I agree with the more exhaustive [proposal initiated by kelalaka][1] 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](/help/on-topic). 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 do not define questions about cryptography as broadly as some might expect, in particular:

 - [Questions about analyzing a specific piece of data are rarely helpful to other people and are thus off-topic](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/a/101).
 - [Questions about cryptocurrencies which are not about the underlying cryptographic mechanisms are not about cryptography](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/a/986). [Specialized sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/363122) (like [Bitcoin](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/) or [Ethereum](https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/)) have different, possibly broader scopes.
 - Questions about implementing cryptography are not about cryptography, they belong on [Stackoverflow](https://stackoverflow.com) with [one exception](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/a/952).
 - [Questions about assignments _must_ include attempts and where they got stuck.](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1117)

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](/help/on-topic), [our main site for similar questions](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/search?q=), [our meta site](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/) or even [ask on our meta site](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/ask).

  [1]: https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1513/23623