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Suggestion: community-sponsored (commonly off-topic) questions-"best way", "what's first"
I was in the process of answering a question and had to convert it to a clump of poorly formatted comments when it got moderated. The specific question was a relatively typical off-topic one, essentially: "How should I 2D?" It got me thinking, though..
Rather than moderating 1,000 duplicate questions per month, allow the (meta/moderator) community to vote/decide on a very small handful of "off-topic" questions to give good, solid, "best way" answers to. The purpose of the questions and answers could still be aligned to the site's principles by giving them a minimal starting point and/or diverting their question AWAY from this site.
Questions like "What is the basic outline for a 2D game?"
This could be opened, a minimally-comprehensive, single, (meta/moderator/community) answer generated, and immediately closed with no further answers or comments; a "sticky" so-to-speak. Anyone searching for approximately that, would get some basic highlights of what to Google (and not StackExchange) next. The "community" answer for these few questions could just be external links to wiki or book titles in quotes. Duplicates that get posted anyway could be linked to the sticky which would, again, divert them away from here until they have better questions.
Just an idea...

http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1372/flood-the-site-with-softball-questions

@Byte56 Yes, "Canonical Questions". So, was there any consensus or action in the last year? The general vibe I got was "Yeah, do that"??

@Byte56, would be neat if moderators could "delete" the question from the general pool, while leaving it visible for only the asker (Closed++). When the asker visits their question, they are automatically redirected to the "Canonical", instead. Neat, indeed.

The other thread is for lowball questions that are on topic. Essentially generic versions of common questions, so we have something to point to when those common basic questions come up (without the typical mess of the non-generic versions confusing the asker). The stack exchange site is great for a lot of problems. But getting started or opinion based questions are not welcome here. Who decides what the one answer for these "best way" questions will be? I see them generating a lot of disagreement and discussion, the exact reason those questions are off topic in the first place.

@Byte56 I think the idea here is that the question be converted to a community wiki, and closed immediately after the first answer; and where the answer can be edited by the community to update links to external resources (to keep it current). Then the 'how to get started' question could be flagged as duplicate to one of these.

Q: "How do I 2D?"
Q: "What's the best 2D library?"
Q: "How do you XX in 2D?"
A:
"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. Those kinds of questions are outside the scope of this site.
This question cannot be reworded to fit the rules in the help center.
Please do some initial research:
    [Wiki link]
    [Link to Reimer's main tutorial page] (very specific step-by-step answer to "how to get started")
    [Link to RasterTek main tutorial page] (very specific answer(s) to "next" and "which technology")
    [Some book]
    [GPU Gems] (Post-Reimer "what to learn next")
[Read-only forever]
This, at least, directs them SOMEWHERE (that isn't here). Closing them typically leads to "Why?" comments.
Edit: Added more link examples. 1000's of questions could be avoided by handing out those 3 specific links right up-front. This would cull many derivative questions too by walking newbies through matrices, order of operations, coordinate-spaces, etc..

(You cannot "reword" the question to make it SE-appropriate, so moderating it as such just sends it to the top of the giant [Forever Closed and Unanswered] pile)

If someone can't be bothered to type in "game programming tutorial" into Google before asking someone, the damage is already done. Adding links to the close reason would require a bunch of maintenance and debate for what I see as little gain.

To some people, drawing their first triangle to the screen is like discovering the world isn't flat. I feel like you may have been doing this for so long, that you have lost the beginners' perspective. Someone that is already in over their head learning graphics, isn't going to come to a Q&A site and do more research to learn the personal preferences of the Q&A site. This is witnessed by the massive amount of existing off-topic questions that get posted despite the existence of 100+ other already-moderated, nearly-identical, questions. Have question, will ask.

Not answering their question (at all) makes them ask a new one. I've seen moderators, occasionally, put a blurb in comment as they close a question and the blurb was all the person needed to get going. Replacing the verbose "this is moderated" banners with a link gives them the same banner and explanation but also provides any relevant comment-blurbs automatically. "Deleting"(hiding) those posts would also "un-do" the damage.

I read your question thinking we'd give them some kind of basic overview tutorial. This answer you sound like you're proposing is just a larger close reason, which is disappointing. If people weren't reading all the other close reasons, why would this do anything? At least being helpful and focused on a basic overview would be useful to people.


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Synonymize [light] with [lighting]
lighting has 290 questions. light has 35 questions and no tag wiki or excerpt. It appears to cover the same things as lighting. Should they be synonymized?

In my opinion, these tags are pretty much identical, as one describes the act and the other the object. They cover the same concept and could easily be merged together.

Agreed. Merging now.... Done.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How is my question regarding FBX off-topic?
How do people benefit from narrowing the list of acceptable topics, why are "superusers" forcing topics on hold or closing them. What is this site all about, is it information warfare, downgrading topics that don't seem relevant to you. Whats not relevant to one person may be an extremely important topic to someone else, and people should strive to help each and not discourage one another from our goals.
My question was about an FBX problem and that's clearly related to game programming and better suited to this forum than any other and there seems to be very limited number of topics on this forum regarding it, can people vote to save my topic from being binned please..

Are you talking about this question?

yes that one, its been driving me crazy for weeks

In this case your question appeared to be what the community generally considers a "debug my code" question, and off-topic. The reason is that is provides only a vague problem description "it conflicts with FBX somehow," and some limited diagnostics output (indication that some DLL you are -- likely indirectly -- causing to load could not be found). This tends to mean we can only make educated guesses. Further, this type of question is generally only useful to the individual asker and consequently runs against the general principles of StackExchange (to provide a useful database of questions and their best-possible answers that is useful to everybody).
For those reasons, the community regards that kind of question as off-topic and you'd be better off asking it at an actual discussion forum, like GDNet.

thanks Pete, that answer is good enough for me, ill continuing seeking a solution myself

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


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Synonymize [tile] with [tiles]
tiles has 537 questions. The second tag, tile has 65 questions and additionally has no tag wiki or excerpt. It appears to cover the same things as tiles. Should they be synonymized?

I have done this.

@Vaillancourt thank you! Appreciated. Hope you are doing well.

I doubt there is an expert in a single tile that could use the tag tile to filter out questions he might want to answer.

I just noticed this situation today with a question that had tags for both. I would have proposed a synonym myself, but I lack the necessary topic rep to do so.

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


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Question appears in "Hot" thread but not the "Active" thread
Even after a refresh, I noted that my newest Meta question did not appear in the "Active" thread, but did appear in the "Hot" thread immediately after posting, even with only one view. Are these two threads swapped on the meta site? I haven't noticed this on the main site, but it could be happening there as well.

Edit:
The "Active" thread now seems to have updated after a few minutes of keeping an eye on it. What could have caused this?

Because that's how the technology works.

Blame caching.


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Synonymize [ui] with [gui]
gui has 199 questions and a little wiki info. ui has 20 questions and no tag wiki or excerpt. It appears to cover the same things. Should they be synonymized?

It is done
(More characters so I can post this answer.)


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Question about play-testers for prototyping off-topic?
I'm taking this game design course on edX (which, by the way, is excellent) and they emphasized the importance of prototyping, and getting new/fresh people to try your prototypes.
Is it valid to ask on GD.SE "where can I find prototype play-testers for my games?"
There's a similar question here about beta testers, which appears to be closed, then re-opened.
I thought about asking people directly in chat if they are interested, but it seems to be a small pool of users who recurringly visit (not, as required, a pool of fresh people all the time).

I think "where can I find playtesters" would qualify as being off-topic in the sense that it is a list-of question.
As I understand it, your linked example question was re-opened because it was changed to ask about a strategy rather than asking about a list of locations (I still don't think it's a great question, which is why I assume I voted to close it originally).

I figured as much. Thanks for your opinion.


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When is it appropriate to cross-post answers?
I reviewed the first post of a user (this answer). They asked a question on SO and posted an answer a day later (and marked it as the accepted answer).
Then today he answered a question here on GDSE with essentially the exact contents of his Stack Overflow answer (along with a link to it).
Would have it been better to only give a small explanation, with a link to the existing SO answer, or is copy/pasting the text of the answer on SO appropriate?
I thought the second option would be the most appropriate (because you don't want to oblige your readers to go somewhere else), but at the same time, duplicating content on Stack Exchange seems unnecessary.

