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The 2013 GDSE Winter Refactor
It is the holidays!
A time of gifts, food, drink and festival (and hats, if you are into that sort of thing).
Now, we don't have any of those for you (except the hats), but we do have over a thousand unanswered questions on our site. So, alongside the network-wide winter bash that will be happening again this year, we thought it would be a good idea to go through and prune the backlog in what we're going to call the 2013 GDSE Winter Refactor.
This will be a directed effort to review, answer or close all the "unanswered" questions on the site which have fallen off the front page and are bit-rotting in the deeper, darker, less-trafficked portions of our site.
What can you do to help, you ask? It's simple! Visit the unanswered questions page and give it a browse. Keep an eye out for questions good and bad that could use some tidying up (really, that's most of them). Then:

Vote to close anything that doesn't belong on this site or that would be better served on another SE network site. That includes

Questions that are not on-topic or that aren't high-quality questions.
Question that not the right sort of question for a StackExchange site.
Queries that are general programming questions better suited for StackOverflow.

Edit any questions that are poorly worded, overly verbose, or not actually phrased as questions.

Try your best to find the real question that a user is asking. Edit the question to focus on that. Remove excess distracting information.
It's okay to make a question more general, especially if you are turning a "code dump" type of question into one that is more focused on the theory behind the topic.
If the question title and the question text disagree, edit the former to match the latter.
When in doubt, remember to be bold. Some of these question have been languishing, unanswered, for months. You can only really improve their chances by editing them.

Answer any questions you feel qualified to.

Keep the usual guidelines in mind for answering questions. Try to avoid guesses or lots of speculation.
If a user is asking about something that suggests they are taking the wrong approach, consider answering their direct question first (briefly) before offering guidance on an alternative approach.
If a question already has an answer, consider editing the answer to improve it if needed, or give it up an appropriate vote.

Of course, please remember that the point of this event is to reduce the unanswered question backlog and improve the quality of the Q&A available on this site.
As such, please don't upvote zero-scored answers just to mark the question as answered, and please don't answer bad questions, make trivial edits, or add chatty comments. We want to be decisive about getting good questions salvaged and answered and getting bad questions closed. When in doubt, flag it for moderator attention.

As an added bonus, I'll be handing out some nice rep bounties to those who help out with the Winter Refactor. Thanks in advance to everyone helping clean up the site!

Should we motivate askers to Accept answers if there is any good ones? or just up-voting them is enough?

Up-voting them is enough; an answer need not be accepted for the question to be considered "answered." Often the asker may have vanished from the site anyway.

@Byte56 Just to check, this does include questions which were asked ages ago, right?

@Polar Absolutely.

@Byte56 Definitely going to participate! This site has helped me time and time again, now is my opportunity to help them :D

Hats! I MUST DO IT FOR THE HATS!

A filter to find question with very low votes asked by persons with very low reputation would be useful, since most of them are ... not that good, let's say.

@GameAlchemist Not very recent, unanswered zero-score questions by low-rep users

We're in the last two days of the Winter Refactor folks, and hovering around 1032 or so questions with no answers (about 1320 "unanswered"). Keep it up! Let's see if we can get that first number under a thousand!

I did 2100 rep in bounties. We'll try to figure out a way to track better next time and get more rep to more people.

The Winter Refactor is now over, and I wanted to thank everybody who participated!
Although it's really hard to track activity statistics for event, those of you who did help flagged, closed, edited and answered your way to an impressive milestone: at the close of the event last night, we had 995 questions with no answers and about 1286 "unanswered" questions total!
This is way down from the starting numbers, which were up in the 1300 and 1550 ranges respectively! So once again, thanks a bunch to everybody who joined in!
But remember, just because the event's over doesn't mean you have to stop digging through the unanswered backlog. There's still a lot of questions in there worth taking a looking at, and if we keep this activity up, we may not need to hold another one of these events next year.

Blasphemy! There's always the need to refactor.

I'm still doing my bit, answered enough to keep it under 1000 today. :)


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Is it OK to ask questions that give a shader and ask "How can I optimize this?"
Is it OK to ask these kinds of questions or are they not focused enough / too much "do my homework for me"-like?

It sounds like it would be too broad. So it's not classified as too broad you should tell us:

The specific functionality you're interested in optimizing
What you've tried already
Exactly what about it isn't working
Exactly how you want it to work

Further, providing any profiler information or evidence you used to decide that this was the functionality you needed to improve would likely be useful to the person answering you.

I would like to add that otherwise, it will only be list generator of possible optimization techniques that may or may not work in your case.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How far is too far when it comes to editing questions?
I was considering heavily editing this question when Josh then edited and answered the question himself. The edits are significantly better than how it was originally phrased but in the end the question could boil down to something along the lines of how to create sprites that allow for user customization without having to create every single combination ahead of time which is what I was considering editing the question down to. This would remove all the fluff of it being a browser based 2d MMORPG. Or at least I consider these details fluff.
So I provide the above question as an example of the occasional question I'd like to edit and the types of edits I would make, but generally don't make these edits in fear of completely modifying the question to a point where it may upset the asker. Do I take the risk and make the edit, or is there some line that I should be aware of and make an effort not to cross when it comes to editing questions?

Related: http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/815/how-much-should-one-edit-for-readability (possible duplicate?)

I wouldn't say a duplicate, definitely related and the answer and provided links are somewhat helpful but the recurring piece I see is "Clarify meaning without changing it" which is really where I was really looking for clarification. In the example I provided, does removing what I consider as fluff change its meaning? I wouldn't think so but I don't know if that goes beyond the "respecting the author" that gets mentioned in other places. I appreciate the answer you provided on this question. Thanks!

In general, I advocate that you edit with assertiveness and conviction. Respect the original asker, but don't be shy. The asker (or anybody else) can always undo your edit.
It's especially important, I feel, to take this tack with questions that are otherwise really bad or close-worthy (the specific question that spurred this discussion was not such, but they exist).
Most of the time, I find that bold edits result in better answers.
For that specific question, being an MMO is potentially important (I briefly mention why toward the end of my answer). I agree the browser-based bit is not, but since it neither adds value nor removes it, I chose to keep that aspect of the question.
One could argue that we should distil all questions to their purest forms, where possible, and this is definitely a question that does apply to just about any 2D game with many character sprite possibilities.
However, I'd argue we should also keep search ability in mind: a less experienced developer will often assume, occasionally incorrectly, that certain aspects of their specific project (browser-based, MMO, fantasy genre, uses the Foo API, et cetera) are relevant to their problem when they are (or do the opposite). They will thus search for those terms, and if we edit all our questions into their pure form they may not find that question in the search results.
If we leave the "extra bits" and details when they do no harm, askers may have a better chance of finding a pre-existing question that solves their problem. If they don't or don't realize that, and ask a similar question (replacing "fantasy genre" with "sci-fi genre" or whatever), well, that's why we have the concept of marking questions as duplicates (rather than deleting said duplicates): they serve as breadcrumbs back to the canonical answer.

My only challenge with this way of thinking would be around what qualifies extra bits as harmful. I could see removing the extra bits saving us the trouble of people disputing a duplicate claim or dismissing a question/answer outright because of the content having meaningless fluff in it, but if that's my only concern its probably not worth my time to make the edit and we can just explain why the decision was made as is on a case by case basis. Good advice.

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


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Are "how do I set up my development environment" questions on-topic?
Consider this question which is asking about setting up MonoGame.
I closed it (as off-topic, "how to get started). But I am interesting in seeing the consensus on this class of question in general, which I've taken to calling "setting up a development environment" questions.
These take the form of things like:

How do I use library X with IDE Y?
How do I compile library X as a [static|dynamic] library?

and perhaps even

Why do I get these errors running this library's tutorial?

Should we consider these on-topic or not?

