text:
Do we really need the tag 'chess'?
Chess is a specific classic board game.
And we have a tag for it: chess.
It has only 11 questions.
What should we do with it?

and a single 1-rep-guy posted 2 out of 11 super downvoted questions

I believe it's a little bit too bit too concise and underused to be a tag.

I think it's a good tag and we should keep it.
It is a board game, but it is also a board game that is very commonly adapted as a video game, and there are lots of algorithms and techniques for doing so efficiently (particularly within the domains of board representation and AI).
I think it's quite reasonable to expect that somebody who is an expert at writing chess AI or solvers, or somebody interested in finding questions and solutions about such problems, would be the kind of person to make chess a favorite.
I don't think the current description of the tag is worthwhile though. It describes the game in detail, but not how the tag should be used in the context of Game Development.

reality shows that there are only 11 questions. Among them only 2 look interesting and not even too much related to chess, rather to generic algorithms. This tag adds entropy to the site. Just a drop into the ocean, but since we are talking about it..

by the way I get your point that chess is more than a game, close to an intitution

Popularity is not a good metric for determining whether a tag is good for the site or not, it's just a factor for how careful we should be when considering doing something to the tag (for example, we should be extremely careful doing something to [tag:unity]). If only having 11 questions means a tag is bad, well, we should remove every tag right? Because every tag with more than 11 questions had 11 questions at some point. Just because something is new, or unpopular or its popularity grows slowly should not be a reason to blacklist it.

What we should consider is: is the tag on-topic (absolutely, no question about it) and is the tag contextually specific enough that people would be able to use it for searches or filters and get results that make sense and are consistent (in this case, finding Q&A about writing chess games). I don't really see how chess is different from racing or roguelike or anything else that's isolating scope to a subgenre. You can be a chess game expert.

I thought about posting a second answer, and suggesting to make it a synonym of [tag:board-game].

I think we should delete it.
Given the fact that is very specific, and even though one could be expert at chess (at playing it), the challenges at implementing it is not more and not less difficult than any other games.


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What's a "minimum complete verifiable example" (MCVE) and how do I provide it?
I've been asked to provide a "minimum complete verifiable example" (or MCVE) of my problem. What is that, and how do I provide one?

When asking a question about a problem, especially a problem that involves debugging your code or some behavior of your project, you will get much better answers if you
provide steps or code people can use to reproduce the problem on their own. Questions asking about debugging problems are considered off-topic here, unless accompanied by such steps, which should be:

Minimal – Use as little commands or code as possible that still produces the
same problem.
Complete – Provide all parts needed to reproduce the problem.
Verifiable – Test the steps or code you're about to provide to make sure it
reproduces the problem.

Minimal
The more commands or code there is to go through, the less likely people can
find your problem. Streamline your example in one of two ways:

Restart from scratch. Create a new project, adding in only what is
needed to see the problem. Make the code short as possible, consisting of only things that will cause your issue to occur.
Divide and conquer. When you have a small amount of code, but the source
of the problem is entirely unclear, start removing code a bit at a time until
the problem disappears – then add the last part back.

Complete
Make sure all information necessary to reproduce the problem is included:

Some people might be prepared to try your code to test the answer
they're about to post.
Provide the actual sample input that you're using. For example, when your
problem is related to specific input or data, it's probably a good idea to include the actual data that you're using; the problem might not be in the part you suspect it is, but another part entirely.

Verifiable
To help you solve your problem, others will need to verify that it exists:

Describe the problem. "It doesn't work" is not a problem statement. Tell
us what the expected behaviour should be. Tell us what the exact wording of the
error message is, and which line of code is producing it. Put a brief summary
of the problem in the title of your question.
Ensure that the example actually reproduces the problem! If you
inadvertently fixed the problem while composing the example but didn't test it
again, you'd want to know that before asking someone else to help.

It might help to transport the example to a fresh machine to confirm it really
does provide an example of the problem.

Note: this is a modified version of the Stack Overflow help page of the same
name.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
Should we update the "debug my code" close reason?
When we first discussed the "debug my code" close reason we settled on the following wording that is in-use today:

Questions about debugging a problem in your
  project must present a concise selection of code and context so as to allow a
  reader to diagnose the issue without needing to read
  all of your code or to engage in extensive back-and-forth
  dialog. For more information, see this meta
  thread

Many of the questions we got back then that this reason would pertain to were large, context-free code dumps. Recently I've noticed we're getting a lot of "debug my code" questions that either aren't strictly code-related or do include very concise (but not at all relevant) code samples.
Consequently I think we should update the close reason.

I think we should change the reason to include wording requiring a minimal example that would reproduce the problem. I've created the What's a "minimum complete verifiable example" (MCVE) and how do I provide it? meta post, cribbed from the StackOverflow help pages (an idea I stole from Vi and Vim), which we can use to request users provide such an example. I propose we update the close reason text as follows:

Questions about debugging a problem must provide a minimal, complete, verifiable example of the issue so
  that readers can diagnose it without needing to guess, read all of your code, or engage in extensive back-and-forth dialog. For more information, see this meta
  thread.

This is now live.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Where is the line between Game Development and Stack Overflow? Should I transfer this topic to SO?
I have this topic that hasn't received an answer. That could be because my method is too unorthodox, the problem too big, or a badly worded question. I am in no way frustrated about this because it has only been one day, and is a complicated problem.
But one thing I was considering is if it would do better in SO where things are more coding based, and conversations about time stepping are more common. Since this question was more coding/math/physics based where does it belong the most? In some ways I could almost see it at SE Mathematics. What is the line between Game Development and SO topics that involve code for games?
What if this topic did really belong in another site. I think it would be rude to copy and paste it into another site (that would essentially be double posting), is there a better way of doing this?

I think the question is fine here.
The "line" isn't very firm. There is definitely a lot of overlap between certain topics here and on SO, and that is fine. Our general rules, which  definitely have fuzzy subjective parts, are:

does this have anything at all do with making a game?
would a game developer give you a better answer to this question than a non-game developer?

If the answers to both of those are a resounding "no," we migrate to SO. Otherwise it's perfectly fine here.
Your question is only 23 hours old, it's not languishing or anything. I suspect the issue with it will be that it's a fairly dense wall of text and code, followed by whats amounts to "where do I stick some math?" It's fairly imposing and hard to wrap your head around, which means the expected investment from any given potential answer-er must be more. Which generally means fewer attempts at answers.
I suspect you'd get better responses if you were able to streamline the question somehow. I'm not necessarily convinced you'd get better responses on SO, but until the question has an answer here you're free to delete it and re-post it there.


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Is asking for the criterion and consequences of an algorithm choice considered too broad?
I would like to put forward a question to the effect of "What are the criterion for choosing Forward Shading vs. Deferred Shading and what are their consequences e.g.: Deferred shading makes many light sources cheaper but makes transparency difficult and eats up VRAM."
Does this seem too broad to the point that it becomes off topic for off-loading too much research unto the community?

To me, it looks like the question is basically

"What are the criteria for choosing technology X versus technology Y?"
"What are the consequences of choosing technology X over technology Y?

both of which sound like basic "which technology" questions to me (which means they're off topic).

Thanks Josh, do you think there is a good way to ask for the objective consequences (not stating consequences as a subjective pros/cons thing, but just what does it enable/disable someone from doing with their renderer) when using Deferred Shading? Or does that still sound too broad and offloading research for GameDev SE?

I think that is harder to judge on the surface, without seeing the actual questions.


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Should terrain-rendering be a synonym for procedural-generation?
Right now the descriptions suggest terrain-rendering is just a subset of procedural-generation. Is it special enough to warrant its own tag?

I think terrain-rendering and procedural-generation should remain split.
There are lots of interesting terrain rendering techniques (and thus questions about those techniques) that are possible and which are also wholly independent from the process by which the terrain data was generated. That is, you can totally render a terrain you didn't generate procedurally.
Similarly, procedural generation can cover a whole ton of other areas (the generation of rooms, items, characters, storylines, et cetera). It doesn't just have to be about terrain. Terrain is, in fact, only a pretty small subset of the applications for procedural generation.
Probably what we should do instead is clarify and appropriately-broad the descriptions for both tags, and go over the questions using them to make sure they're still using the tags correctly.

My thoughts were similar. The reason I asked was this question - I initially thought it was mistagged, but when I read the descriptions of terrain-rendering & procedural-generation tags, things seemed a bit ambiguous, so I thought it might be worth discussing.

I can see that; I tried to clarify the purpose of the tag descriptions earlier today. I don't think that question needs 'terrain-rendering' at all (at least not yet) so I just removed it.

IMO, the clarifications are an improvement.


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What happens after editing an on-hold question?
I made some edits to this question in attempt to make it less opinion seeking. They edits were approved, but I'm curious as to what happens next. Do the on-hold / close voters get automatic notice of the edits? Should I flag it for moderator attention?
Note: I'm not necessarily advocating for said question or my edits - it might still not be a good enough fit for the site.

FWIW I don't think your edits, while sound, address the fundamental issue with the question.