I think it's fine to cross-post answers if they're still useful and relevant, and copying the full text should be encouraged.
Link-only answers are bad, even if they link to another Stack Exchange site. If the answer on Stack Overflow gets deleted, or someone edits it to be more relevant to the SO question, we'll lose an answer!
Stack Exchange user contributions are CC BY-SA 3.0-licensed, so someone could even re-post someone else's answers, with attribution. I think this is a good thing.

Cross-posting answers is bad. It's already bad enough that the question is a cross-post (as it generally must effectively be, if the same answer text is applicable); instead of actively harming the network by diluting the available information, improve it by writing a better answer to the question.
You can cross-post portions of an answer if they make sense to use as a starting point, but in general we want to elevate the level of discourse, particularly as it is related to game development, on our site and demonstrate what makes us useful and unique within the StackExchange ecosystem.

We're making contradictory-sounding initial points, but I think we're mostly preaching the same thing. If writing a good answer involves copying a bunch of stuff from another SE site, it's still a good answer, right?

Sure; if you're re-using (but building on) cited/quoted material from another answer. If you just copy-pasting an answer with zero (or minor) fixups, I don't think that's good.

I disagree. If somebody already has a perfect answer that fits both situations, I think they shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel (or their own answer).

It would be better to link to the original answer and explain in detail how it can be adapted to the question. However, since it's an answer and not a question, I would prefer to let the voters decide the quality of its composition. If another answer is more clear, but states the same facts, the overall better answer should win out democratically.


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Is asking questions not directly tied to game development allowed?
A few times in the Gamedev SE, I see questions that even though they seem to be related to game development (obvious variable names, Class names, etc..), but aren't directly relevant to any issue that concerns game development.
As in you would be better off asking it in StackOverflow, where you'll probably receive an explanation coming from a community that includes a ton of developers who will know the best and most efficient ways to reply to your question. Sometimes there are general physics/mathematics related questions that can also be answered more efficiently in the suiting forums.
So shouldn't it be better to redirect the people who ask their questions here to where they would receive better answers? It'll be much more helpful to them.

If you see something new (necroing old posts isn't terribly helpful) that you feel is better suited for another SE site flag it for moderator attention or bring it up in chat and see how others feel on it, etc.

Thanks! Will do from now on :)

Something like you describe is better-suited to http://programmers.stackexchange.com. StackOverflow is for specific problems with actual code. Programmers is where questions that deal with programming as a discipline go.

Questions that are not about game development aren't considered on-topic here. This is pretty well-established in the site rules; there's a dedicated close reason specifically for general programming questions that are a better fit for StackOverflow.
Being "about game development" means "would a game developer reasonably be expected to give a much better answer than any other sort of developer?" If the answer there is "no," it's generally not a question suitable for this site and should be asked elsewhere.

I totally agree with your answer, but the forum is full of them...


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When will we get the new user pages stackoverflow has?
A few weeks ago, stackoverflow got some nifty new user pages.
I was wondering when will we get them over here at GDSE.

I can't find a timeline, but there is a progress list: List of communities with base css updates completed
They started rolling out the update two weeks ago, and they're about half done, so I'd guess we'll get them within the next two weeks. But without a timeline, who knows.


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Purpose of 'location', 'position' and 'transform' tags?
These three tags represent a small number of questions (with position having the most at 74), and I'm not really sure what value they add.
The purpose of tags (as far as I am aware) is to organise questions and make it easier for experts of certain topics to find questions to answer. However, I'm not really sure what an expert on 'positions' would know that any other game developer wouldn't (as it's a pretty fundamental concept). The same goes for the other tags, these all seem to be redundant (also I'm not sure I see the difference between location and position).
Should these tags be removed?

I've just found a potential use of the location tag, a few questions under that tag are using it to refer to the real-world location of the player (i.e. geolocation). Even though this is very few questions to warrant a tag, I can't think of any other tags that would be a good substitute. Unless there's a suitable alternative, I'll leave these questions as-is.

For the uses of location that you found, geo-location would be a better tag.

location and position are stupid and should be removed.
I'm not so sure about transform though. I think there is a legitimate expectation that one could be an export on transformation, as that's basically linear algebra and it's a pretty reasonable "topic" for questions (for example, my favorite question from my computer graphics class: how do you transform a transformation?).
So while the first two should be re-tagged, I think transform should just be made a synonym of transformation.

Thanks, I suppose you are right about transform being useful - I wasn't particularly sure on that myself. I can set about re-tagging the first two, but I don't have enough rep to suggest a tag-synonym yet.

The transform to transformation merge is done. The others will need to be manually removed because there is no bulk tag editing feature.

It might have helped if the big swathe of edit suggestions actually linked this meta post (or even just mentioned it) instead of just saying "Tag cleanup" and then proposing a bunch of changes at odds with the intent of the tag as it was.

@Alex See MrCranky's comment above; he's right, normally edits that just remove a tag aren't considered substantive enough to approve. If you do this in the future, referring to the meta post in the edit comment will help prevent rejections.

@MrCranky Sorry my bad, I'll be sure to do that in future. Thanks for letting me know.


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Useless Augmented Tag
Two new tags have been recently created.
augmented-realityaugmented
Should augmented be removed or made a synonym of augmented-reality?

I for one believe the "augmented" tag should be dropped, to me it seems ambiguous.  I'd prefer augmented-reality unless there's some better descriptor than AR

+1 I created the augmented-reality tag (from the augmented tag), probably best to set it up as a synonym.

augmented is now a synonym for augmented-reality.


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Is it appropriate to Edit an answer just to improve the answer-er?
Regarding this little gem from a 19k user:

@Jon instead of improving your answer I decided to write my own. –  Philipp Apr 27 at 11:43

And this question: Editing the pixels of a rendered image
I left a comment stating that he should expand his answer.
I'm wondering if it's also appropriate to suggest an edit to his answer, like so:
[EXPAND: Does BlendState matter?]
I know that it does, and the answerer probably does to, but it was omitted in lieu of a one-liner and youtube tutorial link.
I don't want to be like Philipp; I want to help the user improve his own answer. When Philipp suggested that I expand on my answer, I didn't even know there was another way to do it; I needed Philipp's knowledge as much as the OP. If he had taken the time to list all 2 of the methods, I would have realized that I was out of my depth, asked him to post an answer that I could up-vote, and removed mine, if he agreed.

Philipp's original comment on your answer was perfectly reasonable. He was simply suggesting you provided a more theoretical explanation of your code. This seems to be more in line with what the OP wanted as well, since they did not specify a language they were probably looking for a high-level explanation.

Regarding this little gem from a 19k user:

There is nothing wrong with adding one's own answer to a question rather than improve an existing one and users are under no obligation to favor improvement over new posts, for a variety of reasons. There's nothing eyebrow-raising whatsoever in Philipp's decision.

I left a comment stating that he should expand his answer.

This is good (although it might be considered bad form by some to explicitly "bribe" a user with votes in exchange for improvement, as you did in your original comment).

I'm wondering if it's also appropriate to suggest an edit to his
  answer, like so:

No, it isn't. Edit an answer to improve it, not to embed commentary within it that it should be improved. That's what comments are for. Editing to improve answers should not fundamentally change or add significant content to (non-wiki) answers.
If you've got an edit in mind that adds a lot of content, it probably is better off as a new answer.

I know that it does, and the answerer probably does to, but it was
  omitted in lieu of a one-liner and youtube tutorial link.

One-liner tutorial links are the definition of "link only" answers and should be actively discouraged/voted-down/voted-for-deletion.


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Should we add the thing about off-site libraries to the help page?
One of the most-used close reasons here is

Questions about "how to get started," "what to learn next," or "which technology to use" are discussion-oriented

But this is not clearly stated on the Help page. The help page says not to ask subjective questions. I just had a comment exchange with someone who didn't read the Help, and posted this kind of question. I said to read the help. He came back and said his question wasn't subjective. So I said it was clearly stated in the help that "which technology to use" questions are off-topic.
Then I looked, and it isn't clearly stated. Maybe it should be.

