text:
What to do about this user spamming/promoting links and the associated questions?
This user joined today and added links to 7 questions all with the same text.  I don't know if the site is legit or not, but I don't think this is behavior we should support or encourage.
I imagine the possibility where users sign up just to post links of varying quality and overwhelm the site.  This isn't a good thing.
Question 1
What should be done with his link spamming?
Question 2
What action should we take with dealing with these questions?  Here are a few ideas:

Require a minimum of 200 rep to post links, comments, etc
Lock the posts and prevent new answers
Mark the questions for deletion.

Here are some sample questions that were List-like (asking for links).  On most SE sites, these types of list questions would be marked as off topic, but as Bitcoin matures we may adopt that policy as well.

What are some good ways of marketing a Bitcoin related service?
What are the most respectable Bitcoin news websites?
Are there any poker websites that accept bitcoins?
Are there any revenue sharing blog websites that pay out in Bitcoin?

This is a difficult one to be honest. We do a lot to combat spam and we're always trying to do more, but a lot of the suggestions we get just don't work that well.
We're already talking with SE staff about crawling links to prevent url shortener spam and we already blacklist common spam sites as they appear. Requiring rep to post links unfortunately isn't a great idea since we want new people to be able to ask questions, even when those questions include links - especially since a good link is often a better resource for finding solutions than the question itself.
For now the best solution is to flag these things for moderator attention and, if you have sufficient rep, vote to delete.
Note: Voting to delete requires a negative score, so downvoting these is also very important. Your downvotes will also prevent many of the twitterbots out there from tweeting the spam since most are based on StackBot and have a minimum vote threshold.
Indeed the best thing we can possibly do to combat spam is get enough 4,000+ rep users on the site that we can successfully vote to delete without moderator intervention.

Does Vote to Delete require the question to be closed first?

The link you provided states: "Voting to delete questions immediately after they are closed (even if they are new)" so that seems to answer my question.

Well, seeing as I am one of the people that actively combats those links more often than not, here is what I do:
 - Downvote the question - this makes it possible for other people to vote to delete it and I think it can also make the question disappear from the front page
 - Edit the question's title and body - this way the spam links disappear and have no use. The spammer in question will not be able to edit those back - they don't have the rep.
 - Flag the question for deletion - if we get enough attention on it, it will be deleted

Flag the question for spam (6 votes are required, no moderator intervention is needed)

All of this takes a few seconds per question if you are dealing with multiple questions at the same time. Asides the obvious benefit of keeping this site clean, it also gives you some benefits:

It gives you points towards your badges for editing
It improves your flag weight, which will also give you a badge
If you are doing this through the review tool, you also get points towards a few more badged (close votes, first posts, etc)

So in the end, you can wire yourself to view those troll posts as something positive - you have a way to reward yourself for editing them and you have a good feeling about doing this community a service :).

You are wrong about editing posts (see here and here). You are making it harder for other to think about flag-ing the post. It's the only thing which is required really (downvote is automatic). All it takes is six spam flags and the post is gone.

Looks like they have to be closed before I can vote to delete. Deletion is automatic with 6 spam flags, but that could take quite some time on Bitcoin.SE, making it different to SU and SO; perhaps there is good reason to edit the post here?

Perhaps this is a good strategy? ie add a spam warning to the top of the post: http://meta.superuser.com/a/3577/91656


text:
"Bitcoins.stackexchange.com" should redirect to "bitcoin.stackexchange.com"
I just made this typo, and I'm sure other people do too. What do you all think about adding "bitcoins.stackexchange.com" as an alias to "bitcoin.stackexchange.com"?

Seems like a good idea; not sure the SE administrators would be willing to do it. I'm unable to find precedent for it. Can anyone else think of a previous site aliasing request?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Non-binding ♦ close vote
Sometimes a post has crossed the line so patently that a moderator can simply close it.
Sometimes, however, a post might be walking near the line, and it is at least "not obvious" if it should be closed or not.
In this latter case, can a moderator decide to cast a non-definitive closing vote, i.e. a vote which simply counts as 1 instead of directly closing the post?

Why not just press skip instead?

@NickODell in case you mildly want to close a post, without using your full ♦-power to close it, but casting a simple vote like any other user.

Ah. I misunderstood.

Heh, I remember this feature was requested back in the happy Stack Exchange 1.0 days ... too bad it's still not implemented.

I wish. Unfortunately we either have to close/delete/whatever outright or abstain from voting. I tend to abstain unless it's really obvious or the question already has 3+ votes on it.

It's like all we have is a machine gun and we encounter a rude child.

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


text:
Significant one letter edits
In Installed MacOSX over HDD containing wallet, there is a typo which will hinder searches.  Trying to edit it, I get a warning at the top of the page and a refusal at the bottom during submission.
This is a significant change - how can I make it?

Fixed it for ya.

Ironically this question itself has a single character error: "type" instead of "typo".

The error I got was "Edits must be at least 6 characters; is there something else to improve in this post?"
You can reword another part of your post in addition to changing the single character and it should go through.

Yes but this is stupid: if there is only a single character to fix, I should be able to do it.


text:
Must one never ask about mtgox's outages?
mtgox.com has been down for about an hour.  Last time I posted a question about this, my question and my credibility were disparaged:
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8855/why-is-mtgox-down
Is it forbidden ever to ask about this, even those it's covered in the news media?

Your question was closed as being too localized. A good rule of thumb for detirmining whether a question is too localized is to ask yourself, "Who would be interested in this question in 6 months?"
In this case, the interested parties would be limited to people who are designing exchanges.
Let me also make a counterexample: Suppose you ask a question about the March 2013 blockchain fork. This was also a temporary problem, but because it affects so many more people, the number of people interested is correspondingly higher.

Is it forbidden ever to ask about this, even those it's covered in the news media?

Whether it's covered in news media is irrelevant, because news media is about current events. The StackExchange formula is really bad at covering current events. There are lots of things that StackExchange doesn't do well; we respond by not doing them. (see #2, don't build a truck)
Also, the fact that you padded out your question probably didn't help.

The problem is mostly that the question was poorly phrased so that it only applied to a single point in time. For example, if the question was more like, "What caused the significant Mt. Gox outage on March 30, 2013" rather than "mtgox.com has been down for maybe three hours" it likely would have fared better.


text:
Question quality standards
Why doesn't the following question meet quality standards?
Title:Ripple ledger
Question: How can one download and analyse Ripple ledger?
Tag:Ripple
I also made the title the same as the question and expanded question slightly, since it is really a very simple question and I can't make it wordier without being repetitive. Didn't work.


text:
Should we merge 'lost' and 'recovery'?
lost and recovery generally cover the same ground. I think that lost should be a synonym of recovery.

Given that I didn't get a response, I'm going to interpret that as a 'no'.

I'd rather "be bold" like in Wikipedia and interpret it as a "yes".

@Lohoris The problem is that I can't do it myself, because I don't have 5 upvotes in those tags. A few other users can though: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/81/lemonginger http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/44/emansipater http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/78/ripper234

recovery has been proposed as a synonym for lost. You can vote here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/tags/lost/synonyms


text:
Should we remove the 'technology' tag?
technology isn't a meaningful tag. Shall we remove it?

By itself doesn't mean anything.
Unless someone comes up with editing the tag description in a way that it makes sense, it should be removed.
edit: removed it.

I recall that we removed the data tag a while back, but it ended up coming back. Is there something we can do to remove the tag permanently?

@NickODell I think moderators can do it, unless I'm mistaken


text:
Should moderators downvote without explanation?
Supposedly there are kids on the forum who downvote for various reasons. However there is ample evidence that some mods are downvoting as they please, based on criteria only known to themselves. This is eroding the trust. Whenever I post a question I wonder how soon will I be downvoted for unknown reasons.
The problem with downvoting is not merely your reputation score. It makes users less likely to read the question and eventually answer it.

You're assuming that it is a moderator that is downvoting you. It takes 125 reputation to downvote.

Well that's kind of the point of downvoting. People can only read so many questions and we want the best questions to get the most attention, both from people looking for helpful answers and from people looking to answer a question.
If you're asking Ripple questions, I think it's because we still have some users who downvote every Ripple question. Whether that's because they think it's off topic or because they don't like Ripple, I don't know. It is, IMO, annoying and unfair.

At least in the case of downvoting by moderators a brief explanation and the statement that he/she downvoted it would be more helpful in guiding users regarding the questions they post. Otherwise how do they know? Anonymous, no comment downvote lowers your reputation on StackOverflow.

I think the important note here is that there are ways in which moderators are different from normal users and ways in which we are the same. Our close votes, for example, are binding so we can't just participate in that, we decide it. Our up/down votes, on the other hand, are just like everyone else's. If our votes carry no special weight, I see no reason why there should be extra requirements when we cast them.

That said, I do attempt to explain non-obvious downvotes or downvotes where I'm making a judgement rather than agreeing with an already-existing comment or answer.

So you basically agree that downvoting without any comment is an acceptable practice in general, except in some cases of your choosing?

I guess downvote in this case is not some kid who doesn't like ripple. It is more like: see kid, I've got the power. That will teach you! Very mature indeed.

@Bitripple: Yes, precisely. Generally, downvoting without comment is an acceptable practice. One case in which I consider it mildly unacceptable is when it is applied to any question within a category one believes shouldn't be in scope for the forum even though the forum has explicitly chosen to place that category in scope because then it's essentially a refusal to abide by the community's decision and it's not fair to people who make the effort to ensure their question is within the agreed scope. I say mildly though because it's your downvote, if your judgment sucks, it's just one vote.

