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Where should I upload resources linked to my question/answer?
I've seen users posts and refer content on "external" sites.
Where should I upload mine, and where should I not upload mine, and why?

Note that this question serves more of a reminder than anything else.

Think in terms of future visitor experience: favour content in the post rather than an external link, and favour stable external sites rather than rot prone ones.

Images should be uploaded to StackExchange's imgur server, using the Image <img> Ctrl+G icon in the edit bar of every Question and Answer post. They'll end up with an URL starting with https://i.stack.imgur.com.

Code should be posted right in the question/answer, and formatted using the Preformated text <pre> <code> Ctrl-K icon in the edit bar  of every Question and Answer post. There are many reasons why code should not be posted as an image / screenshot.

Videos should be converted as much as possible to animated gifs and uploaded to StackExchange's imgur server, as described before. If not, YouTube links tend to not rot that much.

Whole projects should not be needed. If you think you need to upload a project, you probably should re-scope your question or your answer. If you must upload it somewhere, favour "open source" repositories such as github¤. And when linking to the project, browse the history of the project and link to a specific commit instead of linking to the 'head' of the master branch. This way the question and the project will make sense for future visitors (you'll most likely keep on working on your project, which will render the 'head' irrelevant to the StackExchange post).

This being said, it's important to not rely on less stable external resources. There has been stories in the past that made some questions and answers completely irrelevant because they relied on resources that were no longer there, and no longer available.
So here is a (incomplete) list of sites that should be avoided mainly because of a high risk of link rot:
Images:

imageshack.us (Meta discussion)
photobucket.com (The images will not rot, but inserting them in the posts will not end well.)
postimg.org
tinypic.com (Although these seem to not have rotten, they can't get integrated into the post.)
wikipedia.org (The search does not find only the images, unfortunately, so it can't easily be used to find links to no longer valid images.)
prntscr.com

Files/projects:

drive.google.com, goo.gl
dropbox.com, dropboxusercontent.com
filedropper.com
mediafire.com
One drive
uppit.com
zippyshare.com (If you intend to visit this site: Not adult content, but NSFW either.)

Code:

pastebin.com - yep, it can rot.
justpaste.it

Other considerations:

codepen.io Although the code will not technically rot ¤, StackExchange posts allow users to put JavaScript, HTML, CSS and images in posts using the JavaScript/CSS/HTML snippet Ctrl-M tool bar icon, so this should be favoured (plus that the history of the code will be visible in StackExchange posts, whereas the code on codepen can change ¤¤).

¤ I have not yet encountered an occurrence of a rot there.
¤¤ From what I understand of the service. Has to be confirmed.

What's the protocol when the link is already dead? I.E. the imageshack one doesn't seem to be in the Wayback Machine or the Google cache for the page. I searched SE Meta too, but didn't find an authoritative solution.

I usually remove the link from the post and adapt it however I can to make it readable. If the post still makes sense, I leave a note to the author suggesting them to re-upload, and if I can't figure out what the post is about after the removal, I vote to close as unclear (I also leave a note).

Thanks for the guidelines. Should we ✅ the entries when they clear?

I don't think it's necessary here, as we'll have to keep on checking for these once in a while, (a bit like the "blacklisted tags list").

If we find old http URLs for i.stack.imgur.com, should be we edit them them to be https instead?

@Pikalek I saw that I found it odd that the bot did not fix them. I might try and have a word with someone else about that. I would not focus on these, but if you encounter them when working on something else, sure, fix them!

Yeah, I did a quick search & saw mention of the bot, but didn't know if it was an 'already done' thing or a WIP. I found them in here when editing to remove [tag:quads]. They end up at an https page, but the source is http.

I'll ask around tomorrow and see what's going on with that :)


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Canonical question for picking a random element from a set with weighted probability?
We have several questions about a very common problem in game development: How to pick a random item from a list, but with a bias so that different items have a different probability to occur? Here are some of these questions which I could find. More of them might exist:

(RPGs) Drop table design
Designing Drops system - How and where chance of drops are defined?
Algorithm for determining random events
Handling random with unique chance in Python
How to get the result of random item with different possibility?
How can I select an enemy to act next, biased toward smaller enemies?
Best gacha like system?

I think the reason why this question gets asked so often and nobody closes them as duplicates is because many of them masquerade as more specific and localized problems. That makes them difficult to find with the search function.
I think we should pick one canonical question, search-engine optimize it and then close all others as a duplicate.
Do you think one of them is good enough to be the canonical question about this problem? Or should we write a new one and link them all to that question? And how should we title the question so it is easy to find through searches?

A related question about non-uniform probability distributions, but not in the context of choosing from a list specifically, though some of the same techniques apply.

I'm leaning towards "Algorithm for determining random events" though I'm not happy with the title. I don't like any of the titles, but the Q and A of "Algorithm for determining random events" has an answer that: 1) doesn't post code for copy and paste. 2) Describes how a weighted random system works. 3) Handles any number of weights of any value.

An alternative, if none of these is really a perfect fit, is to create a new question that's specifically tailored to the common overlap, without any of the particulars that complicate the existing questions. I did that for the questions we get about pitch & yaw becoming roll, and I think it's been reasonably successful at catching future dupes / isolating other parts of the problem not already answered by the general advice.

I created a question for this.
How do I create a weighted collection and then pick a random element from it?
It probably has room for improvement, so please make edits as you see fit.

Thank you. I flagged all the questions above as duplicates of this one (except the second to last, because I already flagged it as a duplicate of a different one)

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


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Creating a Sandbox for questions
Due to a recent influx of low-quality questions on this site I think we should have a sandbox on this site.
Should we create a sandbox in this meta site, or is the stuff we have here enough?

What "low-quality questions" are you referring to? How are they low quality, and according to whom? "this site", do you refer to "meta" or to the main site? What's a sandbox for and why do we need it?

Is the fluff text in this question meant to be ironic then?

@Pikalek Yes, you reason correctly(padding words so i can get past the character limit)

It’s really unclear what you are proposing — both what you see as the problem and what you think the solution should be.

In part, this is what the review queue is for. Special attention is called out toward helping new users.
If we had as much traffic as Stack Overflow, we might also have a triage, but that's not yet needed here.
In my experience, the current system is already really effective at actual spam (ads & self promotion). After that, there are reputation & badge incentives to encourage everyone to edit posts.
Keep in mind that most users are not intentionally making bad posts. Mobiles aren't the most elegant way for submitting questions, but that's all some users have to work with. English is not a universal language. even in places where it is a default language, some use it better than others.
The barrier you propose strikes me as being at odds with the 'be friendly' attitude & code of conduct, specifically:

building a community where all people feel welcome and can
  participate, regardless of expertise

Asking good questions, adapting to our norms & observing our protocols are skills that improve with practice & support from other community members.

This assumes we're talking about GDSE. I'm less familiar with how questions on meta-GDSE are dealt with.

This is more for users that are unsure that their posts are low quality or not

We are talking about GDSE

We don't need this.

Game Development Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional and independent game developers. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about game development. (Source)

StackExchange sites already have all (well, most likely 'most of') the tools required for moderation by the community. This includes

using comments to tell users that ask how they can improve their questions (available to users who have 50 rep)
proposing edits to questions (they get in a review queue for users with less that 1000 rep)
vote up to indicate that the question is good, useful and well formatted (available to users with 15 rep
vote down to indicate that questions are not useful, bad or lacking in effort (available for users with 125 rep)
possibility to vote to close questions (for users with 3000 rep)
multiple review queues to make sure the questions and answers on the site are of great quality.
...and a lot more.

The site is made in such a way that it will allow users to fail a bit and learn from it before preventing them from posting trash on the site.
If you're really worried about if a question fits well on the main site, either ask it there and wait for feedback and learn from it, or ask in chat and see the reaction of the users there.
Finally, from my own experience, questions asked in meta that should have been asked on the site instead are generally from users trying to evade a question ban on the main site. We won't open the door to it.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Buttons on mainsite look disabled
Take a look at the following two screenshots. They are our close dialog and our flag dialog.
I have selected an option, and the button is enabled and I can click it to submit my close vote or my flag.
The button looks disabled though. It's greyed out. It looks like I haven't done something right, or like I can't actually close or flag this question.
It used to be orange or blue or something other than this.

This appears to occur in a number of places with buttons of this style, e.g.:

The search button
Post your question
"Save your edits" on any post
Why do all buttons on this site appear to be disabled?

All submit buttons are like this, including the "Search", "Post Your Answer", "Post Your Question" and "Save Edits" ones, and those that only mods can see.

By upvoting this question, does it mean that "I agree with this bug" and so it should be left in?

Lol, I think it means "this is a useful bug report".

Might this have something to do with SE standardizing the themes?