The help page does seem to mention all those topics in the close reason. Or am I missing something?

Oh, I was looking at "What can I not ask here" and expected to see those there. Just strange organization then. :)

The information pertaining to what is and isn't on-topic is in the help/on-topic link. The main help page pointed to by the [help] quicklink and the close reason doesn't explicitly list them, but does contain a link to the "on topic" sub-page.
We can't edit the content of the main page, so all the information we want is already posted where we can put it. Beyond that, it's up to users to actually read the page and its links instead of skimming over it.


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Votes on "Hot Meta Posts" have low contrast
At the "Hot Meta Posts" area, you can see how many votes the popular question have.
Main site:

But at meta, the contrast is very low and the numbers are near invisible:

The designers have been given the bat signal; they'll fix it up tomorrow.

@JarrodDixon Any update on this fix?

@Alex fixed - again, sorry for the delay.

I changed both the question scores and section headers to have a much lighter font color; the fix will be pushed out in the next few hours.
Sorry for the delay on this.


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Allow very high-level questions about fundamental topics?
If a question is posed that essentially asks for the definition of some core piece of game development, such as this one, can we answer those with a high-level description of the topic?
In the question I linked, the user simply doesn't know what skeletal animation is.  They don't need to know every detail about it, but they would benefit from getting an introduction to the topic.  In comments, this was accomplished by linking to tags.  That works, but can the question be answered regardless?
At time of writing, that question is in the close vote queue under too-broad.  I would agree that trying to completely cover the topic would be unanswerable.  But could that user get a brief introduction beyond simply linking to the tag description?

We seem to allow terminology questions, generally. With some minor editing that question could be changed to "what is skeletal animation in the context of games?" or similar, and I think that would on-topic and answerable.

I keep peeking at the question without getting inspired about that edit.  While avoiding mutilating the question, anyway.


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Synonymize [xna] and [xna-4.0]
xna × 2796
xna-4.0 × 657
These tags mean the same. I think we can assume, that user is using the latest and last version of XNA (4.0). So when looking for xna tags, user expects to see 4.0 tags also.
There's third tag also xna3.1 with 6 questions. XNA 3.1 and 4.0 has differences, so maybe that should be left alone?
I just feel that users looking for certain tags, expect certain results. Looking for unity,xna, monogame,sdl..etc, should bring all versioned stuff, but looking for versioned tag, should return only questions tagged with that.
I am not saying that we should delete all versioned tags or anything, but these two most used xna tags are synonyms.
EDIT:
There is currently 318 questions that have tagged xna and xna-4.0.

I believe questions with 'versioned' tags should also be tagged with the main 'base' tag, i.e. a question with the [tag:xna-4.0] tag should also have [tag:xna] tag (meaning people who search for [tag:xna] would find all questions regardless of version).

@Alex did you know you can search with wildcards, like xna*? So no need to do what you are proposing.

I bet you can do all kind of searches, but that does not remove the fact, that we now have 2 tags, that users should tag when creating question for xna. 4 years since last update and announcement that no more is coming, so I don't see the difference between xna and xna-4.0.

@congusbongus Ah, I was not aware of that functionality. Thanks for letting me know. It does seem a bit redundant now with that in mind.

I find your comment on leaving 3.1 alone while removing 4.0 contradictory. Thinking in other contexts, considering XNA likely isn't getting a new release, so let's say Unity for example. Do we pretend that anything tagged just Unity is the latest and greatest version? What happens when a new release comes out? Do we go back and retag or do we leave it alone and create a new tag for those who are still on the old version who might post future questions? Just seems an odd way to handle it.
If there are only 6 questions tagged XNA 3.1 then I think we should just merge everything into XNA since the versioning hasn't seemed to help all that much.
To clarify...
The issue may actually just be with my understanding of synonyms and how they work on the site. For me it's import to be able to understand and distinguish that while XNA 4.0 may be the same as XNA, XNA is not always going to be the same as XNA 4.0

Microsoft has announced that XNA is not getting updates anymore, they are building new, something like XNA, but it's not the same. So in that light, xna and 4.0 are the same, but leaves 3.1 there, incase someone is still using it. But yeah, merging all is option too.

Right. I just don't want to set a weird precedent that makes no sense for other technologies because other technologies aren't dead.

Maybe edit the 6 3.1 questions to state they are version 3.1, and merge the tags.

So as I understand it your position in this answer is "merge everything so we only have one XNA tag?" (If that isn't the case I'd like to post an answer that says exactly that, so we can see where the consensus is).

Yes - I would merge the XNA versioned tags into the XNA tag is what I was trying to say here.

The guidelines for versioned tags are basically:

don't use them
if you use them, the context should be one where the subject matter of the question is specifically tied to the versioning in some fashion
the "latest" version should probably not have a version tag in most cases

In the case of XNA, we know the latest version is 4 and that there will be no further releases. However, we also know that 4 has some significant breaking changes, so there is merit to knowing version 4 is used in place of an earlier version (thus I think the last guideline is too weak relatively to apply here).
My vote, thus, would be to do nothing here. xna-4.0 should be for questions using XNA 4 or specifically concerning XNA 4's breaking changes. xna-3.1 should be used for earlier-version specific questions. xna should be used for questions where it doesn't matter (basically, everything else).
We should not do anything that removes xna as a tag in any form (because version tags are "evil"); as a moderator I'd probably veto any such action, because the xna tag itself is far more natural. I would not, however, be opposed to simply wiping out the versioning altogether and folding everything in to xna.

Good link find. I think these are good guidelines and my concern with doing nothing is that we might have a big mess on our hands that would need cleaning up, as in we would have a lot of improperly tagged xna-4.0 tags (which maybe isn't a problem?) and the tag should be reserved for questions such as this one http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/75896/renderstate-in-xna-4

If the "mess" really isn't a concern and we just take an effort to properly tag questions moving forward based on these guidelines I am perfectly ok with taking no action on these tags.


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Why was my question about finding an artist removed?
i had a question on a dev site removed for looking for another dev? (wanted to hire an artist) just curious why would that be on a site for dev's to congregate? I think this is a great site, the people are great. Why was the question removed?

The reason the site is great is we have well defined rules about what kind of content we allow here. Where to find artists or asking to hire artists is not on topic. Try here: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/12846/where-can-i-go-to-find-a-game-graphic-artist and learn more about the site at the [help].

ok, thank you Byte56. And not to be rude, i am new here. so where can i find this list of rules so i do not break them again.

The Help button up top: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help

The stackexchange network isn't your standard forum where people just post a topic and get replies. This is a question and answer network, where people post questions about problems and other people post answers. It's not an "anything gamedev goes" type of place. The goal is creating a searchable resource to provide solutions to problems that many game developers face.
The type of questions you can ask are pretty well defined in the help, specifically the What topics can I ask about here? page and What types of questions should I avoid asking? page.
You'll notice that job offers or where to find assets are not part of the questions that are on topic. These questions are either advertising or too broad.


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Modding: Rediscussed
According to this accepted answer, modding is on-topic on GameDev.SE. The posts didn't explore the topic very much. Should modding be covered by GameDev.SE? Why or why not?
The possible solution is to give modding communities their own sites or . Should prominent modding communities be given their own site and if not, what is a better alternative and why is it better?

Modding varies too much

I would argue no more than game development as a whole.  There are lots of engines and paradigms to do things within the scope of making games, as well as different disciplines that also fall under our existing umbrella.
Either way, I don't see how "too much variety" is a valid excuse.  There are lots of other StackExchange sites that cover lots of different topics.  Just look at the list of languages and frameworks on StackOverflow, or the number of games (of all sorts of genres) on Gaming.SE.

Game creators aren't mod developers

That's a presumptuous statement.  I personally know a couple of full time professional game developers who also have mod projects on the side.
If your point is that mod developers aren't knowledgeable enough to contribute to the site, you could just as easily point to the hundreds of closed, low-quality questions from so-called game creators who don't know anything either.

The Modding Culture is different from the GameDev culture

Your examples are just that some vernacular is different.  So what?

should modding be covered by GameDev.SE? If so, why?