@DavidSchwartz on several other SE forums, that I frequently visit, a question or an answer is never downvoted, unless it is completely unintelligible or off-topic. Regular users often comment on their downvote. There is no moderator vendetta, like seems to be in this case, because moderators are professional. For example, what guarantees that you won't be downvoting any question which you deem may cast a bad image on the company that pays you?

@Bitripple: Nothing, but I get my one downvote per question just like everybody else. For the record, I almost never downvote questions on the Bitcoin.SE forum. And, you may find this hard to believe, but I honestly don't think our weaknesses should be secret.

It's not "annoying and unfair", it's downright abusive, and they should be outright banned from the site.

Hard to be tough on users when moderators share the attitude - if they can so can I - instead of taking approach of positive feedback where upvotes for valid and good questions would weed out the questions that get no votes. Downvote should really mean 'this question doesn't belong here, there is no any justification for it', not be expressions of personal dislikes and ego.

I agree that it is good practice to add a comment when downvoting and I believe that moderators should lead by example.
That said, I don't know where you get the idea that a moderator is downvoting you. There are three moderators here: me, David Schwartz and David Perry. There's a couple of hundred other users with enough reputation to downvote.

+1
That was just an impression. It is hard to understand that regular users would downvote such a question, since it is in their interest to distinguish rogue downvoters from moderators. But indeed, by the same token, the same is not in the interest of rogues.


text:
Please stop this abusive behaviour!
We have clearly established that Ripple questions and other cryptocurrencies questions are in-topic, but there still are users that downvote and close-vote all such questions.
I'm getting really really annoyed.
This is an abusive behaviour and those users should get banned from the site.
I really can't see how can you tolerate that.

Regardless of what we, the moderators, have commanded from on high StackExchange sites are designed to be a self-regulating community (more or less). While I don't agree with the idea of downvoting Ripple and altcoin questions and that's certainly not what the votes are there for, we Bitcoiners of all people should understand and respect the workings of a free market.
The original rules are arrived at by voting consensus, modifications to the rules are arrived at by voting consensus and the community-evaluated worth of individual content is arrived at by voting consensus. If more people here like ripple than hate it, you'll still end up with a positive score. If not, questions the community deems undesirable will go into the red and eventually stop being asked. Welcome to StackExchange, the ultimate free market of Q&A.

Still, this is bugged. As long as ripple-hating people reach 5, they can close questions, because reopen votes cannot be cast until they are closed. Also, early downvotes might bring less attention to the question, and this is unfair. This shouldn't be an acceptable behaviour.

And as long as there are more ripple-loving people they can re-open said closed questions. As long as there are fair admins, questions that get closed and re-opened or become an issue of dispute can be locked. Voting is anonymous and only works properly when it remains anonymous. There are a lot of things we'll do to reduce user stress on this site, but betraying the entire concept of user privacy isn't one of them.

In short, be patient. Either you'll win and the ripple haters will leave (or at least stop downvoting since it does no good) or you'll lose and the ripple lovers will leave. Again, self-regulating via market effects, exactly the sort of thing the majority of Bitcoiners would love.

"Voting only works if anonymous" is a totally false assumption. Self-regulating makes sense in some situations, but abuses should be prevented and sanctioned anyway. Never mind, I give up, thanks for trying to make your point.

Whether you agree with the assumption or not, it's the way StackExchange works and it's a pretty high-functioning model that's done quite well for us thus far. Sorry if it upsets you, but sometimes the only answer is "that's the way it is and it's unlikely to change."

Why do we have shady bots that remove serial downvotes targetting a user, and this is considered good, while the same doesn't apply if the target is a tag? It's pretty much the same principle: you should vote the question, not the person nor the tag.

StackExchange indeed has far from perfect voting system. However, on many other SE forums professionalism prevails because it is in everybody's best interest to get the best (or any) answers to their questions. Thus, often very superficial attempts at answers don't get downvoted, as any effort counts. Here, with the motley crew of spammers, scammers, extremely opinionated, wannabe advertisers, wannabe whatever, special interests, etc. the system weaknesses are much more obvious. One can say it is just another example of the tragedy of the commons.

Look, I'm getting tired of going around in circles. The moderators and most of the community are on your side in this - one of the mods is actually a Ripple dev, I don't know how much more "on your side" we can get than that. That said, this is the way StackExchange works. It's an existing network that we're a part of - on their terms and following their rules. We're playing in their sandbox and if you don't like their rules you don't have to stay. I'll mourn the loss but they're not going to completely change the rules because you're annoyed by downvotes. They're just downvotes, chill.


text:
Subscribing to a Question
I apologise if this has been asked previously elsewhere, but is there currently / could there be any facility to subscribe to a question?
I frequently find questions that are very interesting, and I would like to see others answers to them (though I have nothing to contribute myself).

You can subscribe to updates of a question by adding it to your favorites. Just press the  button with the Star under the question's upvote and downvote arrows.


text:
Can we find a better tag for this?
I don't really like the tag "marketing" for the question
What is a good way to concisely explain Bitcoin?
It sounds to much like this is a strategy-to-promote-bitcoin site instead of the factual Q and A that it is.  But I wasn't immediately able to find any more appropriate tags for it.  Anyone else have ideas?
Clearly this question and others like it need categorisation.  But without resorting to meta-tags, what categorisation is appropriate?

elevator-pitch
The term is usual for introductory explanations that take less than 2 minutes. Read more here: Elevator Pitch

How about a plain and simple introduction?

evangelism, promotion?

Even worse!  This is supposed to be a factual reference, and the question/answer are clearly on topic.  We should be able to give it a legitimate tag.  I realise the fact that it literally covers all of Bitcoin makes it somewhat general, but still.


text:
[tag:resilience]
Both questions with resilience are also tagged weaknesses, and nothing else.
Should we delete it?


text:
What is the intended use of the technical-analysis tag?
I always assumed that the technical-analysis tag referred to technical chart analysis, i.e. the prediction of future BTC exchange rates based on chart patterns and the psychology of trading. However, it seems to be used as a substitute for the technical tag, i.e. analyzing the technical behavior of the Bitcoin protocol or Bitcoin client.
There is no wiki tag, so I am not sure if my interpretation is correct. Before I added any wiki text or did any retagging, I wanted to ask meta for the consensus opinion on its meaning.

Barring some dissent or discussion here, I may add a definition for the tag and do some retagging later in the week.

I've looked over the questions tagged with the tag and most of them are better served with the "architecture" tag instead, so if we achieve a consensus here it should be fine to keep that tag for chart analysis.

I agree that technical-analysis should specifically refer to technical chart analysis.  Upvote here if you do too.


text:
At what point can we modify the appearance of the site?
I think we're about due for a cool custom design for this site. What needs to happen in order to make that a reality?

Going out of beta, I guess (which is at SE owner's discretion)

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!

The short answer is "you gotta graduate from public beta before you can have a site design".
The long answer is the answer to a different question: "what does it take to graduate?". I wish I could tell you the exact and precise criteria for graduation, but there aren't any. In broad terms, it comes down to overall site growth over time and the quality of the questions and answers.
At the moment, Bitcoin.SE is generally on the right track. This year so far has brought you guys a healthy amount of new traffic. We'd like to see if it is sustainable over a longer term. Your userbase is small, but engaged. This is good, but there's definitely room to grow there.
A custom design aside, you guys right now are a fully-featured and functional Stack Exchange site. The term "beta" is more a historical artefact than anything.
You're asking and answering questions about Bitcoin and filling a niche in a (still) small but growing market. Keep doing what you're doing and maybe throw a bit of site promotion into the mix, and I have no doubt that you can get to the point where you can have your cool looks and eat them too. (Okay, this didn't come out quite right, but you get the idea.)
See Does This Site Have a Chance of Succeeding and When Will My Site Graduate for more information.

Thanks, Adam. This is exactly what I wanted to hear.


text:
Where have all / The upvotes gone?
When this stack exchange started, we voted early and often.  Halfway decent questions got 3-5 votes, good ones 8-10, and excellent ones 15 or more.  Nowadays it's rare for me to see a question with 5 votes on it.  What's happened?  There are clearly more active users than this, so why aren't you voting?
I know that recent publicity has flooded us with a lot of low-quality questions that generally produce a feeling of "meh."  But this is not the only issue here.  Take a look at this question by makerofthings7:
How does Chaum style e-cash work? (all the Wiki links are broken)
It's a good, interesting question that was clearly researched ahead of time, and I know you all saw it because makerofthings7 even posted a bounty on it so it has been sitting in the "featured" area for 3 days!  Yet as of right now there is exactly one other vote on it besides mine.  We can do better.
The other thing I'm seeing a lot of are questions that have several answers but no votes, which doesn't make any sense at all.  If it's worth taking the time to answer, it's definitely worth one single extra click to vote on it!  And if the question is genuinely so "meh" that you can't bring yourself to upvote it despite the fact that you we believed some kind of answer was possible, then instead of answering it edit it to something you would actually consider a good question, and upvote that!
On the other side of things, if it's not worth an edit, not worth an upvote, and not worth an answer, downvote with a comment.  The addition of the comment can prevent a meh-poster from feeling unfairly "punished" and it might motivate them to edit the question themselves if you actually give them an idea of how to fix it.  Downvotes help people, not hurt them.
If you still need encouragement, consider this--the electorate badge is one of the easiest gold badges to earn and so far only 6 people have done it.  Just think about it.....shiny.  If you're on the site anyways, might as well turn a few easy clicks into a nice bright yellow circle.  Don't you wish you were a gold-badger?
Share your tips and feedback below.
p.s. Lohoris, none of this applies to you.  You're awesome.
Edit:  One more thing
I also want to remind people that you can upvote while voting to close as duplicate.  Sometimes you'll run across someone who has phrased something really clearly but just didn't recognise or understand how another question gave them what they needed until someone else pointed it out.  It's worth rewarding these people's participation in the site, especially if you want to drown out the meh-questions in the future.  Just because a question turns out not to be needed doesn't mean that the person wasn't making an effective contribution--good phrasing on a duplicate question helps our search engine visitors find the content they are looking for, and that's worth rewarding.