Questions that are edited after being put on hold or closed will appear in the "Reopen" review queue for users with sufficient reputation.


text:
Should I remove my unanswered questions?
I have posted a few questions on here that have not been met with a response. Going over them, I still do not have an answer, but I would not be able to confirm an answer or mark it as "most helpful", due to no longer having that particular project.
In one case, I still have no idea why a particular function was behaving like it was 'opposite day', to the point where I would not even be able to replicate the problem to confirm a solution. In another case, the issues were encountered in an environment that I would preferably never have to use, again, in this life or the next.
Should somebody come along with the same problem, I can see my questions being a hindrance. They would be 'originals' for a duplication close, but offer no help. In the case where future answers would make them helpful I still feel that a newer question, where the problem is still in the asker's interests and they are able to judge a question as most helpful, would be an improvement to the overall quality. I also know that deleting questions can sometimes lead to the user being punished in unforeseen ways.
Should I delete the questions, or leave them be? Is there a way to mark them as "abandoned" in a way that would be more helpful, in the given context?

There's no particular reason to delete them, except your own peace of mind. There's no way to mark them "abandoned" or whatever but it shouldn't matter much.
If you want, delete them (the ones you can at least). But otherwise they don't cause any issues.


text:
The Artificial Intelligence beta has started!
After previous failures, the AI site has its probably last chance to join the SE network. GDSE has its own ai tag but if you're interested AI beyond gaming (e.g. the process behind this, or AI for playing board games), you're more than welcome to join.
Currently we need your help, since the site is struggling to find its own distinct and unique scope.
Address: http://ai.stackexchange.com (to access go here and click the 'visit' link)
We've already few question related to gaming, like chess or Go.
I hope you find this information interesting.

I can guarantee, that there will be someone who makes an artifical intelligence just to post questions on the AISE

Have you considered setting up a community promotion ad?

@JoshPetrie The site entered recently private beta, so it has no banner yet and the site is risking to be closed in few days, so after it goes public, then yes, otherwise you won't be able to visit the site which is in private beta by clicking on the banner.

There's a pretty big difference in academic AI and game AI. Does the AI site actually cover both?

@Byte56 The scope is still being discussed. Basically everything related to AI what's not covered on the other sites, but some overlap could be expected. Game AI is already at gamedev.SE, some other at Stats.SE, DataScience, cstheory.se, basically AI topics are spread across already 10-20 sites, so there is some talk about having one central point, otherwise it's very confusing. But dev gaming AI is on-topic only here I guess, not likely there.


text:
Community Ad for Cartography in Area 51
I've proposed a new site, "Cartography" in Area 51: Proposed Q&A site for those interested in maps and map-making, historical or contemporary, real or fictional.  I believe that others in the Game Development community might be interested in such a site for their work and to see other ideas, both fictional and real, with regards to creating maps for games and such.
I know advertising this in the non-meta is disallowed on SE sites, but I'm not sure how community ads work, or if it's something that enough people would think was a good thing to point the Game Development community toward.
Any thoughts on this?

I know advertising this in the non-meta is disallowed on SE sites, but
  I'm not sure how community ads work, or if it's something that enough
  people would think was a good thing to point the Game Development
  community toward.

You should make a community promotion ad. To do this, post an "answer" to that linked post containing an image of the appropriate size. The answers to that ads thread should be pre-filled with a template so you basically just need to fill it out and supply the ad image.
This will be both bump the ad thread so people see it on the active page of meta, and then provide the community a way to vote on your ad. Once it gets a certain number of upvotes it will be displayed on the main site.

Ah, excellent.  Thank you.  I've been an SE user for years, but rarely have done anything meta, and the community ads and Area 51 are very new to me.  I'll put an image together.  Thanks!


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Do we need a hats tag?
So, this question was made: Why do games have hats?
With the question the tag hats was made, before starting rollback wars do we really need such a tag?
Would a tag like cosmetics-customization be better?

We definitely do not need a hats tag and I have removed it from the question.

But think of the hats!

We certainly don't need a tag for hats.
Although cosmetics-customization could do the trick, seeing the scope of the answers, it's not only used for that as it could be used as trophies and/or visual achievement as well.

I sincerely think we need a hats tag.  I love hats and I constantly refresh to see if there are any new hat related questions.  Please do not remove the hats tag, I use this hourly.

Hourly not often enough. -5.

Looking at score, you can tell some people don't get the joke.

Without the hats tag I'm not sure if I can get through a workday.

Hats.... Hats everywhere

Why stop at hats?  What about other clothing-based modifications?  Perhaps we should have a dapper tag, instead...

Wow, tongue-in-cheek comments don't go over so well here in meta...

Your not making a comment, your posting an answer. Downvotes are used to simply show users do not agree with you. It is worth being aware that without tone, it is easy to misread when a user is legitimately having a laugh, trolling, or just voicing an unpopular opinion.


text:
Could the SE system realistically help preempt bad / off-topic questions?
SE already has code somewhere that links related questions in the side bar. Is it possible to have the system tally the # of related questions that have already been closed & use that metric to warn users that their question is likely to encounter a similar fate?
Basically I'm envisioning a soft filter in between submitting a question & actually posting it that attempts to preempt bad / off-topic questions. Thoughts?

While I'm not in favor of this idea I do think it would be useful if the related questions display indicated that a question was closed or not.

This probably isn't a good idea, even if it technically doable.
The fact is the related questions already exist, but people either don't read them or do but think their question is still unique enough to warrant asking again, and post anyway. The Help Center also exists, but people don't read it or think their questions are an exception.
It's quite unlikely these folks would find an additional warning against asking a particular impediment. They'd just ignore that too.
Meanwhile, it would annoy or inconvenience users asking legitimate questions that the system just guess wrong about.
StackOverflow itself does have (or had) additional heuristics that go into questions and warn users of certain things, I believe. I don't post there enough to know. But there's a ton more traffic and proportionally more off-topic questions there.
Here, I don't think we have a problem with lots of egregiously bad, duplicated off-topic questions. They're easy to close and don't present too much of a moderation burden, even given our relatively low population of active close-voters.
I don't think the cost of trying to add more automated protections against this class of questions is worth the effort or the downsides it would bring, personally.


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What is the chat score?
Could sound trivial but sometimes along with a chat entry from a user, below the profile picture, comes a number.
I cannot sort out what that number stands for. I noticed that it also features in user profile on the chat.stackexchange but honestly I don't understand it.
Could anyone exaplain it?

It's the user's network-wide reputation, less association bonuses.

how is it computed? And also, is it restricted to a single SE branch?

"Network-wide" means across all StackExchange sites. It's a straight sum of all your accounts, as far as I know.

I had the same guess but looking at my profile accounts I should have > 2k score while in the chat profile it is close to 1.4k. So I wondered if it is calculaded in another way

giving a better look at my profile page I realized that the score in the chat match the top 3 account scores of the user. If you think it is reasonable could you edit your answer so that I can accept?

It probably doesn't count association bonus then.


text:
Where can you view or query all your recent chat replies?
I don't know if this could an obvious suggestion which has already been taken into account or a totally stupid idea (or if it is already possible and I just could not find it) but several times I thought it could be useful to be able to query for at least latest chat message replies.
This is because it happens that I need to take a second look at something someone said to me in chat but I cannot sort it out.
So I thought to ask it directly here.

They already show up in your inbox drop-down on any regular SE site, although only if you were not in chat at the time.
Are you looking for something different than that? If so, there's this recent replies view on chat.stackexchange.com itself. You navigate there by viewing your own chat profile and looking at the replies tab, which you can then filter.

I thought that dropdown menù displays only notifications which occurred while not browsing SE. Am I mistaking?

It looks like you're right; mine is usually so crowded I hadn't really noticed.

The dropdown displays pings that haven't been dismissed while you're not active in chat. You can be browsing the regular site. In most cases if you leave chat without dismissing them (replying/clicking the circle) you'll get a notification after some time.


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Do we need a new [entity-component-system] tag?
I often see questions with both entity-system and entity-component tags (or entity-system and component-based).
To make it a bit clearer, should these questions be tagged with a new entity-component-system?

Prior discussions here and here.

Do you have a concrete example of questions that you feel would be able to be tagged better if they had one extra tag slot to use? I feel like most of the time questions at the maximum tag limit have quite a few pointless, bad, or redundant tags on them.

@JoshPetrie I edited the question :)

I am still in support of Tetrad's answer to this question back in 2012. Not all entity systems are component-based, and not all component-based code is an entity system.
Today's "entity component system" is building heavily on component-based concepts that have been in place in software engineering for years, and I think there's value in continuing to allow the distinction between "I am asking about an entity system" (entity-system), "I am asking about component-based programming or design (component-based) and "I am asking about both" (using both tags).
If anything I am in favor of correcting the description of entity-system and entity-component (the former is really describing the latter, which itself has no description at all), but otherwise doing nothing.

I don't think entity-component uses system. The way I see it, Unity is an [tag:entity-component] (and [tag:component-based]), it has no system, and the process is done in the components. The description of [tag:entity-system] fits what I've known as an entity-component-system...


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When to use tags Unity versus Unity5?

Note that, since we have merged these two tags, this question and answer does not have any real value. I am keeping it for the point of record, but a moderator may feel completely free to remove it, if the point of keeping record is unrequited or otherwise redundant.