I think they're generally off topic. How to set up development environments isn't a task that's specific to game development. They're also questions that are often overly broad and essentially asking where to get started or for a tutorial.
However, concerning your last point, I do believe there could be some cases where these questions are on topic. Cases where the technology being used is specific to game development and the exception is specific to the technology. For example, a shader expection might be something that qualifies, a null pointer exception would not. Those can be considered on a case by case basis.

Yeah, I agree. Almost invariably they also boil down to "read the documentation" (when documentation is available) on either the library or the base IDE or toolchain.

Setting up a development environment can be a nightmare. Docs are frequently out of date nowadays, and doing something like linking a jar in eclipse or another project in xcode can make you want to tear your hair out. If the question is well worded, it will help someone to get started with development

@alexstone They can be asked on stackoverflow.com. They're not on topic here. If you want to make an argument for them being on topic here, you can post it as an answer.

I think this falls under all the other 'is it us or SO/UX/whereever' type of questions. If asking questions about how to mod a game/engine are on topic for us than, as long as no NDAs are broken, I would assume that how to set up those games/engines for doing just that to be an on topic discussion.

The argument I have against this approach is that it is setting a precedent for a certain kind of "how to get started" questions as being acceptable. Furthermore, we're generally against considering questions asking for the same thing except in a different language or with a slightly different technology stack as distinct (they are usually closed as duplicates), and that would result in essentially result in this site maintaining generalized documentation on installing various bits of software.


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Why do I have the teacher badge even though haven't answered any questions?
I just joined gamedev to ask one question that seemed too game-dev for StackOverflow, and noticed that I have the teacher badge even though I've only just joined haven't answered any questions.

Then when I clicked the badge, I ended up here which tells me I've earned it for this answer on this question:

Which I'm not only 99% sure wasn't written by me, but also couldn't have been posted by me because I only joined today (see here).
What's happening?

That question was asked on stackoverflow, where you apparently answered it. It was then migrated here, then you were awarded the badge, then it was closed. Then it appears the answers it had were removed by community, which is why your answer is currently deleted.

Ah, makes sense though it's somewhat convoluted. I probably wrote like that 3 years ago as well.


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Are questions about finding team members for a game development project on-topic or off-topic?
I am of course not asking about those "Would you like to join my team" job-postings disguised as questions which appear from time to time, but rather about generalized questions about where and how to hire developers, artists or other team members for a game development project.
The help center lists as on-topic questions, among others:

project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)

Assembling a project team is the first part of team management.
One recent question which was closed as off-topic through a moderator was "Where can I find animators to create 3D models and animations for characters in 2d isometric game?" but I don't want to discuss this particular question but rather the issue in general.
Assuming that a question asks about recruitment strategy for a game development project and that it does address aspects specific to game development which don't apply to general software development (which would make it more fitting for programmers) or even hiring personel in general (which would fit on workplace), could the question be on-topic?

Assuming that a question asks about recruitment strategy for a game
  development project and that it does address aspects specific to game
  development which don't apply to general software development (which
  would make it more fitting for programmers) or even hiring personel in
  general (which would fit on workplace), could the question be
  on-topic?

Possibly, if other factors did not contribute to it being off-topic (such as being a list-of-X question, or overly based on opinion, et cetera).
However, I'm finding it very difficult to think of good example where what you are suggesting would be there, but what I am suggesting would be absent. Do you have an example question that you are thinking of?
I don't really think there's anything overly specific to game development that goes into the crafting of a recruiting strategy for game developers. You could ask for techniques to drive up the popularity of your project among potential game developer recruits, but that is a list-based question (and also only has a very weak basis for a game developer being able to give you a better answer). You could ask how important prior game development experience is to hiring a potential candidate, but that's highly opinion-based because everybody considers that issue differently.
In short, such questions are not off-topic outright but their nature, I think, will generally mean they are off-topic for other reasons.

I once asked myself "How to hire an artist". I know where to go, I know how much to pay, but I wouldn't know how to write a contract for the artist. I was sure here the question would get a lot of IANAL answers and comments advising to ask a lawyer (which I would of course do if I had money for a lawyer).  Anyway, I found my answer elsewhere and did not try here. Would it be on-topic or off-topic?

"How to write a contact" would definitely be off-topic I would say.


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What counts as a "debug my code" type of question?
We currently close questions as off-topic when those questions are asking, essentially, for the community to debug the asker's project. When this close reason is applicable is a little unclear at the moment, so I am putting this post out there to solicit feedback and clarification on the exact circumstances under which a question should be classified as a "debug my code" question. I would like to arrive at a consensus on the wording for

why a question is considered a "debug my code" question and
what a the user should do to improve the question.

The primary motivation for this is to reduce confusion among users, especially new ones (and especially given that sometimes a question is so closed because it provides too much and sometimes it is so closed because it provides too little code). My secondary motivation is to establish verbiage to use in an upcoming proposal to make "debug my code" a standard close reason for the site (rather than one that must be manually entered via the "other" off-topic radio button).

The key word in "debug my code" is my.
If the code being asked about is short, generic, and something which a lot of people are likely to have written in that form, then it's not a "debug my code" question.
Similarly, if the code you're asking about was written by someone else and is available to lots of people who might also have problems with it (for example, if it's inside an open source library), then it's similarly not a "debug my code" question.
But if you're posting whole functions from your own code and are asking people to find the bug you put in your own implementation, that's asking other people to debug your code for you, which is against the site's current rules.

I think it's worth explicitly calling out tutorial code. Technically it's "someone else's" and "widely available". But recently there's been a glut of people copy-pasting code from mediocre tutorials, not understanding it, failing to get it to work, and then dumping it here and asking "fix it".

I think a question can be considered a "debug my code" question when it describes a problem without also describing an appropriately-localized context in which the problem could occur (along with proof that the problem does occur there).
Specifically, if a question provides so much (or so little) code that an answerer would need to either

post an answer based on speculation or
engage in a follow-up dialog back and forth in the comments

then the question can be categorized as a "debug my code" question. Note that this specifically does not address the length of the code posted, because I believe that to be a red herring (per the fact that a user could be asking for debugging help with either a lot of code or a little bit of code); what's more important is how well the presented completely scopes the defined problem.
This is different from (although potentially a subset of) the "too broad" close reason, although the definition for "too broad" does not address the scoping issue of the code per se, which I why I believe it is still relevant to use a distinct close reason.
I would suggest we use wording like the following:
"This question appears to be off-topic because it is asking for others to debug your project for you. Use the debugging tools available to you to isolate your issue to the specific part of your code that demonstrate it. See this question for more information."

May i ask why the need to close of question about debugging help? Is it because it seems lazy? Because the answer is only relevant to that specific code? Or maybe because the answer will not provide help for others that find the question later looking for answers?

I imagine for a number of reasons, but a big reason is that it is too localized to fit the Q/A->Archive format that this site runs. Localized debug questions like that are unlikely to generate more widely useful answers for future reference, as they are tied to a very specific and unique situation. Coupled with that, the higher numbers of these questions would cause too much clutter, and make it more difficult to find the valuable answers.

This question is not about whether or not these sorts of questions should be closed; that is the standing policy (see here and here). If you would like to debate that policy please start another meta thread.

So just reading this thread now, probably be a good idea to make this kind of stuff a bit more clear on the main website, so people don't waste their time asking

We can't do that, unfortunately (we don't have control over "the main website" beyond a few select areas, such as the close reasons). We could request to have the FAQ modified, but I don't really think it's worth it given the number of people who still ask questions the FAQ says not to, because they don't bother reading it).

When all of these apply ...

When a code sample is given and the Asker is expecting the code to be "fixed".
When the solution to fixing the code is not useful to many others.
When the context of the code is "specialised" or specific to some particular context / scenario that others may not typically be met with programming.