This gives an idea of the issue as well (Note the use of the word "extreme"...): http://screencloud.net/v/yF1F

I'm perpelexed as to who gives a care about upvotes.  They aren't convertible into money.   Why is lack of upvotes a problem?    Lack of good answers, ... now that's a problem.

Well, upvotes encourage new users to join the community. F.e. I see a lot of complete new SE users with 1 rep, who aren't even able to vote or comment. They need a mere 3 question upvotes to gain this privilege. It's hard to get started in SE (http://goofygrin.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/why-stackoverflow-sucks-and-participating-there-is-impossible/), so it's a good custom to help others getting started.

Oh lol I noticed just now, thanks ^^

Here is an example of a great on topic question and answer, they should get several upvotes:  http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/8250/1878

New users can't vote up questions, but they can ask questions.  Thus, when the ratio of nonvoting:voting users increases you will see a decrease in votes.  With more new users, questions drop off the front page faster.  Total views should stay relatively constant versus number of users.  However, views by voting members will decrease.

I'm looking at site stats right now - ignoring the first 30 days or so of the private beta (just because all our Q/A/Vote stats were all over the place then) we have consistently maintained an average of 4 to 6 upvotes per question and right now we're sitting at about 4.5.
Given that, mathematically, we have maintained the same proportion of upvotes per question as we always have it seems likely that what's really happened is that the populace of the site has shifted and upvotes are going to questions you might consider less deserving or in fairness probably aren't even looking at.
Questions about Chaum style e-cash are great for the hardcore among us, but the variety of questions we've seen lately tend to be simpler in nature and given that they now make up a majority of questions it's probably a fair guess that the majority of our users are finding more value in those questions than more technical fare.
In short, the number of upvotes hasn't changed, their distribution has - and in direct response to the will of a free market to the desires of consumers, too. How very Bitcoinian of us.
That said, I'm going to go upvote some good questions now and I encourage you all to do the same.


text:
Is there a "See Also" or "Related" template?
I found two questions (here and here) that are not QUITE duplicates of each other (different fundamental question, same answer... 3^2 = 9, 3*3=9). Is there an official flag or 'See Also' template for this?

Related: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/10844/201940

For similar or related questions the following format should be used to edit in links at the bottom of the question:

###See also
> [title of question](url to question)

See also

How should duplicate questions be handled?


text:
Can we create the tag 'bitcoinjs' again?
This was raised  a while back, but the tag seems to have gotten deleted.
I'd like to tag this question as well as all of these.

Don't know how that happened but I have added it back. Someone feel free to add a tag wiki for it.

I tried it on the same question.

Creating the new tag [bitcoinjs] is not allowed since the tag
  [bitcoinj] already exists. If you think this new tag should be
  allowed, raise it on meta.

Who has the privilege to (re-)create it?

Diamond moderators, methinks.


text:
Are specific mining hardware questions topcial?
Are specific questions about miner setups etc topical eg.

Will x miner work with x pcu
Will x miner hardware work with x software

Yes, because it is factually answerable, and the answer will stay the same, such questions can be a good fit.
However, such questions may be answerable by a simple websearch, so it would probably make sense to ask only if it is harder to determine than that and then explain what previous research has been done, and that it was unsuccessful.

Thanks! I have had a rather hard time digging the BTC forums and such to find the info I need, and it is often not there...


text:
Prerequisite readings for users

I don't understand half the questions of the site.  There seems to be
a certain level of affluence by the participants of bitcoin.
Probably the community doesn't want novel, advanced questions to be pushed aside by an influx of ignorant questions by new, ignorant
users.

I wanted to get your opinion on including a list of prerequisite readings for new users in help. The community would expect users to know the content of the suggested readings, before they ask a question that is already answered. Secondly, are there any particular answers on bitcoin, that provide links to readings which would make a new user well-versed on the topics of this site?

That's a good point you are making. I didn't realize until now that there are no pointers on introductory information in our help-center. It would be a good idea to create a page for that!
Until we get that done, we have some things already though:

What are some good resources for understanding Bitcoin? – A collection of introductory resources to get more familiar with Bitcoin.
I am new to Bitcoin, how can I get started? – A collection of questions that are of interest to new users of Bitcoin.SE.
The top-voted questions are some of the most frequently discussed. By skimming through them you can easily get more familiar with the topic.
The frequently asked questions give a similar selection but have a slightly different focus.
If you want find out more about terminology, there are some questions about that collected under the tag terminology.

In general, we ask the users to see whether they can find the question already on our site, before asking a new question. The site also suggests similar questions when one starts writing up the question. If you don't find the question, just ask away. If it was a duplicate, someone usually will point it out.
However, chances are that most obvious questions have been asked already, as the site has been operating for more than three years now, and collects more than 8000 questions. :)

I've just added a small section to the help section of Bitcoin.SE titled "New to Bitcoin?" with some pointers to resources and introductory concepts.
Feedback concerning action and selection of links welcome!

I'd like to say the best places to start reading about the technicalities of BTC are:
https://bitcoin.it
https://github.com/aantonop/bitcoinbook
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Perhaps a techie personality page would be good too; we may link to postings, musings, and Q&As from notable people in the field
Other than that it is mostly a minefield of weird out there > (http://trilema.com/category/bitcoin/)


text:
Happy New Year!
I hope you had/will have a great party when the date line comes to your latitudes!
I'm sure, we'll see amazing advances in Cryptocurrencies in 2015, and Bitcoin.SE will be the place to ask and answer the questions about them.
Happy new year and all the best for 2015!
Murch


text:
Bitcoin SE has two new Moderators! Please give a warm welcome to Stephen and Nick!
One of our Christmas presents had still been in transit, but on 5th of January it arrived: We've got two new moderators!

As you might have noticed, Stephen and Nick had already stepped up before their appointment to help push things into the right direction. They could be seen welcoming new users, as well as reviewing, editing, answering, and commenting. Now after accepting a moderator role on the site and being appointed, they are familiarizing themselves with the new perspective they have on the site, but have already started to help out with moderator flags and representing our community on the Stack Exchange network.
Thanks again to the moderators that have stepped down, David Perry, ThePiachu, David Schwartz, D.H., and Turbo, for their huge contributions to Bitcoin.SE and the Bitcoin community. We wouldn't have such a marvelous collection of Questions and Answers without you, and would consider ourselves lucky to have you continue contributing!
I'm looking forward to sharing the moderation responsibilities among the three of us in the future. It is my hope, that we will now have enough manpower to tackle a few issues that had been on the backburner for a while, i.e. that we will be able to not only help maintain Bitcoin.SE, but to work with the other users to push for some improvements and growth.
As always, we would like everyone to bring forth their ideas and concerns here on Meta, as well as contributing to the discussion of the topics that are already there.
Feel free to come by our chat-room, the Bitcoin Lounge, to get help, discuss questions, and ideas, or for idle conversation. A weekly chat is held in the Bitcoin Lounge on Monday 20:00 (8pm) GMT, but you will find people hanging out there most days of the week.
Please give a warm welcome to Stephen and Nick!
All the best, and a great start into 2015 everyone!

Congratulations Stephen and Nick! Keep up the good work.

Congratulations indeed!  Thanks to all three of you!


text:
Tag graph from stared.gihtub.io/tagoverflow
I just discovered the Tagoverflow Tool, and thought I'd share it with you.

The picture shows the 32 most used tags on Bitcoin.SE colored by community detection. The two orange ones that are partially on top of each other should read development and block.

How does it do community detection?

@NickODell: I would assume that "community detection" here means how often the tags are used together.


text:
How come I can't put math equations in my questions or answers?
Compare the same question on Bitcoin with the one on Cryptography
I think the second one is much clearer. How do various stackexchange sites decide on this and how does it get turned on?

The mathematical symbols you're seeing are generated by MathJax. MathJax is a client-side Javascript library; it increases page load times, so that's why it's not enabled on every SE site.
How do you get it enabled? You
1. make a meta post suggesting that we add it (check!),
2. get community support for it,
3. one of the moderators makes a request to one of the Community Managers, and
4. they enable it.
Personally, I feel that there's a small number of questions that would benefit from it. Most of the time, there's an alternate way to explain a problem that is both easier to google and easier to understand.
However, the question you posted (and most ECDSA questions in general) would clearly benefit from being able to use MathJax, because there's already a body of literature about ECDSA. I see two good ways of going forward:

Use one of the image-based workarounds to display math equations. The problem is that they're terrible. Once LaTeX has been rendered into an image, it's very difficult to edit. You can embed the source code of the LaTeX into an HTML comment, but then you're trying to keep two pieces of code in sync manually.

https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/a/263

Enable MathJax only on certain tags. (Is this possible/something the SE team will implement?)

We could, but the people at stack overflow don't want to unless it's really necessary, because it tends to slow down page loads a lot. I think most questions don't require the kind of complex math equations that would make having LaTeX installed nice.
This was discussed earlier here: Implementing LaTeX?


text:
Let's get critical: Feb 2015 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Bitcoin Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Remember to search using incognito - otherwise you'll get biased results.

