Please Support the Monero Stack Exchange!
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/98617/monero
TLDR:
1. Go to the above site (make an account if necessary) and follow using the orange button on top left.
2. Upvote a question you think should be on a Monero stack exchange site
Why start a Stack Exchange?
Monero is tough. Its tough for developers, its tough for users. Its tough for developers because the original code from bytecoin was purposefully undocumented, so when a person wants to work with Monero, they have to figure out how the code works first. This usually involves going to #monero-dev on IRC, but not everyone has time to do that, and sometimes the person with the answer isn't sitting in the chatroom. Hell, the monero community funded someone to go through and document the code - this is the state of things. Developing for Monero is tough.
Its tough for users in two ways - the primary client is command line only, and any current third party solution requires some fiddling. Sure, the GUI may solve this issue. The second way it is tough is its conceptually difficult. Hell, I still don't understand ring signatures or the upcoming ringCT, but I'm not a cryptographer. Will a SE fix this issue? Probably not. But it will create some good answers that may help.
What can a stack exchange do that this forum, our forum, or reddit can't?
It can provide a knowledge base of information that is easily updated, curated, and searchable. The problem with reddit, or this forum, or our forum, is that information gets lost. Unless debruyne is available to serve up one of his bookmarks for a given answer, 9 times out of 10 you won't be able to search through the forums or Reddit to find an answer to a problem. More likely than not, someone had the same question you did, and someone provided an answer. But now that answers is gone. It wasn't added to our knowledge base on getmonero.org, and its lost in a thread.
With a stack exchange, a good question may lead to a good answer, and both the question and the answer get upvoted, and this information is findable in the future. Some random person that feels like tweaking monero a bit to increase its functionality can get all their questions answered without going to the chatrooms, because some people just don't like doing that I guess.
So, please goto the stackexchange, and vote on things that are under 10.
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/98617/monero
TLDR:
1. Go to the above site (make an account if necessary) and follow using the orange button on top left.
2. Upvote a question you think should be on a Monero stack exchange site
Why start a Stack Exchange?
Monero is tough. Its tough for developers, its tough for users. Its tough for developers because the original code from bytecoin was purposefully undocumented, so when a person wants to work with Monero, they have to figure out how the code works first. This usually involves going to #monero-dev on IRC, but not everyone has time to do that, and sometimes the person with the answer isn't sitting in the chatroom. Hell, the monero community funded someone to go through and document the code - this is the state of things. Developing for Monero is tough.
Its tough for users in two ways - the primary client is command line only, and any current third party solution requires some fiddling. Sure, the GUI may solve this issue. The second way it is tough is its conceptually difficult. Hell, I still don't understand ring signatures or the upcoming ringCT, but I'm not a cryptographer. Will a SE fix this issue? Probably not. But it will create some good answers that may help.
What can a stack exchange do that this forum, our forum, or reddit can't?
It can provide a knowledge base of information that is easily updated, curated, and searchable. The problem with reddit, or this forum, or our forum, is that information gets lost. Unless debruyne is available to serve up one of his bookmarks for a given answer, 9 times out of 10 you won't be able to search through the forums or Reddit to find an answer to a problem. More likely than not, someone had the same question you did, and someone provided an answer. But now that answers is gone. It wasn't added to our knowledge base on getmonero.org, and its lost in a thread.
With a stack exchange, a good question may lead to a good answer, and both the question and the answer get upvoted, and this information is findable in the future. Some random person that feels like tweaking monero a bit to increase its functionality can get all their questions answered without going to the chatrooms, because some people just don't like doing that I guess.
So, please goto the stackexchange, and vote on things that are under 10.
Finally joined up; you are definitely right about not being able to find stuff so easily on here or reddit, so hopefully this board gets some momentum... maybe if you guys haven't already, we can start putting the questions and answers from the MAAM threads on reddit there so it can be more easily searchable on the web.
But I couldn't help to lol when I saw "fluffyponyza" asking a good chunk of the questions on there about "who created and launched Monero?" and "who is the company behind Monero, and how was it funded?"... either he's going ahead and asking the questions for the super new users that are just now coming here, or it's a very clever troll.
im pretty sure it is fluffypony. the purpose of the stack exchange at this point is to provide example questions and vote on them.