I've noticed the same issue recently on the 'Save Edits' button - I figured maybe it was just bad for those of us with color blindness issues.

Note that this appears to be addressed (based on some quick tests) in the new site theme that is currently in testing.

Confirmed. Looks much better in beta theme.

I'll tag this as completed once the beta theme leaves beta, then.


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"Modifier" tag?
I noticed we have quite a few questions about architecting systems that can add/remove temporary buffs/debuffs/localized exceptions to rules layered on top of the normal behaviour of a game actor.
This includes eg. gaining stat increases or special abilities from equipping an item in an RPG (lost when unequipping), or using a potion/buff spell (lost after a max duration or on a cancellation condition), and also applies to card effects in a trading card game that modify other cards.
Some example questions that fall in this vein:

Effect Replacement System
What's a way to implement a flexible buff/debuff system? And its duplicates:

How to implement buffs / debuffs / temporary stat changes in an RPG?
Architecture design in "buff-heavy" game?
c++ RPG - Handling buffs / equipment stats
How to implement a property with a base value and a changed value?
TCG Game Architecture

OOP implementation of BUFFS and Stats. Suggestion
How to implement status-changing effects for attack class in turn based RPG?
Design patterns for effects between actors and technology
Simultaneous events in a realtime system, where processing order causes different outcomes
A way to create a variable that includes a modifier that should be checked every step [Gamemaker]
How do I set up my modifier system without casting?
Database for a diablo 2 like item system?
Stat Multipliers: from Base Value or Iterative
Pluggable modifiers to game engine
-Words to describe stat stacking behavior?
How to implement expiring and self-refreshing buffs in an RPG?
In a Tower defense game, how to do buffs/debuffs
C++ Entity Component System: Diverse Behaviours
Designing a fluent API for card effects
How to implement trading card game's "special effects cards"?

(While some of these not currently marked as duplicates could probably be folded under "What's a way to implement a flexible buff/debuff system?" I think there are also distinct questions here, including investigations of stacking rules, and narrower questions about a specific implementation or problem)
To me, this topic of modifiers looks like a well-defined subject in which a developer could become an expert, with substantial applicability to different types of games.
Uniting these questions under a common tag could make it easier to browse the topic for insights from previous Q&As, identify duplicates, and help users with experience in these systems spot questions they can help with.
But the fact that we don't already have a user-created tag uniting these questions suggests that a term for these questions might not be immediately obvious/intuitive to our community.
So, I wanted to gather consensus on Meta about how best to approach this:
Is this a well-defined topic that should have a tag?
If so, what should the tag be called?

Yes, this topic should have a dedicated tag, but "Modifier" is too vague a name.
The tag should be called "Effect-Modifier" to emphasize that it refers to changing the gameplay effects of items/entities/rules in the game.
Proposed tag info:

An effect modifier is a modular rule that changes the behaviour of other game content, like a buff/enchantment that makes a character stronger (or debuff/curse that makes them weaker), adds new gameplay abilities & behaviours, or changes how an existing rule works.

To make the tag easier to discover, we should define "Buff" as a synonym, since RPG-related questions frequently use this particular flavour.

Yes, we should add a tag "Modifier"
Proposed tag info:

Modifiers can be applied to game entities during play to (temporarily or conditionally) change their behaviour, including stats ("+1 Strength"), special abilities ("Invisible when Stationary"), or other exceptions to the normal game rules.

To make the tag easier to discover, we should define Buff as a synonym, since RPG-related questions frequently use this particular flavour.

There are tags [tag:effect], [tag:effects]. I think the name would apply to this, but they're used for some other things. Also, I'm not sure how would users know that this tag exists when they search for tags.

@AlexandreVaillancourt I think "effect" has a serious risk of being confused with VFX - most of the questions in that tag seem to refer to visual, shader, and particle effects of various kinds. Maybe we could split the tag into visual-effect and gameplay-effect or something similar? Though even then, I worry gameplay-effect could be taken to mean any outcome of a gameplay rule, not solely rules applied as a layered buff/modification on top of a base.

Yeah, 'effect' per se is not good and we should rename these tags anyway. Perhaps 'temporary-effect'? I dunno.

I noticed one question referred to using a system like this to implement game modes - modifiers you'd set before the start of the match/campaign, which would be permanent for the duration of that game. So even though they're "temporary" in the sense that we could start a new game with different parameters, putting that in the tag might oversell their transience. (That was my thinking when I crammed "(temporarily)" inside parentheses in the proposed definition above - I don't see it as a necessary criterion, just a common one)


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Should I write an answer, even if the answer might not be correct?
I saw this question, which is asking if there's any technical reason why some shader source uses cryptic variable names (like bn instead of brickNormal).
I haven't done much shader programming before, but I have an idea of why that might be the case; based on my (extremely limited) understanding, the shader source has to be sent to the GPU to be compiled. Because the GPU has to have all of the source of a shader before compiling it, using smaller variable names reduces the number of bytes that need to be sent to the GPU. This would either reduce the time it takes to compile the shader, or reduce the time it takes for the shader to become usable.
However, I don't know if it's true. It's more of maybe-a-step-in-maybe-the-right-direction. It's also possible that unless the shader source is very large, most RAM/CPU/GPU interactions would be too fast to notice.
Should I give an answer, that I think might be the right answer, even though I don't know for sure?

Thanks for asking about this in meta.
This really boils down to this other question:

Are you ready to lose rep if the answer is wrong?

If you're ready to take the risk, then sure, go for it!
But if your reputation is important to you and you feel like you would be gambling by posting an answer along those lines, then you should probably not answer. This would be the case for instance if you had answered a lot of questions and your answers were generally received badly by the community (i.e. you have lots of downvotes, you deleted a lot of your answers, etc.).
This latter example does not look like it's your case, though.

Keep in mind that if your receive a downvote, you 'only' lose 2 rep, which is not much, and if you realize that the answer is wrong from the downvotes, you can always delete it to save your public image :P

You can also edit the answer to improve it in response to community feedback! Users can choose to reverse their downvotes if you edit your questions or answers.


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Can we make a Game on this site?
I've seen these 3 rgb cubes and thought of making a little game with these and I want to ask straight forward:

Can we make a little online Game as gimmick on this website

Do the operators allow a little gimmick to this site, made by the community?
I mean there many things to consider like safety of the website and the servers and for that code review of the communitys work, which means work and with work it means money.
The game shouldn't be a Triple A game, maybe just a tap game or sth else small.

Maybe the cubes could chase the mouse, because they want to cuddle, that would be a nice game

What value do you think this would add, specifically? Most users come here not to play games or discuss them, but to discuss making games. This is a very different thing from playing a game.

Arguably, our reputation system is already a game, a gamification of expertise. I often joke that "StackExchange is my favourite RPG" - you can grind and earn points that help you level up and unlock new class abilities (privileges), as well as earning achievements (badges) you can show off on your player profile. ;) So, to be interesting to me personally, a game for this site would similarly help teach/encourage constructive use of the site. If someone could invent a game that helps new users learn to make good posts, or use search effectively, I'd be very interested. :)

@DMGregory From a certain perspective, SO made a game to make the game you propose: The Stack Overflow Comment Evaluator 5000™. Initially, I had thought it was a CYOA, but after extensive 'play' I now deem it to be a clicker.

Related on Gaming.SE: Feature-Request: Mini games on sidebar to play for fun

Not likely.
Game Dev Stack Exchange gets operated and maintained by Stack Overflow, Inc. That's the company maintaining Stack Overflow plus a couple of hundred other sites.
GDSE's mission is as a Q&A site and knowledge repository. Adding a game to the site is neat, but doesn't further that goal, and Stack Overflow, Inc's developers are fairly busy as-is.
Stack Overflow periodically launches minigames across the network for holidays, but they are unlikely to attach an ongoing game to this site.
Whilst your enthusiasm's appreciated, you're probably better off spending that energy on your own little games.

If they really want to see this through, there might be a way to make it as a browser extension, that detects when you're on GameDev.StackExchange and injects the necessary script. Then there's no buy-in needed from the development team, and it's strictly opt-in for users who want to play, with no impact on other users of the site.

Right, users can freely create userscripts which overlay a game on this site.

If you do make a user-script using any of the elements of the site please make sure to check the Terms of Service, particularly Trademark guidance.
https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service


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Why do all buttons on this site appear to be disabled?
I'm browsing the Game Dev stack exchange in Safari on macOS. All the buttons for posting questions and answers are light gray with white text. This is both difficult to read and makes them appear disabled. Here's what I see:

It may just be my aging eyes, but I can barely read that. If the text were black, that would solve the problem, I think.
Furthermore, on macOS, here's what a disabled button from the OS looks like:

The text in that disabled button is more readable than in  the enabled "Post Your Question" button. Regardless, the white text on light gray background resembles the disabled button enough that I think many users will assume it's not working.