Final Results

Which bitcoin script forms should be detected when tracking wallet balance?

Net Score: 10 (Excellent: 10, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is it chain of headers rather than a chain of blocks?

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 1)

Is there a local wallet for Ripple?

Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 1)

How many transaction and btc have been cancelled?

Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 1)

What exactly happens when a node detects a double spend?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 0)

What transactions will be included in the next block?

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

Receiving `error: {"code":-25,"message":""}` on sendrawtransaction with v0.9.3

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 3)

How to convert encrypted wallet.dat to decrypted? (Yes, I know the password)

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

Creating your own Bitcoin price ticker

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 1)

why is bitcoind is missing from /usr/local/bin?

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 2)

[Satisfactory] Is it a chain of headers rather than a chain of blocks?
The page showed up fairly well on the following Google searches:

headers chain vs block chain bitcoin
headers chain
block chain headers  [Rank 6, what the heck?]

There are about a thousand pages describing how blocks are chained, so
even though I wrote the accepted answer (and I'm happy with it), I also
don't think this is "far better than other available resources." (For
all the searches above, the block chain section that I wrote for the
Bitcoin.org developer guide ranks higher.)
I also agree with Nick that ODell that the question title could
definitely be improved.
[Satisfactory] What exactly happens when a node detects a double spend?
Non-matching searches, no results in first two pages

bitcoin double spend
bitcoin core double spend
bitcoin double spend drop
bitcoin double spend confirm

Matching searches

bitcoin node double spend
bitcoin double spend keep

This
question
came up fairly often in the search results.
I think this question and answer are excellent for being specific and
clear, but it "requires oddly specific search terms to find," so I'm
grading it satisfactory.
[Needs Improvement] Is there a local wallet for Ripple?
Non-matching searches, no results in first two pages:

ripple wallet
local ripple wallet
download ripple wallet

Matching search:

local wallet for ripple

This
question
came up in every search result, although it describes something
different and may be out of date (I don't follow Ripple).
The Ripple.com downloadable client
announcement
also came up in most searches and provides, I think, the best resource.
Because the "answer is no better than what can be found elsewhere," I'm
ranking as needs improvement.  Improvements could be further describing
the security and privacy benefits of the downloadable Ripple client, or
describing why it took so long for the Ripple project to create such a client.
Also, any contraindications for using the downloadable client would be nice.
[Excellent] Which bitcoin script forms should be detected when tracking wallet balance?
Non-matching searches, no results on first two pages:

bitcoin wallet detect
bitcoin wallet output
bitcoin wallet scriptpubkey
bitcoin wallet pubkey script

Matching searches:

bitcoin wallet script [page 2]
bitcoin wallet script match [page 1, near top]

This is an important question for wallet and other program creators,
it's clearly worded, and Nick's answer is clear and concise.  I also
think it will show up in search results for the most commonly used terms
even though there are some negative results above.  It's "well-written
and has a clear, comprehensive answer that is far better than other
available resources," so I'm rating excellent.

I'll amend this post when I get to the rest (this is a lot of work!).
Edit: not going to finish.  Hopefully 4 reviews is enough.

Which bitcoin script forms should be detected when tracking wallet balance?
I might be biased, but I think this is pretty good :). The only non-SE source I can find that touches on this is http://www.wildbunny.co.uk/blog/2014/03/18/watch_only_wallet/, but that uses bitcoin RPC to identify the transaction type and extract addresses. It doesn't go into as much detail, but it would probably be more useful to the average developer.
Is there a local wallet for Ripple?
Not much to say about this. It's a clear, concise answer. The information is available elsewhere,  although it's difficult to find.
Other SE resources:

What are the ways to create an offline Ripple wallet?
(This might be a duplicate.)

Non-SE resources:

https://xrptalk.org/topic/1266-anyone-create-a-cold-wallet/
(I have no idea why there's an xrptalk when there's perfectly good ripple.org forums.)
https://xrptalk.org/topic/1855-wallet-security-tips/

Creating your own Bitcoin price ticker
An okayish question. The best non-SE resource I can find is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=918246.0, which doesn't go into much detail.
It's tagged with development, which I think ought to be burninated at some point.
I'll call this Satisfactory.
Receiving `error: {"code":-25,"message":""}` on sendrawtransaction with v0.9.3
He asked a clear question, which is good. He figured out the answer, and posted it to his own question, which is even better!
OTOH, it seems like a very localized question, and the views and votes reflect that. E for Effort, I guess.
Is it chain of headers rather than a chain of blocks?
This question takes the form of "misunderstanding, amiright?" which is problematic because it's really hard to search for and it makes it difficult close duplicates of the question.
DAH wrote a really good answer, but it's attached to a so-so question.
I'll add the other ones as I get to them.


text:
Suggestion: synonym [bip16] to [p2sh]
I think we should merge bip16 into p2sh. They cover the same topic, and P2SH is more descriptive.

I wasn't aware of that, but then go ahead. I'd say keep the synonym though.


text:
Can we narrow the scope of this question?
Can we narrow the scope of this question?
Is guadagnarebitcoins a scam?

I found this site:
http://guadagnarebitcoins.altervista.org
What do you think? Is it a scam? Are there ways to earn Bitcoins
  without mining?

This question is attracting spam. I think we should narrow it to be only about whether guadagnarebitcoins is legitimate. There is already a question about where to get free Bitcoins: Where is a comprehensive list of websites for getting free bitcoins?
Thoughts?

Ok, went ahead and did it.


text:
What should the [hd-wallet] tag mean?
There are several HD wallet proposals. The most common one is BIP32, and a less common one is gmaxwell's proposal. Recently, we've been getting questions about both of them, both tagged with hd-wallet.

Clarification of BIP32 hierarchical deterministic multisig scripts
How does HD wallet protect its master public key?

This seems confusing.
I propose moving one of them to a new tag.
Thoughts?

I'm thoroughly confused, to be honest. I call it BIP32 because in pybitcointools the function is called bip32_hdm_. I'll read up on Greg's proposal ASAP. (PS. I'm blown away that I can FINALLY use Meta with iOS SE app! Woo!)

Thats what really confused me at first. Also the wiki page for deterministic wallets is making this more complicated. I think they need a better classification.

@abeikverdi You're one of the people this affects; any idea how we should reclassify them?

@WizardOfOzzie The one you're asking about is BIP32. It's just that that's not the only HD wallet proposal. (PS. I know, right?)

I was thinking of splitting it into bip32 and non-bip32-hd-wallet. That wouldn't be elegant, but it would at least be clear.

@NickODell, Pieter Wuille at this video distinguished them by calling non-bip32-hd-wallet as a deterministic type 2 wallet.

I've merged hd-wallet into bip-32-hd-wallets today, but then found this post. Sounds like I might have made a mistake. Will investigate further.

Update: according to a conversation with Pieter, Maxwell's proposal from 2011 introduced the term "deterministic wallets" but only BIP32 introduced hierarchical-deterministic wallets. Hence, anything labeled "HD-wallet" should refer to BIP32.

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


text:
Are we willing to embrace other cryptocurrencies?
The focus on Bitcoin has kept participation from other cryptocurrencies to a minimum.  When the site first launched, the decision made a lot of sense: most of the "alt" currencies were simple forks of Bitcoin.  But since then, new currencies have become a testbed for innovation and many solve entirely different problems.  We should either focus excursively on Bitcoin and sidechains or revise the FAQ and change the name to include other currencies.
This is not fueled by a motivation to marginalize Bitcoin.  The second major cryptocurrency, Namecoin, was started because Satoshi didn't believe in piling every proof-of-work system onto a single blockchain.  Academic research is first tested in new currencies, such as Zerocoin, because it is easier to experiment with a new currency.
However, we are now seeing the first wave of currencies with radically different designs, such as Ethereum.  BitShares innovated on the very definition of value.  Even the Tor developers are working on using a cryptocurrcy to improve network throughput. New currencies are more than just an "alternative" to Bitcoin, they offer new solutions and solve different problems*.
Being "officially" neutral and allowing questions about other currencies isn't enough.  Users searching for answers on Google won't know what the official policy is and experts in other cryptos are turned off by the name.  Since we can't get any traction here, Namecoin (which is specially cited in the FAQ) is considering switching to Vanilla forums so that we can offer a Q/A system.  Even discussions regarding different types of PoW or specific applications (like decentralized markets) are seemingly off-topic for a "Bitcoin" SE site.
The Bitcoin name and URL only makes sense if you are primarily interested in Bitcoin.  This is incredibly self-limiting in a future filled with cryptocurrencies that solve different problems.  C is still the language of choice for many applications, yet we've seen many successful new languages over the past forty years.  If the original StackExchange had restrained itself to a specific technology, it never would have had such an amazing impact on the programming community.  If we want this SE site to become a vital resource for the cryptocurrency field, then we need to truly embrace other cryptocurrencies.  I think we should update the name and URL (perhaps Cryptocurrency and cryptos.stackexchange.com or just cryptocurrency.stackexchange.com) and update the FAQ.
We are still in Beta, but time is running out.  We need to either widen our audience to embrace other currencies or narrow it and restrict discussion to Bitcoin and sidechains.  Officially allowing questions related to other currencies while discriminating against them prevents future SE sites from building their own communities.
Update addressing posted answers:
Arguments about the popularity of Bitcoin don't make sense in the long run.  The situation is a bit different, but it's not far off from claiming that StackExchange should have been called JavaExchange.  Even Satoshi thought that piling every PoW system on Bitcoin was a bad idea, and Ethereum, BitShares, and others are proof that Bitcoin isn't going to be the only cryptocurrency that matters.
The argument that other currencies aren't trying hard enough is like claiming that the name "JavaExchange" wouldn't have alienated users of other programming languages.  Arguments that we just need to make tweaks are like claiming that JavaExchange wouldn't be dominated by Java questions if they just tweaked a few things, like the FAQ.
This really comes down to usability which (no offense intended) is something that I think most technically minded people have a hard time groking.  People don't read the FAQ or the intro!  The Bitcoin name effectively makes this a site about Bitcoin.
What do we gain from keeping the Bitcoin.SE name? What would we lose by switching to Cryptocurrency.SE?
Switching to Cryptocurrency.SE would reduce bias in search results, user perception, and the community.  Cryptocurrency.SE will still turn up in searches for Bitcoin, but users won't mistake it for a Bitcoin only site.

