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Twice today have I seen questions that I consider related to the trader/trading sphere. Which started me questioning about whether traders/trading questions in general should be considered Off-Topic.

I'm really not sure they are appropriate for this site.

Personnally, I even think they could be redirected to the Finance dedicated StackExchange site: Quantitative Finance https://quant.stackexchange.com/

I have not, but I was hesitating to suggest closing both questions as off-topic here. So I'd like to discuss if my point of view is shared: that traders and trading question are not legitimate subjects and such questions should be closed.

Should we allow such questions ?

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  • Based on the answers and comments such as this one and this one, perhaps you could remove the two example questions from this question and just ask about trading questions in general?
    – Nike Dattani
    May 5, 2021 at 0:10
  • @NikeDattani one of the question has ben totally reworded, so I have removed them from the question as they no longer fit as good examples
    – Stephane Rolland
    May 7, 2021 at 8:29

5 Answers 5

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I feel like a lot of trading type questions are very subjective and would tend to be more applicable to that current moment in time than something useful to someone using this stack exchange site further down the road. I know a lot of opinion based questions were allowed in stackoverflow initially, but then later closed as off topic.

I personally see this site as a place to ask about the development of the protocol. That being about questions regarding security, writing smart contracts, maybe even how to run a pool, etc. Those seems like topics to me that would enable a concrete answer instead of what type of trade someone should make or the technical analysis of the charts.

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  • What about for the two specific questions that Stephane Rolland has listed in their question? Also, beware that restricting what's on-topic so much at this stage, could cause the site to fail, as you can see what's happened with other cryptocurrency SE sites like EOS.IO, Iota, Tezos, Monero, etc.
    – Nike Dattani
    Apr 27, 2021 at 18:31
  • @NikeDattani I have not checked the Area51 data about about others, but Tezos SE does not seem to be failed: It is in beta phase with several metrics to be much improved ;-)
    – Stephane Rolland
    Apr 27, 2021 at 18:37
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    @StephaneRolland All of the ones I listed failed miserably. I would highly recommend being careful not to send people away in the early stages. If you only welcome a very specific group of people (people asking about development of the protocol" as amura is suggesting here, there may just not be enough people or questions for the site to work). On the other hand, you don't want questions from completely clueless people, asking questions that no one wants to answer, so there's a fine line that needs to be straddled. I would welcome the questions until we're more sure about the avg question/day
    – Nike Dattani
    Apr 27, 2021 at 18:41
  • @NikeDattani I agree with you that we need more data points on what types of questions people are going to be asking before setting up what's on/off topic. From being active in stackoverflow many years ago I know a lot of opinion related questions that didn't have concrete answers ended up not being very constructive. I see trading questions failing into that group. However, I think through the beta process you will find out what questions will fall into those categories as stackoverflow is much different than this site and its intended audience.
    – amurra
    Apr 27, 2021 at 18:51
  • @amurra Is your problem with "opinion-based questions" such as this one with 10 upvotes or is it about questions that ask about the ADA currency? This Meta question is about questions that ask about the ADA currency, and the examples given are not as much opinion-based questions (though they could be considered opinion-based depending on how you think about it).
    – Nike Dattani
    Apr 27, 2021 at 18:55
  • @NikeDattani I was referring to the topic of trader/trading questions that's mentioned in the first line of the question. Sure there will be some trading questions that aren't opinion based and informative, but my hypothesis is that most of them will be about trading cardano at this current point in time. I see those questions as being opinion based and probably should be closed. Also there are a lot of questions on SO that have a lot of upvotes that are also closed due to being opinion based. In the end that's why there is a vote to close button that the community will use to decide
    – amurra
    Apr 27, 2021 at 19:16
  • @amurra just to be clear, are you okay with questions about the ADA currency that are not seeking an opinion-based answer?
    – Nike Dattani
    Apr 28, 2021 at 2:08
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    @NikeDattani Yeah since they will most likely contain factual answers that can be referred to over time. Again I'm using what I've learned over at SO, so things might be different here since it's a different community and I'm definitely open to changing my views as well.
    – amurra
    Apr 28, 2021 at 12:14
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In the two cases listed

  1. Value behind ADA - is both opinion and changeable
  2. Why parabolic vs exponential - not ADA specific, no definitive answer

I would push both of the above to Reddit, Discord or Telegram

Suggested key criteria

  1. Question is not Cardano/ADA specific - reject or edit to make it Cardano specific
  2. Answer is temporary or changeable - suggest alternate service (Reddit?) - vote to close
  3. Question and answer are opinion based - suggest Reddit or link to external resources

Off-topic

  • Pricing/Market questions

Grey-areas

  • Comparisons with other block-chains

NOTE: I will edit this based on comments and their support.

