The Beginners & Help section needs Help

[LeGaulois]

The Beginners & Help is a section that should be dedicated to Bitcoin only and therefore could have a better place to the Bitcoin board (maybe as a child board under the "Bitcoin Technical Support"?).

Currently, there is nothing clean and a user can't even get if it's supposed to be a section related to Bitcoin (and so Beginners Q & Help related to BTC) or a section for anything else (from VPNs to tokens stuffs, DAOs and "look at me" threads).
Many topics are about the forum uses, so there are people with questions. It's the type of topic that should be posted in Meta.

If it's not convenient for whatever reason, what about moving all topics dedicated to Bitcoin to the Bitcoin board, the beginner and help section becomes related to anything off-topic, or remove anything not related to Bitcoin, the section becomes dedicated to BTC

[jackg]

I was about to make yet another topic on this.

I've made at least one before and no one seems to be doing anything. I asked a question about an altcoin there but it got moved, whereas the noobs who do it get to keep their topics there...

The B&H section to me needs to be split up into three sections:
1. B&H meta (as a sub meta board for forum related trivial questions)
2. Bitcoin B&H (as a board for bitcoin beginners which should be on the main page)
3. Altcoin B&H (or something that can be for questions that aren't going to get bounced to the 20th page in a couple of minutes because of the bountiers).

[Sharon121212]

Most issues about bitcoin or bitcoin related that are posted on beginners and help might constitute spamming on bitcoin discussion. Beginners and help is meant to assist so post made there no matter how so simple should be seen with consideration of the person level that posted it. Also new be gets to introduce themselves and seek directions there, the help beginners and help board give is large although there as some spam activities there but it's not only in that board we see such,

[logfiles]

One of the reasons could be that the moderator in that board has not been online in over a year yet it should be one of the most important boards in this forum.

Having a couple of active moderators in there could help to guide the posters and also move useless topics to the trashcan and keep the board clean.
I am still not sure why Theymos hasn't worked on this yet.

[LoyceV]

A new moderator would be good too, MiningBuddy hasn't been online in over a year, and his last post was nearly 3 years ago.

Update: logfiles beat me to it

[LeGaulois]

I don't think it's a matter of having a moderator, how the section is currently handled is fine. The section isn't active enough to dedicate 1 person only to the section. I don't know who moderates it, I suppose it's the first Mod. available seeing it but as I said moderators aren't the problem here. The real problem is to make clear if it's a section regarding Bitcoin or not

@logfiles
This person isn't a moderator anymore or doesn't moderate this section, I can't remember.

The B&H section to me needs to be split up into three sections:
1. B&H meta (as a sub meta board for forum related trivial questions)
2. Bitcoin B&H (as a board for bitcoin beginners which should be on the main page)
3. Altcoin B&H (or something that can be for questions that aren't going to get bounced to the 20th page in a couple of minutes because of the bountiers).

Whatever is good, I am interested to get only pure BTC content,

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> Beginners & Help - All primitive questions (to pros like us  ) like "what are ASICS", "who is satoshi" and "what is mining" should stay here. <…>

The terms are rather broad and generic, but I’d say the centre piece is "primitive" (i.e. basic). The above examples are multi-board type questions, which, if placed on a specific more knowledge based board, would likely be reported for being "too primitive".

The sections is not precisely thriving with activity as of late, and mods do swoop-in and clean it up, locking threads and so on. I think the idea was for it to be a starting multipurpose board, and that is what it does. Of course it could be structured with chid boards to organize it by theme, but as it stands threads are not often moved, so I assume it does have this multipurpose goal.

[hd49728]

A new moderator would be good too, MiningBuddy hasn't been online in over a year, and his last post was nearly 3 years ago.

MiningBuddy likely removed from staff list.  
Some months ago, there are unofficial vote on new moderators for Beginners & Help board. If I remembered well, top users (not in ordinal positions) of the vote include:
- Jet Cash;
- DdmrDdmr;
- LoyceV;
- Some others.
Finally, I found the topic:
User nominated names of possible moderators for forum.

'Most' is an exaggeration  Most of those aren't proper mods anyway. The only two that are - or were - are MiningBuddy and Raoul but they were removed from staff a while ago which was probably due to inactivity. Theymos probably just forgot to manually remove their names from the sub boards which has happened a few times. If you check their profiles you'll see it doesn't say staff anymore.