The tools are often similar (and in some cases, better), the end results are often similar, and more importantly the people you would want to get answers from are often similar.

I would say that the crux of your argument could be similar to web development vs native development on a site like StackOverflow.  If you are not personally involved in it, just ignore some tags that you know won't have questions you care about, and move on.

(Respectively numbered) 1. While Unity and Libgdx share many things in common, many concepts can still be applied to both. The same cannot be said about moddable games. 2. Sorry for the presumptuous statement, but my point isn't that mod devs aren't as competent as game devs - rather, mod devs go through a very different process and experience to create their product. 3. "Vernacular" is important.

(Continued) 4. Relating to point 1, many tools are not similar. For game creation, there are many engines but they all have relatively low-level access and follow an entity-component system. Unity and Unreal is an obviously similar comparison but Unity and GameMaker also share many features and designs as well, even though they are made for games of different dimensions. SC2's map editor is worlds different from Portal's map editor, which is galaxies away from MineCraft's modding IDE.

@JPtheK9 your point about game creation engines follows a very programmer-centric view.  If I were a level designer, for example, the tools that the modding community uses and the development community uses could be very similar, if not identical.

Should prominent modding communities be given their own site and if
  not, what is a better alternative and why is it better?

This is not a discussion that is appropriate for the Game Development community; this community can discuss the topic of whether or not this site should be hosting modding-related questions or not. Area 51 is the appropriate venue to discuss whether or not modding, or game-specific modding, should have it's own site. That happens independently of Game Development.

Given the reasons I proposed, should modding be covered by GameDev.SE?
  If so, why?

The subject is already on-topic; the community doesn't need to re-iterate why it should be. Instead, you (or others who agree with your position) need to provide compelling reasons why it should no longer be on-topic and win a community consensus.
When talking about whether a specific existent subject should remain on-topic on a specific SE site or not, you generally need to address two issues:

where that topic might otherwise be on-topic, if anywhere and
why hosting that topic actively harms the site community or is otherwise detrimental to on-topic subject matter elsewhere on the site.

In the case of modding, it's not on-topic at gaming as of this writing, and that's probably the only other reasonably site that would cover it. So there's no basis for banning it here on the grounds of "it's covered elsewhere."
The crux of the issue, then, is: does it harm this site? I don't see any hard evidence as such in your post. Only opinion and conjecture. I'm therefore not particularly inclined to agree with you.
You say that the main reason you think modding should be off-topic is that the audience isn't there or isn't suitable to answer the questions. But of the 100 or so modding questions we have, approximately 80% have at least one answer. That doesn't seem like an unhealthy metric to me. Further, "audience size" isn't a good reason for banning a topic anyway; a small audience for a subject is rather an opportunity for the site to attract more users. We don't want the user base of the site to become stagnant or to get too much of an "in-crowd club" appearance, and supporting a diverse range of topics is therefore ideal, even if the practical audience for those topics is not currently large. We also expect and desire users with lots of different areas of expertise; not all users may have familiarity with all mod tools, but not all users have familiarity with all graphics or physics APIs either (and so on). There's absolutely nothing wrong with having pockets of non-intersecting expertise on the site. It is, in fact, desirable.
Your arguments regarding culture seem mainly to do with terminology, which is already an issue within the realm of game development and is easily handled by asking clarifying questions to provide specificity in the use of terms that may have different meanings in different contexts. The relatively slow growth of modding-related questions and users focused solely on answering those questions doesn't cause me any concern that there will be a sudden significant shift in jargon on the site that will create a Tower of Babel effect.
You are welcome (and encouraged) to start a game mods proposal on Area 51. But I don't see anything in your argument here that would make me think we should reconsider our stance on game modding questions on this site at this time.

I'm only familiar with modding SC2 and a select few other games and from that experience, here's why I think GameDev.SE should not cover modding:
Modding varies too much
Introducing modding to our community would mean introducing moddable games - too many to count. What do the SC2 Editor, MineCraft, and Portal Puzzle Creator have in common? Not much. The variety in high/low level access and concepts are too great to be covered by our site that also covers building games from scratch.
Game creators aren't mod developers
The biggest reason why I think modding shouldn't be on-topic on GameDev.SE is that the audience is not suited for answering questions about modding. While I might be familiar with the SC2 Editor, most game creators certainly are not. I don't know anything about MineCraft modding but I know Java, while MineCraft modders might not know anything about getting a standalone game off its feet.
The Modding Culture is different from the GameDev culture
More modders showing up would further exacerbate this issue by leaving those game creators clueless concerning the modding jargon and culture. Scripts become interchangeable with triggers. Missiles are no longer missiles but projectiles in general. Etc.
Solution
Giving modders their own site on StackExchange might work well but because of the aforementioned variety, it might also lead to several communities dumped in one - not very productive. I think that ultimately, the best thing that should be done should be done based on the benefit of the audience. If a game's modding community grows to superb heights, they should get their own site (i.e. MCMod.StackExchange.com).


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Should users be able to receive reputation by having accepted edits?
Some users are putting a lot of time and effort into making edits on this site. Would it be possible to reward these people that are fixing questions by awarding them with reputation?
The could be two ways of rewarding the user, a percentage of reputation that the question receives (for example 5% for a question that has 10 up-votes gives you 5 reputation), or a flat rate (for example 3 reputation)?
Maybe it would be good to have an up-vote choice in the edit review section where the reviewer can up-vote the edit to give the user reputation. By having the up-vote option, it would reward users for higher-quality edits compared to a two word edit.

There is already a reward for having accepted edits. For example, on a post you recently submitted an edit to, I approved your edit and made some additional edits. When I approved your edit, you received two reputation for successfully submitting an edit:

You can learn more about how to get reputation on this help page.
If you'd like to suggest an alternative to the two point reward already in place, that would be a network wide change and should be posted to the network wide meta.
However, I think some kind of percentage based system would be a bad idea. It would encourage people to make unnecessary edits to posts they think will be popular, or posts that are already popular.


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I should have the "Fanatic" badge... why do I not?
Either I should definitely have this badge, or I don't understand how the process works: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/badges/55/fanatic
I think that possibly the online indicator doesn't work sometimes. If you look at my profile, it says that I've been online 93 days and only 3 consecutive. But I'm pretty sure I've been online for 100+, all consecutive.
Anyway, I've set this page as my homepage for Firefox to open every time it starts up. And I am completely sure that every single day I open up a new Firefox window at least ten times. Even if I only spend a few seconds on this page before I click away, I'm still online here.
Is there anything that can be done about this or do I have to start all over again?

You're a fanatic in my book.

xD I just wish there was a way to get the badge. :P

I've had this happen to me before while trying for this badge both here and on Stack Overflow - just opening the page on startup doesn't seem to count as visiting the site - you actually need to navigate to another page before it will count your visit. Just viewing your profile or a random question once a day (or 10 if you'd prefer) seems to be enough.

"Days" are measured according to UTC, and consequently it's rather easy to "miss" a 24-hour window. Also, certain kinds of login-only activity don't count as accessing the site.
I can see the day you missed, so it's not a problem with the system, just a side-effect of how it works. Unfortunately you'll have to start over. :(

As a wild guess this number and the number you think are off because it's based on server time (UTC maybe?) not local time.
So you might have logged in on two separate days but it was really the same day accounting for the less than 100 count. As an example you visited at 10pm local time one day and 10am local time the next day. This could have been 3am and 3pm server time which would be the same day to the server.
If you visited more than 24 hours apart it's possible you also crossed this threshold and wound up missing a day as well due to the time zone differences. As an example you visited at 1pm local time one day and 3pm local time the next day. This might have been 11pm and 1am server time resulting in you completely missing a day from the servers perspective.

Well... my timezone is EST. So I don't think that would've been it. I suppose it's possible... but IDK...


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Remove buffers tag?
Looking at the buffers tag from what I can see there are only 5 questions: 4 are on the subject of OpenGL while the other is DirectX.
To me buffers is ambiguous and doesn't bring anything to a question. It can mean anything and only has a meaning when used in conjunction with something like opengl

I agree with this. I'll delete these tags.