I'll try to poke someone at SE about this, it's been reported a while ago.


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Can certain "list-of-link generator" questions be allowed?
I recently asked, are there any premade outdoor worlds suitable for testing 3D graphics?  The question was put on hold:

Questions asking for resources are considered too broad here, unfortunately (because they are list-of-link generators); a good place to ask if the suggestions above aren't sufficient would be GDNet.

I agree that I'm basically asking for a list of links.  I don't agree that that's a fundamentally non-worthwhile thing for this site, though it might be prone to difficulties.
In other words, there are bad (unproductive) list-of-link questions and good (productive, helpful, well suited to the community's interest and expertise) list-of-link questions.
The only prior discussion I can find on this is a Meta question from 2010: Should we allow "list of X"-questions?  The consensus back then was that such questions were allowed but needed to be Community Wikis, which sounds reasonable to me.

Can you post your proposal for what we should/should not allow as an answer? That way it's clearer to tell if votes mean "this is a good question to ask" versus "this is a good solution to adopt."

There are two primary reasons we don't support these kinds of questions.

Our "don't ask" page (and indeed all SE sites, as this one is not under our direct control) says to "avoid asking subjective questions where every answer is equally valid...". While the existence of some resource is an objective fact, that's not where the issue is. The subjectivity comes from the fact that any resource that exists answers the question, and there's nothing else for the site's machinery (voting) to chew on except popularity, which can be very subjective.
The answers are link-only and devoid of almost any other content, and we destroy such answers per network policy.

Any guidelines that propose exemptions to the "lists of resources are off-topic" policy would need to thread those needles, as well as be something that the community itself can uphold (that is, not require constant moderator attention). I'm not sure I can think of any such guidelines that don't radically transform the question into something that is already on-topic, but perhaps somebody else could.
As for the community wiki angle; we don't use CW as a crutch for otherwise-bad questions. Community wiki is really, at this point in the network's lifecycle, something of a vestigial element. We don't really have a defined use for it, and all the attempts I can recall to try to institute a use haven't really gained any traction.

The spirit of the rule against link-only answers is to prevent people from simply deferring to an external resource, e.g. "here, read this book for your answer."  It doesn't make sense to apply it where the external resource itself is the answer.  ("What paper was this algorithm originally published in?")

That’s not all though, it’s also to ensure that the answers remain valid and useful on this site. If the link goes away (which definitely happens), the answer can become varying degrees of useless.

Which is exactly the problem that CWs are intended to fix, isn’t it?  It seems like the tools are available but for some reason we’re very reluctant to use them.  No wonder they’re “vestigial,” right?  :)  I don’t know what you mean by “crutch” – a question needing CW doesn’t make it any less of a question and it doesn’t make it any less worthwhile to the community.

@Maxpm No, community wikis don't fix or address link rot at all. Link rot can be corrected on any answer, CW or no, by all users with the appropriate reputation, just like CW wiki questions. The rot has still happened, and may not be correctable, thus rendering the answer and its votes useless.

Very few questions "need" to be CW (which is why users cannot mark them as such any more), and similarly so for answers. SE's intent for CW answers is that they are building block for a community to share in the development of an answer. But there's no need for that if the only sharing we do is updating links. Existing edits work fine; CW solves none of the other concerns with link-only answers.

There are two nuances to my question that I think make the difference:

The information isn't readily available elsewhere.  It's not, for example, like asking "what are some free 3D game engines?" which can be  answered by the first page of Google.
It's not subjective, because it doesn't ask for the "best" resource, but rather any resource that reasonably fits the goal.  The hope was for that broad frame to inspire answers catering to different tradeoffs.
For example, "this scene's complexity is representative of contemporary games," or "this scene looks dramatically different under HDR," or whatever.

Given these criteria, or criteria like them, I think exceptions could be carved out of the broad rule against asking for resources.

Stack Overflow has questions like The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List and they don't cause the world to come crashing down.  (And evidently there is no binding network-wide policy forbidding them.)

That SO book question was locked (like some other early SO questions) as a recognition that it has historical value even though the site policy has moved beyond permitting questions like it, however.

I appreciate that you've gone to the trouble searching for precedent. In this particular case, the precursors you've found are not necessarily in sync with the community standards. Admittedly, it would be good if there was a way for the system to reflect that.


text:
How are policy questions revisted?
What is the protocol for revisiting general policy decisions on meta? Specifically, I'm not talking about debating whether or not a particular situation warrants an exception to a rule. Rather, I'm asking about situations where the rule itself needs to be revised or replaced in terms of being a canonical answer.
As context:

This question recently came up on meta, citing a much older meta question with what appears an out of date accepted answer.
I proposed these guidelines regarding homework questions which were marked as an accepted answer. Later, after attempting to apply them, I feel that they omit important criteria. Making any significant changes to it after the fact doesn't seem like a good idea as votes may no longer reflect the extent to which others agreed (or not) with it.

In general, how does the Stack Exchange model handle this type of situation? As a potential solution, could community wiki answers be useful here? They would allow the community at large to update answers to policy question to reflect evolving norms.

Generally I'd expect that in order for us to adopt some change to an existing policy, the answer with the proposed change should at least outscore the answer that was originally established as policy (and maintain that for some period of time; I usually wait at least three days to a week to assume that votes on tag blacklisting and such are settled, for example, and those are fairly minor).

Having a place where all the current policy decisions are listed, as we do with all the blacklisted tags, is definitely something worth exploring. There's a policy tag here that may help with that. Although I don't think it's necessarily a great way to deal with identifying what is and isn't current policy, because it's easy to edit out "maliciously" (and hard to see when somebody would have done so), and also easy to forget to go back and remove it from abandoned policies.
I think a big meta-meta post like our tag blacklist post is probably better.


text:
Should we clarify that game-specific tags are for mods?
We have several game-specific tags on the site, such as skyrim, world-of-warcraft and minecraft because modding questions for games are considered on-topic here.
We also have mods, which serves as identifying questions about modding that are not game-specific or for games too unpopular to get game-specific tags on their own.
This means that some of these questions are "double-tagged" with mods and the game-specific tag, while others are tagged with one or the other.
Should we do anything about this?

I propose that we rename game-specific tags to have a "-modding" suffix, so we'd have skyrim-modding and the like. We should rename mods to modding for uniformity, but otherwise leave it alone because it serves a useful purpose.
When we find questions that are double-tagged, we should remove the less-relevant tag.

Please remember that comments aren't for extended discussion, especially of tangential issues to the post. One can make another meta thread or use the [chat] if necessary.


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Game Development updated site theme is ready for testing!
As part of implementing the new unified themes across the network, we're gradually rolling out updated site themes for each site. As of today, we have enabled your updated site theme for testing.
If you can't see it right now, that's by design! This is a very early test implementation of your design and we need your help finding issues with it before we make it live for everyone permanently. So, keep in mind, there will be things that need fixing! We'll address those things as we can.
If you'd like to review it, here's how:
How do I enable it?
Click here and check the "Beta test new themes" option. This will turn on the new theme for all sites that have one in testing, including this one. Here's more info on how to opt in. You can uncheck the box to revert to the older theme until the site is live for everyone. Note, while turning it on is immediate, it will take a few minutes to revert to the old view - but it will go through!
What type of feedback do we need?
On this post: Bugs related to this site's design elements
Please help us look for issues/bugs related to the theme design and how we have mapped the old theme to the new. This needs to be done within the limits of the new unified theme.
This could include colors of sections of the design or text, problems with JavaScript add-ons (if applicable), the logo or top banner appearance or other artwork.
You can also feel free to ask questions about the new layout if you're unsure how to navigate it.
On Meta Stack Exchange: General concerns about left nav or theming
There are some things that are definitely changing everywhere and can't really be adjusted on a per-site basis. A few of them include:

Top banner is shorter in height, so some artwork has to be adjusted along with some logos.
Left Navigation is active everywhere (but can be collapsed into a menu by visiting your site preferences - instructions here).
Responsive layout is active, which lets the site adjust as browser widths change - no side scrolling (some pages haven't been updated, yet, though). For now, if you prefer the scrolling, you can disable this by clicking the "disable responsiveness" link in the footer.
Many site elements including tags and voting arrows are standardized across the network.
Link underlining is active. In an effort to make links more visible, they are now being underlined.

