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I have noted over the past few weeks that a large number of questions are very open ended.

The submitter has clearly done little/no research and is simply requesting that someone else builds their product for them.

Without 'naming and shaming', what is the appropriate way to deal with these kinds of question?

Things like "I want to build a product which generate wallets on the server. What do I do?" or "I want my contract to do this, this, and this. How do I do it?"

Answers pointing people in the right direction.. linking to Solidity documentation etc are simply met with "Can you give me an example".

Whilst I am happy to give examples, I feel that people should be putting in at least a little bit of effort. I would much rather help someone who is sincerely interested, and prepared to put the time in.

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  • Perhaps we should encourage MCVE approach as per; stackoverflow.com/help/mcve
    – Lee
    Commented Aug 25, 2017 at 13:15
  • I agree that "How do I do X?" is too broad for a Q&A/StackExchange site. However, in the Ethereum ecosystem, is there a better spot to direct users to? Where should they pose questions like that (if they're really not a developer and need help getting started being one)? I think it would be very discouraging to just say "you can't ask that sort of question here", without any further guidance on how they can make better inroads in the development community.
    – MidnightLightning
    Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 17:32
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    That is reasonable BUT we should not allow people to post questions that break the rules just to then direct them to a different place. Rather, they should read the rules/FAQ first..
    – Thomas Clowes
    Commented Aug 31, 2017 at 10:02

2 Answers 2

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I think this is an obvious application of the "Too Broad" closing reason. It's just that. I mean, even giving a tutorial is beyond the scope of an SE site.

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Sometimes these questions are actually overly-specific, instead of "Too Broad." For example, "here are the specs for my rig, will it work?"

For that case, the best solution I've seen so far is just closing as a custom Off-Topic, explaining that it's too specific.

But as @MidnightLightning said, it is nice to refer them to another option. My location of choice has been /r/ethdev so far.

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