Why do you answer questions on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange?

Question

Maybe this will be closed, but I think this is a valuable question even if it does skirt the rules and I think the answers to this question may help others who are asking "why isn't someone answering my question" or "why isn't someone answering my question the way I want them to" or even "why is someone asking such a question" or "how rude of that person to expect such a detailed and elaborate answer! I'm going to troll them!" If it must be closed, I accept, I'm not trying to cause problems. Though I would suggest the general answers to this from the bigger "dogs" on this forum could result in this being a great link to provide to people who ask questions that are out of context on this. Or a link to this question could be used to calm those who respond angrily to valid questions.

There is no "correct" answer to this question and there is no "incorrect" answer to this question and I have no intention of identifying any particular answer as the "correct" one. I'm sure some people will select which answers they "like" and I think that's acceptable, as I may do the same thing, but I would still put forth that no answer is "wrong" (unless it conflicts with the otherwise declared premise of this forum). The purpose of this question is to understand.

The real question is "why do you answer [or try to answer] questions on bitcoin stack exchange?"

I ask this because I find that the questions on this web site are frequently high on the google search list for the answers to questions I, and possibly others, have. The problem is that the average person doesn't understand the answers found on other websites and sometimes here. I usually seek very elaborate step by step instructions but I get that people are resistant to providing such answers as they are not only rather challenging, irritating, and may seem like a "waste" of time (because people think that the level of detail some may seek isn't reasonable, realistic and or otherwise justified in their desires).

"What do you mean you don't understand that? I just said you use the scriptsig from the previous output". Well, not everyone knows exactly what that is and if one other person used it incorrectly or didn't describe it perfectly in a previous question, a reasonable person who is trying to learn it may have misunderstood it. Then they might also mix it up with the scriptpubkey or other some such term as well, either due to a miscommunication in another question or some other minor variation. It happens.

I'm asking this question because I'm trying to understand, is it wrong of me to want elaborately detailed and step by step instructions for my questions? Or is it not wrong of me but is this the wrong forum? Its hard to tell based on people's reactions. Is this forum only for those who do understand those terms and can correlate them all back to each other easily without it being elaborately described several times in the answer to a single other question?

This answer to one of my questions was near perfect in every way, but who wants to go through that much trouble for a stranger and, likely, for more questions for other processes in bitcoin? That was just one small part of the programming and took quite some time. I greatly appreciate what was done, but was my desire for such a detailed and thorough answer unreasonable and or out of place in this forum? Was I rude to ask, expect, seek, and or to pursue such an elaborate and time consuming answer for such a small part of the bitcoin protocol? If I ask for more such elaborate answers to other parts of the bitcoin protocol, am I being even ruder and or even more imposing, or, in particular, within the boundaries of this forum?

This answer to a question is also rather well done, but still lacks some specificity on steps that could help to make it a lot easier for some people, but can you imagine having to do all that was done thus far and then being even more detailed each step of the way? I understand, that is quite the task. Is my preference reasonable within the boundaries of these forums?

I hope this question gives some people the opportunity (particularly those who answer questions) an opportunity to speak out without feeling like they're trolling a particular individual (though I admit some may inadvertently find a way to do so anyhow) but also to help myself and other, possibly labeled "n00bs" to better understand the context of this forum.

Thank you for your responses.

Answer 1

I answer questions, when I'm interested in the topic, feel like I can provide a comprehensive answer in a reasonable amount of time, and the asker has made a reasonable effort to ask a comprehensible, specific question. Answering questions allows me to test and refine my understanding of the topic, provides a community service and is satisfying to me.

I usually don't answer questions:

• wehn the asker doesntn evn spellhceck, or decent grammar
• when the question is so broad that it's impossible for me to tell what facet of the described topic an asker is interested in
• if I can't answer something in at most half an hour (although I sometimes misestimate, or even first research the topic when I'm really interested)

• If an asker wants to do something that requires a lot of technical expertise within Bitcoin, but it's obvious that he has just discovered a topic and not done any research whatsoever yet, but already is requesting all sorts of unrelated details.
  E.g. I want to build my own house, can you please give me detailed instructions on the different steps such as how to pick the stones for the wall, mix grout, and angle the beams for my roof to cope with a middle European amount of precipitation.