The question would be where to define the borders. If you see this bitcoinSE as a synonym for all satoshi-based crypto tokens, that would already enable hundreds of altcoins here .. most of them will find the questions to their answers already posted somewhere here. But what about completely different tokens, such as NXT, Etherem, BitShares, CryptoNote. IMHO they all deserve to have a Q&A platform and they are also based on ECC and the blockchain tech.. So why not have them in here too?! Just my 2cents

@xeroc What does blockchain technology actually mean?

@nick-odell the blockchain tech is a technology to achieve a decentralized and consistent database in an untrusted environment. You can see it as a way to replicate a database over the internet such that every participant has the exact same copy of the database and does not need to trust anything else than just the protocol/software. No human (3rd-party) involved in the trust process.

@xeroc To pick some edge cases, would Bittorrent or Ripple fall under that umbrella?

@Nick-odell Bittorrent definitely not. As for ripple, the consensus algorithm seems to not built ontop of a blockchain (https://ripple.com/consensus-whitepaper/) .. They have a distributed ledger and could store the transaction history (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8112/is-ripples-trade-history-recorded) .. disclaimer: I am not really into ripple.

The key breakthrough with blockchain technology is the ability to trusted perform transactions between untrusted parties.  This is similar to how public key cryptography allowed trusted communications over untrusted channels.

And arguments over how to classify a technology are pretty trivial, it's not like StackExchange has suffered because the definition of a programming language is fuzzy.

I'd like to suggest the title be changed to "Should Bitcoin.SE be renamed to "cryptocurrencies.SE?", which would much better encapsulate the main point of this discussion.

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. I don't entirely disagree with Murch, but there are a couple of points I'd like to address.
Why don't we have more [altcoin] questions?

Critical mass. All of the [altcoin] users are over on [altcoin]talk, so they're more likely to get an answer. Of course, they're also more likely to get inane rambling. :)
A perception that they're not welcome. It's not true, but I can definitely see why a new user might not see it that way.

The site name.
The front page. Most of the front page items are about Bitcoin.
Altcoins are treated with a mixture of hostility and derision in the cryptocurrency community. This is less true on StackExchange, but there are still some incidents.
A few days ago, a new user posted a question about an altcoin, and another user came in and commented that it was a scam. That might or might not have been true, but it was irrelevant. So, I removed the comment.
If you see derails like this, don't engage. Flag it for moderators to deal with.

How can I, an ordinary user, encourage more [altcoin] posts?
Create content about [altcoin]

Write questions about [altcoin], and optionally write answers.
Find other [altcoin] communities on the net.
Post links to your questions.
(Optional) Laugh maniacally and collect badges as you steal their users.

I do this a bunch with r/Bitcoin: http://www.reddit.com/domain/bitcoin.stackexchange.com/
Promote [altcoin] to other users of Bitcoin.SE
In chat, please :)
You mentioned that Murch not understanding BitShares as being part of the problem. But why should Murch know about BitShares? Is it technically interesting? Will it solve one of his problems? If one of these two things is true about [altcoin], then you should tell other users on the site about it. If more people learn about it, more people will know enough about it to answer questions about it.
Personally, I'm interested in the Storj project. So, if you want me to spend time learning about your altcoin of choice instead of Storj, you need to convince me that it's more interesting or useful.

from Indolering
Officially allowing questions related to other currencies while discriminating against them prevents future SE sites from building their own communities.

Not... really. The thing preventing them from starting their own SE sites is the fact that they have even smaller userbases than Bitcoin.

from Indolering
I think that this SE site should be about all cryptocurrencies,

Well, it is. Are questions about other crypto-currencies on-topic?

from Murch
Also, I would assume that the people informing themselves about Namecoin/Zerocoin/etc. are already much more engaged with crypto-currencies, in turn causing a much smaller number of (basic) questions to come up. There are a lot of redundant and basic questions concerned with Bitcoin here, which just don't translate to coins with a more expert following.

Personally, I would prefer those more expert questions. So, that may not be the direction that this SE is going right now, but it's a direction that I'd like to see it move in.

from Indolering
I think we should update the name and URL (perhaps Cryptocurrency and cryptos.stackexchange.com)

Yuck. Way too similar to crypto.stackexchange.com

and update the FAQ.

Absolutely.

I'm not saying that Murch should learn more about BitShares, I'm pointing out that admins who are mostly interested in Bitcoin wouldn't care as much about a bias against other currencies.  Both of you have essentially argued that fixing the fine print is good enough.  However, changing the name to Cryptocurrency.SE would remove a major source of this systematic bias while still serving the Bitcoin community.

I also updated the question to address some of your points.

@Indolering: I agree that the name change would reduce the systematic bias.  I remain unconvinced that this necessarily translates to a net positive effect on the site as it may also reduce Bitcoin traffic, which currently should present the main source of traffic. Also,  the term cryptocurrency might be less attractive to new users than Bitcoin, as 'crypto' sounds inherently difficult. On the other hand, this might not be a bad thing if we want to revitalize a more expert community.

While I would like more questions about other crypto-currencies to find their way here, I don't think your premise is fair. The alternative crypto-currencies with the biggest following are those which you previously derided as "pump-n-dump sideshows" such as litecoin et al. Naturally, due to their similarity with Bitcoin a lot of their questions overlap with questions about Bitcoin, yet still litecoin is the twelfth biggest tag on Bitcoin.SE. namecoin by the way, is the third biggest currency-tag, after litecoin and ripple ranked 61 among all tags with 72 questions.
The other topics that you would like to see more questions on, such as zerocoin, ethereum, and bitshares are all even less prevalent. Zerocoin is a truly academic experiment, Ethereum hasn't been properly released yet, and honestly, I don't even exactly know what Bitshares is.
I'm not sure whether the number of questions we are seeing about the cited topics are not just representative of the much smaller communities and business interest they have: On Reddit (in lack of a better gauge of community size) Bitcoin has 163k users, Dogecoin 90k, Litecoin 25.6k, Namecoin has 2.4k, Zerocoin has 1.4k, and Bitshares has 846.
There are a number of secondary Bitcoin subreddits of note: /r/BitcoinMarkets has almost 20k, /r/Jobs4Bitcoin has 8k reddit users, even /r/GirlsGoneBitcoin has 6.8k. Bitcoin is just magnitudes bigger than most other crypto-currencies.
Also, I would assume that the people informing themselves about Namecoin/Zerocoin/etc. are already much more engaged with crypto-currencies, in turn causing a much smaller number of (basic) questions to come up. There are a lot of redundant and basic questions concerned with Bitcoin here, which just don't translate to coins with a more expert following.
I have the feeling, that we are comparing watermelons and currants here.

"Since we can't get any traction here, Namecoin (which is specially
  cited in the FAQ) is considering switching to Vanilla forums so that
  we can offer a Q/A system."

Are you sure that it isn't for lack of trying?
You decry Namecoin not being visible enough here, but have only answered one single question tagged with namecoin here. Further, when I opened What can we do to better support questions about other cryptocurrencies? in direct response to your last post, you didn't even bother to respond.
If you want Namecoin to be a bigger topic here, perhaps you should actually invest some effort. E.g. send people to ask their questions here, and provide the answer here. You can easily get notified about questions tagged with namecoin by subscribing to the tag.
As a Namecoin developer you are  ideally suited to seed this SE with frequent, important, and good questions about Namecoin, by posting and answering them both.
Stackexchange is highly visible on Google, and if you want more people to flock here for Namecoin, having more Namecoin content here will do the trick. Additionally, you can post Namecoin questions here back to other communities in order to get people to answer them.

As to renaming this SE. – It started out as Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency, and was changed to just Bitcoin last minute before the private beta. The renaming has been proposed several times since, but so far there has not been sufficient interest in it for SE-staff to take notice. To be honest, I'd like Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies, but I don't think dropping Bitcoin from the name completely would make sense. It is by far the dominant topic, and therefore it makes sense to have it represent this SE.
I have created the topic Updating and Improving our Tour/About site to discuss specific changes to the tour. Please provide feedback to the posted suggestions.
If you have specific ideas for changes in the FAQ, please create a similar post aimed at the FAQ.

I think that this SE site should be about all cryptocurrencies, you wouldn't make the argument that the original SE should have been named after Java just because it tops the TIOBE index or the based on the activity different mailing lists.  I think that your non-understanding of BitShares is an example of the implicit bias driving the current policy.  The dominance of Bitcoin only makes sense if you are primarily interested in Bitcoin.

That is a poor comparison, because Java is one of several similarly prevalent programming languages, while Bitcoin is a dominant market leader. Try a few googlefights on that, the difference in number of hits is on the range of factor 30-200. Besides, we have tags and questions about dozens of other cryptocurrencies, which makes your comment here just a reiteration of your OP.