Questions that meet some of these criteria may be considered "debug my code" but also may be relevant / interesting to others doing similar projects.
Questions that where none of the above apply likely are of a different context, for example ...
Given this code sample ... (insert any code snippet here)
"How does it calculate X correctly?" , the asker be trying to understand some code from something they read online.
Then theres ...
  "How do i calculate x from this ...", Probably homework.
Then you have ...
  "X isn't correct, i was expecting a value of 42, could you tell me why?", This person maybe asking how to fix the given code, I think this may fall under the remit of "debug my code" given that when a solution is provided it is only beneficial to the asker.

I could've sworn there was a selection for "too localized" in the close options; maybe that was removed at some point, because I don't see it now.
Anyway I see "debug my code" questions as a specific variant of "too localized" questions: debugging your code helps you but not anybody else. Stated differently, if answering your question amounts to hunting down errors in your specific code snippet and that answer wouldn't help anybody else, then it's a "debug my code" question.

"Too localized" was removed as part of the close reason/on-hold refactor to the SE software, I believe. And you're right, we used to that one almost exclusively to close the kinds of questions I'm referring to.

I tried.  :)  http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/1181/19126


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Should we create a "debug my code" close reason?
As mentioned in my question about the definition of "debug my code" questions, I'd like to propose that we merge two existing close reasons and make room for a new close reason dedicated to addressing "debug my code" questions.
I'm going to post, as an answer to this question, what I think we should do now based on the general consensus from previous question on the definition. Feel free to upvote that answer or propose your own solution (including a post saying we shouldn't do this, if that's how you feel).

This is now live!

I propose the merging of our current close reasons that cover "which technology" questions and "what to learn next" questions. For reference, these reasons are currently:

Questions that are about "which tech to use" are outside the scope of
  the site. For more information, see this meta post

and

Questions about "how to get started" or "what should I learn next"
  cannot reasonably be answered with anything other than opinion polling
  and therefore are off topic for the site. For more information on how
  to ask a better question, see the help center

I suggest we combine them as follows:

Questions about "how to get started," "what to learn next" or "which
  technology to use" are discussion-oriented questions which involve
  answers that are either based on opinion, or which are all equally
  valid. Visit our help center
  for more information.

and then add the following new close reason:

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

I don't know if that should say "to read to read" but it looks like a good idea to me otherwise. :)

Since we really are allowed only 3 custom reasons, I think this is an excellent proposal.

My only quibble: Can we trim off "on asking questions here", so it's just "Visit our help center for more information."? The help center contains more information not just on asking questions but also on why we have such rules, among many other useful things.

I was going to ask about why not bring back too localized but based on the opinions in this meta post and the way you've worded your debugging close reason I would say you've really got a good solution here.

@Anko, I like that idea.

Looks good to me as well. But if we are going to trim off "on asking questions here", I think there should be a comma after "information".

I've added the reasons and they are pending approval by another moderator.

...and it's now live!


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Do we care about the OP's (unclear) intent?
We get a fair number of terribly phrased and formatted questions here.  Here's a recent one from the Off-topic/unclear close pool. (Both Anko and I have tried to improve it, check the revisions):
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/70656/how-do-i-flip-a-sprite-along-an-angled-line
The original question was incomprehensible, but seemed like it could be salvaged to answerable by some edits.  Unfortunately, the OP was so far afield that they hadn't even accurately expressed their intention.  Once they received an answer, they explained further.  As Krom said in comments,

That's always a problem with ill-spelled questions.

My question is: do we care what the OP was trying to say, or about forging good questions and answers from bad posts?

I think we do care, to an extent. The goal of SE sites is to provide an archive of good questions and answers foremost, but a secondary goal is to get individual users the answers they are after.
In cases like you've described, I would advocate for taking a firm hand in editing the question into something reasonable based on whatever context clues are available, provided that you can make a case for there being a single obvious question in there somewhere. Try, as best as possible, to keep the asker's intent in mind, but do prioritize the validity of the question over that intent if there's doubt.
Usually in these cases I'd leave a comment explaining that I edited the question but couldn't be sure I fully understood the asker, and request that they clarify my edit. This reinforces (especially to new users, who are usually the ones responsible for these kinds of questions) what happened to their question, that they can also edit, and various other details about the operation of the network.
However, if a question is really bad, to the point where there could be multiple equally-valid but unrelated questions in it, or you aren't confident what the intent is, please vote to close as unclear instead. Once a question has answers it's much harder to make major edits align without then doing somebody a disservice, so if that seems like it might happen it's better for the long-term health of the site to put the question on hold for a while rather than let ultimately unrelated answers clutter up the post.

+1 Reading this, I was enlightened. I've tried to follow Wikipedia's guidelines and be bold with edits: Accompanied with a comment explaining what I did and why, this initiates what Wikipedians call the Bold-Revert-Discuss-cycle, improving the post. However, this isn't enough: In contrast to WP, we distinguish Q from A. That is why we have holding and closure. We need good questions, but more importantly, we need them before answers. Questions that aren't there yet should be closed, then edited, then reopened.

As a site, our primary value is in our answers (the questions are basically SEO for finding the answers).  When there is a high-quality answer on a question -- whether or not it's the question the original poster was actually trying to ask -- I'd argue that our priority should always be to protect the answer, not the original poster's intent.

I say, to hell with the OP's intent.  Make good questions from bad.
The SE model is to make questions that are useful for future visitors, not the one person who posts one question and never returns.  Good questions with good answers draw better views of the site, and serve as a good example for future posters.  Bad questions that match a lone user's idea help no one.
The terms of service declare that a post becomes the property of the site, not the individual user.  Even if that user does return, they can ask a new, better-phrased question to get to their precise problem.  Or they can answer their own question, answered in the manner they intended, once they figure it out.
If the OP's ego is hurt by having their original post mutilated, then they ought to have asked a better question.  Ego is also not guarded by the terms of service.  Apologies to the casual users who are lost along the way.  But those questions aren't what the site needs in order to prosper.  The site needs good questions.

The moderation team on this subsite keep citing Stackexchange principles, but somehow, do not appear to embrace the most important idea behind it all. Perhaps it's a resource or community size issue. I'm sure, as a programmer you've found yourself Googling an obscure issue and are glad to find another, relevant, random query. Duplicates are one thing, as are questions that essentially beg for code, but questions such as these - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003241/when-should-i-use-a-domain-specific-language - Are the lifeblood of Stackexchange. And single shot questions ARE important.

I can't tell if you are agreeing with me or arguing against.  What is the most important idea?  Your example is a good general question; here's one from gamedev: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/16571/what-makes-a-computer-opponent-feel-alive   I don't have any problem with this kind of question.  I want there to be more of them.  I think that removing crappy, individual-centered questions increases the likelihood of finding some random question with thorough answers.

I understand that the community is small when compared to Stackoverflow, and I can see why you'd not want the board overwhelmed with "how do I do this?", or "which one's the best?" questions. But this place takes it to an extreme. On Stackoverflow, you'll occasionally find questions with no answers. That's the approach you should take from time to time, I think... The idea is that someone will come across the query by happenstance and fill in that void, enriching your board. Either that, or the user/poster will get the hint, and in a large number of cases, self edit.

So I saw your question, and I interacted with it in the preferred way, which is to attempt to improve it.  As moderator Josh suggested, you can always argue about close vote reasons on meta.  Since you didn't ask specifically about your own question, i did it for you.  Please participate.  http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/should-joystick-hotplug-on-osx-be-reopened  As for the general tactic of what should remain open and what shouldn't, feel free to post about that here too.  But be prepared to defend your case strongly.


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When should we answer "it depends" instead of closing?
Consider two example questions:

Is a Masters degree in computer science beneficial over a Bachelors in the game industry?
What are the types of 3rd-person camera called?

On first read, one's impulse might be that these questions should be closed, because they are too broad or based on opinions. However, both questions do have answers that are of the form "it depends / there isn't a definitive choice."
When, if ever, should we consider it appropriate to answer these questions as above instead of closing them? Further, how should we guide other answerers towards posting those sorts of answers instead of saying "well, one opinion would be..." or similar?