If you have concerns or issues regarding the left nav or the overall approach we are taking to theming, then this Meta Stack Exchange post is the right place for feedback.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some unique design elements like voting arrows and tags that are being standardized in this process. Keeping these custom elements makes our ability to maintain the sites too complex and, while we're very sad to see them go, we're in a difficult position of needing to make the site designs work together so that we can continue to address feature requests and bugs that will make your Q&A experience better. This is addressed in a Meta Stack Exchange post if you want more detail.
What new themes?
If you're like, "What the heck are you talking about?", then you should read the Meta Stack Exchange post entitled Rollout of new network site themes (and maybe the posts it links to for the full background). To follow along with the rollout of these new themes, go here.
Thanks so much for your constructive feedback!
Oh, Who am I?
If you don't know me, I'm one of the Community Managers here at Stack Exchange. I'm here to listen to your input and convey it to our Design team for responses and fixes to bugs. I'll do my best to respond to your concerns and explain whether changes we've made are bugs that can be changed or if they're by design and why.

Generally, I like the new layout. I'm not fond of side bar menus because the cut into the main panel width & make the text there crowded, but as long as I can turn that off, it's okay.
As pointed out by others, the typography of the logos need some work. If I had to generalize, I'd say the typography for "Game Development" looks inconsistently 'weighted':

the vertical stem of the 'p' has different widths above & below the baseline
the line used for the 'hole' of the 'a' is right flush with the line used for its 'cap gap', but the line used for the 'hole' of the 'e' is not left flush with the line used for its 'foot gap'
the height for the horizontal cross piece of the 't' is narrower than any other horizontal strokes (the 'a' cap, 'e' footer
in general, the vertical strokes of the letters seem inconsistent

Here's a first pass edit:

There are still some issues:

The 'G' needs works - it doesn't seems quite as capitalized as the 'D'

the 'n' is a bit wide

the kerning isn't consistent
Note: it seems we can't load .svg files - so this is a rendering & may not be pixel precise with the real file.

Great critique of the inconsistencies in the letters.

@Almo Thanks. I suspect the font is a custom job - I tried to query it on identifont & fontsquirrel & nothing really came close. It shows promise, but needs some revisions.

Argh! You're right, now that I can see these things. In your revision, kerning can be improved around the "opm" and the "v" (tuck the e's in closer).

@doppelgreener Yes, I agree with the 'opm' kerning. 'v's can be trickier due to the slope - not saying that something couldn't be done, just saying it's more challenging there. Not sure if it's their file or my editor, but when I opened it, it was laid out / grouped ... oddly. Further edits are likely to be far more time consuming than what I've so far.

Yeah, no expectation you update this further yourself. It's an excellent proof of concept.

I like the inconsistency in the letters. I think it is a metaphor for game development itself, where nothing is 100% perfect.

We've rolled with these refinements. It'll go live in the next build. It looks great, nice work!

Visited links just look like underlined text, which doesn't seem like great UX to me. Their hover effect is also almost indistinguishable from the default text color.

I didn't bother looking at the CSS, but I can't really tell if there even is a color difference there.

Good catch. Given some of the other problems users have had with links / buttons & colors, starting with a distinguishable coloring scheme would be preferable.

I agree that could be confusing except underlines aren't allowed in out Markdown other than as links. The standard on the sites is that unvisited links get slightly lighter on hover and darker on visit.

I know that our markdown doesn't allow underlining, but not everyone might know that. I'd still expect links to stand out from text with also color, not just underline.

@JonEricson It would still be preferable for us to not have such a dull link color on mainsite. Most sites choose to have distinguished colors for links for good reason to help them stand out, on top of underlines or what have you.

I'd agree, a stronger colour cue here would be useful. The meta theme's bright orange for unvisited and brown for visited remains clearly scannable in both states (though visited-hover lacks a visible change here too)

The "META" text in the meta logo could be improved

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the text for “META” doesn't actually fit in well. It's super dark (being the only source of black in the header) and it's squared unlike all other text on the page. It strikes me as a bit like a first-draft pixel font games often have before later revision to style and color.
I think it'd be improved by:

using a dark grey we see in the bottom cube on the left, not pure black
getting very slight curves added to the letters, like the "Game Development" text has. The old game dev meta logo uses the same font for the "meta" text, this could do similar.

OTOH the fact that it resembles exactly what we put into our games at first is kinda funny, and I don't mind that.
If this isn't just me, I'd be curious what others think could/should be done to improve this text, if anything. Maybe even if it does look like first-draft text that's kind of perfect.

I'd say that the "D", "a" and "e" letters in "Game Development" look a bit out of place, because of the space difference inside the letters (the holes in the middl of the letters, don't really know how they are called..).

Sticking with the meta typeface, but I switched to the same gray as the cube. It'll go live in the next build.

Overall, I like it (I love that the UFO/wireframe weirdness is gone; apologies to whomever made it but it just never did it for me)...
...Except for the logo text. The fact that some letters have holes and others just have lines where the holes should be (like the "a") makes me think of a badly-scaled piece of pixel art. It makes the weighting of various parts of the letters look very uneven, to me.
Also, on the main site the baseline for all the letters is four pixels above the nearest background grid line. On meta the baseline is six pixels above (probably because of the need to push it up to fit the "meta" tag underneath).

Spot-on about the holes/lines thing.

I just noticed that the meta logo is a .svg - so maybe it's a scaling / rendering issue?

Arguably, "a badly-scaled piece of pixel art" is on-theme for the kinds of issues we help solve... ;)

The ok button on the top left corner of the answer region at the bottom of the page looks a bit weird.

Maybe I'm the only one noticing this, maybe not, but I just wanted to report this since it looks a bit out of place.
I like the new style overall, there are just some things that could be improved, as previously explained by others.

I can't reproduce. What browser/OS are you seeing this on?

@Jon Ericson I'm using Windows 10 and the Chrome browser

Hmmm...  I still don't see it. Is it possible you have an extension that might interfere with this? (Seems unlikely, but you never know.) Maybe try changing window sizes in case it's related to the way the responsive design works? I'll put it in the list of things to look at, but it might not be something we can fix if we can't reproduce it.

@Jon Ericson I don't seem to be able to make the "Your Answer" popup show up anymore..

Ah. You need to have less reputation on the site. I tested by using a sockpuppet account I have just for this sort of thing. I could downvote you a few times. ;-)

I'm 100% sure that it's not cause by any extension, since I didn't have any when testing the bew theme out on my other machine.

This has been mitigated, and should be live if you wanna check it out.

Oh great, I can't turn it off.
[
I'm glad that our various buttons are no longer "gray text on gray backgrounds against a soft gray site" but I wanted to compare the old and the new and I now can't toggle back and forth.
Yes, I hit F5 and ctrl-F5, I can't get the non-beta version back.
(Minor correction: some parts go back, like the up/down vote buttons)
I do see that we lost our banner though. :\

Hooray for every site on the network looking near ducking identical. Its my biggest criticism of the theme update and I will continue to berate that decision. I know exactly how much work it takes to maintain the codebase for things like the vote buttons (precisely zero, its the same svg file as the badges and site header).

Imo, good riddance to that banner, it looks very outdated.

@mr-matt Ok, fine, but is "no banner at all" better?

Well perhaps. It is nice to have a unique logo tho. I just wish it looked nicer.

@mr-matt And what isn't outdated? Waste of space and "slim" fonts, coupled with single page rendering? All of those seem horrible to me, and I'd love to turn it off.

I know this is probably meant for bug feedback but I honestly think both the original and the new theme looks very outdated and bland.
I made a quick mock up. Thoughts?

A simple, clean and minimal design with a dark background.

Thanks for your contribution. You might want to include the specific fonts you used - for something like this, there might be licensing issues. Being able to ID the fonts can make it easier to determine their legal status & if necessary, find similar alternatives.

I have noticed a couple of bugs:
Multi-lines titles are split in weird spots:

I'm using Pale Moon as my web browser, and I get these issues:

When I click the flag on comments, the popup is positioned in a weird location; if I change the zoom of the page (using Ctrl+mouse wheel), the pop-up comes back in the center, if I wait a minute or two, the pop-up comes back in the center:

This one seems to have been fixed in a recent update of Pale Moon: The timestamps of the comments do not show. If I hit F12 to debug the page, they show up, but they vanish again after a minute or two.

If I tell the browser to tell stackexchange.com sites that the useragent is Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.9) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.1 Firefox/52.9 PaleMoon/28.2.1 (using about:config in the address bar, with key general.useragent.override.stackexchange.com), the timestamps show up correctly.

The title wrap is a newly introduced bug. I'm not sure we support your browser, but I'll pass it along to our dev team. :-(

Yeah, they pride themselves to be as much conformant to HTML specs, so I don't know if the issue comes from a bug on their part or from a way the HTML/CSS/JavaScript is done on stack exchange sites.