I've come across both tags quite regularly. Commonly, they are both used on the same question. When I see unity deliberately used over unity5, the context applies just as much to the current release of Unity (at the time of writing this, version 5.4).
In my experience, the difference between versions is not really local to pre-5 and post-5. If the question deals with the possibility that an answer directed towards the most recent version of the editor will not be applicable to the particular situation, the user should probably be mentioning the version they are using, anyway.
Is this a case of tags that should be synonyms, or is there a more explicit argument for when to use unity and when to use unity5 that I've missed?

Personally I rarely find the versioned tags useful except in the case of say D3D9 versus 10/11 and 12. But I am not familiar enough with Unity to know if there are sufficient differences.

One minor quibble: you can easily download official versions of Unity going back to 3.x here. (When going through the normal "Get Unity" flow, click the "Older Versions of Unity" link in the grey bar below the EULA link

@DMGregory, wow. I had missed that. That actually helps me out considerably, too. thanks for pointing that out =)

I'll confess I'd selfishly feel sad to see the unity5 tag go, since up until now I've been able to brag that I'm the only user with the unity5 tag badge. ;)
But I agree, there's not much value in distinguishing unity general versus unity5 - I can't think of an instance where the tag helped to clearly identify an issue specific to 5.
If we were to do any versioning of the tag at all, the biggest split would be at 4.6, when the new UI and event system features were introduced. I'd give different answers to a user wanting to build GUI in the old system (prefaced with "WHY!?") or NGUI add-ons, versus someone working with the richer native features in later versions.
Unity 5.3 added the SceneManager, changing how we transition between or stream in levels, along with exposing more particle scripting options and sprite asset placeholders. 5.4 added GPU instancing, motion vectors, and texture arrays...
The takeaway is that substantial features get added on sub-versions often enough that it's not going to be practical to use tags to distinguish this information.
In the cases where it's relevant, I think we can just ask users to clarify in the body of the question which version they're using, and otherwise adopt the working assumption that they're on the current version.

For reference, here are the main things that changed in Unity 5:

Rendering

New lighting model with physics-based materials used by default. A physically-based-rendering or pbr tag might be more helpful here, as well as applicable outside of Unity contexts.
Realtime global illumination using Geomerics Enlighten. There's already a global-illumination tag users can add to highlight issues with this. It doesn't distinguish the realtime case, but neither does the unity5 tag since the engine supports offline baking too.
HDR reflection probes, likely to be mentioned specifically in the question if the user is having reflection problems.

Animation

StateMachineBehaviours for handling animation callbacks in a more structured way.
Transitions between state machines & Direct Blend Trees (should be clear when used in the question)
Ability to generate & adjust root motion curves.

Audio Mixer, allowing more control over audio levels for groups of content, and dsp effects. The pre-5.0 workflow still works the same if the user doesn't create an audio mixer, so only a description of their setup will tell us whether this is in play.
PhysX updates, but the physics engine is treated as a black box anyway...

Think of it this way; if the two get merged, your even closer to reaching your silver badge in unity :D

Haha, that's a good way to look at it. :D

@Gnemlock you are indeed right, I just got my first silver tag badge. :D https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/badges/140/unity?userid=39518

I was going to say you must be pretty close. Grats :D


text:
Can we merge "unity and "unity5?"
I previously asked for clearer instruction in regards to when to use the tags unity or unity5. From the feedback and answer, it appears there is no clear good reason to use one over the other. Should we merge these two tags together, to prevent further confusion between the two?

Response to my previous question
To quote DMGregory, "there's not much value in distinguishing unity general versus unity5 - I can't think of an instance where the tag helped to clearly identify an issue specific to 5." While this is a single answer with 2 additional votes, at the time of writing this, it comes from the only user to currently have a badge in unity5.
It was also pointed out that 5 was not a major revision to the editor. Much greater revision occurred in the earlier 4.6 release, and evidence shows that substantial updates still occur during sub-version releases. Differentiating between pre-Unity 5 and post-Unity 5 does necessarily help us identify the exact version the user is asking about, nor how their version might impact on the context of their question, as opposed to the assumed "latest version" if the user does not specify either way. It is therefore more helpful for the user to mention "I am using Unity build x.y.z" as opposed to tagging the question as unity or unity5.
Analysis of unity5 tag
Looking over some of the numbers associated with the tag, I can see that more than half of the questions also use the unity tag. I personally find myself adding the unity tag to questions during edits, if I identify the context to be non-exclusive to Unity 5. At the time of writing this, there are 904 unity5 questions, 523 of which also use the unity tag.
Looking over the current 50 most recent questions under the unity5 tag, 28 of them also use the unity tag. Of the ones that only use the unity5 tag, there is a clear pattern where the question could easily have applied to pre-5 releases of Unity.
Analysis of recent questions that exclusively use the unity5 tag
Of the left over 22 questions, most could benefit from inclusion of the unity tag. In some cases, the asker acknowledges that they are using Unity 5, but ask a question that deals with more general concepts or implementations. Questions such as 'How do I provide a pixel offset?' and 'How do I change a game objects position from another game object?' deal with basic Unity concepts, that would easily apply to earlier versions of the editor.
There are questions that deliberately target Unity 5, though as they currently stand, may not need to. "Impossible rooms and 5D space" specifically targets Unity 5, but in context, deals with a much more general subject. For what little the current answers actually answer the Unity part of the question, the general response is that 'Unity can not do it like they could do it, you will have to cheat a little'. The suggested "cheats" are not Unity 5 exclusive.
In most questions, I only presume the tag is being used to infer that the user is using Unity 5. Questions like *"How to automatically delete an object" and "Can't get my android device to be connected.." presumably only use the unity5 tag because the user is using the latest version of Unity. They do not actually specify anything in regards to the version they are using, but the context is also that which is not unique to Unity 5.

In regards to the potential increase in duplicates
Of course, there is the issue of the few instances where version difference does have a large impact on the context of the answer. I am yet to find an obvious example for Unity 5, but I am sure there are some there. Further questions using the unity tag would suffer the same penalty from earlier versions, it is simply clear that nobody has thought to include a version tag until Unity 5.
For the purpose of managing duplicates, we could then go in one of two directions:

Duplicate questions are not duplicates if concerning different versions might be preferred, by some, but I generally disagree. Users may think the version difference would make their question unique, where the context of their question does not change dramatically enough between the two versions to warrant an alternate answer. This leads to multiple questions that don't really need to be in multiple, and it would take more moderation (and moderation specifically from users savvy with Unity and its version differences) to clean up.
User should mention versions, but alternate answers specific to alternate versions should be encouraged is my personal preference. By encouraging alternate answers for alternate versions under the same answer, we encourage all relevant information in the one place, without further duplication. While I can see this having its flaws, I do not think it would come with any problems not already present with the global issue that a lot of our answers are inevitably going to be outdated, and require updating.

In every case where I perform an edit on a Unity question, I go over the question, and look at the tags. I ask myself "does this apply to Unity pre-5? does this apply to Unity 5?", and as far as I can remember, this has always led to me ensuring that both tags were included. As far as I am aware, these tag inclusions have never been rejected or reversed.
Wouldn't it be better to simply merge unity with unity5?
We could employ a suggestion that users mention the exact version they are using, for clarity. By having a single tag, we do not infer that users should only differentiate their questions between older versions1 and the current version. As it stands, having both tags for no deliberate reason seems a unnecessarily confusing.
1 For purpose of clarity, I am only acknowledging currently accessible versions of the software when I say "older versions".

Sure, we can merge unity5 with unity and create the synonym. Unless there are opposing views, I will do so soon.

Might I suggest that we go with using the tag unity3d instead of just unity. My reasoning behind this is that stackoverflow has a unity3d tag because of Microsoft's unity DI container. Using the same tag as them might yield better results from the search engines. Right now unity3d is a alias of the unity tag but perhaps it should be the opposite ?

I think that change is much larger and should be explored in a separate question.

unity5 is now a synonym for unity.


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What to call a physically-based-rendering tag?
In discussing Unity tags recently, I noticed that we don't yet have a tag for physically based rendering.
This is getting to be a popular feature in games/engines, showing up in Q&A here (34 posts so far containing "physically based rendering" and 43 containing "BRDF")
The techniques and terminology differ substantially from conventional lighting models used in games. I think this is a good candidate for a tag, as a topic in which one could be a subject matter expert.
The trouble is physically-based-rendering is one letter over our tag length limit.
So, I'm debating between a few options:

pbr is short & easy to type, but not as clear unless you're already well-versed in the topic's parlance. It's also not search-friendly: if someone starts typing "physically..." the tag search won't suggest pbr (like how typing "ambient..." won't suggest ssao)
physically-based-render keeps the core meaning, but is a little awkward, since we never talk about a "render" being physically based, just rendering, lighting, shading, or materials. Maybe "renderer" since this can affect renderer-level details like what to include in a G-buffer?
physically-based is likely to get polluted with people using it to ask about physics-based gameplay mechanics, rather than rendering.

Since this is my first tag addition, I wanted to ask for META's expertise so I can get it right the first time, and avoid making work for someone else to fix my tags later.

It seems the greater popularity lies with "BRDF". Of the posts showing under a search for "physically based rendering", we only have 12 actual questions. Of the posts showing under the search for "brdf", we have a total of 21 questions. 4 questions appear under both searches.