I think that if you can say with objectivity that a question has no single answer, then that is an answer and should be posted. Opinions and subjective experiences should be left out of the answer, or added as a footnote or comment on the post. Answers that do otherwise, and suggest one of many possible options, should be voted down or flagged (because they are wrong).
If the question seems particularly likely to generate a lot of such answers (i.e., is popular) even though it could be answered with "it depends," the question should be flagged for moderators who can put a notice on the question demanding answers based on facts.
However, I would move that we apply this policy after first considering if the question should be edited to better clarify the asker's intent or mold the question into something like likely to require this kind of judgment call.

But what do you include in your answer other than "It depends?" My gut tells me that to justify your "It depends" answer you are going to need to include details based on opinion and subjective experiences which without these details I don't think an "It depends" answer is actually useful and as such we should probably just close the question. If comments are the only thing that are useful to someone looking for an answer to the question then is this actually a good approach? My gut also tells me you've got a decent response to this so I've only posted a comment and not an answer for now.

I guess the trouble comes from I don't know what saying it depends or that there is no single answer with objectivity looks like

I think it depends what you say after "it depends." In the education question above, it can be objectively asserted that different studios use different hiring practices and guidelines. Similarly for terminology questions where the term being asking about has no agreed-upon definition, you can show examples of two differing, competing definitions.

I don't necessarily think there is a large number of questions covered by this topic; in fact I think it's rather small. But every useful question we can keep open helps improve the site, and I think particularly early beginners can benefit from answers to questions about definitions (especially those where the answer is "there is no agreed-upon term/definition for that" because so many beginners seem to struggle endlessly over those things).

Based on the clarification received in chat I can be on board with this

As stated multiple times today on stackoverflow there are is a common practice to answer questions about software development and issues with your own solution, which may be one out of thousands. How is this bad? There are other solutions and such but this one works. You could add pros and cons of your solution or state that there are others too but why shouldn't you tell one solution for a question?

You seem to be asking about a different topic, the fact that some questions are closed as "too broad." The help has a page that explains the rationale (which is network wide) behind the "too broad" close reason. If you would like further clarification, please post an actual meta topic about it.

I would say... it depends.
If the presumption is: "the answers that can be given branch out too much from a concise option" then we can call it too broad and close it like normal. However, if there is a general standard or a few options that can be given in an answer (see example) then question can produce answers that are not too opinionated or dependent on other variables.

Example
The Masters degree example:

If I continue my degree will it help or if I go obtain an internship
  will that help more?
Continue Degree

Option A: Take it - it helps because of:

Definitive Point 1

Option B: Don't do it - it doesn't help because of:

Definitive Point 2
Definitive Point 3

Go for Internship

Option A: Take it - it helps because of:

Definitive Point 1
Definitive Point 2

Option B: Don't do it - it doesn't help because of:

Definitive Point 3

If the structure of the answer can be concise without giving opinions on the definitive points that make up the options then it is not too broad to answer. If however it was like this:

Continue Degree

Option A: Take it - it helps because of:

Definitive Point 1

Dependent on Point 1.1

Dependent on Point 1.1.1
Dependent on Point 1.1.2

Dependent on Point 1.2

Option B: Don't do it - it doesn't help because of:

Definitive Point 2

Dependent on Point 2.1

Dependent on Point 2.1.1

...

Dependent on Point 2.1.2

Dependent on Point 2.1.2.1

...

Definitive Point 3

Dependent on Point 3.1
Dependent on Point 3.2
Dependent on Point 3.3

Then there is clearly a broad answer (most likely due to the format of the question) and so the question does not fit our standards.
To sum up
If you can't answer an "it depends" question with a selection of few definitive answer points then it is too broad. If you have a small selection of concise options with no dependency on opinion or situation (beyond the scope of the question) then it is a good question-answer combination.


text:
Should 'idea for distributed MMO servers' really be on hold?
This question is on hold because it is overly broad. However I do not believe the question to be overly broad at all. Only the title is wrong (and overly broad). The contents of the question actually has a clearly defined question:
From the text:

I just want to know if adding a DHT to the worker nodes would be feasible? This should allow redundency and high availability out of the box as DHT's are quite good at that.

Which I would translate to the question:

"Can an entity system with DHT be used to span an MMO game over multiple servers to improve the redundancy and availability?"

Or something like that.
So the main question of this meta question is: Should we not alter the title of this question instead of just putting it on hold?
On a side note: I think we're a bit on an on-hold spree here. Way too many questions get put on hold. Yes some are very bad, but questions like the one I refer to only need a small touch-up to be valid. I think putting so many questions on hold, often without letting the poster know why or how to improve their question makes this community very inaccessible.

Edit the question, it will be placed in the reopen queue.

Doh, I didn't know that :), done!

Close votes are supposed to be helpful feedback, and the on hold queue is meant to encourage the feedback to be used.  In practice, sometimes that feedback is wasted.  Edit away.

As Byte said, edit the question (or vote for re-open if you feel it's fine without edits) and it will go into the reopen queue. I think that particular question does need edits like you described to be viable, however.
We do have a lot of questions on hold. This isn't ideal, but it's better, I think, than the opposite, which is lots of bad questions with answers reinforcing the perception that those answers are okay.
The "on hold" change to the network was designed, in part, to combat that problem. Questions closed for standard reasons include a disclaimer about why the question was closed, what can be done to improve it, and where the user can go for more information. If you feel any of those reasons are lacking, make a meta post about it (we can change the custom ones).
I'd much rather see more questions put on hold and then edited and reopened than leaving comments suggesting the user edit the question, and then having to deal with the constraints of editing the question and not invalidating existing answers.
This question is a great example of what happens when we let that go. It was an extremely broad question asking for a survey of techniques for 2D lighting. It contained one specific question about image projection, which was appropriate and interesting, so I edited the question but left it open against perhaps my better judgment. In the interim it got two answers, one of which is accepted but does not answer the edited question, but the original. At this point the only recourse is to revert the edit, leave the answers, and close as too broad. Which is a shame.

I'm inclined to question this judgement.  If a question gets an accepted answer, and if that answer isn't overly verbose, then it seems to meet neither of the "too broad" criteria and surely shouldn't have been closed as such?

Acceptance of an answer means nothing in terms of whether or not a question is appropriate for the site, though. And "too broad" doesn't just mean "there's one answer, but it's a book" it can also mean "there are too many answers of any length."

Whats wrong with an answer which doesn't get into detail but lists his choices like the one user answered in this thread? I don't see harm done with this question and clearly one found an answer to it. What would be wrong if more posters would post more answers to it? If people want to engage why don't you let them. I really don't get it as I thought this a stack exchange like stackoverflow but it seems it's nowhere near it.

@Coretek your idea of SE is contrary to what is explicitly stated in the help.  "If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here." Read: engagement is actively discouraged.  SE is about the specific, very useful content.  Like Josh described, list questions provide, instead of a really great question and answer, a mediocre list of options.  Any site can list off technique names with no substance behind it.  SE tries to do something better than that.


text:
Why is my question closed and how can I improve it?
This is a question I asked today that has been closed as off-topic. I edited it to make it more on topic and am told is still off topic but for a different reason.
I honestly do not understand what is wrong with my question. How can a question about hardware supported by Java be subjective, it either supports it or it doesn't?
Can someone explain what I have done wrong and how to better phrase my question to get them answered instead of closed.

There are two aspects of your question that make it off-topic here (emphasis in all quotes is mine):

With all the devices that are used for gaming now is java a good
  choice for games on the merit of its cross platform compatibility or
  is there no benefit in changing from c++.

"Is X a good choice?" is a form of "which technology should I use?" and such questions are outside the scope of the site (see the Help Center). They are extremely broad, discussion-focused questions, and this is not a discussion forum.

What i am interested in is if i start my next game in java will i be
  able to target a larger audience than if i did it in C++ as java is
  "cross platform" out of the box but does that apply to games.

