Do we want to update our "Ask Question" side-bar and if so, how?

Question

Recently, Catija suggested we can change our side-bar text on the ask page to be more site-specific and warn people more directly that cryptocurrency questions tend to be off-topic.

The way this works is that we get to customize the following box labelled step 1:

There are at least three sites on the network which have already customized this box: SFF, EL&U, and CodeRev. The common theme for them seems to be that they are kep really short and with links to helpful resources.

Now the questions we are asking ourselves are:

1. Do we want to customize this box? I.e. do we think it would be helpful in reducing the number of obviously off-topic questions we get?
2. What themes do we want to talk about and what are the corresponding meta resources? Cryptocurrencies? Ciphertext dumps? Homework dumps? Programming questions?
3. What is the precise wording we want put in there?

Answer 1

I agree with the more exhaustive proposal initiated by kelalaka that a bulleted list might be helpful. However, I think we should keep it contained to the most common issues we encounter and leave the exhaustiveness to our Help Center. So instead my below suggestion focuses on our four close reasons as these are by definition the most off topic isues we get.

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The community is here to help you with questions about cryptography. Provide details and share research with your question.

While drafting your question, please note that we have some rules for questions some might not expect, in particular:

• Questions about analyzing a specific piece of data are rarely helpful to other people and are thus off-topic.
• Questions about cryptocurrencies which are not about the underlying cryptographic mechanisms are not about cryptography. Specialized sites (like Bitcoin or Ethereum) have different, possibly broader scopes.
• Questions about implementing cryptography are not about cryptography, they belong on Stackoverflow with one exception.
• Questions about assignments must include attempts and where they got stuck.

If your question passes the above considerations it will most likely be on-topic, if however you want to be extra sure, you can browse our on-topic page, our main site for similar questions, our meta site or even ask on our meta site.

Answer 2

A simple bullet for the possible issues might be helpful. Edited to fit the full format with a little cheating.

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The community is here to help you with questions about cryptography. Provide details and share research with your question.

While drafting your question, please note that we have some rules for questions some might not expect. If you are looking for;

• How cryptography is practically used; consider Information Security
• How cryptography is implemented and how to correct implementation errors; consider StackOverflow
• How to improve a working cryptographic implementation; consider
  CodeReview
• How to use a Cryptographic library/software; consider SuperUser
• How to find a cryptographic library/software; consider Software Recommendations
• Financial, economical, legal aspect of cryptocurrency, or the usage of related tools; consider Bitcoin, and others.
• How to find a solution to your crypto-related puzzles; consider puzzling.

If your question passes the above considerations it will most likely be on-topic, if however you want to be extra sure, you can browse our on-topic page, our main site for similar questions, our meta site or even ask on our meta site