• I'm generally put off by questions that are based on elaborate contrived scenarios, or provide a huge wall of text to present the asker's current understanding. If the asker needs to provide multiple paragraphs of text to explain their scenario, often that is a sign that they should first rather do more research or ask a few questions about the background content of their question.

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Addendum: Looking at your questions, it seems that you're very interested in the topic, but were eager to skip a few steps. If you want to get to the bottom of Bitcoin's technical concepts, you'll have to build up the vocabulary to talk about them. As an idea, you may want to consider three-fold:

• Read! We already have several thousand questions on the site. There is a lot to discover and to learn. :)
• When your questions get longer than ten sentences, take a step back and consider whether you can separate parts out of your question to ask separately. This may include statements you're making in your question that you don't confidently understand yet. Hereby, try to ask open questions, instead of making a statement and asking whether you've correctly understood. Smaller scoped open questions will be much easier for potential answerers to tackle. If you're tackling a complex topic, you might need to ask several questions in preparation before getting to the main topic of your interest.
• When you're finding that answers throw up more new questions, consider asking specific follow-up questions to fill in the background instead of piling on comments.

That said, I see that you've been asking smaller and more focussed questions lately, so it seems you've already arrived at similar conclusions.

Answer 2

I enjoy answering the questions on here just because if I can help, I feel good for doing so. Its extremely educational as well, testing your own knowledge when explaining to others. But agree with Murch, I use similar guidelines myself, and I think the fourth point especially relates to your questions. I've noticed that your questions ask for a lot of technical details but then you don't seem to understand them, so I'm not sure what you expect from the "elaborately detailed and step by step instructions for my questions" if they aren't going to be technical. For example, I'm unsure why you would be seeking technical details of transaction signing if you don't yet understand the core concepts of scriptSigs and transaction outputs well.

There is nothing wrong with asking challenging and technical questions, but I would say that its quite important for questions to be straight to the point and specific. It makes our lives as answerers a lot easier to answer questions if they are clear and specific. If you write long paragraphs surrounding the actual question, it can be quite off-putting and difficult to answer, and same goes if you ask broad questions instead of specific ones, such as questions surrounding the entirety of transaction signing rather than specific aspects of it. Same goes for asking followup questions in the comments, its a lot easier for us if you separate them out into separate questions.

Answer 3

The problem you're having lies at the intersection of four different problems: complexity, empathy, length, and teaching.

1. Complexity: In Bitcoin, new concepts build on previous concepts. If each concept requires two previous concepts, then the length of the answer doubles for every additional level of simplification. If I want to say something without using jargon, I need to introduce a bunch of related concepts before I get to the meat of what I'm trying to tell you.

   As an example, try to express "the second scriptPubKey of the transaction" without using the words scriptSig, scriptPubKey, input, or output. It's really hard.

2. Empathy: People who understand a system inside and out tend to assume that others have a similar level of understanding. In other words, they explain something as though they're explaining it to themselves.

3. Length: An answer can be too long. This is both because longer answers are hard to write, and because it's harder to find individual pieces of information. It's hard to link to a piece of information in the middle of an answer. It's hard for Google to point to a piece of information in the middle of an answer.

   You rightly point out that a detailed explanation would be easier for people who don't understand Bitcoin jargon. However, some experienced Bitcoin developers use Bitcoin.SE as a reference, when they've forgotten some detail of how Bitcoin works. ("How is a P2PK output represented again?") A detailed explanation doesn't help them, because they're just looking for one piece of information.

   One good way to reduce the size of an answer is to not describe a step, especially if that step is described elsewhere. (e.g. "Between step 4 and step 5, you must razzle your framastat, but that is out of the scope of this answer.")

4. Teaching: Here's an analogy.

   You're trying to teach someone how to take a square root. They only know how to add together single-digit numbers. You can give them a purely mechanical procedure that tells them every step they need to do to take the square root. However, they won't understand why they're taking the square root, or what the purpose of the individual steps are, or how to sanity-check their result. If you ask them to extend the method to take a cube root, they will have no idea how.

   In a similar sense, there's a completely mechanical set of steps to verify a signature. However, if I tell you that, you won't understand why only some fields are hashed, or how you might modify the procedure for an altcoin.

These are the four reasons why you're getting the answers that you're getting.

P.S: May I suggest the Bitcoin glossary? It's been helpful to me.