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Split [2d-physics] into [2d] and [physics]
2d-physics?
!
2d physics!!
Noctrine proposed this in a 2010 comment—some approval, no action.
I think the combined tag adds no extra value. Any reasons to keep it?

++ the gif for making it easier to understand visually. http://i.stack.imgur.com/HdA5J.gif

I've replaced 2d-physics with physics everywhere. This may have caused the 2d aspect of the tag to get lost, but I consider that a minor issue for the old questions. Manually editing 408 questions isn't something I was keen on doing.

I think we should get rid of 2d-physics.
I don't like the idea of "combined tags" like this, in general, as it just sets precedents for combining two concepts that are really orthogonal as far as the purpose of tags goes. Should we then have opengl-physics for doing physics using GPGPU techniques via OpenGL? Should we have d3d-xinput for a game that uses XInput and D3D at the same time? These would be absurd, and so is 2d-physics.
There are good arguments to be had that 2D physics can afford some fundamental simplifications and thus has a lot of conceptual difference from 3D physics. But the point of tags is not to sum up the whole of a topic in 32 characters or less, it's to provide a classification mechanism useful for searching and filtering questions. "Combined tags" actively detract from that use-case by requiring more tag inputs to filtering and searching UI. Whether or not the nuances of the differences between 2D and 3D physics math and simulation should be apparent from the question text itself, not the tags.
Besides, we don't have 3d-physics.
(Note that by "combined tags" I don't mean "tags with a hyphen," I mean tags composed of two or more sub-tags which are themselves valid for the site. 2d and physics are both valid sub-tags, but rope-physics is acceptable because rope isn't a thing. I'm not entirely convinced dimensionality is a useful tag on it's own, but that's a different topic.)

I have a strange sense of deja vu that I've asked you this before, but do moderators have mass stealth tag-morphing superpowers? Writing an edit script that bumps all 400 questions to the front page would probably make me some enemies. :)

We can mass-rename or mass-merge. I can't mass-delete. My plan here is to simply merge 2d-physics to physics and ignore the 2D tag.


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Merge all the entity tags
The following tags:

entity (33 questions),
entity-system (316 questions),
entity-component (68 questions)

(total of 350 questions) are all mostly about the Entity Component System architecture.
Although entity-system is the most popular and has the best wiki summary, I suggest merging them into a new tag: entity-component-system.

I wonder if there's value in entity-system versus entity-component-system though (where the distinction is that the first one is about entity systems that don't involve the currently in-vogue component-based model)? Is there another tag we could use to express that? Does it not really matter? My concern is mainly because undoing that merge later is much harder, so I'd rather we make sure we want to do this; if anybody has thoughts please post an answer.

(I agree that entity and entity-component are silly.)

@Kromster Is your intention to 'revive' the debate?

@AlexandreVaillancourt My intention is to attract more attention to this question and make it done as proposed.

That said, there seems to be some argument for some tag change, here. If we come to any conclusion involving tag change, we should make the two related questions duplicates of this one, as one is an obvious duplicate, and the other is older but appears contradictory to this question.

@Gnemlock You're right, they're not duplicate, they're touching the same tags, but are not duplicate.

Related: Do we need a new 'entity-component-system' tag? and Are the entity-system and component-based tags describing the same thing?.

In reference to Josh Petrie's comment, I think entity is silly.
When referring to an entity in the context of an Entity-Component-System architecture, for instance, the role of the Entity is quite agreed upon.
So in the context of the tags entity-system and entity-component, we have a good idea of what the entity there will be used for.
But when we use entity by itself, what does it mean? What is its role?
IMHO, when it is used on its own, it's generally used in the context of a set of parameters and features that form a whole; I see it as a synonym of object, game object, agent, etc.
Used in that context, we already have the tag gameobject, which, IMHO, would be equivalent.
Thus I don't really see why we need to keep the tag entity.
I think the questions that have the tag entity should be revised one by one, and re-tagged entity-system, entity-component or gameobject, (or just removed) depending on the content of the question.

And I don't really see what would [tag:entity-component] be about.

I would assume [tag:entity-component] is about either the individual components making up the entity, or an entity based component system.

@Gnemlock Would it be different than something tagged [tag:component-based]?

Possibly, in a broad sense, yes. The two are not mutual. Thats the main reason I am hesitant to the idea of using synonyms; that said, it might have a better functional impact, if we clarify that the two are not generally synonyms (and we just bundle them together for the purpose of questions) in the usage guideline.

I agree with Alexandre Vaillancourt, in regards to the entity tag. However, I think we should discuss all tags within the scope; it seems redundant to make decisions on replacing a tag, when we are still discussing potential removal of the possible replacement tag.
I think a couple of the tags can be improved in order to assist usage, either through synonyms or usage clarification. I am going to bring up another tag, as I feel it works well as a potential synonym.

component-based: A previous question raised issues in regards to confusion with the correct usage, suggesting it as a synonym for entity-system. I feel that the answer applies to this context, and highlights a common relation:

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.
   - answered Apr 23 '12 at 14:14 by Tetrad♦

entity-system: I think we should keep this tag. However, we should amend the usage guidelines. The guideline should address the fact that entity systems are not always component based, and suggest additional use of the component-based tag, if the user is specifically asking in context of a component based entity system.
entity-component-system: I do not think we should implement this tag. Between entity-system and component-based, we have this covered. Furthermore, the two are not necessarily linked, so the single tag would not actually replace the two separate tags.
entity-component: I see this going one of two ways, but ultimately, I do not think we need this tag for the same reason we do not need the entity-component-system tag. Given that the context appears to be specific to component-based entity systems, the questions using this tag should use the entity-system and component-based tags. I think it might be easier to simply merge the tag into entity-system (specifically because it has more relevance to an entity system than a component-based system), but we should consider any potential to confuse users who note that we have the two as synonyms, and thus assume that they are synonyms by definition and not by definition of how people are using the tags, themselves.
entity: As per Alexandre Vaillancourt's answer, we should assess each question. Some questions appear more relevant to gameobject, in which case, they should be re-tagged. Ultimately, I feel this tag should be made a synonym of entity-system, once the prior cleanup is complete.

While we are on the subject; I can find a couple more tags that somewhat fall into the context of this discussion. However, for the purpose of quality control, my stance is that we should clean up the tags already discussed before involving others. That said, when this reaches a resolution I am happy with, I might bring the other tags to the attention of meta, to ensure we are directing users and questions in the right place.

Quoting Tetrad's answer on the similarity between entity-system and component-based (or entity-component??):

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.

And Josh Petrie's answer on merging re-tagging questions that have a both entity-system and entity-component or both entity-system and component-based into a new entity-component-system:

Not all entity systems are component-based, and not all component-based code is an entity system.

I don't think it would be wise to merge all of the three tags into a single entity-component-system.
What we need is a better description for each tag.
I would have suggested to introduce a new tag entity-component-system (I already did :P), but, again, quoting (myself):

Here is what an ECS is:

(Image source)
By this, I mean that every dev and every company has its own view of what an ECS is or should be.

The tag would either be too specific or too broad. So I don't think we should introduce a new tag entity-component-system either.

I think the image makes the point confusing. The metaphor from the image does not really apply well to humans, given reasonable understanding in a programming environment. That said, I agree with not introducing entity-component-system, albeit for different reason.


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Is it OK to ask about map encoding on GD?
I want to ask a question that is not exactly listed in the game development topics. To be more specific, I would like to ask a question about making map editors for other games and how to understand the encoding of the maps. Is this question OK to be asked here or does this question fit a different site, or perhaps reddit or some other forum?

Short answer:
You can ask, but it just barely seems on topic and might be closed.
Longer version:
If it's about some specific application, and you are asking how that particular application is encoding it's maps, here is not a good place to ask.
On the other hand, if you are designing some map editor for yourself, and wondering what should be considered in creating your own map file (which seems to be the case here), I would say it's in the gray area.
A better question might be something like describing your game, and asking what should be stored for that specific game.
The general rule of thumb in this site is:

A question should be specific about what the problem is, and
The problem should have some specific solution, which is not immediately obvious just by a mere google search.

Of course the question obviously should be about some Game-Development topic, that in your case it is.