I'm not particularly for it, but I found another variant through google. One particular paper refers to "pbf" as "model based rendering".

TL;DR:
Main Tag: pbr
Synonym Tags: physical-based-rendering, physically-based-render

I suggest the tag pbr. It is easy to implement, stays true to the most used and accepted term, and still easily solves other possible issues:

There is the issue where users unfamiliar with the term physically based rendering would not understand the term. That said, if users are completely unfamiliar with the term, we probably should not expect them to be using any variation. On the flip side, as we see questions that fit this tag, we should be adding the tag. As users notice the new tag, those that are unfamiliar with the acronym "pbr" would hopefully look to the user guidance, and familiarise themselves with its use.
pbr is not search friendly, but than, main tags do not need to be. If we implement alternate synonyms, the alternate tags will still come up when a user searches. We can thus implement one or two alternate tags (I suggest physically-based-render and physical-based-rendering) to further facilitate potential user searches.

Regarding universally accepted terminology, as says Google
Running a quick google search for physically based rendering, I find that "pbr" is a common acronym. It appears in the blurb of the top hits, along side "physically based rendering". Both "physical based rendering" and "physically based render" are automatically corrected to "physically based rendering", thus returning the same hits.

Regarding setting up synonyms
I suspect we would need a moderator to set the synonyms; from a rough inspection, we would not have enough users with permission to vote on tag synonyms, should all the suggested questions receive the new tag. That said, I don't think that will be too much of an issue.

What about physics-based-rendering? Does that come across as less awkward than the adjective-used-as-adverb option?

That said, it occurs to me that users not already familiar with the term "physically based rendering" may not even consider adding such a tag. If we want to stay true to the term, I would suggest having pbr as the main tag. As more knowledgeable users add it to relevant questions, users are sure to inspect the usage guidance for why it was added, and in turn it would in theory catch on.

@DMGregory, I had accidentally delete my earlier comment, but I think physics-based-rendering might be to confusing. It wouldn't attract as much incorrect tagging as physically-based, but I think the same problem might attract non-attention, if that makes sense

I think physically-based-render would be the best compromise.
The tag wiki should start with something like "Physically based rendering is ...".


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Do we still consider programming questions off topic if the context is game-dev related, but the problem turned out to be generic?
I was aware that we do not accept generic programming questions, but does this include questions where the problem was encountered in game developing but turns out to be generic?
I came across this question, today, where a user was asking about a Unity error. A user voted to close the question as the context was generic programming, and commented on an answer telling the user not to answer such questions. Ultimately, the asker thinks the problem actually is specific to game developing, which in turn is adding to confusion. In the example, for instance, the user refers to a generic constructor problem as a "Unity error".

Previously, I have noticed that 'generic' issues encountered during Game Developing do not receive close-vote attention.
I frequently run into similar examples that are left open, answered, and upvoted. The clear difference is that it takes the effort of attempting to answer the question (or rather, solve the askers problem) to reveal the generic nature of the actual problem. Previously not giving it as much thought, I am sure some of my own answers simply address generic issues, and have nevertheless been accepted.
Examples I have seen include:

Explaining that variable is different to Variable. (Similar questions may include making the same error in other contexts, such as method calls.)
Explaining that a class presents its constructors in a specific format, and the user is not following that format (more cryptic in explaining the problem, but identical to the example question I linked, above).
Explaining that if I create variables a and b, and set a = 5, I can not immediately retrieve a by only referencing b.
Explaining that inherited classes can not see private methods, and further explaining the use of protected as a replacement.
Explaining how arrays and structs work. (was only part of the answer, but made a big impact in answering the question.)
Explaining that if you constantly refresh an input variable, every instant where there is no input, the variable will reset to 0. (This last one may appear specific to game development; however, I disagree, as I have most commonly run into this problem through non-game software development.)
Explaining how to read file input.

Answers don't make a question on or off topic. Questions do.
If the question is obviously a generic programming issue or error, such as interpreting the meaning of a compiler errror (as is the example you linked), it's reasonable to vote to close as off-topic.
Otherwise the questions is probably fine.

This still leaves much ambiguity, as it does not address the fact that many other examples are generic programming. I mention the answers mostly because I feel users are having to address the answer to understand the generic nature (for example, the question I linked had its close vote started by a user only after they looked at the answer), but the questions themselves still base themselves in generic programming. A good example is the last question I link; while it has high votes, it simply asks how to read a text file.

@Gnemlock My assertion is that when you vote whether or not to close the question, you vote based on that question. Answers should not factor in. The vote is for the question and the text of the question is what matters.

As for the question that raised this issue, I object to your assertion that the user must have voted after reading the answer, because the timestamps only show you the order in which the user commented, not the order in which they read or made decisions. This is not tracked by the software. It seems entirely plausible that the user could have read the question, continued reading to the answer, and commented on the answer first since that's where the scroll position was, and then scrolled up. The decision to VTC could have easily been made after reading the question, though.

Further, I don't think it matters. The question seems pretty obviously off-topic to me right off the bat because the text of the error in the title is indicative of a general C# compiler error. I feel like you're trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. As for other questions, if you feel they are off-topic, vote on them as such. I try not to go back into the archives of the site and retroactively apply my unilateral vote to old questions where policy changed or that might have been missed. It's not helpful.

It doesn't help to enforce newer site policy on older questions? Now I'm even more confused. In such example we have the potential for old questions bumped to appear at the top (that is how the "how do I read text" question came up). Is there policy / best practice for only acknowledging new policy on older questions that could be of more help? This seems especially non-uniform, and especially confusing for new users.

@Gnemlock If something bumps a question up to the front page, is flagged, or otherwise brought to our attention as moderators we generally act on it then. We do not explicitly go digging around in old posts trying to keep their open/closed status up-to-date with new rules that have come along. It takes far, far, far too much time and is mostly busywork.

The rules we have in place here should exist to serve the sites goal of providing high-quality searchable answers to canonical game development questions. When we start to worry over retroactive enforcement of new policy and nitpicking over rules lawyering and all that, we start to lose sight of our utility.

The "general programming belongs on SO" rule fits in to that view: it helps to delineate our scope relative to Stack Overflow so that we don't become a duplicate of Stack Overflow and to keep our focus on questions that deal with our area of expertise: game development. It's a pretty clear-cut scenario when a question is about a simple compiler error message. It's less clear cut in the "reading a file" case because perhaps there are Unity-specific issues involved (a better way than with File.ReadAllText, maybe ReadAllText isn't available in Unity like some BCL APIs aren't, et cetera).


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Edit an old closed question vs. create a new question
I came across this question as a suggested question from SE:
What are the basic game activities?
It's been closed as off-topic, though I would expect that the core question of "what are the basic activities we can provide in games?" as a very important and relevant question for Game Design.
This is actually and area I'm recently researching and there is a good amount of information available that I think would be useful. I haven't found a similar question on this site.
So, would it be better to edit the original question that is 3 years old, and to which the existing answers are, in my opinion, not quite on point with the core question.  Or would it be better to ask a new question and put my answer there?

I'm not sure we could ever have a reasonably complete answer to such a question. New game concepts are invented regularly, and there's not great consensus about which activities "count" as truly distinct (eg. is FPS aiming & shooting in Portal a different activity than in Call of Duty because the outcome is different? How about a pistol versus a bazooka, which also have different outcomes?) Moreover, I'm not sure how one would apply this to actually solve a game development problem - it's not like we decide what games to make by assembling a complete list of activities and then throwing darts…

The concept is commonly referred to as ludemes. In Portal and Call of Duty, precision aiming would be one ludeme they share. Portal also has puzzle solving ludemes, while Call of Duty includes several revolving around competition and strategy.  It's not about the mechanics, but a more baseline explanation of activities.  Portal, Mario, Frogger, Super Meat Boy, all have the concept of get to the goal for example.

if you mean "base things we ask the player to do", there are only 8 as far as I have always been taught. I still see this question as being widely opinion-based through its interpretation

I've found a useful razor for identifying constructive questions is to ask "what problem in my own work am I trying to solve with this information?" - if you can phrase it that way, we might be able to suggest ways you can pose this as a constructive SE-style question (which may be distinct from the question you linked)

@Gnemlock I agree the question has a problem of ambiguity of interpretation.  And perhaps each interpretation is useful information.  I think I'm going to take some time and see if there are similar answers that rule out interpretations, and write a Q&A on remaining interpretations for which I can provide a specific Question and researched Answer.

In context of the exact question you refer to, I would personally vote for neither. That said, your best course of action is to edit the original question, and let others decide whether it should be reopened.
Ultimately, if you wish to make your case for reopening the question, you must do better than 'there is good information available that I think would be helpful'. You specifically need to address the core close reasons, and more specifically, address how you could change the question to limit these reasons.
It is important to note that in opening or closing a question, we generally do not address any current or potential answers. That is; arguments based off answers are invalid for closing or opening a question. I personally find that answers can give us insight into how others interpret the question, but if you comment that "this question should be opened, because the answer is really helpful", it's just not going to happen. Sorry.