"If I do X, will I have a larger audience?" isn't something that can be easily supported by facts and objective data, in many cases. Sure, there are some, but this isn't one of them. Support for C++ and for Java on modern platforms in just about ubiquitous, but there is no concrete way to say what the "available audience" is for a program written in either (especially since the audience for your game, players, rarely care about the technology used to build a game). As such this is just going to result in discussion fostered mainly by opinions (of which there are many, and they can be polarizing).
Fundamentally you are still asking "what should I choose, Java or C++," though, even with your edit. So the question is still off-topic.
Further, you did not ask about hardware as your meta question asserts. In fact the word "hardware" appears nowhere in the question as of this post (and a question about what hardware Java is supported on wouldn't be on-topic here either).

I'm not sure how to tell you what to do to improve this question, as fundamentally what you want to know seems to be "C++ or Java?" That's not a topic we want to host on this site.
That said, I left you a comment on the question with my advice.

+1 for "especially since the audience for your game, players, rarely care about the technology used to build a game"  the one exception there is Linux users, which tells you a lot about Linux


text:
Ideas for the 2014 Spring GameJam
We'll hold the Spring GameJam soon enough (in a month or so, starting today, 3 March 2014). Drop all of your ideas for the new GameJam as answers here. Based on a combination of votes and relevance of comments under each answer, we'll make a list of stuff and then a poll, for everyone to vote to choose the final direction the jam will take.
The old jam format (poll to choose themes and so on) will be used as a fallback solution.

Right now, in order to participate, users need reputation. This requires new users to build up some rep if they want to participate. Advertising the jam is a great idea to gain new users, but if the rep requirement will immediately throw them off, we'll not be getting anywhere.
My suggestion: we host the jam externally. We do the submissions and voting there. This way, anyone can participate, regardless of the reputation they have here. Unless there are better options, I could host the jam myself.

I have a bad feeling about hosting it externally. I'm all for trying it to see what happens, though.

Voting for theme (if we do that again) should at least be external. So we can use a system that hides vote counts. Not only to ensure we don't have run-away leaders but so that people don't know what the theme will be until then vote counts are revealed.

Is the goal of the gamejam to find new users or to have fun with the current users?

Having fun with the same 3 users everytime gets boring. By opening up to the world we will also get to see more exciting stuff.

I'd like to see as many and as nice games as possible; I think that's the best to get out of a jam. I was thinking that allowing the participants to decide what their games should be about is the best way to achieve this. Removing the specific theme will indeed nullify the imagination exercise, but in turn it will allow people to come up with a great idea themselves, which may be better than anything pertaining to the theme.
So, the next theme should be: "Let's make a game."

While I don't know if this should always be the case I'm open to doing it themeless once in a while.

I'm very iffy about installing programs on my computer and I think this gives browser-based games an unfair advantage. (The only game I played from the previous game-jam was John's)
To counter this advantage, I would like to propose that submissions must include a short gameplay video.

Since animated images can be embedded directly into SE posts, I propose submitting those instead of (only) hosting actual videos. Short instructions can be provided for possible tools to use.

Games are meant to be played, not watched. I don't think this is really helping to solve the issue you describe.


text:
Is this StackExchange too restricted or overly moderated?
I'm a bit irritated how you handle things in the game developer stack overflow.
While it's is common practice on stackoverflow.com to share your personal knowledge and way to solve it, while here you are restricting discussions and different opinions/ways to solve a problem.
Maybe this is the reason why this board is rather small?
Giving two examples:
1) You shut down this thread: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/71550/how-can-i-do-infinite-ground-for-running-gamewhile the first comment in the post is clearly the answer to the OP's question. I don't understand why you are closing his thread and not posting the first comment as answer instead.
2) Asking for best practices or options for basic workflow
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/71554/basic-workflows-for-game-development-udk-cryengine-unity-export-format?noredirect=1#comment129376_71554
-) I'm asking for rethinking about which questions are really about opinion on a unique author's subject (e.g. if one likes a color) and which questions just may have multiple ways to solve it.
-) I also don't think that there are question which have too many possibilties to solve so that you need to but them on hold. Else nearly every question at stackoverflow should be put on hold because there are 1000 ways to code a solution for a problem.
I experience the stackoverflow system as followed: Someone asks a question and users answer it with their own solution. Then the community upvotes the best/simplest/shiniest one. Additionally this helps the questioner to valuate the solutions.

While it's is common practice on stackoverflow.com to share your personal knowledge and way to solve it we must be visiting two different Stack Overflows then. On the one I visit, questions inviting discussions and different opinions are shut down with extreme prejudice.

Why? Isn't this the way it always works? Someone has a problem and one posts his solution in form of code or something which is the way he would solve this issue. There are of course 100 other ways and then another user posts his way. And the users upvote the easiest way. I could really start listing nearly infinite threads now.

Just to note, the "you" in this question is about me.

It doesn't matter in my opinion which moderator did it because I believe it was done in best interest following your game dev guidelines. So I seek adjustment of the guidelines. Or learning to interpret them how the mods @ stackoverflow do it (because I think they wrote them and gave them their intention).

What, specifically, are you asking for? You don't want opinion based questions to be closed? The only question I see in this post is asking if I think I'm the reason we're a "small" stackexchange.

No this is not an insult to you it's a maybe challenging question but with the aspect in mind of improving the game dev section. Nearly every answer to every question will have "opinion" or "one's way" in it anyway. Providing this way helps the questioner.

OK... "What, specifically, are you asking for? You don't want opinion based questions to be closed?" Please edit the question to state what you're wanting.

Maybe it would be too much if questions like "Do you like this model to be more red or more yellow" are allowed. But I don't see in any way how these two question mentioned in my first post (especially the one about infinite levels) are purely opinion based posts.

If a question has a provably correct solution then of course the opinion aspects are fine, but these suggestions would harm an already very damaged place. Those type of questions are already a problem on the site, if a question is specifically calling for opinion well it's time for you to do your own research and form your own opinion. A flame war of opinionated programmers all juiced up on theory helps nobody.

The other question you're pointing out was closed as "too broad", not primarily opinion based.

--Edited (Misread): I see now that "too broad". But thats exactly the point. I extended my question @ OP. At stackoverflow there are nearly no questions which are "too broad" because there are 1000 ways to solve them programatically. At least that is my experience and I liked it that way. (I asked a lot of "broad" questions there)

Extended the question to also include the "too broad" argument. My personal opinion is that while on stackoverflow the community cares to understand also the most hard to read and understand question, they are shut down here instantly. This was an extreme example of course and you probably shouldn't let every thread open. But somehow this also feels like the knowing on this forum want to hide their knowledge , which should not be the point of such a platform imo. Despite it seems common practice for game engineers and modelers to hide their knowledge.

I'm not active here so I can't offer an opinion on what Gamedev.SE should or should not do, but those questions would have been  closed on Stack Overflow, too, for the same reasons they were closed here.

Ok I have never had any of my questions closed on stackoverflow and they were also seeking broad wisdom and the answers were opinion based. Here are some example from me: opinion based about PM: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16896240/maintaining-user-stories-and-use-cases

@Coretek interesting example. That seems like a weird outlier to me - if it came up on Meta.SO there's a good chance it would get closed.

Very difficult to compare questions, saying this one is still open, why isn't this other one. You should instead focus on how you can improve your question.

I'm not talking about meta, just about the (original) stackoverflow. The community there is really helpful, open and newbie friendly. Talking about the java, android, c#, java-beans and so on sections.

No byte in my opinion my question is fine as is. You have another opinion. I don't want to compare single threads, I'm comparing the whole original stackoverflow with the game dev section. And this was just an example. You can find all me questions and answers in my original SO profile. I was also engaged in the software testing section.

Funny. It feels to me like we're talking about two different Stack Overflows. The one I know closes questions like those you show with extreme prejudice - at least in the tags I tend to frequent.