Thanks. Would it be on topic to ask how Unity encodes maps and how should I make a map editor for a unity game?

I'm not sure about the first part (how unity encodes). But it seems the second part is.


text:
Looking at some new tags
There a few tags that I find questionable:
vertices
What purpose does this tag serve? I can't think of any question that this tag could be applied to. Even the only question that uses it has nothing explicitly to do with vertices.
ecs
Is also only used on one question. Looks like it should be made synonymous withentity-system
crashes
Seems quite ambiguous. If people have problems with software or a bug in their game that causes crashes would debugging not be more suitable?

I removed all three tags. I didn't create any synonyms.


text:
Visual bug with chat layout
The current layout for the chat room needs some fix to avoid partially hiding the enable desktop notification link.

What browser (etc) are you using? The display issue above only occurs for me when resizing the window vertically (when all the star column text can be partially obscured by the black bar). Once live resize stops, the text reflows fine.

Your question about a chat FAQ is better asked separately.

Ok about FAQ in new question. About my browser, it's on Chrome, Firefox and IExplorer. Maybe it's due to my screen resolution (1366x768), but it works well in all chat rooms I tried except gamedev.


text:
Wrong tag stats?
Is this a bug?
Steps:

Go to tags
In the filter box type "business". You see two tags (business x 43), and (business-model x 7)
Click on each. The page that opens for business shows 0 questions and says "You are on the Featured tab.
There are no questions with an active bounty at the moment." You get the same result with the other tag as well.

Are you on the "Unanswered" tab? If I switch to active, I get the number of questions matching the numbers you've listed.

@William'MindWorX'Mariager you are right, changing to active tab lists the questions. Yet, from UX perspective this is bad to default to an empty subset and show a message that has the tab's name wrong (the default tab is 'unanswered', which is referred to as 'Featured').

The site remembers your tab choice when you return to tag navigation in many cases, so if you previously had the 'unanswered' tab selected, it will return you there the next time you view a tag list. Similarly, if you had the 'active' tab selected, it would return you there.
Some things do seem to cause this to reset, but for me it never resets to unanswered.
Also, when I'm on the 'unanswered' tab I don't see the text labeling it 'Featured,' so that's interesting.

It is strange. I could not reproduce the effect when I tried again now (even in an incognito window). One thing I am sure of though, is that I copy/pasted the text verbatim from the screen to my question.


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The tag 'game' is still around
Not much of a question here.  More of a pleasant reminder that tags should actually say something about the question.  I saw this game on the front page today, and it has far too many instances on the site.
The word "game" in tags is redundant.
I'm going to try to clear out some of these.  Feel free to assist.

I got rid of the last few this morning. I also added the tag to the list of bad tags.


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How to save this question?
The following question How to develop and optimize the illusion of meaningful character development between the player and NPCs? [on hold] will be deleted in 24 hours.
I request some ideas on how I can shrink the scope of the question to make it on topic. I agree with DMGregory that the question is academic and their may not exist a simple recipe answer. I believe that this post will prove valuable for many developers down the road, because as Extra Credit has stated, this is a current issue that has high demand for advancement and implementation.

Take it to a discussion forum. Put a link in the comments of the question.

I don't think you can.
The closest reasonable question I think you could extract from that would be along the lines of "I have a corpus of recorded dialog, I want to reuse that dialog as much as possible when writing new dialog, how can I mark up and/or track the recorded dialog and my new dialog to help me achieve this automatically?"
But I'm not sure that's what you're after, and in any case isn't necessarily a game-development specific question. Although it's certainly an interesting thing to thing about.
But I think you should take your question to an actual discussion forum. I think it will have a better chance of getting you the dialog (hah) that you want.


text:
What should be done with a closed question in which the answers have become out-of-date?
This question regarding the 'best cross-platform 2d graphics engine' (Cross Platform 2D Graphics Engines) shows up as the first Google result when one searches for 'cross-platform 2d graphics framework'; however, the contents are now five years old and while some answers are still applicable a lot of it is out of date and hence misleading.  (For instance, Unity now directly supports 2d graphics.)
I think there are two possible courses of action to correct this:
Either:
1. Open the question and allow it to be updated.
2. Delete the question.
It's certainly an important question to answer, but if the StackExchange format is intended not to be used for this kind of question then I think we should delete the question.
There may be other options (somehow mark it more obviously as outdated, etc.) but I think something needs to be done.

Re-opening the question is not an option without a broader policy change, for what it's worth.

I'm not convinced we should do anything with the question.
All questions on the site age, and many will eventually age out of relevance. It isn't our job to constantly explore our history and "update" or otherwise maintain old questions. A user searching for information is expected to do some basic due diligence in his or her search, and that includes trying to determine if the information they've discovered might be old enough to be out of date.

Well, I think it speaks to the goal of the site. Is the goal to have 'correct' information where correct is determined by the discussion and votes of the community?  If so these types of question eliciting opinions are clearly troublesome, and have resulted in the locking of the question.  However, we now have a question that has obviously incorrect information in it and no recourse to provide answers that are correct.  Users need to do due-diligence but leaving information that is wrong is just wasting time.  I recognize the answer isn't clear cut and appreciate your engagement.

A site that maintains correct information over time is a wiki, and we very much strive to not be that. Instead we strive to be a question-and-answer site, hopefully one that where possible accumulates canonical questions that stand the test of time. But ensuring questions stand the test of time isn't high on the priority list, necessarily.

Ignoring that the question is marked as a 'community wiki', I understand that you mean to say the questions here are intended to be, in a way, fixed in time.  That is, they're the best/correct answers to questions in the limited time-frame in which they were asked.  It works well for some types of questions and not so well with others.  This is a question it doesn't work so well with and I think something needs to be done with it.  If it didn't rank so highly in a Google search on the topic I would be okay with just doing nothing.

No, more that we'd like Q&A to be such that it doesn't become outdated with time... but in practice that doesn't always happen and we don't want to set the precedent of having to expend the effort to go back and "maintain" all the old stuff. My stance is less about this question specifically and more about what I think our general policy should be for old stuff.

There is one other option: historical lock
This is where a moderator locks the question, so no edits or votes are possible. This is suitable for the example question because:

The question has, or had, value as shown by the votes and views
The question can't be made on-topic regardless of any additional votes or edits

These "best XYZ" questions are especially bad because it takes a lot of effort to vote up a new, better answer over an outdated but once popular answer. However, they do give insight to what things were like years ago, so shouldn't be deleted outright. A historical lock is a compromise, one that loudly signals that the content is no longer current.

This is probably the best compromise, imo.

I think this is a good way to keep the history intact while notifying people that it might be/is out of date.

I'm going to do this now.

The main issue I see with re-openning this question is: it has an accepted answer. So even if there are better answers added, chances are that the accepted answer will always be the first one, even if it gets less upvotes than others..
On the other hand, deleting the question means a reputation loss for everyone that has posted it. (Unless there is a way to have them keep their rep.)
A thing to consider: if this question was to be asked today, it would probably be put on hold as off-topic (no technology suggestion).

It's a community wiki question, its very possible that most of those votes resulted in no reputation.

@JoshPetrie Aah, you're right!


text:
Site design updates are live!
A majority of the changes are not be visible; these tweaks go along with recent updates that were made to Stack Overflow:

We have updated the site's CSS to a newly refactored LESS system, so that it's easier for us to fix SE network CSS bugs globally and launch new features in the future.
We have updated some of the graphics to SVG for retina support.
We have fixed a LOT of obscure bugs that arose when new features were not thoroughly tested across the entire network.
We are launching the shiny new user profile!

Visually it will "feel" the same as the old site with slight layout adjustments.
This update should retro-actively fix most of the old design bugs. If you see any new bugs, or old ones not yet fixed, please post an answer here to let us know!

I'm guessing it's too late but thought it might be worth a mention. Any chance something can be done about this at the same time? http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/can-we-get-a-hyperlink-style-for-chat-that-is-less-subtle

Thinking about it chat probably isn't affected by the new changes but I don't know for sure :)

@SpartanDonut chat isn't part of the update, but I will ping someone who might be able to make that adjustment.

Wooo yessss. ♥ It's so pretty I want to touch it.