First and foremost, you should never ask a new question if you already identify it as a duplicate of a previous question.
But what if the original question was closed?
If it was closed, your identical question will probably be closed for the same reasons. In this case I think there is more to it than that, but I will talk more about that, below.
If you instead edit the original question to better suit site policy, you will not necessarily see the question reopened. The edit will flag the question for the "Vote to Reopen" queue, and other members will have an opportunity to vote towards reopening the question. Keep in mind that once opened, further users may still vote to close the question, again. If you truly believe the question is on topic for current site policy, make an argument about it in the comments.
But what if I think the current answers are wrong?
If you think the current answers are wrong, down-vote them. If you really wish to be helpful, add a helpful comment explaining what you find to be wrong. You can add your own answer, and if your answer truly shines above the rest, it will eventually be up voted above the rest. If you do not have an answer, but still believe the other answers to be incorrect or of low quality, post a bounty. These options are all available if and when the question is reopened.
But what if the question is not reopened?
If the question is not reopened, that infers that the community in general does not see this question as being on topic. You can ask about it more specifically, here in meta, and perhaps other users will provide more helpful dialogue on why the question is not a good fit for here. Ultimately, if it comes to this, any identical question you post will meet with quick closure and potential down voting.
But what if it really IS a good question?
Just because a question is good and potentially helpful, does not mean it is a good fit for StackExchange. Good examples can be seen in primarily opinion-based questions. Other elements to the question might make it a poor fit for this sort of site, and ultimately make it far too difficult to uphold the general quality we strive for. I will talk more about why I think this is one of those questions, below.

In regards to the question in context, I would personally still vote to close. As well as being "Not Constructive", I can see this question being "Too Broad", "Primarily Opinion Based" and even "Unclear".
The question "What are the basic game activities" is currently closed as "Not Constructive". I do not believe we close questions for this reason, any more. That said, if we do, that is the penultimate argument. This question has already been closed, and will surely be closed again. One of the users who voted on this question is now a mod1, and if they agree the question is still off-topic, they do not require any more votes to close the question.
Ignoring the current close status of the question, the major issue I see is broadness. What do you mean by "game activities", exactly?

I interpret it as "what can we tell the player to do". If we stick to the basics, this question is not very broad, at all. At least, not from my opinion. One constant in my studies has been that, when it comes down to it, we can only really give the user 8 different core objectives. That said, I am sure others would disagree, entirely. That is their opinion. If an answer relies to heavily on a users opinion, that might also make the question primarily opinion-based, which is another sort of question we don't accept.
The first answer interprets the question as specifically asking about the basic activity for each genre in existence. With 4 up-votes and no down-votes, I think it is clear that others have shared this interpretation. This particular answer screams too broad. A complete answer would have to include every game genre - well outside the scope of the format of Stack Exchange.
The second answer appears to interpret the question as specifically asking about aesthetics. I am personally unsure how the user could have made that interpretation, aesthetics and activities are greatly different from each other. All aside, the answer has received almost as much up-votes as the first, despite tackling a completely different question all together.

It is clear to see that this question received mixed interpretation. I can personally understand why this question is considered not constructive, and would vote to close this question, myself.
1 Forgive me if I miss-inferred; As far as I know, users are listed in order of when they placed their votes, so I infer that Byte56 was not a mod when they cast this particular vote, as the question would have been automatically closed before another user could cast their vote.

Thanks for the in depth answer. My biggest concern is that information, like that which you've linked to, is not obvious or immediately available to someone who maybe isn't studying the academics of game design and that this site may be suffering from that same audience not knowing what to ask to get to it.

@Chris GD.SE doesn't aim to be a one-stop-shop replacement for an education in theories of game development. Such a resource would need to be structured very differently (eg. it would need to answer "how do I get started?" which is another thing we don't do) Rather, it's made to be a problem-solving resource, for people who are already working on game projects and need help understanding an issue or overcoming a barrier. Other resources are better equipped to handle first-timers and general theory information. Just because a piece of info is interesting doesn't mean it belongs on this shelf.

@DMGregory Agreed, but I've actually gotten a lot of information from this meta question/answer/comments that I was hoping to find when I originally went to that question. So, as to your suggestion above, it has a specific use to my own work. I'm going to try to frame a question as such.


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The tag 'units' and us
This came up while reviewing the suggested edits queue (for tags).
I'd like to highlight something that has been already written here by user15805.

units is ambiguous as users have asked questions tagged with it that are both about entities (i.e. enemy units) and measurements (e.g. unit conversion).
I also believe it doesn't exactly add much in the way of filtering (i.e. searching for questions that are about units in games (usually contained into a much more major category e.g. strategy games where one expects to find units) and units in physics (physics here is a tag that's enough)).
I recommend deletion.

The alternative would be to decide to keep the tag and focus its scope on the concept of measuring stuff, or keep the tag for the concept of in-game entities, typically in army-related games.

I have removed all current uses of units and added it to the bad tag list.

The quoted text reflects my thoughts about it. We should delete the tag units.

I agree, I can't see a good reason to leave the tag around.

The tag units is clearly used ambiguously, and the tag does not offer the kind of benefit or support we usually associate with tags. Furthermore, it does not appear that any of the involved questions would suffer detriment to having the tag removed. We should definitely delete it.
In case others wish to have more information to make a decision, here is some information I was able to pool from the units wiki and listed questions:

The tag is currently only being used on 20 different questions. This seems like a particularly small number to have a dedicated tag for, in the first place. Two of these questions have been closed, one for "not constructive", and one as a "duplicate".
The interpretation of the tag appears to be roughly split down the middle. Half the questions appear to use the tag in regards to units of measurement, half the questions appear to use the tag in regards to ambiguous game units such as enemies or texture objects. There is no wiki excerpt detailing the intended use.
Despite being created 4 years ago, there are currently only 2 views on the tag wiki, one of them being myself in response to this meta. It is clear, from this, that the this tag has not received any real support in regards to meta. Furthermore, there do not appear to be any users subscribed to this tag. Of the top users, I only note a single user who has answered more than one question with this tag,  at a total count of 3.
The tag is only used as a secondary tag. While it is somewhat clear (in most cases) what the askers intention was, in regards to using the tag on their question, the questions all feature more relevant tag that more accurately categorise the question. Not a single question categorises soley under the units tag.

I have previously been told that a good way to judge any possible benefit from a tag would be to determine whether somebody professionally adept with the subject would be more likely to provide good quality answers. Ultimately, I do not believe you can be a professional in regards to units of measurement or game units, as either topic is simply to ambiguous.

Agreed. The closest thing I can think of to an expert in "units" would be someone well-versed in working with & converting between coordinate systems, for which we have the [tag:coordinates] tag. I think that and physics covers most interesting uses of units of measurement for gamedev purposes.


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Sizing up the 'size' tag
Similar to the context of "The tag 'units' and us", I came across the tag size, through processing a review queue1. Ultimately, I initially meant to use this tag, but a bit of investigation lead me to the assumption that I probably shouldn't.
This tag does not appear to have been brought up in meta, previously, but it appears to suffer the same problems we see with the tag units: the tag receives little attention, and when it does, the interpreted context of "size" appears to be mixed.
What should we do to improve the quality issues concerning the size tag?
1In not exactly the same context, of course, but I digress.

I think this tag should be deleted. The tag is neither popular, nor useful, due to ambiguity. For what little benefit it adds, as a tag, the use of other tags serve the related questions in greater quality.

The intention of the tag appears very ambiguous, from inspection of the questions that use it. The main subject of each question varies, and with it, the exact context of "size". The context is actually usually found in the tag that precedes size, but I feel that for this very reason, the 'size context' tag should be more than enough.

perspective size has been used in a question asking about the difference in game object size as a direct result of player perspective.
texture size has been used a couple of times in questions asking about the physical texture sizes.
scale size has been used in a question asking about best practices for scaling the size of game objects.
file and file-format size has been used in relation to questions concerning the actual file size of the end build, or impacts on said file size relating to various used file formats.
font size has been used in questions relating to both font size and the size of UI as a result of changes to font size.
screen and camera size has been used in questions relating to the screen size, both physical, and in terms of the projection made by the in-game camera.

Apart from that, it appears that the tag is not very popular:

The tag has been used on 20 differant questions, 3 of which have been closed as "primarily opinion-based", "unrelated to game-developing" and "unclear".
The tag has no apparent followers, and the top users have all only answered a single question.
The tag has been used, recently, with a single question tagged with size in the last 30 days.
As mentioned, the tag has no guidance wiki, and the tag appears to be used quite ambiguously. Keep in mind that even if we decide on proper usage of this tag, the resulting cleanup would easily remove at least half of the questions that use this tag. We simply do not have the question count to warrant needing it.

I have burninated the size tag; you can accept this answer.


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Did Edit functionality change?
I'm trying to adjust the tags on the following question:
Using an unregistered company name
To remove the Game-Design tag and add the Legal tag.
However, it gives me the error message "Edits must be at least 6 characters; is there something else to improve in this post?"
I've been able to make tag only edits before, is there something that's change? How should I be making these kind of tag edits?

Are you trying to edit the whole question or just using the "edit tags" button next to the tags themselves?

I don't see an "edit tags" button. I think Edit Tags is a rep or mod privilege that skips review.