I agreed with this sub-board, because it is better for newbies to ask for things relate to forum in such sub-board. The sub-board might help to reduce bandwith in Meta board. There are always spammers, but for newbies, they should have rights to ask 'silly' or 'naively' questions, because they are newbies.

1. B&H meta (as a sub meta board for forum related trivial questions)

I also agreed with those rest two suggested sub-boards, but there is one thing should be considered. Three sub-boards might lead to mis-classification on current topics in B&H. I am not sure that theymos can code and ready to spend his time to do perfect codes to automatically classify all old topics into their appropriate subboards. Moderators actually don't want to do this, and should not do this too. How many threads need to be reclassified into coming three sub-boards?
For coming topics after sub-boards created, I don't see problems to classify them.

[LeGaulois]

@DdmrDdmr
Then, all topics related to Bitcoin deserve a better place than this section. Topics like:
- How to add a Bitcoin address to Electrum / difference sweep and import priv. key
- Future fees of legacy addresses ?
- integrating Electrum with Ledger Nano S ?
- Basics: Mnemonic seed and Private Keys

Are good questions or 'how to' but get lost page 7
I'm pretty sure if we had a section dedicated to Bitcoin there would be more people willing to post tutorials or asking questions and so on.

Topics I scratch my head
What is Quality post really ?
How to make a qualified post!
Do you know how should be your topic title?
How to launch an ICO - TOP TIPS FOR NEWBIES

Then if it was to make a multi-board type question, better to move anything related to Bitcoin to another board

Some months ago, there are unofficial vote on new moderators for Beginners & Help board. If I remembered well, top users (not in ordinal positions) of the vote include:
- Jet Cash;
- DdmrDdmr;
- LoyceV;
- Some others.

A new moderator would be good too, MiningBuddy hasn't been online in over a year, and his last post was nearly 3 years ago.

it's not what I'm interested in.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

I’m pretty structured by nature, and child boards are a help to that sense. What I was referring to is the intent of Beginners and Help board, which I interpret it to be multipurpose.

Some decent topics do crop-up there every now and then in the B&H board, with a certain depth and utility vs many inconsequential threads. As in every board, these will eventually be buried unless they are (organically) bumped, or someone comes up with a thread that recaps them and keeps it both up-to-date and around the top of the board. The drawback to this approach is that the thread compiled is logically in accordance to its creator’s personal criteria, and that it may not be kept up-to-date for long. Even if child boards are created, the same potential “burried under the rubble” issue will occur.

On the topic of tutorials, I’d rather prefer the existence a tutorial child board (as in the Italian board), although then one would have to consider where to place these guide child board themselves, and if they in turn need subdivisions by theme.

[Quickseller]

The B&H has turned into what amounts to a newbie jail of people trying to post there to get merit to rank up. There are some people doing this who are generally helpful and know what they are talking about. However others are just posting crap after the question has been answered.

[Jet Cash]

I agree with JackG, and I would add a B&H mining sub-board.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The moderation of B&H isn't bad at the moment. It seemed (to me, at least) to be neglected for quite some time, but certainly in the past few weeks and months, someone has been paying it a lot more attention. If you go and look at the first few pages right now, there are plenty of topics which have been locked after OP's question has been answered. What would be useful now is if more of the useless repetitive posts that QS is referring to were deleted.

I agree with LaGaulois here, in that the board is too much of a mish-mash of various topics to really function smoothly. It's essentially what Off Topic should be - threads that don't really fit anywhere else but are generally useful and related to crypto, computing, privacy, security, etc. - instead of Off Topic being a complete mess of useless nonsense like "Do you dream?" and "What is love?" Baby don't hurt me.

Perhaps a Bitcoin Beginners' board in the Bitcoin Section, the same in the Altcoin Section (or would this be better as an Altcoin Technical Discussion board?), and leave Beginners & Help for general forum help, as jackg has suggested.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

The B&H section to me needs to be split up into three sections:
1. B&H meta (as a sub meta board for forum related trivial questions)
<snip>

This is the one I don't really agree with, because Meta isn't a mess because of trivial questions about the forum.  It's a mess because of ban appeals and on occasion threads about merits or trust. 