On the subject of touching:
At 100% zoom Chromium on Linux, the Questions-button is almost touching the title:

At 75% zoom, it overlaps:

I did some dev-tools digging in case it's useful: The button's font-family is hitting sans-serif, which on my system (and probably some other Linuxes), defaults to the generously-spaced DejaVu Sans.
I often browse zoomed out and didn't notice this on the old design.


text:
Why is the mmorpg tag a synonym for mmo?
Just because most mmo's are rpg's it doesn't have to mean you can't have mmofps or mmorts.
When I select mmo I expect to see networking related questions and when I click on mmorpg I expect to see questions specific to this genre of games.
Actually we have a mmorts tag, so why not allow for a separate mmorpg tag?

I don't think mmorpg versus mmofps is a worthwhile categorization, personally. I'd say that mmorts should also be made a synonym of mmo.
These games fall into two broad categories: the MMO aspects thereof, and the "suffix" aspects thereof (RPG, FPS, RTS, cooking simulation, what have you). I believe application of the relevant tags mmo and rpg will appropriately organize the question for searches and for categorization into domain expertise, and there is no need for us to generate or maintain the full set of pairwise permutations.
It is true that there are subsets of the discipline of producing an MMORPG verus and MMOFPS that may be specific to that particular genre category, but I don't believe the breadth of that specific area is large enough to justify an entirely unique tag. Rather, the question itself should call out it's specific nature and that should be sufficient.
By creating tags specifically for each of these sub-genres, I also think we impair their visibility, as users who consider themselves domain experts in the "MMO" area or the "FPS" area may not see questions that they would otherwise be able to provide useful input on. It similarly further reduces the chance for an asker to miscategorize their question as an mmorts question (because that's what they think they are building) when the actual question is really more to do with RTS mechanics in general or large-scale network synchronization, et cetera.
Further, this fits our already established precedent of avoiding combination tags, as we chose to do with 2d-physics recently, for example.
Tags should be about aiding, searchability, they should not (and cannot reasonably) be able encoding every detail of a question. In this case I don't (yet) see a useful reason to bloat the tag spectrum with inclusion of these particular details.

Then is there a way to remove mmorpg and mmorts tags and suggest using the separate tags? Since combined tags aren't really useful...

Unfortunately we don't have great tools to "teach" users about proper tagging, beyond setting up synonyms; and we can't set up synonyms that map one tag to multiple. We can't even actually blacklist a tag (not that it is relevant to this discussion). :( It would be interesting to have, though. The best we could do is map mmofps and mmorts to mmo and hope the user notices and adds the appropriate fps or rts tag.


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Why do some questions have a blue tint on the iOS app?
On some questions, there is a blue tint in the background. What does it mean?

Some reasons I've eliminated due to inconsistency:

Reputation of asker
On Hold
Unanswered

I actually don't see the blue tint in your screenshot, but I'm guessing this is a "favorite tags" feature. Where the tags you've marked as your favorite have a different background color in the list of questions.

This is most likely the 'Favorite Tag' feature in action. Similar to the main site:

Tags you have marked as favorite will show up with a yellow background. In the case of the iOS app, the theme is slightly different, so they show up with a blue tint.


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"Recommend Deletion" button fails?
When I click the "Recommend Deletion" button, and only that button, in Chrome, I get the following:

and the buttons go grey

but I can still browse back to the page and the buttons re-enable:

But I still can't recommend deletion - only edit, ok, or skip.

I've only gotten that "Unable to load dialog" popup when my network connection is momentarily down. Next time it happens, maybe your browser's developer console has a more detailed error message.

It's been going on for as long as I can remember. I'll just have to wait for another low quality post and check.

Maybe "recommend" means "vote" (which you can't do yet) and not "flag" (which you can)?

That makes sense. I was under the impression that it was an automatic thing, and that button would flag it for further moderation. Maybe we could grey it out and/or make the text more specific?

I think I get the "normal" behaviour, i.e. I can recommend deletion and I get the normal pop-up, so it would not be what JoshPetrie is suggesting, but more what Anko is suggesting (the thing about checking the console log). I think if you were not allowed to do something, you would not get the option available.

Okay, not a bug. Checking the console I found that the response was being blocked by our security proxy, possibly because it included the word "popup." Although it is a little strange that it allows the other popups used on the site, I know how to work around that.


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"You may award your bounty in 23 hours"?
I wanted to reward a couple of answers I got, giving both of them a bounty.
So I "started a bounty", and picked the "reward an existing answer" option.
However, when I try to assign it, I get the "You may award your bounty in 23 hours" message.
I don't understand, I'm not requesting attention to this question, I'm trying to… you know, "reward an existing answer"? Why do I have to wait for that, it does make zero sense.

Follow-up.

This is true for the whole SE network and the issue has already been discussed several times. A couple instances:

Should the 24-hour timeout apply to bounties awarded for “exemplary answer”?
Should we still have to wait the 24 hours if the Bounty reason is 'Reward Existing Answer'?

The rationale behind the waiting period is to avoid users from easily transferring rep to one another. E.g.: Suppose you have a buddy in the network that you'd like to give some extra rep so that he/she can unlock some privileges. If there was no time limit, one could easily transfer substantial amounts of rep in minutes. With the time cap, at least this can't be done systematically.
To sum up, this is unlikely to ever be changed, since it is more of a safety mechanism.

The wait also brings even more attention to that amazing answer. (There's a big blue +100 tag next to it in the top questions list, and it goes in the featured tab.)
I've seen reward an existing answer-bounties cause so many upvotes to an otherwise underappreciated answer that the answerer netted more rep from votes than the bounty. That happened here if I remember correctly.


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Chat room color theme is too bright
The current version is way too bright.
It would be superb if we had color theme we can customize for the chat room.
If such feature is too much to ask, I at least desire to tone down the color a bit.

If you look at the "input-area" CSS, there is a missing image:
background: #000 url("//cdn.sstatic.net/gamedev/img/bg-notify.png") repeat scroll 0% 0%;

Which makes the background of the input area ridiculously bright.


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Can't I create a second bounty in the same question?
I wanted to reward a couple of answers I got, giving both of them a bounty.
After encountering a first problem, now there's a new one: the "start a new bounty" button is not there any more. Is this another "intentional" behaviour to keep the paranoid SE admins happy? Does it ever come back, or for that question it's just permanently disabled?

Yes, you'll be able to create another bounty. I believe the two day timer resets after your first bounty and future bounties will have a higher minimum value: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105275/abusing-bounties-for-unlimited-profit

@Byte56 could you convert it to an answer? BTW that sucks: if I can't award the same amount to both, it will be pointless.

Well, the first part is just a guess, and the second part: it's just the minimum value, so I believe the next minimum will be 100, which is what you want I think.

@Byte56 but the first minimum was already 100 "If you are placing a bounty on a question you answered, your minimum spend is 100" Fun thing is that that rule prevents using bounties to gather upvotes, but actually this happens only because they won't allow to select it immediately… lesson: don't do messy things, or they will mess even more, cascade-style.


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Game Design vs Game Development
I work as a Game Designer, where I design the game in the "paper", do all the data analytics that may need and then coordinate with the developer to create the game itself.
I came in this website for possible feedback on my questions and useful resources. However, I found it difficult since most (if not all) of the questions are related with programming.
Do you think that questions like user experience, data analytics, in-game economy etc are under the "umbrella" of Game Development or another SE proposal specifically for Game Design would be better?
I want feedback from here, so I can create the proposal if you agree with me.

Game design is on-topic as stated in the help pages: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic so you can totally ask them here, we need more non-programming questions! (I am a programmer myself =p). However a lot of game design questions might be subjective, but a lot of the topics you mentioned would have perfectly answerable questions!

@KevinvanderVelden One of the most popular questions in StackOverFlow is the collection of books and lists about C++ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list. I was thinking to ask a question and then use a community wiki answer to collect case studies about specific issues. Like In-game Economy analysis or skill levels implementation or weapon features and properties. Do you think that this kind of questions would be closed? It would be a good idea to bring more traffic from Google about Game Designing

We generally only use CW questions as a last resort, so probably a question like that would be closed for being too broad.

kevin you should post that as an answer, so that we can upvote it and he can accept it

There are tags for game-design, user-experience, analytics, and economy, and all of them contain open questions with positive scores. You could take a look to get an idea for which questions in those areas are well received.