Probably, and since you're below the threshold required to edit without review the system probably wants you to make more substantial edits. I don't know if this changed recently or not as a way of heading off a lot of the bad, irrelevant tag edits. You may want to check on MSE.

Not seeing anything on MSE (StackExchange Meta right?). And I was able to do this as of last week, October 8 to be specific.

@JoshPetrie I'm assuming you are suggesting, if this is an issue, it's an issue across SE and not just gamedev.  Posted a question to SE Meta http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285645/has-edit-functionality-changed-i-cannot-edit-just-tags

Yes, because there's really no reason I can think of that would have localized such a change to GDSE.

what was the exact question you edited on October 8th to suggest this was previously accepted?

The core functionality of the Edit button has not changed, and you can make tag-only edits within reason.
I have previously encountered situations where I only wished to change a tag, but the edit was "too minimal". That said, I was able to submit an edit to a question where I only removed the unityscript tag1. I was required to submit a manual edit description, but once entered, my edit was successfully submitted.
It is difficult to define "too minimal" in regards to a tag-only edit, due to conflicts between the two circumstances, but here are some ideas:
It may involve further consideration, regarding edited characters

It can not be a simple count of how many characters the edit changes, as an edit of "legal game-design" has a character count of at least 16, while "unityscript" only has a character count of 11.
I had considered that only the 'total character sum' of tags was taken into consideration, but by my count, "legal game-design" gives a 'total character sum' change of +6.

It may be an unwritten privilege
Admittedly, the ability to make tag-only edits might seem insignificant. As a result, it is entirely possible that the ability to do so comes with the provision of other privileges, without deliberate mention. If that is the case, this would have to be somewhere between the last privileged you unlocked (View Close Votes at 250 reputation) and the next privilege I can unlock (Edit Questions and Answers at 2,000 reputation). Two particular privileges stand out:

Create Tags at 300 reputation may also yield improved ability to edit tags.
Access Review Queues at 500 reputation may also extend the general ability to edit, including tags.

Either way, nothing is mentioned regarding editing tags. We would need a moderator or higher to comment on whether either of these could or would be the case.
It may be a user-specific bug
If it ultimately boils down to a bug, we know that the bug does not affect everybody, or is at least a little more specific than preventing all tag-only edits. We do know that it is not a recent change, as ultimately, we have seen that tag-only edits have been accepted as recently as within 5 hours of the original post.
1 Immediately after submitting the tag change, I proof read the question and submitted a more thorough edit. The initial edit was confirmed almost instantly, so both edits appear as separate revisions.

It is odd, and all seems to be working now. I'm accepting your answer here, and if I come across the issue again will further update the question on MSE with any info I can gather.


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The HTML canvas tag
Based on the description of the canvas tag ...
A new feature of HTML5, allowing Javascript apps to have a drawing surface in the browser.

...it should be used strictly for HTML5 games using the canvas element. However a lot of questions about Unity also use the same tag, because the drawing surface for unity projects is also called like that. Same for games using the Canvas object in the java.awt package (altough, they come up less frequently).
I think they should be either a separate tag for unity's canvas and java's canvas or the description of the tag should include these 2 options too (which would mess up the "favourite tags" feature on the site though).

Canvas is a very generic term TBH. I'm pretty sure it's used in a lot of places, not just HTML5/Java/Unity.

@DH. Those were just the 3 examples I knew of, there is 1 in .NET too

While there are alternatives to the canvas, in using Unity, you have to ask how many people would actually use a [tag:unity-canvas] tag. Using just [tag:unity][tag:canvas] would make it a metatag, which is also how I would describe the other uses you list. It is worth knowing that the Stack Exchange has moved away from, and now should not use, meta tags.

I have renamed 'canvas' to 'html-canvas.' I have not gone through the 290-odd questions removing the tag from those where it no longer fits.

My gut feeling is that the instances where the tag is used with Unity are just superfluous and should be removed. Same with the Java instances.
The HTML5 instances seem legit and in line with the original intent of the tag. Maybe we should rename it to html-canvas?

Would be a good idea imo. Putting it in unity questions is redundant, because you can only use a canvas.

Especially in favour of adding the html prefix, as without it, the tag looks somewhat like (and appears to be used like) a meta tag.

+1 for html-canvas

@Gnemlock straight from the link: "The reason meta-tags are a problem is that they do not describe the content of the question.". html-canvas describes the content of the question, it's (obviously) about the canvas element. I even have it in my "favourite tags" list so I cab see those questions easily.

@Bálint, this is true. As I said, in favor of the prefix, as without it the tag looks like a meta tag. I'm not sure what you mean by "I even have it in my "favourite tags"", though. At present, the tag [tag:html-canvas] is yet to exist.

@Gnemlock sorry, I though you were speaking about the tag in general, and not about canvas or html-canvas


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Should we answer "where should I start?"
A lot of people ask "I am new to game development. Where should I begin?" It gets down-voted and closed.
I am not suggesting we answer each of these questions individually. I am suggesting we ask and answer a canonical question answering this. Then we can link them to our question before closing theirs.
"They should have read the rules first!"
Sure, but they didn't. Neither did I when I first joined stack exchange. The point of this site is to give and receive help to game developers of all skill levels, including first timers. They need to know where to start. We should be the ones to tell them. Part of the answer of where to start can be "read the rules."
Thoughts?

It's not clear to me what your "reading the rules" argument really has to do with your proposal. If you are proposing changing the rules so this question is on-topic, why does it matter that part of the answer is "read the rules of this site?"

@JoshPetrie Check out Phillip's upvoted comment: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/q/131700/41345

No.
The crux of the problem with "how do I get started" is that it is a huge topic. Entire books have been devoted to the material. Most of those still cover it poorly. It seems folly for us to think we can provide answers to that question in the significantly more limited format of the StackExchange Q&A engine.
Further, everybody's situation is unique, everybody has their own motivation, their own goals, and their own thought processes that predispose them towards certain pedagogical paths that would be more optimal for them. I've spent years moderating the "For Beginners" forum over at GDNet, and seen this question more times than I can remember. The threads that seem to work out the best are those where we were able to engage in a back and forth dialog with the asker, sort out their experience level, their wants, and from there suggest a series of first steps we can then engage with them on and provide feedback to. We don't have the capability (nor the mandate) to do that here at all.
The structure of a SE site is just not well-suited to the asking of such a question nor the answering of it, to the extent that I feel we could not do the topic the justice it needs. We should leave the question for other sites to field.

The one thing I would stress quite heavily, though, is that anyone making games should have a relatively strong knowledge of mathematics, especially the knowledge of coordinate systems and geometry. Without that knowledge, I can see quite a lot of game ideas being impossible to make let alone make half-decently.

@TheGreatDuck Let's say I don't agree with you. Your comment demonstrates why SE is not a great vehicle for this information: it cannot be down-voted, and voting (both ways) is how SE surfaces "generally good" answers and buries "generally bad" ones. Absent that mechanism, all we could do is argue in comments, which are not for discussion (outside of meta), have limited presentation and formatting options, and are generally aggressively trimmed, deleted or moved-aside when they start to clutter up and derail a question.

What I mean to say is that no answer is appropriate because people cannot just "start making games", and as such I would stress that one doesn't begin with making games. The knowledge base required to implement certain things lie in subjects beyond just programming. It's no different that what you helped me with the other day. I could stand there all day staring at a globe trying to envision motion upon it, but without a clear knowledge of vectors or rotations or spherical geometry... you just cannot do it. Even 3D games reply upon a knowledge of linear algebra.

Tl;dr I am agreeing with you and adding the point that if anything any answer we give would depend on one's knowledge and 90% of the time we'd just end up telling them "come back when you know more about math and stuff relevant to what you wish to do". Therefore, any answer would be inappropriate as it would sound rude and harsh no matter how we put it.


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Can we get a close reason for "where can I get free resource X"?
"Where can I get free resource X?" style questions are off topic, but when flagging such questions, we don't have an indicator for that reason. Could we get one? If not, then which flag should we select for such things?
Presently the off-topic options are:

Programming questions that aren't specific to game development
Questions about "how to get started," "what to learn next," or "which technology to use"
Questions without a minimal, complete, verifiable example of the issue
Blatantly off-topic with nothing to do with game development

None of these seem like a clean fit for "find me free X." @DH mentioned, option 2 links to the help center & this is probably more of a first timer type requst - maybe that option could be tweaked to include this issue as an example to help guide the less experienced (both the OPs & the mods). Thoughts?

I usually pick the second option because it links to the help center, where it clearly says that asking for free resources is off-topic.

Smart; didn't know that it links to help center. Perhaps that option could be edited to include "find me free X" as an example.

We can change the text of the 'which technology' close reason, but it has to fit in the character limit and I believe the current wording is basically exactly on that limit. A proposal to change it would need to account for that. I would further move that 'free' is irrelevant to the issue.

We get three custom close reasons, and we're using all three currently. In extreme circumstances sites have been granted a 4th, but I don't think we see nearly enough of the "finding resources" questions to justify StackExchange giving us an extra slot.
The questions covered by our existing close reasons are far more common, especially since the generic "too broad" close reason covers these "finding resources" questions fairly well. "Too broad" is usually what I use to close them, the custom "which technology" close reason is also good and covers the topic.
Further, in the past these questions were on-topic and there are several floating around in the sites history. They are closed now, but in the interest of getting askers as much help as is possible, duplicate questions should be linked to them where possible instead of closing outright.