It looks pretty good!
The site look and feel has stayed nearly the same in good ways.
Our UFOs have gone missing from the site header, but I don't actually miss those UFOs.
I also like the revamped site logo with the thickened text borders. It looks superb.


text:
Should we have separate game-maker and game-maker-studio tags for legacy users?
I’ve used both Game Maker and briefly Game Maker: Studio. Studio was a complete rewrite of the engine. It has different features, different language standards and syntax, and is considered a separate product. As a result many people still use Game Maker version 8.1 or older which predate Studio. Studio is also a compiled language whereas pre-studio was interpreted. As a result considerations in performance matter a great deal more in one versus the other. Similarly unlike most engines where functions might be removed or added this rewrite changed a large amount of behavior.
I imagine this discussion was had in the past but should we separate the tags and have two?

Since an answer has already stated that this is a thing to be done, I am making a list of questions here that should have the studio tag. Since some features do transfer over it might not be necessary to squabble over questions that just happen to be involving Studio; however, as I am primarily a veteran user of Game Maker 8.0 these are questions that are involving features that were either heavily modified and/or added in the Studio rewrite.

Doubt about font inclusion (GAMEMAKER)?
What is the difference between phy_position_x and x in GameMaker: Studio?
Gamemaker Studio 2 html5 game sfx influence background music volume
Why can't I export an APK from my project in Game Maker?
How to make a boss control multiple object spawners in Game Maker Studio 2
how to check if an array element is defined? (Game-maker studio)

I have only been searching for about 5 minutes so don't expect this to be exhaustive as a list.
I do not have enough reputation to create the tag itself (95 rep short) so if someone would please create the new tag by adding it to these questions I will gladly edit the wiki tag accordingly and begin using it elsewhere.

I see a significiant difference between game-maker and game-maker-studio-2, Often to the point that I have to put 'GMS2' in the title to ensure I'm talking about the right Studio. There isn't any tag closer related, so I would like a game-maker-studio tag at least.

@Steven you're confusing the versions I'm bringing up here with another issue I'm only partially aware of. You're noting a recent schism between studio version 1 and studio version 2. I'm noting a schism that goes all the way back to around 2015-ish when studio 1 was released. Though if studio 2 has created yet another significant change then I am really fearful for the future of Game Maker's developers. Making that many fundamental changes tends to outright kill usage of a language/engine.

This is equivalent to a versioned tag (e.g., those for D3D9 versus 10 versus 11, et cetera), which we generally only do if there is a significant functional difference between the versions of the thing in question.
Based on

It has different features, different language standards and syntax...

it sounds like that is the case.
However, we also don't really preemptively create tags on the presumption that we'll need them (because we can't, really, they'll just vanish if they're unused).
So in this case, if a collection of questions can be identified (as it seems has been) which are using the existing game-maker tag but should actually be using a proposed new game-maker-studio tag, retagging that collection should be fine.


text:
2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
To that end, here is how the moderation done here on Game Development breaks down by activity over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  3         16
Users destroyed                                   7          0
Users deleted                                     3          0
Users contacted                                   7          0
User banned from review                           1          0
Tasks reviewed³: Suggested Edit queue           387        760
Tasks reviewed³: Reopen Vote queue               63         37
Tasks reviewed³: Low Quality Posts queue         91         87
Tasks reviewed³: Late Answer queue              167        223
Tasks reviewed³: First Post queue               293      2,653
Tasks reviewed³: Close Votes queue              239        300
Tags merged                                       9          0
Tag synonyms proposed                            10          0
Tag synonyms created                              6          0
Tag highlight language set                        1          0
Questions reopened                               58          0
Questions protected                              10          9
Questions migrated                                4          0
Questions merged                                  3          0
Questions flagged⁴                               17        598
Questions closed                                947         38
Question flags handled⁴                         330        285
Posts unlocked                                    1          3
Posts undeleted                                  10         93
Posts locked                                      4         68
Posts deleted⁵                                  398      2,610
Posts bumped                                      0      8,733
Comments undeleted                               25          0
Comments flagged                                 18      1,399
Comments deleted⁶                             2,341      2,264
Comment flags handled                           363      1,054
Bounties canceled                                 1          0
Answers flagged                                  49        662
Answer flags handled                            598        113
All comments on a post moved to chat             14          0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Game Development without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 3 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 3, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁴ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁵ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁶ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Wishing you all a happy new year...


text:
FCC Accessibility Options For Disabled Question
Can this question regarding FCC Accessibility Options For Disabled Question be reworded such that it doesn't violate our "no specific legal advice" rule?
If not, is there a related useful question we could post to address at least some of the concerns in the developer community regarding the recent exemption expiration?
I reworded the initial title of the question to make it more of a question (as opposed to a statement of disbelief). Personally, I find the question body to still be a little to reactive, but didn't want to overstep with edits. Since the question is deemed off-topic anyway, maybe a more extensive edit would help.
In particular, the question addresses an editorialized news article about the topic & ask "is this article serious?" Would focusing on that aspect of the original question help?
Having reviewed some of the IGDA video in which Karen Peltz Strauss of the FCC discusses what the CVAA means for games, my take is that the article is viewing things somewhat out of context.

FWIW I think the original question has been deleted... so it makes it difficult to discuss if you're not seeing any "traction" on the meta.


text:
How can I help improve the site?
I like this site and this community, and I have some time to spare.
What are the things that I can do to help improve the site?

You can try to convince the community about what is on-topic on this site. See: https://gamedev.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1935/should-we-add-the-thing-about-off-site-libraries-to-the-help-page?rq=1

There is a bunch of things that can always be done:

Answer unanswered questions.
If your rep allows it, you can help review posts.
Participate in the on going development of the site by contributing questions, answers & votes to meta.

If that's not enough, here is a list of things that can be done as part of housekeeping:

Fix the posts that have a high potential of link rot.
With the same philosophy, we should review the usage of links such as bit.ly. While these are nice for short URLs, the target of these links can be changed, redirecting users to inappropriate sites after some time.
Clean up the software-engineering tag.
Improve posts by using \$\LaTeX\$/MathJax.
Identify collections of questions that should be closed as duplicates, or for which a "canonical question" can be authored and used as a duplicate target (see here for a recent example of this process in action).

This list should be updated when new stuff comes up :)

Regarding links to dead sites, can't it a) be detected automatically (or at least flagged automatically) and b) relink to Internet Archive (wayback machine) automatically? (automatically = from code)

As far as I know, there is no automatic way to do that. Based on my recent venturing in replacing links to gpwiki, there is no way to know if there is an archive on web.archive.org, nor which version is the right one, as there may be many and not all of them are "legit". Someone on SO meta has made a post about this.


text:
Community Promotion Ads — 2019
2019 is here! And with the new year, as usual, comes a new iteration of Community Promotion Ads! Let’s refresh these for the coming year :)
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

cool game development related open source apps
the site's twitter account
scripts packs or power tools
project or blogs from notable or just community devs
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting


text:
I just noticed I can't answer a question, but theres no notice about a reason
I wanted to answer this question: Why do RPGs let you know how much XP you need to level up? .
I suspect it's protected or closed or something like that, but there is no notice about that, like it would be on other stacks. Is this intended, and if so... why?

Top of the page:

The question is protected; I assume you don't see the message box below the author's name, above the comments?

Yes, I can not see the answerbox. My frustration/question is why it doesn't give me feedback that I can't answer because the question is protected, like it would do on other stackexchange sites. I added a screenshot to show where it would usually be.

Huh, yeah, your latest screenshot of the top of the page is surprising, I would have expected the banner there. :(

The question you're asking about is protected, which means it cannot be answered by users who have less than 10 reputation on the site. The 100-point association bonus doesn't count, so as of right now you'd need to earn 9 reputation on the Game Development site
Questions are generally protected when they become popular and as a result start to attract low-quality responses (such as commentary posted as answers or spam).
The protection banner is displayed underneath the question:

It's arguable that it should also be displayed in some form by the answer box. It certainly seems like it would be useful for questions with a long answer list. But I don't think other SE sites do that? If I'm wrong, that's unfortunately not something we can fix without SE's intervention.

I assumed that was the case, but it didn't show the usual notification for it. I edited the question with a screenshot.

@Lichtbringer Your screenshot shows the bottom of the page; the notice is usually underneath the question, not near the answer box. Do you also not see the notice under the question, as in my screenshot above? Can you add a screenshot of another SE site showing you the notice in the answer box?

I found this Protection banner missing when I don't have enough rep to answer; closed and locked banners appear in wrong spot, so it seems it's not specific to this stack, but a sidewide problem.
It seems the intended behaviour is to show protected at the bottom where the answerbox is to user that have not enough rep, and show it at the top to users who have enough rep.
For some reason, it doesn't show at all.


text:
Is there an animation stack exchange site I can view?
I've been struggling with animation but I can't find an animation site on stack exchange. Is there not an animation site here? If there is where can I find it? If there isn't then where should I ask animation questions?
Keep in mind I'm using multiple software, so I'm not sure about asking in the Blender site.
Edit: Also I'm looking for animation in general. I.E. Games, pixel art, 2D, etc.