For the moment this is true but it won't be so crazy dominant in the long run.  What technology has ever kept up near total dominance in the long run?  You might be able to name a few, but from web browsers to web servers to operating systems and databases, total dominance in a field is the exception.  BitShares and Ethereum are proof that there is a future for other currencies.

I also updated the question to address some of your points.

@Indolering: Counting systems, Languages, Money, Governments, Writing systems, Telephone network, Telefax, audio casettes, Compact Discs, E-Mail, Facebook, generally everything that strongly benefits from network effects? Especially communication and data transfer technology. It is my perception that Cryptocurrencies are much more like the aforementioned than any of the examples you made. Web browsers are application layer, more comparable to wallet software than cryptos. I'm a Linux user myself, but Windows has a 90% market share, followed by 6% Macs.

Databases have to serve a specific user pattern, and perhaps at some point need to be transfered to a succeeding system. They are not reliant on being interchangeable to all other systems. Almost 60% of websites are served from Apache servers. – Ethereum and BitShares might technically work, but have next to nil market penetration. In what way are they "proof that there is future for other currencies"? I do not find your argument convincing. There will be other uses for blockchain technology, but the network effect will cause each niche to have a small number of competitors in the long run.

It's like Intelligent Design demanding a "fair share of time" in Biology classes next to Evolution. WTF?
Respect needs to be earned. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proofs.
If developers wish to not work together with the Bitcoin community in building a better system but think they are smarter than them and can do better, then by all means they can try. But simply making a claim and a tweaked fork does not deserve any respect or automatic help from the SE community in getting it pumped. Especially after all the evidence of 99% turning out to be scams or just detractors of capital and effort (best case) there's no need to waste any time on them before they actually have something to show for.
I'm completely against any altcoin noise in this SE. They can create their own.

I'd compare it to Emacs vs. vi. Two very similar systems, solving two similar problems. Yet, each has a few frothy-mouthed supporters that insist that their system is the One True Way, and any other way is Blasphemy. I'd prefer that questions about each system be able to peacefully coexist on the site, without proving that they deserve respect. They can create their own. They can't. StackExchange policy prohibits making a more specific version of an already-existing site. The one exception to this is AskUbuntu, which was grandfathered in.

That's too easy. Emacs and vi are not blatant forks of each with literally no improvement. Second a blockchain needs security to be useful. Fragmentation of intellect and effort and money can be bad, but fragmentation of blockchain security is just ridiculous.


text:
Updating and Improving our Tour/About site
We haven't updated our about page, the Tour, in a long time. I'd like to use this opportunity to clarify the inclusion of other cryptocurrencies on our Site. Please discuss and contribute specific suggestions for improvements you would like to see made.

Why is this tagged faq?

I thought I would make the topic about both tour and faq, but then later changed my mind and forgot to remove the faq tag.

In response to Are we willing to embrace other cryptocurrencies? and previous similar topics, I would like to propose the following changes to our Tour:

Current:

Bitcoin is a question and answer site for Bitcoin and crypto-currency enthusiasts. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about Bitcoin.

Proposed:

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies is a question and answer site for crypto-currency enthusiasts. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about Cryptocurrencies such as e.g. Bitcoin, Namecoin, Litecoin, Ripple, Zerocoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, and NXT.

Current:

Ask about...

Specific issues with Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies
Real problems or questions that you’ve encountered

Proposed:

Ask about...

Specific issues with using cryptocurrencies
Algorithms and concepts specific to cryptocurrencies
Any cryptocurrency's sourcecode
Problems with developing applications specific to the cryptocurrency domain
Specific issues with developing new cryptocurrencies
Research into cryptocurrencies

Current:

Don't ask about...

Anything not directly related to bitcoin
Questions that are primarily opinion-based
Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer

Proposed:

Don't ask about...

Anything not directly related to cryptocurrencies
Questions that are primarily opinion-based
Questions that require answers which outdate quickly
Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer

This is an initial effort, I'm looking for feedback!

I didn't realize that the FAQ didn't reflect the current policy. These seem like good changes. ACK

I'll wait a little longer for people to comment. @NickODell: What do you think about the list of examples for Cryptocurrencies. Any to add or drop?

What about other distributed systems that aren't primarily cryptocurrencies, but do involve them? Would a question about OpenBaazar or Storj be on-topic?

Well, if they clearly are based on cryptocurrency, sure why not? If they could function with any other type of payment system, probably not the greatest fit.

ACK the proposed changes.

Pushed the new text to the Tour page.

"Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies" seems to suggest that Bitcoin isn't covered by the "Cryptocurrency" umbrella. Why not just "Cryptocurrency"? Seems short, sweet, and to the point.

@StephenM347 The site is still titled 'Bitcoin' (we can't change that without staff intervention). I thought that suddenly switching to a completely different title in the next paragraph might be confusing.

@StephenM347 We could phrase it as Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies but that seems a little awkward.

As I said in the discussion you linked to, I think we should either change the name to the Cryptocurrency SE site or alter the rules to focus on Bitcoin and it's sidechains.
The most popular spelling is cryptocurrency, without a hyphen.
If we change the name to remove Bitcoin, we don't have to try an over compensate elsewhere.  I would suggest the following:

Cryptocurrencies is a question and answer site for cryptocurrency enthusiasts. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Good point on the spelling, I changed it. In case you aren't aware: We users can change the content of the site, but not its name. If we want to change the name, we have to get convince the SE staff.
Let's assume that changing the name to cryptocurrencies is not going to happen. Would you rather have a SE that solely focusses on Bitcoin, and no SE for other Cryptos, or make some improvements on Bitcoin.SE so that it is more inclusive to other cryptos? Itˈs not realistic to expect another cryptos SE to take off, which is why I choose to spend my limited time on the second option.

I'd like to propose adding "Investment advice" to the "Do not ask about" section.
Proposed addendum:

Do not ask about…

[…]
Whether, when, or which cryptocurrencies to invest in.

I agree with the idea, (those questions are usually opinion-generating nonsense) but this is probably controversial enough that it ought to be discussed in a separate question.

@NickODell Well, wouldn't be asking e.g. "should I trade my dogecoin for Bitcoin now?", "Should I buy an ASIC?" generally off-topic already due to time-sensitivity. Or are there maybe some questions that would be on-topic that I am not thinking off right now?

Ah, I thought you were talking about "Is X a scam?" type questions. Ok, that seems fine.

What do you think about this: Don't ask about … "Advice what cryptocurrencies to invest in. We can't predict the future."

I've added the line to the "do not ask about".


text:
Attention needed on comment of old question
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, so excuse me in advance!
How can I draw attention to my related question/comment on an old question asked by someone else? Can I simply flag it to draw moderaters attention?
Thanks!

Meta is the place to ask for help with using the main page, or for discussing ideas for the site. So, don't worry, your question here is just right. :)

I'm not exactly sure what you are getting at with your question, but if you post a comment on a question, the author will be notified. If you want to notify someone else, you can write @username, after a few letters a selection box with users will pop up to allow you to select one.
If you post a link to another question in a post or comment, the linked question will show up in the right column in the "Linked" section, just how questions with similar topics show up in the "Related" section.
If there is a problem with the comment, please flag for moderator review.

I'm intending to ask a question as a comment but wasn't sure if I should post it as a separate question or not.

If it is only a request to specify a point already elaborated in the post, add a comment, otherwise ask a new question and include a link to the previous question.

It depends on what kind of attention you're trying to draw. If you're trying to draw moderator attention to it (e.g. because you want it deleted) then you should flag it as "other (needs diamond attention)"
If you're looking for an answer to a related question, you should ask a new question about only the part not covered by the previous question. You can optionally link to the old question for context.
If you have the exact same question, you should add a bounty to the question (a privilege you will get at 75 reputation) to draw attention to the old question.
You can also do some combination of these things (e.g. asking a new question and adding a bounty to the old one.)
Does that answer your question?

I was actually trying to get everyone's attention. Eventually I'm thinking I should post a new question with a link to the related question.


text:
Bootstrap or bootstrap.dat
It seems to me that bootstrap and bootstrap.dat are redundant. Should we merge them? If yes, which one do we keep and why?

They do seem to be redundant, I think merging them would be a good idea. I would keep bootstrap.dat, because it has more questions, which implies it is probably the more commonly used term. It also already had a description in place.


text:
Are you interested in us moderators posting about activities on Bitcoin.SE?
Would you think a topic on "meta" where we mods and any other users can post about their administrative activities on Bitcoin.SE. each month would be interesting/engaging for the site's users?

What's happening on Bitcoin.SE in May 2015?
  Answers:

This week I introduced blocksize, to collect questions about the discussion on the increase and related topics, and added it to a bunch of posts.
We merged bootstrap.dat and bootstrap
We reworked the [about] page.

It could be featured and may help get more users interested in the moderation of the site.


text:
Tags "price" and "exchange-rate" appear to be synonymous
The tags price and exchange-rate appear to be synonymous. We should merge them. Which one should we keep as the master of the synonym pair?

As noted in chat, I think exchange-rate is a slightly more descriptive term. Price could be talking about the price of an item in BTC.

I've merged price into exchange-rate.


text:
What's happening on Bitcoin.SE in 2015?
What's moderation actions have been taken on Bitcoin.SE in 2015?

December 24th

Burninated start.

December 22nd

Updated Canonical question for "Unconfirmed transactions": Why is my transaction not getting confirmed and what can I do about it?

November 11th
Sorry, I forgot to post intermittenly.

Added tags for cloud-mining, cex.io, ghash.io.
Created Canonical question for "Getting started with mining questions":
In the ASIC-age, is it worth starting mining Bitcoin at home?