Didn't know there was a custom close reason limit. I agree this probably doesn't warrant one if these are used so sparingly. Editing & staying within the char limit seems unlikely. Aside from missing a chance to link to a duplicate, does it create any problems if there flag reasons for this aren't consistent?

No, it doesn't matter, the flags are mainly to bring the question to the attention of users who can vote-to-close (or not).


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How should I edit my Game Maker questions to improve them?
I have three questions that I have asked on the main site. Every single one of them have been downvoted quite heavily, in my opinion, to the point that I am longer allowed to ask questions (I checked out of curiosity; I am not interested in asking anything else right now). I asked in chat twice (and some nice people upvoted the questions to try and counter-balance what they felt were unfair voting practices) and was told that there are no detectable issues in my questions besides simple things that I can't fix myself anyways (one of the questions is relevant to a mod so the precise software version is unknown).
Now I don't care too much about downvotes, but it does concern me that with only three questions I am question banned, especially when only one of them is explicitly relevant towards what version of software was used. Everything else are only general questions about game maker or only mention the mod as useful context with little relevancy as to what the issue I was having was. As some people in chat also mentioned there is a large stigma towards users of game maker which could also contribute to why it is attracting down voters.
These are the questions I have posted on the site so far:

Does Game Maker use use intrinsic or extrinsic rotations?
Camera not working in a Game Maker mod I am creating
Why won't my model display fully in a mod made with an older version of GameMaker?

The question ban isn't permanent. It'll expire after a period of time, or earlier if you edit the questions and the voting on them rebalances.

@ArtOfCode Except nobody has at all indicated how I should edit the questions. One guy suggested writing an entirely brand new program for the model drawing issue, but that would be absurd, especially since they assume I even have knowledge of writing and manipulating cameras to make such a thing practical. Yes, I am complaining about the question ban but I also want to know what is wrong with my questions (and answers to said questions) that is causing all these downvotes.

http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/game-maker?sort=unanswered&pageSize=50
I do not see a bias against questions marked game-maker there. Most of those have several upvotes, and they are even unanswered.

@Almo I agree. I just figured its a point worth mentioning.

I feel this discussion is a bit of an over-reaction. Only one question has a "heavy downvote". I personally downvoted that question almost a week ago, and its score has not changed.

@Gnemlock I probably did exaggerate. I am mostly asking how I can improve my questions.

I would also like to point out, in comments, that if users do not think a question deserves an upvote on its own merit, they should not upvote it. Upvoting only to negate a downvote is, itself, bad voting practice.

@Gnemlock I'm not going to debate the practices of chat members. If you feel that is inappropriate feel free to go back a week or so and report those posts. I didn't ask them to upvote. They did that by their own merits, because they felt it didn't deserve the downvote. One of them was actually a person who had previously downvoted the post. Also, my other posts were about -4 before the upvotes, each. Two of them I see problems with but the one asking about rotations seems perfectly reasonable. What is wrong with it?

Does Game Maker use use intrinsic or extrinsic rotations?
I don't think there's anything particular egregious with this question. The biggest issue I see is that you start out by discussing a "problem" with your rotations where they "don't see to work" but that's not what the actual title of your question, or the closing question, seems to actually be about. As such one could in theory excise everything but the very last paragraph for a more optimized question.

Camera not working in a Game Maker mod I am creating
This one seems a bit more likely to attract the downvotes it has because it's essentially a code dump with the question "what's wrong here?" It doesn't help that you're being potentially too verbose again, which distracts from the issue and harms readability. In particular parenthetical statements like "(temp model until I figure out the proper model rotation algorithm)" just add noise to the question. That fact isn't particularly relevant but people still have to read and parse it.
I think you could improve this question by narrowing down the code to the point of failure and describing more about the context of the failure as your debugging has made you aware.

Why won't my model display fully in a mod made with an older version of GameMaker?
This one has all the same problems of the "camera taking over" question; iy consists of a large code dump that is very hard to read because you've chosen to format it the way Game Maker requires of you rather than in a way that will help people here help you. It's not as wordy, in terms of superfluous statements, but it might be possible to tighten it up a bit.
It helps that you have an image, but originally you didn't, and that may have also contributed to the poor reception your question got.

In the third question the poor reception came after I edited the image in. Also, it's literally two lines of code in one line. That's not "unreadable" by any means. Also, I was told to do that because the code proved irrelevant to the answer and so I should try and make the question geared more in that direction. It didn't matter how I was drawing the model (there's really only one way to draw models) so I was told its better to just leave the useful version. Also, I made that edit last night after chat told me to do it.

You're right about the image, but as Gnemlock noted, votes are anonymous so all I can do is offer my own theories. You may assert that your code presentation is "not unreadable," but it is entirely possible that others disagree (I certainly do) and disagree to the point where they felt they should downvote the question. As is their right.

"I think you could improve this question by narrowing down the code to the point of failure and describing more about the context of the failure as your debugging has made you aware." I don't really see anything I could take out. As it is right now, it's the minimum it could be. Also, the point of failure isn't a bug in the code. The code is flawless. It's game maker being an idiot. So, I'm not entirely sure what I could remove.

I'd also like to take the time to point that it's very possible that others are voting on your questions based on the attitude you present in those questions or your follow-up comments. When you say things like "The code is flawless. It's game maker being an idiot," it doesn't help endear people to helping you. It makes you sound like a poor craftsman, blaming his tools. It's fine to feel that, but try to keep that kind of rancor to yourself and be objective about the problem.

Except what you dont understand is that issue has nothing to do with the code for the camera one. The issue was that game maker draws everything by this variable called depth that it doesnt document anywhere. I think anyone would agree that that is quite a bad problem to have. Also, I never posted anything like that in the question. Im only posting that here to point out that the code only has relevancy as context for others to see exactly what I was doing. I dont want my question closed for no context.

shrug You asked for advice, I offered some based on how I see you interacting with this site. That's all I can do. I cannot definitively explain why others vote the way they do and I will not engage in argument-by-proxy for them with you.

Im not asking for you to argue by proxy. Im just asking for suggestions to improve the question. It seems like your suggestions are saying to completely buldoze my question which just seems like a bit much. Surely they arent that bad of questions?

That's not what I said at all. I am suggesting you focus your questions and think about the presentation of the question to the audience you have. Not completely delete them.

At the end of the day, voting is anonymous. We can't really tell you why any of the votes have been placed, for sure, unless we were specifically the ones who placed them. The closest bet is that Tim lost his keys, again.
I feel I should also point out that I almost always see a direct link between "why have my questions been down-voted" questions and down-vote; that is, I see a direct pattern of these questions being down-voted more after the question has been raised, either through meta or comments. We can see this has already happened, here; since my original post, the question I personally down-voted has had one of its up-votes retracted. Another of your questions has received more down-voting, as well.
When the result of commenting on the amount of down-votes, I could only see the votes as a form of attitude punishment, which is bad form in its entirity. When these things are brought up, in meta, we have to assume that some users are simply being directed to your questions, agree with the downvotes, but do not agree that they should comment on why they are doing so. I still do not agree with this, but it's better form than criticing the question entirely off perceived attitude. Regardless, we can see that this is somewhat of the case, here.
I will make comments where I have personally voted, below.

I have three questions that I have asked on the main site. Every single one of them have been downvoted quite heavily.

In essence, only one of your questions has been down-voted heavily. Both other questions sit at -1.

..to the point that I am longer allowed to ask questions (I checked out of curiosity;

As brought up in the comments, this is a temporary ban. If you do not need to ask any more questions at the current time, this is not a problem. Just ensure you pay heed to the feedback for future questions, as if it happens again, the temporary ban will most likely be for a longer period of time.

I asked in chat twice (and some nice people upvoted the questions to try and counter-balance what they felt were unfair voting practices)

This, in itself, sounds like a problem. Your telling us that the up-votes come from users specifically because they do not agree that the question should be down-voted, which itself is a poor voting practice. If you do not agree that a question should be down-voted, you simply don't down-vote it. You should never award a question with up-votes if you do not think that the question actually deserves up-votes. We also can't tell, now, if anyone thought your question was useful, given that you've told us the up-votes were placed to negate the down-votes. I would not mind having a mod comment on this, as such practice sounds like the sort of thing that would even be revoked, if a pattern was picked up.