You mentioned only the meta stack overflow. I was not active there. I'm talking about the original stackoverflow and the section I made my experience were software development and software testing (also test automation). There was a lot editing and formating of questions of course but not closing or restricting people from asking (with the chance of getting an answer - or a lot different ones). This is my point.

I have to go for now, but I'm interested in other experiences too. Imo if you restrict questions too much this will not be a beginner friendly place and therefore wont grow at the best rate. I think people would like to answer to the question I posted originally as there are also people who at least try to answer the most difficult to understand questions. But the questions have to be kept open to get the opportunities. Format the question, teach the questioner how to question right, but leave the questions open.

How recent is your experience on Stack Overflow? The way the SO community handles broad and discussion-y questions has become radically strict over the past 2-3 years, so far that many think it's too strict

I'm a member for nearly three years now, more active at the beginning. Not really active since 1 year now I think.

I've recently noted that of the first 50 questions in the top voted category of questions 26 of them were marked "[closed]". However, most of those questions were answered, which is good, but I think this indicates some problem.

The two questions you mention are indeed both poorly suited for the Stack Exchange platform.  The problems they have are rather different, though, and some of them may be fixable.

The first question was closed as "too broad", but IMO, a more accurate closing reason would've been "unclear what you're asking".  Basically, condensing the question and its answers and comments into a few lines, they essentially went like this:

Q: "I want to make a running game with infinite ground.  How could I do that?"
A: "One way is to split the world into several parts, and keep creating new parts in front of the player and removing old ones behind them."
C: "I tried that, but the player falls through the floor!  Why does that happen?"

Basically, it's a kind of a chameleon question — it started out as a conceptual question about maintaining the illusion of an infinite world, and then morphed halfway through into a "there's a bug in my code" question (with no actual code included, which makes finding the bug extra difficult).
Questions like these cannot really be meaningfully answered, since the actual question being asked is a broad, nebulous and moving target.  To try to give a useful answer, one would have to guess which level of abstraction, from general game mechanics to specific coding syntax, the OP is actually having problems with — and it may well turn out that the answer is "all of them", in which case the question is indeed too broad for Stack Exchange.
The general way to fix such questions, where possible, is to engage in comment dialogue with the asker to try and clarify what they already know and what they're specifically having trouble with, and then edit the question to focus on that one, specific, answerable issue.
In some cases, it may also be possible to split such questions into multiple parts, one for each of the component problems.  For example, this example question is broad enough that it could be split into (at least) three distinct questions with distinct levels of abstraction:

"How can I create the illusion of infinite ground in a running game?" (abstract, platform-independent),

"How to implement infinite ground in AndEngine?" (concrete, platform-specific), and

"Why does the player fall through my infinite terrain?" (very specific; should include a minimal example for testing).

As for your second example question, the main problem is simply that it's phrased as asking for the "best" way to do something, even though, underneath, it's really a "how to" question.
To see the difference, compare these two hypothetical cooking questions:

Bad question: "What's the best way to cook an egg?"

This will invite a countless list of subjective answers, with one answered preferring their eggs hard-boiled, while another one likes theirs fried sunny-side up.  (Cue lengthy comment debate on the relative merits of sunny-side up vs. over easy.)

Good question: "How do I cook an egg?  I tried putting it in the microwave, but it exploded!"

or:

Good question: "How do I cook an egg?  I know I can just boil it for ten minutes, but I never get a nice runny yolk that way."

These questions clearly specify what the asker wants, and how far they've got on their own (i.e. in development terms, which level of abstraction they're interested in / having problems with).  While the topic is still very broad, it's clear that the specific question can be adequately answered in a reasonable space — at a bare minimum, "immerse the eggs in boiling water for three minutes" is technically an adequate answer.
The one thing these good questions don't do is ask for the single "best" way to do something.  Somewhat paradoxically, by not doing so, they actually encourage comprehensive answers that describe several good solutions and compare their respective advantages — like, say:

"There are many ways to cook eggs, but, as you've noticed, microwaving is generally not one of them (although it can be done).  One of the simplest ways is to immerse the eggs in boiling water for a short time; depending on the immersion time, this can produce either a fully congealed ("hard-boiled") or a partially runny egg. [...] Eggs can also be fried on a hot pan.  Again, there are several ways to do this: [...] Other methods of preparing eggs include shirring, poaching, scrambling, etc. [...] Eggs can also be used as an ingredient in many dishes, such as..."

Addendum: Prompted by your comments, I tried to see if I could edit your question into something that I would personally find useful and answerable.  Here's what I ended up with.
However, while doing so, I ended up repeatedly running against the fundamental issue that your question doesn't seem to include "a practical, answerable question based on an actual problem that you face".  Specifically, based on the impression I got while editing your question, I strongly suspect that you asked it before even trying to just make even the simplest 3D model (say, a yellow sphere) in any modeling program (say, Blender) and importing it into any game engine (say, Unity).
At this point, my main advice to you regarding this question is:

If you have tried that, please describe what you did (briefly — no need to go into details) in your question, so that potential answerers have some idea of what you're familiar with and what needs to be explained.

If you haven't tried that, go do it now!  Then come back and, if you still feel that there must be a better way, clarify your question based on what you found easy and what you found difficult.

I totally agree with you on the first part. This could all be explained in the comments, and the user could post a follow up question which is surely something others are also interested in. Or one could post it like YOU DID there. Answering the question and hinting to potential problems. Hell this is what I see on stackoverflow all the time. Look at BalusC's post. Maybe he is one of the best posters out there but this is how it should be done imo. He is not afraid to share his knowledge because he seems to have infinite deep knowledge. No jealousy from his side.

And therefore I don't see a reason to close the thread about infinite levels. Maybe edit/format his question by a mod or himself but not locking it. I found the topic interesting too, reading the various ways how it could be done.

To your second part I completly disagree. Because I already have a way in mind shows that I did research but not sure if it's a correct way. And I'm asking it because I didn't find my answer elsewhere. Yes there may be different best workflows for everyone put what is wrong in telling your workflow and show the PROS and CONS about it. You can learn from other answers too and the community will upvote the best anyway. Again this is something wich happens on stackoverflow all the time. People post their coding solutions or hints and the easiest/best one is upvoted.

What is wrong with comprehensive answers? What is wrong with having content on your site? I really don't get it why there shouldn't be different opinions with their pros and cons. And about comprehensive answers: On Stackoverflow some hot questions are 1-liners with code asking how this code produces a specific outcome and other people wrote half site long in depth explainations. How is this bad.

Additionally I altered my question from best practice to: what other options are there. I bet such questions are more interesting for the most of the internet population than questions like "how do I get the second left pixel in uberhax0rdes1ng0r-tool to be half black?"

@Coretek: Comprehensive answers are good. We want comprehensive answers. Unfortunately, they're also exactly the kind of answers that you generally won't get if you ask for the "best" way to do something. So, you know, don't do that. Instead, the trick is to ask for any way to do what you want to do (and, preferably, include an example of a way that you tried and found less than optimal, so that answerers have some context for proposing alternatives). You'll find that, this way, people will still naturally suggest the solutions they like best, but they'll include other solutions too.

Excuse me, this is exactly what I did now in my thread? I asked if my way is feasible and what other ways are possible. On a top level, so the answers wouldn't be too long too.

And you've got one reopen vote since you edited it already. (IMO, you could still improve your question by shortening it and narrowing its focus -- currently, it's kind of hard to tell at a glance what you're actually asking. In particular, your "Q1" and "Q2" parts should really be separate questions. Oh, and fix your question title; "Basic Workflows for Game Development" says nothing about your actual question; "How to make a model 'game ready'", from your lead paragraph, would be a much better title.)

Ok I get it that I can improve it in detail but your suggestions seem to make mountains out of molehills.

