Which questions about projects and products on Solana are out-of-scope?

Question

We established that the following kinds questions are acceptable on this forum in this meta post: Is solana.stackexchange.com just about programming with Solana?

• Developing on the Solana program runtime
• Clarification on base layer governance (feature activations, etc)
• Essential/relevant open-source software, including
  • Validator client
  • Rust client SDK
  • Program library by Solana Labs
  • Anchor by Coral
  • Program library by Metaplex
• Essential proprietary tech
  • Google Cloud Bigtable
• End-user experience directly relating to any of the above

I'm worried that our moderation policies are still too open-ended. Should we reject posts that cannot reasonably be answered by users not affiliated with a specific project/company?

Examples of topics that might be a detriment to this site:

• Proprietary/closed-source tech
  • paid security analysis tools
  • custom RPC API methods, etc
• Questions that inherently incite competition and advertisements ("where do I get X the cheapest/the best")
  • Is financial gain (paid product, tokens…) a requirement for a question to be classified as such?
• Questions with no relation to Solana other than that the product uses Solana technology
  • "I sent coins to X and all my money is locked help!!"
  • "How do I level up in this Solana game?"
• Questions about obscure open-source programs on Solana
  • "What is the type layout of HashSet<Scrunge> in FizzBuzzBlobProgram?"
  • How do we fairly judge whether an open-source project is worthy enough of being addressed here. Should we at all judge?
• Questions specific to forks of Solana

Answer 1

Summer 2022 is too soon for precise delineation of what's off-topic.

~ A loose policy for what's on-topic is adequate to the occasion of a beta exchange ~

For all posts, I propose that any further policy development be guided by what we can cite of the record and results from our editorial forum dialogue (here in meta and in the beta). In other words, by how we bootstrap and refine the exchange ourselves. Specifically, the processes by which the community facilitates the evolution of an unclear, incoherent, and poorly researched post into a single useful, focused, and well-researched question.

For now, sub-par posts can be refined into questions, or closed.

For now, sub-par posts may generate useful answers.

The merit of a useful answer, of course, does not render a sub-par post an exemplar question. No matter the case of what may one day be clearly on- or off-topic, for now the forum just needs to breathe.

Community needs time to grow. IMHO, the excitation phase of first rollout in particular ought be unbounded - like the pressure kick when a new drill strikes black liquid gold. I think in a beta exchange the onus is on the fundamentals rather than the boundary limits and exceptions. Certainly the anomalies help define the next revision, as it were, but to get the ball rolling I think driving the on-topic by civil, friendly, and epistemically-grounded exchanges will get us to a place where we can have a meaningful policy discussion.

Lulz - the site's been live 16 days and there's like, what - 30 people in here? ...and we're gonna be liek, ya, plz no can haz tha nyansolana speeks har, kthxbye! No.

Topic relevance can be addressed by first satisfying the conditions for an exemplary Stack Exchange question.

TL:DR

1. Each of the examples you give provide are an opportunity to construct a valuable exchange-style question
2. The general community guidelines are adequate to address anything otherwise untoward

Best.

Answer 2

I've been pretty permissive. Outside the common SE reasons to close, I pretty much only flag ads and things that are "status-update-like" where the question is unlikely to have any future value (eg. "is X down", "what's the best X", "what are examples of X", etc)