Could you clarify by "animation"? Is it 2D animation? 3D animation? General animation? Is it related to animation technique? Creating animation? Using software for animation?

@AndrewT. Animation in general. Specifically creating animations.

The complete list of StackExchange sites is here.
If your question about animation is in the context of making a game, here is a fine enough place. If it's about creating 3D animated films, or the like, the Blender SE is probably your best bet. There is no dedicated "3D animation" SE site at the moment.

Other options include:

Graphics Design that has a tag for animations;
Video Production which also covers animation.

As noted in the comments, you'll want to specify a bit more what kind of help you seek and post to the most appropriate site.
Finally, as Josh said in his answer, there is no dedicated "3D animation" SE site at the moment.

This proposal seems to have been removed


text:
Is there a policy to close questions on architectural best practice?
There have been a fair number of architecture questions, and I expect most of them have been subjective to some degree, as many tags, e.g. game-design, will be.
Is there an existing policy to discourage best practices questions in general? Is there a policy to discourage architectural questions in general?
If so, Isn't this is a severe blind spot in the knowledge we try to impart? Is this really worth enforcing when architectural concerns are so crucial to the way we implement projects? From experience teaching, coding details are considerably less important in the long run than the ability to teach overarching approach / philosophy / methodology. Many of us have had answers in this vein from teachers, professors, lecturers who gave us lessons that would go on to last a lifetime.
I'm a firm believer in the concrete, and SE encourages questions that can certainly be answered, which is good. But to kill questions like these off the cuff, seems supremely short-sighted, assuming that's the policy.

Is there a policy to discourage architectural questions in general?

No, we have the text "engine architecture" in the "What topics can I ask about here?" section on the 'on-topic' help page. There is also a healthy architecture tag.

Is there an existing policy to discourage best practices questions in general?

Yes. There was a discussion here on meta, which linked to a discussion on meta.se.
Essentially, the consensus is that "best practices" question are often too broad, that "best" is subjective, and that askers often ask for best practices that would apply to their situation.
The issue too broad "best practices" questions is highlited in the "What types of questions should I avoid asking?" section of the 'don't ask' help page:

Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.

Yes, one could give an answer to these broad questions, but would they cover it enough? Would all the aspects of the question be answered, for the user that asked the question and the future visitors?

Isn't this is a severe blind spot in the knowledge we try to impart?

I don't think so. The scope of our site is to help users with actual problems, not create tutorials for them, or write books on a topic for them. There are other places to ask for that kind of knowledge and share that kind of knowledge (e.g. reddit, gamedev.net, personal blogs, etc.).

Is this really worth enforcing when architectural concerns are so crucial to the way we implement projects?

I think so. gamedev.se is a StackExchange site, and it has been built around a specific model. I understand that you're eager to help others, but we still have to follow that specific model. If you want to change that model, you may want to escalate and ask on meta.se.

Thanks. To me it feels very inorganic / discontinuous that we can ask & answer certain types of development questions here, but not others. And I'm aware of the background behind that, because there are a lot of genuinely-too-subjective questions out there (which one might argue is itself a subjective judgement). But it does feel as if the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak.

With that in mind, I think there are some constructive steps we can take when a potentially useful question crosses the "too broad" threshold in the current community consensus: 1) Try editing the question down to ask a concrete question about one specific practice - eg. instead of "what are best practices in UI" maybe "how can I decide when to refresh or update UI components" - the user can always ask a second question about the next aspect they want more info about. 2) Create a developer blog post discussing your recommendations, and link it in the comments as a useful resource.

@DMGregory I agree with option (1), and P.S. if that question needed to be narrowed down further, advice in that regard would have been helpful. I'm not as happy with option (2) as you are, as it scatters knowledge far and wide instead of keeping it centralised here. Link rot is real.

Hm. I've taken a look through the architecture tag and at this very moment I am seeing quite a few questions that should not be open, if this is the policy. That is why I feel there is something of a double-standard on this, as architecture questions I've addressed in the past have not been treated similarly.

@Alexandre Vaillancourt: So, in the absence of a response to my last comment: as I knew would be the case, those other questions are left open, yet this one remains closed. No-one will mention or lift a finger to look at those others and query why these double standards exist on SE. But when someone comes to challenge that status quo, woe betide them for going against general public opinion.

There is a significantly higher volume of questions than community members who can, and do, participate in close-voting. It's very common that questions "slip through the cracks," especially older questions (because when policy on what is/isn't on-topic changes, nobody usually bothers to go back through the thousands of older questions to compare them against the new rules). If there are questions that you feel should be closed, please vote to close them or bring them to a moderator's attention.


text:
Placing on hold / closing too quickly
In some cases, I think questions are too quickly placed on hold.
For each of us as an individual regardless of breadth of skills, there are instances where we would be poorly qualified to decide whether a question is easily and succinctly answerable, or not. Avoiding voting on closure unless it's within one's scope, unless on one of the very obvious usual categories, such as list style questions, would seem to be advised.
In an ideal SE, only those with a certain number of points in a given tag should be able to nominate questions using that tag, for closure, as it seems that some pretty good questions with pretty good and clear answers can get closed if the closers' assumption is that they're not answerable. Once placed on hold or closed, it is much harder to open them again as (I think) most will tend to vote in favour of the status quo, which is to leave it closed.
Another idea is perhaps there should be a minimum time before closure can take place? This at least offers users (not just the OP) time to edit the question and make it reasonable.

"In an ideal SE, only those with a certain number of points in a given tag should be able to nominate questions using that tag, for closure" - this actually already exists, but in the opposite direction.  Gold tag badges give certain one-vote-close powers to holders, so the SE model is actually set up to help encourage faster, not slower, closure.

In an ideal SE, only those with a certain number of points in a given tag should be able to nominate questions using that tag, for closure, as it seems that some pretty good questions with pretty good and clear answers can get closed if the closers' assumption is that they're not answerable.

Ignoring the systematic issues this sort of idea would bring to SE, I'd argue that the problem you present probably doesn't exist.
Most of us have the capacity to evaluate a question's quality at a high enough level to make a close vote decision regardless of the specific topic contained within the question itself.
If a subject matter expert thinks they have an answer to a question and the question should remain open while a majority of other voters believe the question is off topic and doesn't belong then I'd be willing to bet that while the subject matter expert has a really good answer, it doesn't mean the question itself isn't off topic.
Off topic questions are straight up off topic. Good answers don't turn off topic questions into on topic questions.
A lot of off topic questions around getting started and what's best comes down to uneducated users not knowing how to ask the right questions to get the answers they're looking for. A subject matter expert who really wants to answer an off topic question should leverage their domain knowledge to propose a high quality, possibly very transformative edit to the off topic question so that it fits within the mission of SE. Hopefully OP and other close voters / editors can see that the goal of the original question remains in tact while greatly improving the question to the point where the edit can be accepted and the the question ultimately can be reopened.
I won't say there aren't edge cases and what you're saying is 100% false. It's entirely possible there are edge cases. Those specific edge cases could be handled in chat or in meta to work out the specifics of those scenarios as disagreements come up. Site wide changes for edge cases is not a good idea.

Another idea is perhaps there should be a minimum time before closure can take place? This at least offers users (not just the OP) time to edit the question and make it reasonable.

This is simply counterproductive as it keeps low quality content around longer. Additionally, in general there is no motivation to make drastic edits to questions until they've already been closed.
Closing a question is not personal nor is it a punishment. It's a tool. It's a tool keep the quality of content high as well as to get people to think about what they're asking so that people can actually ask high quality questions. Editing is an option for a reason. Questions do get reopened when properly edited.

"If a subject matter expert thinks they have an answer to a question and the question should remain open while a majority of other voters believe the question is bad and doesn't belong then I'd be willing to bet that while the subject matter expert has a really good answer, it doesn't mean the question itself isn't bad." Er, that is EXACTLY what it means. Majority vote doesn't decide quality. That is like saying that because the majority of voters voted in a really bad leader, "that was by no means a bad choice!". Except it was. Skill / quality are objective in STEM; group voice, subjective.

I think "bad" as in "bad question" and the like is a term we should try to avoid. Many questions on this site that get closed are good questions in a vacuum, useful and informative questions that help the OP or others. Very few questions are actually "bad," what they are is "off-topic for this site" as has been determined by the community. When we use "bad" to mean "off-topic," I think we muddy the discourse (and I am just as guilty of this as the next person).

It helps to view closure as not being a slap-down, yes.  The purpose of voting to close can certainly be viewed as helping the OP, either by saying "the answer you want is on this other question" or by helping them to reform their question into a manner that's more easily answerable on an SE site.

I completely agree with what Josh said about the term "bad" and have updated my answer to say "off topic" in it's place as "bad" was a poor choice of wording on my part and off topic really is what I wanted to say.

