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Why did this "First Post" question appear in my to-be-reviewed queue after being one month old?
A few minutes ago, this question appeared in my to-be-reviewed queue, classified as a "First Post" - and thus waiting for a review.
Nothing wrong about the classification. After checking, one sees that it was indeed the first post by its author (from January 29nd). However, what I did not understand was why did it appear in my to-be-reviewed queue today.
I check my review queue pretty much every day and solve anything pendent so to be always with 0 posts in any of the review categories I have access to. So, that question has not been in my "First Posts" to-be-reviewed queue in the past month. It just showed up today (by the way, after the author already has 4 more questions already posted in this site).
Not that I am saying anything is wrong. I would just like to understand when something like that can happen, so I can better learn of the details of the functioning of this site.
Thanks!

The "First Posts" queue isn't just "first post a user made." There are other criteria which aren't very clearly documented (possibly because they're often tweaked to tune the results).
Some of those criteria have in the past included reputation or post score metrics, activity surrounding other posts (generally deletion) et cetera.
It's also worth noting that when you get a review, you "lock" it for a brief window of time until you action it or skip it. If you do neither, the review will time out and go back into the queue. The timeout isn't very long though, so that's unlikely to be what happened here given it's been weeks since the original post.


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How to handle questions that ask for tutorials specific to a subject?
I was reviewing the first post queue and had to review a question that approximately asked:

I've learned subject X in class, so in theory, I know how it should happen.
But how can I do it in language Z? Are there any tutorial out there?

language Z could be replaced by framework Z.
I never know if these should be flagged/closed as Too Broad or Off-Topic > How to get started, or even if they should be left alone?

Questions asking for tutorials are too broad; we don't provide lists of resources.
However, there's a pretty good chance that a question asking for tutorial for an appropriately-scoped concept could simply be edited to ask how to accomplish the task itself.

Then if the question about Subject X has already plenty of questions (and answers) which explain how to do it, it should just probably be closed as duplicate..?

If you could edit the question such that it wasn't a duplicate, that would be ideal. But if the only way to edit it is to make it a duplicate, that's an option as well. Or you could just not edit it and flag it for closure.

Ah, right, that should be considered as well!

There wasn't a post here in meta which showed sites for forums that they could ask that? Maybe it would be the case to put that somewhere easier to find. Kinda off-topic, I know

@DH., the Help Center already has that list at the bottom of this page.

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


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How should we close questions about developer intent?
I'm starting to get a little more into the community of game dev, and have come across this question about the way the developers implemented random base decay in the original space invaders. To me, this question appears off topic, and mildly counter-productive to the user.
Coming from Arqade, we tend to auto-close anything asking for developer intent. This reason is often disputed; Developer intent often requires a sense of speculation, given that we generally can not directly ask the developers, themselves. In some cases, the questions are met with actual reference to cases where the developers were asked identical questions. Given the answer is thus available, the question usually survives; but not without edit to remove the request for developer intent. I.E. Dev. intent in the question would be removed, but providing dev. intent in the answer is acceptable.
In terms of game developing, using the original code or method to replicate the intended behaviour may constitute breaking copyright. You can get away with cloning a game if you figure it out independently, but directly attempting to copy a games code or method can often lead to severe penalty.
My stance on the subject is that we should help the user figure it out, but not by telling them how the original did so, so they may simply copy it.
However; None of the close votes appear to adequately match any viable reason to close the question. I am use to having an "alt" reason, to allow me to enter my reasoning in a text box; but could not find the option available.
Am I wrong in that these questions are/should be off topic? If not, is there a valid reason I should choose / means to provide an alternate reason?
If such questions are off topic, how should I go about VTCing them?

In terms of "copying code = bad" arguments, I refer to the fact that Nintendo outsourced Donkey Kong, and were successfully sued for cloning the game for Donkey Kong 2. If my perception is wrong, please correct me. I have the unfortunate disposition of living in Australia, so am mostly self-taught

The short answer is that currently, yes, questions asking about how or why a developer of an existing game did something are off-topic. Industry trivia and history, other than terminology, is also off-topic at the moment.