September 8th

Got in touch with Ethereum proposal, to point out that Ethereum questions are on-topic on Bitcoin.SE.

August 20th

Slightly improved I didn't receive a Bitcoin Payment. What does it mean when the Client is synchronizing? to provide a Canonical Question for the common issue of "My payment didn't arrive, because I'm still synchronizing.".
Slightly improved What can I do when the blockchain synchronization is stuck at a specific block?, edited and linked a bunch of closely related questions to it.
Ended up looking over most of the questions tagged with synchronization, editing a bunch of them and closing a lot of duplicates.
Started a list of canonical questions.

July 28th

I've just added a small section to the help section of Bitcoin.SE titled "New to Bitcoin?" with some pointers to resources and introductory concepts.
Feedback concerning action and selection of links welcome!

July 21st

Created bequesting-bitcoin to collect questions about leaving cryptocurrency assets to your bereaved.

June 25th

Merged and synonymized block-solution-time into block-interval. Added the tag to a bunch of questions that didn't have it yet, but clearly should.

June 21st

Merged and synonymized bitcoin-qt into bitcoin-core.

June 17th

Added loans to collect questions about lending, borrowing, and loans denominated in Bitcoin.

June 9th

Added majority-attack to collect questions about 51%-attacks. Started tagging the respective questions with the tag (up to now 33). Sorry for the flood on the mainpage.

June 2nd

Merged target into difficulty.

Reasoning: target And difficulty had been collecting the same topic of questions

improved the wiki excerpt for difficulty.
Merged payments into payment.


text:
Updated an answered question with a fix suggested in answer
I'm not sure if to start a bounty or to start a new question in this case:
I asked a question about building a tinily modified bitcoin source code and got a plausible answer and updated my question. Should I start a new question referring to the old one or just offer bounties for an updated answer?

Unfortunately, the Stackexchange format doesn't lend itself to evolving a topic in one post. So, if your update to the question changes it so much that answers already given would become obsolete by being wrong, off-topic, or severely incomplete you should rather ask a new question instead.
In this case, I think it could work out, but perhaps you should write a comment mentioning the author of the answer, so he'll get notified and has a chance to update his answer as well.


text:
Flag on own comment
Can I somehow attract mod's attention to my own comment on an answer for validity? I'm not sure if my comment is complete or not.
Example: Where is coinbase transaction after a hacker successfully performs >50% attack?

My usual procedure would be to only tackle topics that I feel reasonably sure about. However, it is acceptable to take a question as a point to start your own research in order to answer it. A lot of questions can be answered to the asker's satisfaction when one has a bit of background knowledge and knows where to find the remaining bits and pieces.
Also, if the question is of any interest, somebody else will also read it, or there will be additional answers to create a more comprehensive picture. Gross mistakes are the easiest to get corrected that way, they are usually pointed out quickly. Harder are half-truths and vagueness, but those can be corrected by further queries from the asker or other interested parties, as well as additional answers improving on that points.
Please do not produce content and then flag it for "moderator attention" in order to get it proofread, if everyone were to do that we'd have our own scalability challenge. ;)
However, feel free to request help in chat to improve your question.


text:
What should our policy about asking for practical advice on breaking security be?
This recent question asks how to fix a tool for scanning for duplicate R values. There are two major purposes for a tool like this:

Researching how common a security vulnerability is, and
Exploiting that vulnerability to steal money.

Based on the context, it does seem like the latter is more likely. However the response to him seems needlessly hostile. Ideally, we'd just point to a policy on meta, close the question, and suggest that they make a new post on meta if they feel that the closing was unwarranted.
I do think we should have a rule against questions like this. In the interest of having an explicit rule, though, I have two questions:

Should we favor an intent based test? This has the advantage of being simpler, but is pretty subjective. (For example, I think the asker here wouldn't have been questioned about the purpose of the code if they wrote fluent English.)
Should we have a rule against posting code that exploits or scans for a vulnerability?

Related: meta.security: What determines if a question should be considered Blackhat?
Close reason
When closing a question because of this, you can use this close reason:

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it asks how to exploit a real-world system, and fails the three part test talked about [here](https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/a/685). (completeness, potential for evil, potential for good)

This recent question asks how to fix a tool for scanning for duplicate R values. My issue there was the simplicity of solving the issue; it was the BCI API not returning large UTXO counts in full. Given the same user solely posted about duplicate r values, I'm inclined to lean towards a stern but fair stance on posts from newb black hats who also show no interest in what SE is all about

@WizardOfOzzie It is a low-effort question that should probably be downvoted. But since we're trying to come up with a policy to apply to all potential blackhat posts, not just low effort ones, I don't think we should consider that.

(Sorry, this came out way longer than I intended....)
I for one am against any form of a complete ban. Instead, I'd prefer a policy based on several subjective factors (which can evolve as necessary).
Of course, this unfortunately means that errors in judgement can (and will) be made, but I find the complete-ban option too censorious an alternative.
If I were to start a list of such factors, I'd include:

completeness - does the question ask for a turn-key solution to do harm, or a single piece of a potential harm-puzzle
potential to do harm - what is the likelihood that a good answer could result in actual loss, whether executed by the questioner or by any other visitor of this site (noting that vulnerabilities which have already been well explored and exploited by black-hats aren't effective targets for newbie black-hats)
potential to do good for research or education (I have no trouble pointing out Electrum's weak key stretching if it encourages Electrum users to use longer passwords)

After consideration, I'm not sure I'd include "intent" in this list. We can't possibly know the intent of all of the other visitors to any given answer, so I'm not sure why the intent of one particular viewer of the answer should be given a high weight.
As an alternative argument, if the question were "should a user's inferred intent affect punitive actions against the user", I'd say Yes. But I think the question here is "is this question and any associated answers good for Bitcoin.SE", and I think the questioner's intent should be irrelevant.
If I were to apply these three factors to the question at hand, I'd personally find that:

completeness - the question doesn't ask for a script that actually sweeps vulnerable keys, but it comes close... this one's very gray IMO
potential to do harm - pretty low; I'm fairly confident that real-time scanning and sweeping of vulnerable keys is already done by black-hats, and possibly by white-hats as well, so I doubt such a script would be of any further harm
potential to do good - also pretty low, although it might be interesting to see some statistics on vulnerable keys

I probably wouldn't vote to close this particular question based on the above, but it's close enough that I'd have no trouble with someone who thought otherwise.
(Note that it's still a poorly-formatted question with a very uninteresting answer, and I'd certainly consider down-voting it.)

That three part test is a good idea. I think we should apply it from now on.

That is reasonable.


text:
Questions motivating users to do malicious changes to source code
I'm working on changing the Bitcoin Source Code in order to rebuild a selfish node. Do you think asking detailed questions on Bitcoin.SE beta is a tolerable idea? I think maybe this could motivate some people to do the same for "bad" purposes.
What do you think?

In my opinion, if you're not exploiting any weaknesses that are unknown to Core Developers, questions on modifying the standard client for research purposes are perfectly fine. Bitcoin is secure and battle tested, and it only became battle tested by researchers like yourself trying to see how the protocol can be gamed. We need this kind of experimentation to make sure Bitcoin is safe.
If you are researching a type of selfish node that has not been publicly studied, however, then it may be better to consult a few Core Developers to see if anything can be done before making code to exploit a weakness available.

I'm just in testing phase and by testing my first selfish build i noticed that by adding a single break command you could keep blocks private as an connected node but would public those hidden blocks in a certain scenario...so i wasn't sure if giving detailed information on code would make life easier for someone who has the skills but not the time to go through code and find that special place to put his break command!? But I guess as Murch mentions in his answer anyone really aiming to harm will somehow manage even without hints from questions on SE, right?

Since you are doing research for your thesis, which is a commendable purpose, questions along that lines should be fine. I suggest you put an explanation in your posts and/or profile, that you are asking about selfish nodes for your research.
If somebody were truly interested in building a selfish node, I assume that they would be able to do so as well, on the other hand, those that wouldn't have the skills or funds to develop one, seem unlikely to have the hash power to make use of it.
I don't see a problem.


text:
A reminder about plagarism
Spambots are becoming more sophisticated. Recently, we've had a rash of them on Bitcoin SE which programmatically write answers. They copy text from a related article, and post it here.
This creates a bunch of problems. Aside from raising the rep of the spambot, this violates the copyright of the copied site. Also, the answers are terrible, often offtopic, and not checked for any errors.
I'd like to give two reminders:
Please flag plagiarized posts
If you see a slightly odd answer, which doesn't seem entirely on-point, copy two sentences from the body of it, wrap it in quote marks, and Google it.
If hits come up from elsewhere on the web, flag it! Flag as "in need of moderator attention," with the reason "copied from http://example.com"
We don't want to give these 'bots a foothold.
Don't post something copied from another site without giving a source
See also: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/help/referencing
We're going to delete it on the spot, rather than warning you as we've done in the past.
The storm has passed; we're back to warning.

Why are the bots doing this?

@WizardOfOzzie Our spam algorithm takes rep into account a lot. More rep and more positively-voted answers = less chance of being filtered.


text:
Tag for "time between blocks": Block-Interval or Block-Solution-Time?
We seem to have several tags that collect questions on the same topic (and a lot of the questions about it aren't properly tagged at all).
The questions concerned with the time between blocks seem to be tagged inconsistently with the tags block-interval, block-solution-time, speed, difficulty, and confirmations.
difficulty and confirmations have a different focus for me, speed is completely unfocussed and should be removed altogether.
Which one should we use then: block-interval, block-solution-time or something else entirely?

difficulty and confirmations have a different focus for me, speed is completely unfocussed and should be removed altogether.