I'm making molehills out of molehills. You want your question answered, right? If you do, it's a good idea to phrase it so that others who see it won't just go "too messy; didn't read". I can't claim to speak for everybody, but I'll typically look at a question for maybe three seconds before deciding either "this looks interesting, let me read on" or "nah, not interesting / can't make sense of this, I'll pass". Currently, your question still fails that test for me; it took me way more than three or even thirty seconds to even figure out what it's really asking about.

Thats absolutly fine and I don't have a problem with that. What I argue against is putting a question on hold and therefore restricting others from answering too, even if they want. I did have some thoughts of how to phrase my question - the question as you read it now was my first attempt, I put in the best practice afterwards (still before posting) because I thought this would lead to less possible ways but more ways how people are engaging it and therefor get different perspectives.

Gamedev.SE has a tough time being a good SE site.  It's true.  However, your ideas (they weren't very clear) for solving them don't address those problems.  In my opinion, your ideas for solving them represent lingering problems on SO.
When a person posts on SO "How do I do X in javascript", and they receive a slew of answers complete with 4-part jsfiddles, that's...dubious.  Yes, they got help, and yes, the multiple solutions can be helpful to people.  But it sets an unfortunate tone for the site.  People expect to be able to do no research on their own, simply post their problem, and receive a complete tutorial instantly.  That isn't really the spirit of the SO; it's something of an emergent behavior.
Maybe that's ok for javascript.  There's usually a quick solution that is based on utilizing some feature of the DOM or HTML5 or CSS, and the questioner simply didn't know what they didn't know.  They couldn't really google a term to research, and they didn't want to read the full spec, so they expressed it the best they could, as a raw how-to question.
But Game development questions (and frequently, a lot of SO questions as well) cannot be answered like that.  You can't post "how do I make an MMO" and get an answer.  There is no right answer.
There is no equivalent to jsfiddle for game development.  When people post those questions here, they expect someone to tell them the right answer so that they can avoid studying and building their knowledge the hard way.  That is unacceptable.
GameDev.SE can answer (some) game design questions.  It can sometimes list graphical techniques.  It can flesh out algorithm implementations.  It cannot manufacture tutorials, nor can it teach a person to develop games.

I understand your point but there is also no right answer to how to fix a specific javascript problem as there are many solutions for one problem also. If the answers are too broad ppl ask in the comments to specify. And also on the other side: if no one wants or has an answer for a question (which never happend in my sections of SO) then there is also not any harm done in adding a comment that the question is hard to answer and leaving the question open to submerge.

Another point is, that I find far less broad documentation on game design than I find broad information (like differences and so on) for different coding languages. So I would especially here appreciate the opportunity to ask the questions I have here (and googled before - generally speaking: if there are solutions in links, provide the links, simple as that, or mark threads as duplicates).

QUOTE: "There is no equivalent to jsfiddle for game development. When people post those questions here, they expect someone to tell them the right answer so that they can avoid studying and building their knowledge the hard way. That is unacceptable." And this is how I get the feeling. You don't want to help users here because you are afraid they get where you are in less time and devaluate YOU. Why not close this site at all? This is elitism. + it slows community building down - at least. The one that you help now, may be the one to provide an answer for you in the future.

The problem is not that we don't want to help them.  The problem is a lack of effort to help themselves.  If the question defines what they have tried, what research they have done, and a narrow scope of problem, then it is answerable.  If it's asking for a tutorial, it is not.  If it's a code dump with no explanation, that is also a lack of effort.  A good SE question should define the problem AND what attempts have already been made to solve it.  That's what's missing from a too-broad question.  And asking "best method" is similar; the poster should try it and see what happens.

One last thought: If you don't want to answer a question why not leave it open? Maybe other ppl want to help.

We don't leave them open because we don't want crappy questions on the site.  We DO want to build those search results, so that the greater internet can google things in the future.  But lowering our standards won't accomplish that.

Funny that I got "those search results" with one broad question leading to opinion based answers and still people thank me for this question. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14136731/junit-4-vs-testng-update-2013-2014 But I see where your comment is going, just like your original post. You don't seem to be that creative to let your work speak alone - you prefer to guard the basics to hinder other peoples creativity. Then again I bet you didn't learn all by reading docs for yourself but had a teacher or ppl to answer your questions. This is sort of greed: demand without contribution.

to your person: http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1545/do-we-care-about-the-ops-unclear-intent Why are you still on this stackexchange? You clearly seem not one person to help or care about others. Are you a mod here? That would truly be a shame. You should really carefully listen to Josh Petrie's answer.

The goal of the site is basically to help all users get from point A to point B.
point A is where a certain specific (in this case) game development issue they've been working hard on isn't solved. They then may read a book about it or search the web and perhaps still feel they could benefit from someones advice. That is because they are stuck regardless of how much effort they are putting into it, it's not happening.
point B is where they have all the tools and information to resolve it properly. This could happen because they searched and found the answer on the site or they asked a new question that may help others in the future.
Getting people from point A to point B is what makes this site great and what makes it a success in my opinion.
Users in point A describe why they're somewhat stuck and what have they tried so far:
Connecting Circular Rooms
There are two distinct problem (with the questions) that you're possibly ignoring:

Opinion based questions are fine when there is none-subjective meter to test them by. For instance questions that ask how to get something specific done (in code perhaps) are fine because you can run the answer in an interpreter (or compile it) and see if it works. Other questions where the opinions can be strongly based up by fact, work too. The facts are the meter where the compiler was the meter in the former. This is why we don't call them opinion based questions. On the other hand there are questions based where answers will nearly entirely be based on taste, personality and other factors, such as which computer should I program my games on? Which language is better for games? Which engine should I use? This are not helpful because the user is not in Point A, she is not stuck with a problem she can't resolve. She often did not even get actually started. The magical path to greatness is not something we oft can provide in a two paragraph answer to a person we haven't met in a way that any reader would gain something useful by reading it also. Therefore it does fit in a Q&A. It fits in a laid back discussion forum.
Questions about a specific game mechanic or how to make something are also fine as long as that something can be reasonably explained in an answer that fits into a screen (pictures don't count). If someone asks question that require an entire book to answer or a few years of rigorous learning and training regimen than we can't take it seriously. It needs to be either broken down to some smaller scope questions or thrown in the recycle been. Any answer attempting to treat the question seriously would be very shallow and actually not take the users from point A to point B. Mainly because the users are not truly in point A, the possibly haven't gotten started yet or they are not asking the right question.


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Shouldn't this question asking for books and learning resources be closed?
I recently came upon this question:
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/25860/is-there-a-pedagogical-game-engine
It appears to be a question where there is no single correct answer. It appears to be heavily related to the "how to get started" and "which tech to use" question sets. I just intuitively see it as a poll asking for resources such as many similar questions that have been closed previously.
If there is in fact something about it that makes it worthwhile for the site then I would like to learn from it so I could apply this to improve my questions.
Here are similar successful questions asking for resources that were closed:
Game development Blogs
Where can I find free sprites and images?
Basically I'm asking if the site rules where changed recently?

I agree it should be closed, and have done that. In the future, you can simply vote to close yourself, or flag the question if it requires moderator attention. There's no need to open a meta question for each main site question you think should be closed.
The site rules have been changing since its creation. Sometimes questions aren't closed because they slipped through the cracks, sometimes they're not closed because they weren't considered off topic when they were asked.

I agree, I was mainly surprised by it.


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The 2014 Spring GDSE GameJam!
The spring gamejam is going to take place here in meta yet again! The jam will take place 12:00 PM Friday the 4th of April to 11:59 AM Monday, the 7th of April UTC time.
We're going to keep the same rules as before:

Participants are allowed to write games for any platform.
All publicly available libraries and middleware are allowed.    All publicly available creation tools (e.g. Photoshop or 3DS Max) are
  allowed.
The entrant is allowed use any premade assets as long as    they're freely available on the web and the licenses allow them to be    used
  in an open source project (e.g. opengameart.org).
Assets created by the entrant during the game jam may also be used.
The forming of teams is not allowed.
Each entrant may ask questions on the main    gamedev.stackexchange site, as long as the questions are on-topic as    per normal site
  rules. Alternatively, the chatroom may also be used.
Each entrant must release their game as open source after attaching a    license of their choice.