@JoshPetrie, I apologise, I am actually asking how I should properly VTC these questions.

Earlier discussion about "developer intent" questions can be found at

Is "How was entire game X made?" off-topic? and
Why should 'How was the technique in X done' be considered off-topic?

for reference. The conclusions there shaped our current policy of not permitted questions asking about how or why a developer implemented a specific feature, made a specific design choice, or anything like that.
We don't currently have a customized close reason for this scenario. This is because we only get three customized reasons, and we're using all of them right now. For reference, those reasons are:

Programming questions that aren't specific to game development are off-topic here, but can be asked on Stack Overflow. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself "would a professional game developer give me a better/different/more specific answer to this question than other programmers?"
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. Visit our help center for more information.
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.

At the moment we get questions that fall into one of those categories far more often than we get questions about developer intent, so I don't personally see a good reason to abandon one in exchange for a custom reason regarding developer intent. I also don't think we get enough developer intent questions to petition SE for a fourth close reason.
(However, I do think it might be possible to rejigger the wording such that the first and third reasons could be combined, perhaps.)
Basically this is a long-winded way of saying you'll need to vote to close them as generically out of scope or in some cases "too broad," or use the "other" option that lets you leave a custom comment if you have access to it.

That said, it'd be better if before closing one tried to salvage the question. It's very often the case that a question about how a game implemented a feature can be edited into one about implementing a feature that looks or works like one in some specific game; in otherwise, rephrasing the question so the specific game is an example rather than the focus of the question.

It appears that such questions can be closed under "out of scope". I personally feel that such an obvious reason should have its own listing, as tailored close reasons provide help in the way of comments, that can often help the user to either correct their question or seek help through the appropriate chains.
That said, I understand that each SE has a limit of 5 custom close reasons, and the lack thereof is likely a result of the reason not being as important as the others that are available.
I would still query why we do not have a close reason that allows using a custom comment as part of the reason, but the fact that @Josh Petrie has closed the question in topic under the same reason suggests that I made the right choice.

Yup, we're already using the maximum number of custom close reasons unfortunately. And we don't generally get enough of these sorts of questions to justify rearranging the close reasons.

@JoshPetrie, is there an option to add a custom close reason, or should I just close, and attempt to cater to the user via direct comment? I personally find a catered comment to be helpful, as we might be able to derive a more usable question, or otherwise point a potentially good user to a more helpful source for their objectives.

@Timelord64 If you vote to close as off-topic, the bottom reason you can select should read "Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)" which seems to cover the "close reason that allows using a custom comment" case that you describe. (Or am I only seeing this because it's gated to a particular rep number?)

If you click "Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)" then the comment that you post - would be posted as the close reason. This however, may only count when you actually have the ability to vote the question closed. With sub 3k rep - you can only flag a question to be closed.

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


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A Close Vote is not a Super Downvote
I've been noticing a trend of increasing participation on the process of voting to close questions. This is great, as for a while we've had a bit of an issue with lack of participation leading to far too many blatantly off-topic questions (and far too many unilateral closures).
However, with this positive trend, I've started to notice a corresponding negative one: the apparent use of a close vote as a kind of "super downvote." By "super downvote" I mean using closure votes to indicate that a question is "dumb," "bad," "stupid," or similar.
That's not what close votes are for. To borrow from @LessPop_MoreFizz's similar post from Gaming, there are five reasons you should vote to close a question.

If it's a duplicate of another question.
If it's too broad. Questions are expected to be reasonably scoped. Asking how to make an entire game, for pro/con lists, feature comparisons, large itemized lists, links to resources (including art, sound or tutorials)... all of that falls under "too broad." If you think you know the answer to a question, but think it would take you too long to reasonably write it out, that question might be too broad.
If it's off-topic and outside of the scope defined in the Help Center or by our meta policies. Note that that does not prohibit "stupid" or trivial questions. Please make an effort to read and understand the meta policies as defined by their post content, not just the topic titles!
If it is not clear what the question is. That is, if the question is vague or ambiguous, or if there is no question at all (as opposed to merely poorly written).
If it is primarily opinion-based. This is meant for questions that will incite arguments, polls or extended discussion. This is not the same as merely not being useful or interesting. "Opinion-based" is specifically defined in this context as likely to solicit argument. If the answers to the question are capable of being supported by objective facts and evidence, and aren't subjective feelings, it is probably not opinion-based.