@Engineer - to continue with your analogy, in the US we have rules as to who can lead. We can't really legally elect a president who isn't a natural born citizen without first changing the system itself. No matter how strongly you believe a question should remain open because you have a good answer, does not guarantee the question fits the guidelines of the site. You've done right by coming to meta in hopes of changing the system because you see an issue. I don't think your proposed solutions to said issue improve the system and that they actually would hurt the system instead.

In addition to the answer that directly addresses the question I would like to add that on Stack Exchange it is actually ideal if a question is put on hold as quickly as possible. This gives the OP and the community the opportunity to address any issues with the content or handle discussions of on-topicness before reopening the question.
On Stack Exchange once an answer has been posted, and especially if the answer gets upvoted, options become more limited. OP no longer has unilateral say over their content. Extremely poor quality questions are less likely to be deleted. And edits to improve the quality can invalidate answers, which can be a huge headache (and rejected.)
So when in doubt, put the question on hold, clear things up, get the question opened, then post your answer. If the community is trying to close a question but you want it open so you can answer it, work with the OP to make the question fit.


text:
Reviewing useful, but sub-optimal edits
This question was recently in the review queue awaiting edit approval. The edit was made by a script that repairs broken images & replaces off site images with local copies. In this case the image shows some matrix math which can now be illustrated with MathJax.
As such, I'm not really sure what the proper course of action is - here's what I considered:

Approve the edit

It's an improvement since prevents bit rot. MathJax can be added later.

Improve the edit

The basic idea is sound, but it's not the best way to do it. Avoid disincentivising the work of others, while making further improvements.

Reject & replace the edit

The question does need an edit, but it requires an altogether different course of action. Reject the script's edit & replace it with MathJax.

This particular case might not come up frequently, so it might be better to generalize a bit further: what's the course of action when an edit is useful, but doesn't represent the best possible course of action?

If you have the time and the skills, then improve the edit,
Else, if you have the skills but not the time, then come back later to improve the edit,
Else, accept the edit.

A non complete/non perfect edit that improves the post is better than no edit at all.

In the specific case of MathJax/\$\LaTeX\$, if you end up using option #3, you may want to add a link to the list here so that we remember that it would need improvement.

Here is a programmer friendly version:
if( reviewer.has( TIME ) && reviewer.has( SKILLS ) )
{
  edit.improve();
}
else if( !reviewer.has( TIME ) && reviewer.has( SKILLS ) )
{
  while( !reviewer.has( TIME ) )
  {
  }
  edit.improve();
}
else
{
  edit.accept();
}


text:
Now that c# is the only language supported by Unity, do we need to tag Unity questions with c#?
It's been around for a while: Boo and UnityScript have been removed from Unity.
Now, the obvious is that issues with Unity will be tackled in c#. Also, the new Unity users may even not be aware that there was something other than c# in the past.
Given the fact that the system seems to properly highlight c# code even without the c# tag, is there still a need to tag the questions that are tagged with unity with c# too?
If not, do we need to do an edit just to remove the tag or should it be done if there is something else to edit, or do we care at all?

Of course, I'm not talking about questions that are specific about c# within the context of Unity.

I'd follow this rule:

If the question contains C# code, tag it C#
If the question lacks code, but asks about scripting a feature in (a recent or unspecified version of) Unity, tag it C#
If the question asks about solving non-scripting problems in Unity (eg  scene setup, asset management), do not tag it C#

In the first two points, even if the C# language can be inferred without the tag, I think it's beneficial to include for two reasons:

Many Unity scripting questions do not require Unity-specific expertise to solve, so anyone following the C# tag may have relevant experience to offer in answers/edits/comments/votes/flags
Many C# game programming questions come up in the context of Unity, so it's useful if a user searching for C# Q&A also finds Unity C# results included


text:
Ark PS4 server INI files
Is this the right place to ask for help with my game server's ini file settings and such?

Hi Joey, I've migrated your question to our Meta site, where we host questions that are about the site itself and how to use & improve it.

I'm assuming that by "Ark" in the title, you mean the released game ARK: Survival Evolved / Survival of the Fittest.
If that's correct, then no, this is not the site on which to ask how to configure your ARK server. Questions about playing existing, released games should be asked on our game-playing sister site Arqade.
Be sure to check through their existing catalogue of Q&A about configuring ARK servers to see if your question has already been answered.

GameDev.StackEchange is a site for game developers designing and building their own original games and game mods. So if you have questions about developing and configuring a server for a new game that you're creating, then that would most likely be on-topic here.


text:
Should there be a differentiation between general technology questions and questions about a specific implementations of such tech?
I was looking at a question about the usage of Unity ECS and it was tagged with entity-component-system but was specifically about how to achieve a desired effect in Unity's entity-component-system.
Obviously this is valid but not necessarily useful for people just looking for generic questions about how entity-component-systems work. So should questions about specific implementations of a technology be given their own tag to differentiate between them? I see this becoming a bigger thing as more questions will be about this in the future (with Unity pushing this specific feature), so implementation specific posts will quickly outnumber generic posts about the technology itself.
Is this a valid concern?

I think I'll answer 'no' to this one. (Just to make it clear what the up-votes and down-votes are for.)
My main concern is that if we do it for Unity, we'll most likely need to do it for other engines and their technology implementation; and where will the line be? Will we end-up with godot-ecs, sfml-networking, ogre-audio?
I tend to want to reduce the number of tags rather than increase it because it blurs the pool tag and end-up creating confusion.
And with unity-ecs around, I really see questions tagged as such coming around:

unity unity-ecs entity-component-system entity-component entity-system.... Oh crap.. no room for c#!

There has also been discussions in the past about removing/merging specific tags related to a technology:

How should we handle the 'inspector' tag and 'unity-*' tags?
Would we benefit from separate [unity-2d] and [unity-3d] tags?
Is Unity's scene manager such a thing that it deserve its own tag?
Should we make [unreal-editor] a synonym of [unreal] tag?

With regard to the tag creep around entities/components/systems, I wonder whether we should re-examine the need for [tag:entity-system] as distinct from [tag:entity-component-system]. Tetrad's original reasoning for keeping these separate was that "[not] all entity systems are component based." but the tag guidance for entity-system refers extensively to components, making it unclear to me what kinds of situations fit this tag but not [tag:entity-component-system]

I'd also lean toward "no, we don't need an implementation-specific version of [all general technology tags / the entity-component-system tag in particular]" for the reasons Alexandre Vaillancourt described in this answer, as well as another specific to the ECS case:
I think the entity-component-system tag is good for unifying questions about ECS approaches or strategies, which can include applications to Unity without being limited to Unity specifics.
For instance, a user could ask "How can I adapt my AI search behaviour to work in a data-oriented ECS fashion?" with tags unity, entity-component-system data-oriented, etc. That question is high-level enough that anyone with experience thinking in an ECS way could help - suggesting what data to break out into components and what passes of systems/data transformations will achieve the same end. They don't necessarily need to know the ins and outs of Unity's job system to discuss the architecture at this level.
If we have questions that are very specific about Unity's implementation, say because they're about solving a problem in the HPC# language or making the Burst compiler behave a particular way, then I think those questions are better-served by identifying that focus more precisely - say having an HPC#-Burst tag alongside c# to emphasize the distinction of this dialect. This calls out the specific skill set at hand rather than a general topic of interest.
I think a narrowly-focused tag like this is less likely to be misused as a catch-all for any and all questions relating to ECS approaches in Unity (served sufficiently by the existing unity entity-component-system tags), and better focuses on a specific area of expertise (ie. familiarity with a specific language/compiler), making it useful for searching/filtering.
Whether we need such an HPC#-Burst tag at all remains to be seen. I haven't yet observed a large number of questions specific to the ins and outs of burst jobs in Unity, so for now I'd be inclined to watch & wait to see whether the topic develops into one that demands more filtering tools to navigate.

That being said, it would not be completely honest on my part to not mention the other discussions that occurred to keep those tags:

What is so special about unity-networking that it deserves its own tag? (unity-networking)
Should we make [unreal-editor] a synonym of [unreal] tag? (Yes, it's in my other answer, this is to highlight the blueprint part.)

So this would be matter for 'yes, let's add unity-ecs because we've done it in the past', but that's only that. Someone with more knowledge about Unity and its ECS implementation will most likely come up with more valid arguments.

We'll most likely need a kind of policy to keep the questions tagged cleanly.


text:
Are the intro, post-scriptum, and post-post-scriptum in my answer acceptable, or should they be removed?

I have a question about my Game Development Stack Exchange post: 2D isometric pixel art technique
I began my answer with the following intro:

First off, I want to highlight this excerpt from a comment to your original problem (I'm new here so if this violates whatever aesthetic standard, let me know and I can edit this bit out):

We generally can't answer "How did the developers of Game X implement feature Y?" . . . we can answer "I'm having this specific problem with the strategy I'm using so far — how can I fix/improve it?"