I personally down-voted your question Why is game maker displaying a model without all of its polygons?, and did so for numerous reasons. I did so a mere 2 hours after your final edit, and can recall leaving your question at -5. As such, it appears that even this question has been mostly untouched, since your final edit. Ultimately, I voted that your question was unclear and un-useful.
If you were to improve the question, you could consider the following:
To quote you from the comments, "@liggiorgio I'm not actually running this in game maker. Read the post very carefully. This is a mod of a game maker game".
I had completely missed that you were not asking about using Game Maker, the first time I read your question. Your telling us that you think it was made in Game Maker 8. That is not helpful, especially if it is not important. You say it should not be important, but why do you mention it? It is good to remember that if the information is not important, it probably should not be there. Useless information can detract from useful information, and make your question look overly cluttered.
Your question appears to continue providing unhelpful information further down, where you appear to reprint duplicate code, simply for the point of presenting it in a more readable format. If you think that your code would look better presented in a different format, only present it in the different format. You can still refer to it, earlier, as "code snipper 1" or "my first code, below" or whatever.
If I were to improve the question, I would consider the following:
Please take this with a grain of salt, but I would personally delete the question, if it only came down to quality.
When it comes down to it, you were having a problem with a mod created by SomeGuyTM. When you have little information about the origin, it makes things particularly difficult. We do not know if SomeGuyTM is even remotely good at game developing, so for all we know, your problem could have been any number of inconsistencies resulting from author error.
At the end of the day, I'm confidant in saying that the only reason this question found an answer was that you were evidently able to find the answer without GameDev.SE. While your answer does point to something interesting in GameMaker (at least, in my opinion), there is simply not enough information in your question to accurately pinpoint the cause without personally playing around with your project. This is still a problem: How would anybody experiencing the same sort of problems find your question? Not very well, I would say.
Lastly, with a vote of -5, your question does not appear to regular users. As such, not many users are actually going to be able to up-vote. You have to ask whether it is worth cutting you losses. If I am not mistaken, you actually earn a medal for deleting a question with severe down-votes, so it's not all bad!

There is another option
Ultimately, you found your answer, so your not worried with attracting more attention to answer your question. You could tailor it to make it easier to find, if other users are having the problem. It appears that the problem was related to the mod being made in an earlier version of GameMaker. Why not rewrite the question to focus more on the fact that your importing a model into a GameMaker mod and having said problems?
From the looks of the answer, I suspect that your code had nothing to do with it. If that is the case, remove it. All of it. It might seem useful, but it might also detract users who know their problem is not a code problem, and immediately assume that yours was.
Make it short and sweet, and again, focus on the core problem. You might consider making the title more specific, as this is the first thing users will see. Something like "Why won't my model display properly in a mod made with an older version of GameMaker". Than, you could say "I know it is an older version, but the makers have unfortunately provided no specific information, and are not responding to my communications."

I was told by a moderator that I had to display the code in the better format below and that if I removed either code snippet from then on out, I would be sanctioned and the question deleted. I'd rather not bring up that point again.

Gnemlock: also, the code I provided is the minimal verifiable example. Granted, I do intend to regenerate the broken model tonight and upload it for reference. Might serve useful to anyone looking at the question deeply.

I edited the post. http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/131329/why-wont-my-model-display-fully-in-a-mod-made-with-an-older-version-of-gamemake Feel free to comment on the changes however you wish.

"I was told by a moderator that I had to display the code.." No, you weren't. You were told that the way you presented the code made for extremely poor readability and would likely reduce the likelihood that your question would be well-received.

@TheGreatDuck, being told you had "poor readability" does not mean you should post a second version of the code, but regardless, you confirm the problem is not in the code. So your problem is not a programming one, and therefore, any programming would be moot.

@JoshPetrie I removed the code at one point and I was sent a post saying something along the lines of "stop deleting this or you will be punished"

@Gnemlock Thanks for the edits. It's not precisely the exact wording I would use, but they look awesome! I can see the improvements quite clearly!

No, you weren't. None of the comments on that question include the word "punish" or any implication of punishment. The closest thing I can see in the entire exchange is (from me): "Please don't revert formatting edits like that." Please stop casting aspersions.


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Can I ask how/where an existing game uses a particular feature of a graphics API?
Let's say there is an existing game and it's common knowledge that it uses a particular feature of a mainstream graphics API (OpenGL, specifically). While I'm a programmer, I'm not much of a game developer type, so it's not completely clear to me where exactly that game puts that feature to use. However, out of technical curiosity, I would like to get a general description, if that's possible.
Can I ask such a question here, or would it be off-topic?

You can't ask how a specific game implements a specific feature with a specific API, as the only valid answer would be from a programmer of the game; all others would be pure speculations.
You can, however, ask how you could implement the specific feature of the specific game with a specific API. Adding a link to a youtube video (bookmarked at a relevant time) or a screenshot would help a lot.
This type of question is more open ended, removes any speculation and welcome more answers!

I see. Just to be clear: I don't want to know how they implemented Game Feature X. I want to know what use they found for API Feature Y. (In a way, it's the reverse question.)

That's still a question only the developers of game X can answer.

@Tyyppi_77 Not necessarily, although it might be the case -- at least for the one I have in mind. Asking the developers was my first thought, but I thought that maybe asking it as question here might add some value to the site for future readers (if it was on-topic, of course).

If your question is "How was [insert OpenGL feature] benecifial for the development process of [insert game name here]?" there's no way someone who is not the developer of [insert game name here] can answer that question correctly.

@TheodorosChatzigiannakis Tyyppi_77 sums it up.


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Community Wiki type questions, how to?
I've been thinking on creating various posts in the form of Community Wiki to gather information in an extensive way but I'm not quite sure of how to do it properly, so here is my idea.
Step 1 present the topic:
Examples of x mechanic in games, and develop the question.
Step 2 create a pattern for the answers:As this kind of question is too abroad and there is lots of valid answers creating a community wiki where people can edit the answer and just add another example seems to be the way to go, plus, to keep it useful for future readers. This pattern would be something like:

Pattern for debuffs
Game:
Gender:
Is passive:
Duration:
Is cc:
etc...

Step 3 create an example answer:
Using this pattern answer the question as community wiki
Step 4 ask people not to answer but improve/correct the post:
Review grammar, add/remove/modify elements of the pattern, clarify the question,title...
Step 5 once this is done "open" the question for the actual answers
Finally, my concerns are:
Attending to the community rules. Is this the right way to do that?
Step 4 is likely to generate discussion how to manage that; A post on meta? Ask a mod for a chat room?(Not sure how this work)
Anything I miss?

Note that voting, on meta, usually implies 'agree or disagree' as opposed to commentary on the actual question quality, unless stated otherwise.

As previously mentioned, you probably should not engage in creating such 'wiki questions', in the first place.
I commend your intentions, but it has already been established that as a Q&A site, wiki-like 'how to's are considered off-topic. This includes as a format for correctly answering broad questions - questions that are too broad are already considered off topic.
We do having cases where users have created a question, and posted it alongside a community wiki answer. In the cases I have seen, these have been well-organised attempts to provide a canonical, quality answer to a question that poses quality concern but is otherwise on topic. An example might be a question that is often reasked with minor changes that disqualify duplicate arguments, but ultimately warrant the same answers.
When I see these questions, they are either the work of mods, or the work of very-high-rep users, after consider able meta-discussion.
Ultimately, my recommendation is to just leave it alone, for now. If you see any particular question that might provide exceptionally better value as a canonical question, bring it up in chat or on meta, and get feedback from others. If there is value in a community wiki, its worth ensuring that the community would actually contribute to it.
That is not to say that you should not post questions to help others. If you have a specific question that would be considered on topic, and you have already found the answer, you are free to include your own solution at the time of first publishing your question. In this way, you can post a question with your answer.

It sounds like you are proposing a plan to create a set of wiki questions that present information rather than ask concrete questions? And/or questions which ask for lists of things pertaining to industry trivia or statistics or other census-like information.
That's not what Stack Exchange is about and such posts will be closed for being too broad, being off-topic, or being primarily opinion based.


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Do we need the tag [middleware]?
We've recently decided to get rid of the engine tag, along with api, framework, libraries and sdk.
I haven't noticed before but we also have a tag for middleware, where the description is appropriate, but that has no tag usage.
Like the other tags, I feel this tag does not bring value to the site and is more a meta-tag than anything else.

I agree; we should blacklist this tag like we are doing with the others you cited in the original question.

There were ten questions with this tag. 8 of them were closed, or ended up closed after I looked at them. The only two remaining didn't even really need the tag, so I removed it. The tag is now blacklisted.

You should include that in your answer.

@Tommy I never include these kinds of comments about the actions taken in response to a meta post in the post itself, even if it's my own post, because I want to keep a distinction between what was proposed and what was implemented, primarily for clarity in what was voted on and when.


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Is the tag [techniques] useful?
Yes, we have a tag techniques.
It has no tag description and no tag usage and it is used on a very broad range of topics (as broad as 15 questions can be).
Is it a meta-tag that can be used for everything and anything and should be removed/blacklisted, or should we fix it?

I wonder whether once upon a time the tag might have been intended to refer to a "technique" in the sense of a shader, ie. a piece of data representing a collection of passes and render states that should be applied together to achieve a particular effect.

@DMGregory it could have been applied to that, yes; I guess a description should have been added right away to avoid any confusion!

I can not see any non-meta use for the tag techniques. In fact, it is so clearly being used as a meta tag in all of the current usages, I am already going to start removing it from questions.
In any situation where we are asking about "techniques", assuming the question is not too broad, we are asking about the techniques in a very specific context; that context already tells us what the actual tag should be. You do not have an "expert" in "technique".
The tag should be removed and blacklisted.

I'll accept once all the tags have been removed, but I guess you could start right away :)

@AlexandreVaillancourt, it is done.