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eponymous
eponymous
11:31
@darkknight This stackexchange realy needs to just ban altcoins.
The amount of garbage, useless to anybody questions about altcoins is unreal.
Half of the revue queue is people trying to make their own altcoin, which is no fun to answer.
 
9 hours later…
chytrik
chytrik
20:15
@eponymous I see some value in creating your own altcoin as a learning experience, but unfortunately its hard to distinguish between those questions, and the users actually trying to create and sell a new altcoin network
chytrik
chytrik
20:46
Just read through a bunch of meta SE posts on the topic, there are some interesting ones from area51 as well. Seems like a good number of user in bitcoin.se would be fine with reducing the scope, but then looking at area51 it seems that many users outside of here disagree with the creation of many cryptocurrency-specific SE sites, and are in favour of creating catch-all multicurrency sites instead.
Personally, I'm happy to follow along with the moderation policy, but I wouldn't mind seeing the scope reduced to just bitcoin and bitcoin-related questions.
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
txproof vx minconf for a block explorer name?
I'm also open to other blockchain related terms with a .com domains available
chytrik
chytrik
21:29
txproof is nice, very pointed
kinda ironic though? Since the 'proof' would come by trusting a third party :p
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
Hmm, perhaps
blockimport also seems to be available
chytrik
chytrik
just a general block explorer? bitcoin?
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
Probably starting with litecoin
But it'll essentially come out to <coin>.name.com
Hmmm
merklepath is also available
That seems better
And less ironic
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
21:54
merklepath.com it is, then
Pieter Wuille
Pieter Wuille
@chytrik I think contributing to an existing, relevant, cryptocurrency is a far more valuable learning experience than trying to create your own (which only teaches you about the 1% of arbitrary things that differ between implementations - genesis block, p2p port, name, ...; and not about the more general concepts).

And I'm sure that there are some questions from people who genuinely want to learn that way, but my perhaps unsubstantiated opinion is that 90% of all those questions are from people who want to create a pump and dump.
@RaghavSood If you call it txproof, make sure it can actually create and verify tx proofs (see the gettxoutproof and verifytxoutproof RPCs in Bitcoin Core)
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
@PieterWuille I actually got txproof and minconf from the rpc docs :D I'm using merklepath.com for now, but I might register txproof for another project
I agree that the majority of "how do I fork litecoin/dash/bitcoin/pivx" questions aren't really adding much value. There's already plenty of tutorials out there on fork your own coin, and most of the help sought here is debugging code issues over "Here's a novel new idea I want to introduce in my fork, but I can't figure out mechanics for XYZ"
I'd be in support of the latter style of questions, but as it stands, I believe off topic is the way to go
As another point, I don't consider stuff like specific features of other coins off topic - zcash stealth address inner workings, ringct explanations (although that should go on Monero.SE now), and some of the recent Ardor/NXT questions)
Unless there is a separate, generic blockchain.SE, I think that major technology features from other non-obviously-a-scam coins have a place here
Pieter Wuille
Pieter Wuille
22:13
Agree, but I'm afraid that making the choice between "interesting technology" and not will inevitable be interpreted as political.
I consider NXT to be snakeoil at best, and a scam at worst, though.
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
I'm not super familiar with NXT, but I think that the choice should be left up to individual voters as opposed to deciding on a blanket, site-wide "Coin A is allowed, coin B is not" policy. If enough people cast off topic votes, then the question is off topic, regardless of the coin
I do think that a blanket policy of "Bitcoin.SE is not the correct place to seek debugging help with forked coins" is good, though
Pieter Wuille
Pieter Wuille
My view is that leaving it up to individuals will leave us unable to keep scams out.
So I'm personally fine with keeping things like ringct in, but I'm not sure it's possible to construct a objective criterion that doesn't leave total nonsense in.
So I think "no altcoins" is a far easier policy.
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
Perhaps limit the on-topic discussion to Bitcoin, blockchain related cryptography, and consensus rules. That would get rid of all the stuff like address encodings and fork debugging and node setup and qr code formats
Pieter Wuille
Pieter Wuille
Yeah, I'd like that.
(To be clear, I'm fine with following whatever policy is decided)
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
I am too, but there does seem to be a need for change with the amount of irrelevant questions recently. I'll try and type up a meta post this weekend
chytrik
chytrik
22:21
@PieterWuille thats a very fair point. I try to remain politically neutral around here, but putting that aside, I'd love to see all the 'help me create a p&d scam' posts removed (which is probably 99% of non-btc questions, whether intentional or not... thus saving us the trouble of considering an author's intention!)
I like your reply on this meta Q, Pieter: https://bitcoin.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/879/what-should-this-sites-name-be-when-we-get-our-new-design
"My preference for focus of this site follows from this: question should be applicable to Bitcoin, but not necessarily about Bitcoin - in the understanding that Bitcoin could evolve to adopt successful technologies that originate elsewhere."
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
I think including cryptography and consensus allows a politically neutral policy without explicitly calling out coins as scams - in my experience (which may be incorrect, I'm not even close to familiar with all coins), the more scammy coins tend to have little novel progress in those aspects
chytrik
chytrik
That tends to be the issue with restricting the scope: the inevitable grey area
Raghav Sood
Raghav Sood
I'm not sure if it's possible to do away with that entirely, though. I'm not aware of any SE site that has succeeded in precisely defining its scope.
Between culture/language/thought process differences, there will always been conflicting opinions of whether something is on or off topic
If we are going to have to deal with that, I'm in favour of dealing with it a little more and including some blockchain-heavy topics as a whole, like the ones above
Bitcoin.SE is a good resource, with a lot of great answers, and I think it would be a shame to drop information that is relevant and interesting to crypto just because it is not being used in Bitcoin specifically
Pieter Wuille
Pieter Wuille
@chytrik Hah, I had forgotten about that answer. Yeah, I think that still captures my opinion well - things should be applicable to Bitcoin, even if they're not currently relevant to it.
chytrik
chytrik
22:50
A thought on the political issues that could arise from narrowing scope to just btc:
- "bitcoin only" is a neutral and straightforward policy to enforce when considering altcoins like NXT, iota, or whatever the flavour-of-the-week is. Users of those alts might be upset, but a logical step would be for them to create their own site instead (whether SE, or some other forum)
- "what is bitcoin" is where contention forms, anyone watching the bitcoin space over the last few years can attest to this. While in some regards I think this is a simple enough Q to answer, it does leave grey area.
(hopefully) I don't see SE ever becoming a battleground for politics because of this: good Qs and As aren't matters of opinion. Maybe its naïve to think politics won't creep in, or that it wouldn't ruffle feathers to make a change to the site's scope

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