Prerequisite readings for users

Question

• I don't understand half the questions of the site. There seems to be a certain level of affluence by the participants of bitcoin.
• Probably the community doesn't want novel, advanced questions to be pushed aside by an influx of ignorant questions by new, ignorant users.

I wanted to get your opinion on including a list of prerequisite readings for new users in help. The community would expect users to know the content of the suggested readings, before they ask a question that is already answered. Secondly, are there any particular answers on bitcoin, that provide links to readings which would make a new user well-versed on the topics of this site?

Answer 1

That's a good point you are making. I didn't realize until now that there are no pointers on introductory information in our help-center. It would be a good idea to create a page for that!

Until we get that done, we have some things already though:

• What are some good resources for understanding Bitcoin? – A collection of introductory resources to get more familiar with Bitcoin.
• I am new to Bitcoin, how can I get started? – A collection of questions that are of interest to new users of Bitcoin.SE.
• The top-voted questions are some of the most frequently discussed. By skimming through them you can easily get more familiar with the topic.
• The frequently asked questions give a similar selection but have a slightly different focus.
• If you want find out more about terminology, there are some questions about that collected under the tag terminology.

In general, we ask the users to see whether they can find the question already on our site, before asking a new question. The site also suggests similar questions when one starts writing up the question. If you don't find the question, just ask away. If it was a duplicate, someone usually will point it out.

However, chances are that most obvious questions have been asked already, as the site has been operating for more than three years now, and collects more than 8000 questions. :)

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I've just added a small section to the help section of Bitcoin.SE titled "New to Bitcoin?" with some pointers to resources and introductory concepts. Feedback concerning action and selection of links welcome!

Answer 2

I'd like to say the best places to start reading about the technicalities of BTC are:

https://bitcoin.it

https://github.com/aantonop/bitcoinbook

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Perhaps a techie personality page would be good too; we may link to postings, musings, and Q&As from notable people in the field

Other than that it is mostly a minefield of weird out there > (http://trilema.com/category/bitcoin/)