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I've recently joined this site due to my growing interest in Bitcoins, as well as to fight the flood of spam that's been coming in.

In the meantime, I've been going through old questions, and came across these four:

I flagged all four as being off-topic for asking for recommendations, and all four were marked as "Helpful", but they all still exist, and have not been closed.

Aren't questions asking for recommendations verboten on Stack Exchange sites? Or does this site have a more lax policy? If so, is that such a good idea?

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    <crickets chirping> So, is this thing on? Any moderators care to comment? Is there even anyone here?
    – user5954
    Jul 24, 2013 at 20:50
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    i said it before but one mod hasnt been a round since jul 19 but has been on stack overflow yesterday. i made a post about it (meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188815/…)
    – user5747
    Jul 25, 2013 at 13:02
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    @BitcoinFan - yeah, it's pretty disappointing that the moderators don't even check the Meta site... general users I could understand, but this? I know moderators are people too, and they have their own personal lives to attend to, but two days and no answers from anyone? Despite Area 51 showing 4000+ visits a day to this site, I'm getting the strong impression that those are all hits from spammers, and there's no one really here.
    – user5954
    Jul 25, 2013 at 21:14
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    i want to find a site thats good and not bitcoin talk and i was happy to find this one, but, i see all the spam and peple that dont seem to care so i thought ill just stick ot bitcointalk. its too bad bc i love stack overflow to ask programing questions.
    – user5747
    Jul 25, 2013 at 21:46
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    @BitcoinFan I've tried to answer this now, hope that it helps.
    – D.H.
    Jul 26, 2013 at 8:53

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Yeah, I agree that questions asking for recommendations are usually off-topic.

In the Bitcoin world though there might just be one or two sites that do what you ask for and in that case I don't see it as asking for recommendations. I remember myself in the early days of the site asking for an online service that lets me sweep a private key. At that time I couldn't find such a site at all, so I'm not looking for people to rate different sites for me, I'm just trying to find any way to solve my problem. That's on topic in my opinion.

Regarding the questions above, I hope that the community can decide what to do without moderator intervention. Feel free to link to this meta question though so that more people join the discussion.

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    I'd say in the strictest letter of the sense, they are recommendations, because they're asking for a list of things. They're also the kinds of questions that can most easily become out of date when new services/sites/applications becomes available. As for letting the community decide, being an ex-moderator (Board and Card Games, which is still in Beta after almost three years), if you let the users do what they want, they won't close a thing. But I appreciate the answer nonetheless.
    – user5954
    Jul 26, 2013 at 14:04
  • Yes, it is a question about how strict we should be. We have tons of questions on this site that can easily become out of date and part of it has to do with the fact that the site is entirely about emerging technology. There is bound to be more such questions here than on e.g. Seasoned advice. I'm sure we haven't quite figured out where to draw the line yet so your input is very welcome.
    – D.H.
    Jul 26, 2013 at 18:54
  • Since unfortunately I don't think that there is a way to mark questions for more frequent review, we'll just have to do our best to update outdated information whenever we come across it. Since there aren't many comprehensive and encompassing resources yet we should not yet exclude information that might outdate. We could however do a better job consolidating duplicates.
    – Murch Mod
    Sep 1, 2013 at 14:44

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