The jam's theme will be: Let's make a game!
So, think of something nice, and when the jam starts, create it! We figured it would be nice to see what great ideas everyone has, and not bind them with a predefined theme.

The game jam is now over. You can continue to vote for your favorite entries!

What a close race! Every downvote counts ;)

I've secured shirts for each of the winners in this 3-way tie. Congrats to the three winners!

Taiketsu!
A versus shoot-em-up
HTML5 (Phaser 1.1)

Play online here: http://congusbongus.itch.io/taiketsu
Source available here: https://github.com/cxong/Taiketsu
Art from opengameart.org: http://opengameart.org/content/taiketsu-art
Sound by sfxr: http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html

I've had this idea to make a versus shmup for a while, and have always wondered how well it could work. There are very few games of this hybrid genre, and at its core it's fairly simple, so it was perfect for a game jam.
How did it turn out? I guess it's up to you to judge :) I feel that a hallmark of shmups is the finely tuned gameplay, blisteringly hard but not overwhelmingly so. This was impossible for a 2-day jam that relied on PCG :P Still, I'm quite satisfied considering the amount of effort taken. I hope you can enjoy this game for a few minutes.

Pretty cool. The auto fire makes sense because the player would just be mashing a button shooting 100% of the time because in this sort of game there probably isn't any negative consequences from firing as fast as you can all the time. Would love to see this concept expanded upon further one day. Great work.

Had much fun. Sometimes I get slow firing ship myself but also slow firing enemy as well. In that case it takes longer to finish the round. I get an impression this game fits more to quick instant gameplay style; quickly going through rounds and rounds. I think this can be worked more into amazing mobile game, more so since it requires no additional input than movement. o_o b!

Very nice. I like how as parts of your ship get destroyed, you are able to move faster. At the start, it does feel rather useless to move because the bullets move significantly faster than your ship and there's no opportunity to avoid damage. Lots of fun though, :)

Please ping me in chat to discuss your prize.

For Sparta!

Play Original Version
Play Latest Version  (edited post-jam)
Download for Android (same as latest version)
Source

Take on the role of a lanista in ancient Rome, assembling worthy soldiers that you can fight in the arena.
In the first round of the game, you bid to get your first pick of gladiator. If you drop out of the bidding, you lose half of your investment. If you win the bid, your entire bid is paid for the privilege of selecting the most worthy combatant first. Any money you do not spend in the first round carries over to the second round! So you don't have to spend everything.
In the second round of the game, there are 6 types of tournaments that will be held, each testing your gladiators in different ways. Be sure to check the heading for the competition type (eg: Polearms: Str + Int). Each player selects a combatant, and then the best combatant takes the largest prize, second best takes the second largest prize, etc.
Most money at the end wins!  (Including all money saved during the bidding)
Notes on Strategy
There are 30 slaves, and 30 prizes which are the same every game, but appear in a random order.
The soldiers' stats are not random, and you will see the same soldiers each game. Memorize (or look at the source) the best soldiers to recognize them when they appear. Note that there is no "best" solider, only soldiers that are most suited to a task.
The six tournaments are:

Hand to Hand: Str * Dex
Close Quarters Str * Int
Chariots Dex * Int
Ranged Str + Dex
Polearms Str + Int
Horseback Dex + Int

Make sure to have a well-rounded troop in order to win each category.
The 30 prizes are numbered 0, 0, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20.  (So two 0's, two of every number from 2 to 10, then one of every number from 11 to 20).
And the AI does not cheat!
Credits
Heavily influenced by the card game For Sale.
Images courtesy of Terrible Character Portraits
Libraries used: Bootstrap, AngularJS, jQuery

had fun playing. It feels good to be the winner and get all the cash. I wish I could keep the money earned and continue to gamble. Otherwise I feel like there is less point in not using all your money during picking phase; why not just use max bid to get the best warrior. o_ob

I lost badly :( you mentioned this game was based on a card game? Which one? Seems like it could be a fun party game. If you weren't pressed for time, it would have been interesting to use or even make a Roman name generator - a lost opportunity I think!

@Tofu_Craving_Redish_BlueDragon, You start with 50gp, and all of the money you do not spend on slaves in the first half carries over into the second half. Most money at the end of the game wins. So, you can get the best gladiator in each bidding round, but you may not make that money back in the tournaments.

@congusbongus, It is heavily influenced by the game For Sale. I have just added some notes on strategy to help people not only understand what's going to happen, but how to better prepare themselves to be in a winning position.

I've emailed you about your prize.

2048 CUBE

Play online here : http://kyunghwan.weebly.com/unity.html
Sound : freesound.org
Font : http://www.1001freefonts.com/
Source : https://github.com/kyung01/GDSE_GameJam

I wanted to make a puzzle game that's simple enough for me to finis in time but not too boring-interesting enough for players to spend couple mins playing. Also as it was my first Jam I was afraid of being "lost" in the middle. So I wanted to have a solid model in which I can draw from.
Hehehe. This is certainly not the most original idea,(for those who don't know 2048, here ) but I tried to give it a new spin. I hope it is different enough for you to enjoy.
ps : I set the sound volume very small;

The sound effects definitely help; I think the camera FOV is a little too high, as it means it's harder to see all the sides of the cube.

Love it! A twist on a trending addictive game.

+1 for the twist, did not think this would happen. My only concern is that the first time I played, it did not show the game over message, and the second, it did.

Please ping me in chat to discuss your prize.


text:
How should we handle questions that ask to do the impossible because of naivete (or lack of RTFM)
This is not a duplicate of Should "Did not do the research" questions be answered or penalised? . It doesn't address the situation where the question is absurd and cannot be answered simply because the request is unreasonable.
I'd like to clarify I am not talking about asking how to work around a limitation.
Sometimes I see questions that not only deserve a "RTFM" but also simply could not be answered because the request contradicts the information provided by the user.
For instance, I want to accomplish X with tool Y that states specifically it was not in any way designed to support the specified feature.
This does not fall under "too broad", "off-topic" and so forth. How are these types of questions supposed to be handled? Closed with "other" or answered with an explanation of why this isn't possible in the first place?

Your title appears to be cut off.

Custom close reasons can be used for these types of questions. Add a specific comment with the reason it's off topic. Alternatively, you can just leave a comment mentioning that such a thing is not possible, and often the asker deletes the question.

We don't close questions just because the answer is "you can't do that" or "no" or otherwise negative.
If a user, for example, wants to ask "how I can I implement real-time ray-tracing on a NES using home-brew development kits?", then "you can't do that" is a perfectly acceptable, correct answer.
If the question is close-worthy, however, we have custom off-topic close reasons for users with sufficient reputation. Users without sufficient reputation can still flag the question.

So an answer that explains why it can't be done is the correct treatment?

And possibly a downvote for lack of research?

I'd say no. Perhaps they came here because their research didn't find anything.

This is exactly how Stackoverflow gained it's reputation. If the question is pertinent, shows evidence of research, and is finite in it's scope, then surely it's valid. Funnily enough, Josh, I once read about a dev who attempted ray-tracing on a C64. Low and behold - http://beta.slashdot.org/story/186141 - Not every question has an answer on Google though. Ergo Stackexchange.

Agreed, there is no need to down vote. Ignorance does not mean you did not research.


text:
Bounty expiration time mismatch between page and message/email
The bounty that I posted on this question:
Handling XBox 360 Controller Connections in LibGDX after Game has Started
...does not expire for another ~50 minutes (at time of writing), according to the page.  But at approximately 60 minutes remaining, I received an email and inbox message saying that the 24 hour grace period had begun.  So, there seems to be an hour mismatch between the two.
I reloaded the page several times, but the count of remaining minutes stays.  I'm at (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) in windows7, btw.