The forum has child boards for certain sections, so I don't know what the big deal is about adding more.  You wouldn't need more moderators, because the pie isn't getting bigger, it's just getting sliced into more pieces.  Since I have B&H on ignore, I have no comment as to the need for a reorganization, but I will take LeGaulois's word that it does.  I have it on ignore for a very good reason--the last few times I visited that section, it was a snakepit of tomfoolery and a haven for drooling mouth-breathers.  My vote is to at least do something, even if it's not the perfect solution to the problem.  Same goes for Meta.

[suchmoon]

I think B&H should be a place where anybody (including noobs) could ask any question, even if it's stupid, even if it's not about Bitcoin, even if it's been asked 300 times before, and get an answer or get redirected where appropriate. Short of egregious repetitive spamming there shouldn't be too many restrictions on which threads are allowed there, and I don't think it needs to be particularly tidy except for a few stickies maybe. No one really goes there to look for an in-depth discussion on some earth-shattering advances in cryptography. Splitting it into multiple boards would just make it more confusing and frustrating for the users it's supposed to help. Perhaps moving threads that fit elsewhere would be a better approach.

Inside each thread moderation should be reasonably strict to prevent from derailing and preemptive locking should be used as well, which appears to be happening. I see lots of reputable users hanging out there answering questions, which is great. All that's left to do is to convince The Pharmacist to unignore it and help newbies.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Well just as Bitcointalk.org have out grown its main purpose of creation to accommodating other discussion, the B&H board have also out grown just bitcoin related discussion for beginners to accommodating other discussion therefore restricting it to just bitcoin related questions worth be healthy for the board, the best thing for the board would be an active moderator not the addition of subboards. The board can serve as a center for all beginner related questions then when they're asked, moderators can decide to move it to the appropriate section for more exposure and technical answer from experience users if the question deserve one (e.g like mining relate questions).  Adding subboard like mining, altcoins, meta etc isn't necessary.

The board now serve a purpose more than just a board for questions, we have guides, overview, advices etc most of the topic posted on the board are targeted at newbie so I don't think there are other appropriate board than the beginner and help board in regards to posting them. What the board just need is the presence of a moderator to fasting the moderation process although global moderators are doing quite a decent job at least most reports are handled.

[Harlot]

Well I think we can all agree that some topics related to Bitcoin being posted in the Beginners & Help section also falls on other section as well. There are threads being opened up for trading which can easily be created in the Speculation board and Mining topics being opened up which can also fall in the Mining board so in a sense beginners also creates topics related to Bitcoin which could fall in other boards as well. So to begin with we must have some kind of guideline in which what kinds of topics can be created on that board or not.

[Oyarebu]

First and foremost, Beginners and Help section of this forum has been of a good guide for the Newbies who for the first time approach the world of cryptocurrency. Issue like split the Board will definitely defeat the purpose of it creation, because Newbies aren’t technically oriented on the technology that’s why they choose to be here (B&H) to acquire knowledge about the technology and life in general. Agree; that there are many questions outside Bitcoin that has been asked, but most of these questions are educating to most of us Newbie on this forum.

Imagine threads like this; that helped me before my active period on this forum, even though they aren’t in order or more of the technology.

[TIPS] to avoid plagiarism 
Advantages of engaging in quality contributions on the forum.
4 hours and 15 mins learning forum and a long way for a newbie to go.....
Ban appeal - How to make it right and reduce workload for forum staffs
Is there any place where I find most active members of this forum 
Security setup help

These threads are mixed threads from different aspect of life, why some are related to the technology but very helpful, I wouldn't agree on the split, we love what brought us up till now, and I in particular still consult B&H section for more information.

Just my little understanding.....

[Joel_Jantsen]

Decomposition might not always be a best practice and can be quite useless if the sub-boards have minimal to no-content in them. Imagine creating 5 such sub-boards and none of them have more than 3 threads in it. The other mainboards should be utilized to post core issues. For instance, there are dedicated boards for Wallets/Exchange related questions. Everything that is not part of Bitcoin/Crypto should be moved to off-topic.

[LTU_btc]

Now Beginners and help board is located under word "Other", together with Meta, Politics and society, off-topic and Serious discussion. So, I think it means that this board isn't dedicated for Bitcoin stuff only, but for all questions in general. Everything mixed in one place makes this board a bit messy, but there are many worse boards than this one. The problem that this board don't have dedicated mod for long time and global mods don't always have time to clean up it.
In past there was some proposals to make Altcoin beginners and help board, but theymos probably don't see enough demand to create it. And I don't agree with @jackg suggestion to create Beginners and help Meta section - I think it's not needed at all.