I agree.

Which one should we use then: block-interval, block-solution-time or something else entirely?

block-interval. block-solution-time implies that we can predict how long an individual block will take to solve, which isn't true.

I liked the argument, so I went right ahead and merged [tag:block-solution-time] into [tag:block-interval].


text:
We should change the 'review request' close reason to include products
The question that inspired this: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/38871/i-want-to-make-investment-in-btc-mining-machine
It's being closed for this reason:

Questions seeking service reviews are off-topic because they tend to attract subjective, low-quality, and spam answers. On the other hand, services in the Bitcoin space are still evolving rapidly which often renders answers outdated quickly. For more information see this meta-discussion.

This question shows a common issue with this close reason: it is frequently used for closing product recommendation requests too.
We should change this to read:

Questions seeking product or service reviews are off-topic because they tend to attract subjective, low-quality, and spam answers. On the other hand, offerings in the Bitcoin space are still evolving rapidly which often renders answers outdated quickly. For more information see this meta-discussion.

(Changes: 'service reviews' -> 'product or service reviews' and 'services' -> 'offerings')
Thoughts?

Looks good to me.

Okay, it's done.


text:
How to deal with question posts containing several different questions?
Especially from new users, we often get questions which are actually several questions in one post.
What is the best way to deal with them?

Previous discussion about this: http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/426/should-we-split-up-posts-that-ask-many-questions-at-once

These questions don't work well with our format: They break the "duplicate" process, and especially cause problems when they get great partial answers.
Please DON'T ANSWER all questions in one answer post. You will be duplicating work, and produce content that will be useful to very few people. Most likely your post will be deleted and your effort wasted. Also, it will be hard to move great answers to related questions.
If you still want to help the asker, there are different strategies to deal with these questions:

Salvage interesting bits.
If there is a new, interesting question in the post, edit the question to narrow it to this question (and optionally post an answer). Advise the asker to create new posts for any remaining unanswered questions, or even consider posting remaining questions as your own and link them in a comment on the primary.
Close as duplicate
If the whole post is a composite of duplicates, close it as a duplicate of one of them. Consider posting references to other relevant questions.
Vote to close as "low quality", "too broad" or "unclear what you're asking".
If there is nothing worth keeping about the question, downvote and vote to close with the best fitting of the above reasons. Please consider advising the user how to improve their post.

That sounds good.


text:
Collection of Canonical answers (Token Questions/Lightning Rod questions)
There are some basic questions that get asked and answered again and again. Over the past year, I've gone through a bunch of tags to collect and close as duplicate many of those towards Canonical Question/Answer pairs. I'd like to collect these here, in order to have a handy list of questions to use as a "duplicate master". Also, these questions should be scrutinized over frequently, in order to update their content to maintain their quality and relevance.
Please help to maintain this list of Canonical Questions and Answers!

Obviously, most of these will eventually be featured in the frequent questions, which collects questions that get linked a lot. However, until they get listed there, this collection might help provide help finding the best "duplicate master". Also, some of this could use better canonical answers, I'll be putting up some bounties, where the need is especially obvious.

Send payment to unsynced Bitcoin Core:
I didn't receive a Bitcoin Payment. What does it mean when the Client is synchronizing?
Sync stuck at block X:
What can I do when the blockchain synchronization is stuck at a specific block?
How can I access bitcoins when my client is still synchronizing?
Cannot access my bitcoins because my wallet is still synchronising. What can I do to retrieve them?
Request for general advice how to buy bitcoins:
How do you obtain bitcoins?
"I have a bunch of noob questions":
I am new to Bitcoin, how can I get started?
Zero-fee transaction not getting confirmed:
Why is my transaction not getting confirmed and what can I do about it?
Unconfirmed transaction sent from Blockchain.info:
How to unstuck a low-fee transaction with blockchain.info?
Unconfirmed transaction sent from Electrum:
How to unstuck a low-fee transaction with Electrum?
Buying Bitcoins with PayPal:
How can I buy Bitcoin via a Credit Card or Paypal?
Getting started with mining at home:
In the ASIC-age, is it worth starting mining Bitcoin at home?
Recovering BTC sent to a BCC address:
What would happen if you send Bitcoin (BTC) to a Bitcoin Cash (BCC) address?
Selling bitcoins: How can I sell bitcoins and transfer the funds to my bank account?
Why is there no such thing as a redirected, forged, or fake transaction?
Attacker created wallet for victim: Someone else created a wallet for me to use. Is this a scam?
User returning to bitcoin years later: I have lost my wallet, what can I do?
Advance fee scam: Is it normal to be asked for an advance fee on a withdrawal?
Recipient denies confirmed tx: Recipient has “not received” the Bitcoin I sent, but the transaction is confirmed
How does block synchronization work in Bitcoin Core today

This is a work in progress, additional links are welcome!

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


text:
Looking for canonical answer along the lines of "Bitcoin mining is ASIC only at this point"
For the list of canonical questions I started yesterday, I am looking for a good (or the best) answer that could be a duplicate master for "Is it worth mining with Home PC/Laptop/Tablet/[anything not an ASIC]?".
Does anyone have a good suggestion?

The title says you're looking for a question, but your question says your looking "for a good answer". Are you looking for both?

@StephenM347: Well, I'd like the question to be sufficiently related to the topic and the answer exhaustively covering the topic. So, I guess I'm looking for a question/answer pair.

okay. I think an answer comparing the rough power efficiencies for different sets of hardware would be a good answer here, showing just how many orders of magnitude more efficient ASICs are than regular computers. This thread and the image on the thread may serve as a good starting point.

A comparison of efficiency would certainly be nice. I've read that KnCMiner has announced their 3D 16nm ASICs reaching 0.07W/GH per s. I don't think we have an answer here along the lines yet, though.

// , Such a sad subject.

I created my own answer and would appreciate suggestions what I could still improve:
In the ASIC-age, is it even worth starting casual mining at home?


text:
Let's merge 'blockchain-wallet-app' into 'blockchain.info'
We have a tag called blockchain-wallet-app. It deals with substantially the same issues as the blockchain.info, and is used interchangeably.
Examples:

I have Blockchain.info wallet which i can't find
how to do address callbacks?

We should also remove it from questions in some cases:

How does the network apply credit for created blocks?

I would think the blockchain-wallet-app would apply to a subset of all blockchain.info questions. There isn't currently a blockchain.info API tag, so maybe we could make one.

@StephenM347 Yeah, it seems like most people who want to ask about blockchain.info's API just combine the blockchain.info and API tags. :/


text:
FYI: Ethereum.SE proposal on the way on Area 51
For those of you interested in Ethereum, there is a proposal for an Ethereum.SE in the commitment phase.
Also check out our questions tagged ethereum.

Update: The Ethereum proposal has reached 100% commitment, and will be starting into beta soon.
Moar Update: Private Beta has commenced.


text:
How can we clearly say what is or is not a question?
I think we can all agree that just adding a question mark to the end of this (and the post it refers to) does not make it a question:
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/40424/shameless-moderators-deleted-my-question-truth-cannot-be-hidden-forever-you-ha?noredirect=1#comment46465_40424
The tour does not have much in there explicit enough about what is or is not a question: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/tour
It seems like it should be basic enough that no one needs to point it out, but...
What clear definition for what is or is not a question (even before deciding whether it's a good question) applies on the bitcoin.stackexchange.com Q&A site?

Could you please refrain from starting each post with "// , "? I fail to see any benefit and find its visual clutter to be disruptive to my reading.

Good questions:

Specify a clear topic that allows other participants to gauge what would constitute an encompassing answer.
Show that the asker has spent some minimal effort to try to find an answer himself.
If controversial statements are made, they are presented in form of arguments with supportive evidence.
Are useful to more than one isolated individual.
Are asked openly to allow for a range of answers. Especially, loaded questions or statements asking for support do not fulfill this.

You can find more information in our help center in the category Asking. Or have a look at the distilled version at How to Ask.
You might also find this article by one of Stackoverflow's founders on the dynamics between questions and answers interesting: Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand.

I think we can all agree that just adding a question mark to the end of this (and the post it refers to) does not make it a question:

It's also possible to have a question that has no question marks:

Asked by $someone
I'm having problems with this code:
code

When I run it on linux, it produces this error. It works on windows,
  and I've tried this and this. I've tried googling this, and I tried this, but that didn't help either.

This never explicitly asks a question, but it has a clear problem, a explanation of what they've tried, and talks about what references they've consulted.
There isn't a hard and fast rule; it's an "I know it when I see it," kind of thing. If we made an explicit rule, there would be so many exceptions and so many loopholes that it would be a huge pain to comply with.
Warning signs:

(on main site) Uses question to complain about how previous questions have been removed.
Asks something vague, then answers own question with a blog post that's linked.
The asker expects a particular answer.


text:
Canonical Question for "What can I do about having sent a transaction without fee that takes forever to confirm?"
This is basically a note to myself or another interested person to find a good question that may serve as a canonical question-answer pair for the above issue. It was just asked yet again, which might be the thousandth time I've seen it asked. ;)
help unconfirmed for a day

Why is my transaction not getting confirmed and what can I do about it?

Probably has the most canonically worded question title, although this is another good option.

I think a good answer could reference either/both of the below question as well:

Do unconfirmed transactions expire?
How do miners select which transactions to include in a block?

Thanks, that one fits perfectly!

I also just found

What happens if my transaction is not accepted because I did not pay fees?

of which I like the answer for being a bit more elaborate. No time right now, to further explore though.