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  • My question about why ADA is being described as having a "parabolic SAR" was specific to ADA. The question already contained a link to not only an encyclopedia article explaining what "parabolic SAR" is, but also the original paper from the 1970s where the term was first introduced. Probably everyone here knows what an exponential is. My question was not asking to explain "parabolic vs exponential" in general, it was why is ADA being described as having a parabolic SAR? I'm not saying it needs to be on-topic, but it was indeed ADA-specific. Also see my other comments here: close sparingly
    – Nike Dattani
    Apr 30, 2021 at 16:25
  • Is it only ADA that is suffering from this misuse of the terms or is it a general issue with crypto reporting? The original article did not make that clear. If it is only or mostly ADA that is being misrepresented, then I would consider it on-topic.
    – gRebel
    May 2, 2021 at 1:47
  • I don't know about other cryptocurrencies, I've just seen this term for ADA, but if the answer is that it's being used for all cryptocurrencies, that's a perfectly valid answer to my question and I'd be glad that it was answered here. Where else should I ask it? On the Bitcoin.SE or Etherium.SE? There is not a "general cryptocurrencies" SE.
    – Nike Dattani
    May 2, 2021 at 1:52
  • Also, your comment uses the word "misrepresented" which is not something I assumed in my question: the question was meant to be neutral, so if there's a reason why specifically ADA's growth is being called parabolic (maybe the answer is that it's a "misrepresentation" used in all cryptocurrencies, or maybe it's not and the answer is different).
    – Nike Dattani
    May 2, 2021 at 1:53
  • I agree about close sparingly when we move to public beta. I think we should be a little more aggressive during the private beta because it will help set the quality bar higher than it would otherwise. If the "parabolic" question had shown that it was specifically the case for ADA, but not other coins, then I would agree that it is on-topic.
    – gRebel
    May 2, 2021 at 1:59
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    I need to refresh my screen more often to keep up. I assumed there was a more general crypto stackexchange. Under those circumstances it is not an unreasonable choice to put the question in any of the specific crypto SE sites.
    – gRebel
    May 2, 2021 at 2:04
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I hope not. That will drag the quality of the Q&A site down because of its speculative and flame-war-inducing nature. I would suggest keeping this site for purely technical questions used by operators and developers, however I could understand questions regarding papers etc...

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This is a site about the Cardano platform, not the crypto market. I would not think price/trading questions are relevant for this site.

Market changes and commentary are usually ultra-time sensitive and therefore would be out of date quickly. By contrast the platform itself will be largely static and the questions here will generally serve the Cardano development community.

0

99% of the community at Finance Stack Exchange is not going to know how to answer those two questions which are very specifically about ADA. So I don't think those questions will get an answer there, nor am I sure they would be welcomed there (we can try it if you want).

Now just because a question is not appropriate for one site, doesn't mean it's appropriate here, so it's indeed important to discuss your question.

My answer is that trading questions that are about ADA ought to be on topic here at least for now. Based on my experience as the one who proposed and did most of the initial groundwork for the most recent site to enter Beta (Matter Modeling Stack Exchange): for a site to survive, it's not a great idea to start kicking people out so early. Already I'm surprised with the low turnout of people participating here compared to on Day 1 of MMSE or Day 1 of Drones.SE (which by the way was a bit more keen than MMSE about closing questions that could have been considered on-topic, and they seem to have suffered from it if you compare the stats there to the stats on MMSE).

I'm keen to hear the opinions of others too though!

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    You got me convinced in the fact that the Finance dedicated site is not going to answers those question. There's one trap not to fall into though: that it becomes a site for the windy trading sphere. In my opinion there's a dangerous field not to dig into: Chart Analysis of ADA trading rate. It is one level higher in the "opinion based" stuff.
    – Stephane Rolland
    Apr 27, 2021 at 18:41
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    @StephaneRolland I wouldn't worry about that. I see that the vast majority of your rep is on StackOverflow which gets 1000s of questions/day and needs a strong close-voting community (i.e. SOCVR) but in my experience on several new sites, we will find ourselves struggling to get a decent number of questions. After the hype about Private Beta runs out, months later you might find yourself begging your friends to ask questions to keep the site healthy. I'm already surprised there's not much activity here!
    – Nike Dattani
    Apr 27, 2021 at 18:44

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