either way depending on whether it means just code development or also concept development. It shouldn't include business development, certainly.


text:
When does the Public Beta start?
For a while it was always coming in the next few hours, and now it just says "soon."  Does anyone know when the public beta is planned to start?

I was tempted to post an answer simply stating, "Soon :-)"

vote to close, now outdated :)

The site will launch at about 2011-09-07T19:19 UTC :)
From the announcement:

After just 9 days in private beta, we've already got 193 users who have asked
  191 questions and written 414 answers.

Congrats, folks!

Sites typically advance from private to public beta on Tuesday or Wednesday, but this is not automated. It takes manual intervention to transition to public beta. Monday being a holiday in the US, everyone's schedule is a bit off.
The site will launch "soon."


text:
Sort questions by FAQ?
I am confused what the sort criteria is when selecting FAQ on the main questions link:
http://f.cl.ly/items/3V0K1u3R3F0P2L0P380n/Screen%20Shot%202011-09-07%20at%2012.51.26%20PM.png
Do we eventually get to add those manually? It says they are sorted by "number of links" - what does that mean? Also why does it include closed questions?

Choose one of those FAQ questions, and have a look at the number of “linked“ questions on the side column, on the right (above “Related“ questions).
‘FAQ sort’ will display questions with the highest number of “linked (to)” questions first.

links to or links from? seems like a fairly useless and confusing sort filter, especially as it is separate from the site FAQ itself

thanks - well defer to yr wisdom here