MY ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION AS IT IS STATED RIGHT NOW: (12:34pm eastern standard time)

And I concluded my answer with the following post-scripta:

POST SCRIPTUM
You state you're new to art, which is totally cool! My answer involves knowledge of external programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Autodesk Maya. If you are not familiar with those programs, but are interested in learning them, AND if this project is a non-commercial personal project, let me know! I would be more than willing to assist you with further questions when I have free time.
POST POST SCRIPTUM
Again, I'd like to state I'm new to stack exchange as a whole, so let me know if I should delete this portion of my answer and I will move it to some meta forum instead, but the problem occurred here so I would like to briefly address it here. I'd just like to state that the feelings I have gotten from SE's culture and ruleset are lowkey hostile. This is a question about art, a subjective medium, and as such it may require a subjective answer. The unyeilding requirement that questions be phrased as clear-cut and logically as possible such that there is an objective and finite range of answers, while helpful in raising the quality bar of content on the site, is quite frankly ableist, or at the very least extremely offputting to me personally. If you're able to do so, please keep the tone you address other people with somewhere close in your mind as you reply to logical issues or gripes: even though we are all dealing with computers here, we ourselves are humans, and I believe the golden rule is a fairly universal benchmark for interpersonal communication. Thank's :- )

Are the intro, post-scriptum, and post-post-scriptum in my answer acceptable, or should they be removed?

Thanks for asking this on Meta!
Generally, questions asking "how did they do it" can be reworded as "how could I achieve this", and you can answer the question as if it was asked like that, so I think the intro, until the 'All isometric game' is not necessary.

[...] IS STATED RIGHT NOW: (12:34pm eastern standard time)

Everything (questions, answers and edits) is timestamped and accessible, so there is again really no need to specify this: if there is a discontinuity between the answer and the question, users learn to check the edit log.

About the P.S.: It's all right to post some information that are not directly related to the question asked. As such,

You state you're new to art, which is totally cool! My answer involves knowledge of external programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Autodesk Maya.

Is OK, as it gives tips to the user (and the future visitors) what tools could be used.
Now keep in mind that you write answers for the user who asked, and the future visitors to the site. The rest of the paragraph is not really relevant to them, and will not really relevant in 6 months from now, when you'll be tackling other projects. You might want to post it as a comment to the question when your rep allows it.

You can leave the 'POST SCRIPTUM' notice there, or you could just add an horizontal line to make it clear there is a division between the answer and the 'side notes'. We don't have rules for that.

About the P.P.S.: Yes, this should be a post on meta, not part of an answer. If you have an issue with a specific comment, question or answer on the 'main site' (https://gamedev.stackexchange.com), you should "Ask" about it on the meta site (like you just did), and you should link to the relevant post, with quoting the relevant text, if appropriate, as these can be harder to retrieve if they get deleted.

i know it's frowned upon to say "thanks!!!" but i don't have enough rep for my upvotes to be visible (i despise the rep = privs system, but that's a discussion for a separate meta post)... so Thank You!!! This was a really good response, and it answered my question effectively without making me feel any shame. Answers like this make the culture more positive by ratio! :- )

Saying thanks is not really frowned upon. It's just that the vote system is there for that, often. And "thanks" comments are often deleted, but no worries :) I think "culture" on gamedev.se is a bit more welcoming to new users than what there is on SO. Glad I could help :)


text:
Entity/Component/System Tag Cleanup
Alexandre Vaillancourt's answer to this recent meta question made me realize we have a bit of a mess of tags in the neighbourhood of entity component systems:

entity-component-system - 11 questions (created September 2018)
"Used when referring to the Entity-Component-System (ECS) architecture."
entity-system - 376 questions (122 also tagged component-based)
"A programming paradigm in which gameobjects (entities) are composed out of components, and are operated upon by systems. Each entity is an ID that points to specific components."
entity-component - 107 questions (no tag guidance)
component-based - 269 questions (122 also tagged entity-system)
"Component-based designs rely on separating the multiple logical attributes of business objects and game objects into small components dedicated only to specific tasks. Whereas game objects are usually modeled to reproduce the attributes and behavior of "real world" objects by aggregating them together and allowing specialized objects to inherit from general ones, component based design relies on composition rather than inheritance."
game-component - 24 questions(no tag guidance)

Adding to the confusion, the present tag guidance on the entity-system tag seems to describe an entity component system:

Gameobject: anything acting in the game (car, gun, Steve).
Entity: a globally unique identifier (string, number) pointing to a set of components that comprise a gameobject.
Component: a blob of data or simply a tag (Position, Velocity, Renderable).
System: implements functionality. Systems operate on components (Renderer, MovementSystem).
See this answer for a through explanation of an Entity System.

We've had previous meta questions in this neighbourhood:

When doppelgreener asked in 2012 whether entity-system and component-based are the same, she accepted Tetrad's answer:

I don't think all entity systems are component based. Common consensus at this point in time might be to steer people who are asking about non-component-based entity systems towards component based systems, but I wouldn't call them synonyms.

When congusbongus asked in 2015 whether entity, entity-system, and entity-component should be merged, the consensus seems to have been to remove entity but retain the other two.

When Alexandre Vaillancourt asked in 2016 whether we need an entity-component-system tag, Josh answered:

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.

My question is:
Should we do anything to sort out this proliferation of related tags?
ie...

Should we add / modify the tag guidance to better-clarify the role of each tag?
Should some tags be merged?
Is the status quo good enough as-is?

I think we should merge these five tags down to just two:

entity-component-system for questions about ECS architecture & approaches.

merge entity-system into this.

component-based for questions about components without a strict separation from both entities & systems (eg. Unity's original GameObject & Component approach, or applications of the principle of composition over inheritance outside of ECS)

merge entity-component & game-component into this.

Rationale:
While there may originally have been an important distinction between entity-system and entity-component-system, that distinction has not been reflected in the use of these tags or their descriptions for several years now.
"Entity-Component-System" is sufficiently well-entrenched now as a concept that it makes more sense to our users to refer to this as one tag than as the compound "component-based entity-system", leading them to create the tag even after multiple meta threads arguing it wasn't needed.
Questions about managing game entities without "systems" or "components" as explicit participants can be handled with the gameobject tag. (As recommended by Alexandre Vaillancourt here)
If we find a need to categorize questions about entities and systems that don't include components / fit an ECS model, I'd recommend that we create a new tag for those, with a name less likely to be confused with ECS.

Proposed Tag Guidance: (Draft - critique & edits welcome!)

entity-component-system
ECS is a game architecture that treats each piece of game content (entity) as a logical collection of modular chunks of data (components) that describe the kind of thing it is and its attributes or current state. Behaviours in the game are performed by systems that act on entities with the relevant components to update that state.

There are many valid ways to approach an ECS, some emphasizing data-oriented design.
// TODO: elaborate with some examples of common ECS approaches and links to relevant documents.
component-based
In a component-based approach, the attributes or behaviours of game content are built in small modular pieces called components. The identity of a piece of content is built up by attaching one or more components to it, rather than making a unique or derived data type for each kind of content. (See composition over inheritance)

Component and MonoBehaviour types in the Unity game engine are a common example of a component-based approach.
// TODO: Give example of problems with inheritance hierarchies for game content, eg. Shield vs Weapon types and a spiked shield that can be attacked with as a weapon.
// TODO: sketch how composition might be used for just part of a game, like adding behaviours to inventory items, or to build core behaviour of all game entities.
Sometimes a components will combine both data and methods to act on that data, like an Update() routine.
Other uses may treat components as "Plain Old Data Structures" with any behaviour defined outside the component, as in an entity-component-system

Next Steps:
I don't think we can count on a straight merge to sort all of these out, since the tags have been used so haphazardly. So this will likely be a gradual process of sorting questions out of this cluster.

Do you have a proposal for the updated tag excerpts and descriptions? I otherwise would think that it's a good move for us.

Good note: I'll try to draft some up today.

I'll have to admit, though, that the [tag:gameobject] tag puzzles me. Can a question be tagged as such on its own? What would it be about? Do we need a question about that? What's the meaning of life?

@AlexandreVaillancourt Maybe we can further improve that. I think the intention of the gameobject tag, the original entity-system, and the short-lived entity, is to categorize questions about how we implement the base "thing" in a game and manage/update these collections of things in our world. Though in practice, gameobject seems to get used any time the question is about working in an engine that calls its base entity "GameObject" like Unity does. Maybe we should consider more explicit naming / tag guidance for that one too.

Or just remove it!

Good update, thanks for adding it!

When can we actually do this?

@user253751 I've added it to my "todo, soon" list.