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Why is this question on-hold for being "opinion based?"
I would like to discuss about this question and as a result for every other similar that may be asked in this SE.
Learning Curve of GameMaker and its limits
I copy paste here my comment after Mod Byte56 suggested.
The learning curve is a concept that measures how an average person can learn something or achieve a task based on the creator of the term Hermann Ebbinghaus. Focus on the word "average". This means that a learning curve is not an opinion-based concept. As for the limits, I think it's not the case here. Define if you can create a multiplayer game in GameMaker or not for example, is not an opinion-based answer as well. Please reconsider to open the question or point me another place to discuss it thoroughly. Thank you
Can you please share your thoughts?

I think the technical definition of "learning curve" is irrelevant to the issue at hand; regardless of what it means, this site isn't in the business of attempting to determine how quickly an individual or a hypothetical "average person" can learn something, or how difficult it would be for that person.
It's too soft a question, and consequently a poor fit for the site's format. It might not be "opinion-based" per se, but that is probably the closest applicable default close reason.
As for the aspect of the question that deals with the "limitations" of a game producted by GameMaker (or any other tool): that is simply too broad, as it is effectively an enumeration of the things a piece of software can or cannot do under particular circumstances (which are not clearly detailed in this particular case anyway).
No aspect of this question is appropriate for the StackExchange format; at least not as we adopt it on this particular StackExchange site. I think you would get far more useful responses if you ask this question on a more discussion-oriented forum, such as GDNet.

Then the appropriate close reason should be off-topic or too-broad...


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Are Blender questions on-topic here?
I am new to Game Development and I am studying game programming in India. I learn game designing via YouTube and other online sources. Where can I ask Blender related questions?

Historically, we took a lot of Blender questions related to modeling for games as well (as this site predates the Blender SE), but now that Blender SE exists, most questions involving Blender are better suited there.

If your looking for help on modelling in Blender then head over to Blender Stack Exchange:
http://blender.stackexchange.com
If you want to ask people on things like importing your blender models then feel free to post anywhere here. But if it's a question about being in the Blender editor it's self then ask them at Blender Stack Exchange.


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Should there be a migration path to Software Recommendations?
Given all the "which tech to use" questions this site seems to get, Software Recomendations looks like it might be a good place to migrate the "which tech" questions to (at least the "well defined" ones). At the least, it looks like a good location to redirect some of those users to.
This recent question looks like one that might be a good candidate for migration (specific tech being looked at, requirements for project being specified).
Software Recommendations question guidelines

I agree that directing them to that site is probably worthwhile.
I don't necessarily agree about a defined migration path being necessary; I'm not convinced that the majority of the questions we close with that particular close reason would be directly on-topic and appropriate on the Recommendations beta (that is, would be good questions for that site without edits). I'm also not convinced we'd have enough users actually voting for the migration of individual questions for it to see significant practical use; we still have an overall problem with achieving closure via non-binding votes as it is.
Note that we can migrate questions there now, you just need to flag them for moderator attention and make a note to that effect.


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Is this an appropriate place to ask design questions?
Is Game Development Stack Exchange the appropriate place to ask questions regarding game design in terms of mechanics?
Edit: sorry, I found a duplicate of this question.

Yes.


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What is the difference between assets and resources?
I just asked a question about resources management, but on the tagging part, I got stuck on a point: should I tag it assets or resources?
The tags description are the follwing:
Assets

Game resources separate from the software (code) and hardware
  (platform). The most common assets are graphics and audio.
Questions under the purview of this tag tend to focus on the
  management and handling of assets in the game. It can also cover other
  aspects of less common assets, such as reference files or external map
  data.

Resources

Term 'resource' represents a game content item: an audio file, video
  clip, sprite animation image, etc.

So how to choose which one to tag? Does resources focus more on precise files and assets more about global management?

You can always tag both though

@MosesAprico No, not always. The tag limit is 5, so if I already have 4 others, I cannot. And if I am not sure of what do they mean, one of both can be irrelevant.

I don't think there is a meaningful differences within the context of this site, I would think resources should be a synonym of assets.

I agree, they should be marked as such.

I've done this.

I would like to offer an addition answer to this question as it seems that these two words are often confused. An asset is really a sub-category of resource. And this is really contextual.
For example, a REST endpoint is often termed as a remote 'resource'. However, we don't deem it an asset, because the remote gateway is dynamic, and may return a plethora of data from an immense result-space. (these data may be referred to as assets however.)
An image, swf, sound, or a CSS file, or a JavaScript document which are generally stored statically on your web server or your content data network, to be loaded statically by the client is usually referred to as a specific type of resource: an "Asset" Resource.
Did you know, that you also have "Human Resources" working at your company. They hire "Human Resources", not "Human Assets" :).
This is just a take from a Distributed Applications perspective, where we definitely differentiate between the two.
Sometimes on contained projects which use a small variety of 'resources', these two words cannot be differentiated. Every asset is a resource, and every resource is an asset.
Thoughts?

IMO, "things" called "resource" until you build your game, and when you build, they become "assets". Because resource is something that you need to make another thing. But an asset is a thing that belongs to another thing. (so many "thing"s here)

That's a reasonable, but fairly subjective interpretation and I don't think it's a useful enough distinction for us to keep them separate on the site.


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Why answers' authors do not up-vote the questions they answer
I will admit: I am new here. Still, one thing that has intrigued me is that: why some one who bothers to give an answer to a given question does not up-vote that question?
On the one hand, one might think that a question is worth a reply, but is not necessarily super useful. On the other hand, well, if the question is worth a reply, shouldn't it be consider at least slightly useful?

I think you have pretty much answered this yourself: it's possible to know how to answer a question but at the same time to not think the question as written is well-thought-out or useful for posterity or anything like that.


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Merge [lag] and [latency]
The tags lag and latency seem to be about the same thing - network latency. Some of the questions even use the terms interchangeably, for example tagging using one but using the other in the question text. These tags should be synonyms for each other.
However, I'm not sure what the parent tag should be. Anecdotally, latency is used more by technical people, and lag by gamers, so for gamedev it's really a toss-up.

I see some questions that use both to talk about some non-network latency though, one being about input-latency and another about performance (e.g. why does it lag when I render 1 million poly's).
In my opinion I think latency should be about networking and lag be a synonym of it. Questions using lag/latency for stuff like input latency should be retagged (in the given case just input).


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How to handle trivial questions?
A user posted this question yesterday.
Anyone with a little experience and not colour blind will spot the issue right away.
It was so trivial that I started by giving the solution as a comment, but someone eventually suggested to post it as an answer.
Often, a question can be answered simply with a comment.
How should these trivial questions/answers be handled? If the question can be answered with 2-3 lines of text in the comments, should they be flagged? If the answer is too short, it will be flagged and potentially be deleted.

On StackOverflow, we have a close option "Just a typo". That would be applicable in this case. We don't have that here, since we're not specifially a programming board.
As such, it looks like answering it is what's the rules want us to do.

Trivial questions aren't off-topic or banned or any of that, simply by virtue of being trivial.
The question you linked in particular, though, probably should have just been closed as either off-topic (belongs on SO) or as a "debug my code" question.

An answer is an answer regardless of whether it fits in the comment box or if it seems trivial - if you can and are willing to answer it in a comment then you should do it as an answer.
Even short, simple questions are valid as long as they don't fall out of scope (in this case the only issue is it would have been put it in SO rather than GDSE and maybe be a debug style question instead of gaming related).

Remember that you are talking to a completely new user. They don't know where they should post, how they should post, and what to expect from the site.
Personally, I would provide an answer as an answer, and then inform the user in the comments about not posting such trivial (and possibly off-topic) questions on GameDev.
Keep in mind that they're not spammers - They're just new users, desperate for some help, and don't know what to do and expect. Instead of blindly closing their questions, we should instead help them on their way.

I agree with most of what you say! However, I think off-topic question should not be answered, so that the user don't get incentives to ask such questions again.