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It's been a short time since I'm here on Ethereum StackExchange, but i have one question about the site.

Personally, I love full detail answers, with a high technical value and explanation, that really talk about the Ethereum Inside structures, or about it's crypto etc.. It's a nice way to learn from others and acquiring new concepts every day.

But the more I look the questions proposed every day, the worst quality and thematically interesting they are (just my point of view).

The thing is that I find lots of people asking about losing transactions, or about how to use their wallets, investment, "my code doesn't compile" (And there's a site specially done for that) and other not even technically questions.

Is it the intention to let the site go on that direction or not? (I'm just asking and leaving my point of view, don't want to offend anyone)

Thanks for sharing your opinions.

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Good question :-) My ideas below.

Different users are here for different reasons (as the other answer said). There is a split between users who are interested in conceptually interesting aspects of the technology, and users who are here to ask about problems they're encountering in their day-to-day work as developers.

The question I would ask is: "Are there enough interesting questions about the underlying concepts to keep the site healthy?" When these questions have been asked once, then they can't be asked again without being flagged as duplicates. Likewise, we can probably duplicate all "missing semi-colon" questions to the same previous question.

So I'd cautiously say that the site needs both the trivial questions about missing semi-colons and interesting conceptual questions to remain healthy and useful to the wider community.

If the questions are asked "badly" - e.g. poor English, or in an unclear format - then the community flags or edits them. If they're really bad and considered no use at all, then they get downvoted. The community gives its opinion of the value of a question by how it takes these actions.

Some specifics from your question.

The thing is that I find lots of people asking about losing transactions,

There are a few good answers that have traditionally been used to duplicate questions about lost transactions. For example: How can I reverse or cancel a transaction or recover lost ethers?

or about how to use their wallets,

These often get closed as "3rd-party software" questions. But I agree, the repeat questions about how to do basic things using Geth/Parity/Mist can add lots of noise to the site.

investment,

Definitely off-topic :-)

"my code doesn't compile" (And there's a site specially done for that)

I think we allow these because the Help Center specifically says that Solidity issues are on topic. If the code is actually Javascript - i.e. front-end code - then it's often okay to tell them to use Stack Overflow, and flag the question for closure.

and other not even technically questions.

Yes, sometimes it's difficult to judge what counts as technical or not. So sometimes good questions get closed, and bad questions get through.


I think in general (in my opinion - I'm happy for others to say otherwise), the definitions of what can and can't be asked as outlined in the Help Center are a good guide, and have worked so far, but often there are grey areas.

(I know I commented on your question about doing a Master's degree, and it is a good question :-) It's just if we start accepting opinion-based questions in general, we're likely to get lots of "what is the best way to implement MyCrappyToken" and "what will the value of Ethereum be in 5 years", etc. )

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  • Nice answer. And make me re-thinkig about it all. Thanks for all of the info posted of Help Center. I'll check it :)
    – CPereez19
    May 30, 2018 at 18:56
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Increasing quality requires people, time, and energy. To increase quality some of the things that can be done are:

  • edit and improve questions
  • flag/close questions that are duplicates or off-topic
  • downvote poor questions (it's free)

When we have more people, our chances increase of having people do those things, have passion doing those things, and have time and energy to do those things. So there is some hope that as our community continues to grow, that our quality will increase.

When we have enough people that like being a guide, so that when a new person posts a question and they are helped in a friendly way and shown how to make the question a quality question, and the site continually gets polished so that questions always look like quality, the next new person might be more careful with their question and keep it quality.

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New here as well. Hate to be diplomatic but I think that this SE, like most others caters to a spectrum of users.

Most people are trying to learn a new language and/or technology and ask questions a new programmer would ask so there is a lot of 'newb speak'.

I think we've all been at that point we have a boring, uninspired, repeatedly previously asked question that just sears through our mind and at least we have this community to exploit for that together haha.

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