If question doesn't fit those five criteria in some way, don't vote to close it. You have a regular downvote you can apply if you want, and that's a better alternative.
I bring this up not because we currently have an epidemic of falsely-closed questions, but because we have an increase in active close-voters and some of the questions I'm seeing in the queue (more than I've seen in the past few months) don't really belong there. I'd like to head this problem off before it turns into something serious, thus this PSA.
For the most part, it's the "off-topic" closure reason that seems to be misapplied most often, and specifically the "questions about how to get started" close reason. By way of clarification, a question fits the mold of a "how to get started" question when the asker is seeking to bootstrap an education. When the asker is soliciting advice on books to use, courses to take, languages to pick, what to study, how to study, didactical processes or progressions... all of those are "how to get started / what technology to use" questions and are appropriate to close.
A question is not, per se, a "how to get started" question if

it includes the words "how do I get started," "where to begin" or similar
it is a very simple problem
it has more than one reasonable, well-scoped answers
it is asked by an inexperienced user
it is a difficult problem

Remember that if you can vote to close, you are also capable of editing questions, and you should probably prefer making those edits to closure. It's fairly easy to turn many off-topic questions into on-topic ones by replacing particular phrases like "best way," transforming queries about how specific games did something to ones about implementing some akin to what a specific game did, and boldly cutting suggested answers from the question text itself to avoid turning the question into comparison and pro/con lists.
If you don't have the time or desire at the moment to make an edit, that's fine. But don't use a close vote as a more powerful or impactful downvote just because you don't have the time or because you don't like the question in its current form.
That's what the regular downvote button is for.

I'm a bit confused, I would feel that question like this are basically asking for tutorials... (It was the case when I voted on it.)

@AlexandreVaillancourt The question was asking for tutorials originally. But just like writing the words "how do I get started" doesn't immediately qualify the question as off-topic, writing the word "tutorial" doesn't either. In this case, trivially editing out the tutorial request turns the question into "how can I draw a square with OpenGL," which seems perfectly fine.

I'll keep that in mind!

Bad-closing happens in many SE sites lately. This site itself is in particular poorly scoped IMHO, and people just does not know how to distinguish a bad-subjective question from a good-subjective, conceptually objective (art related), or technically objective (technology related) when no code is involved but just a paradigmatic advice. Making a paralell with SO, SO has no place for paradigmatic or arch advice questions (programmers is for that), but this site has no an analogous counterpart, and almost no people capable on distinguishing such questions from bad-subjective ones.

The hardest(?) issue I have with the reasons to vote to close is the "too broad" one.
Say this one, that you linked, would appear to me as too broad.
However, I think I've been mistaking the "too broad" reason for 'there are many ways to accomplish this, not a single "perfect one"', i.e. the broadness would apply to the answers.
These modding skills are hard to master :)

I think that's a common mistake as well; there's more than one way that question could be answered, but that doesn't make it too broad. If we only allowed questions that had one valid answer we wouldn't bother showing more than one answer. "Too Broad" is for questions that are even broader than that. "How do I make terrain," probably might qualify as too broad, but that question seems reasonable to me.

I would also agree with the appropriate broadness of that question. The question itself has many possible answers but the question itself is quite specific. Now...if only I had the necessary knowledge to supply a different answer...


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Would my question about the mechanics of an MMO's lifespan be on topic?
I was thinking about old MMOs such as RuneScape and WoW, and I'm wondering if studies have been done or specialists have an understanding about the life span of an MMO. Can large scale massively played, well managed online games have an indefinite life span, or are all titles doomed to boom and bust?
That the gist of my question, and Im wondering if it would be on topic.

While interesting, it sounds to me like it would either be asking for a list of research papers (off topic) or for a discussion often he topic (too broad and maybe opinion-oriented). It's also hard to see what it has to do with a game you are developing, but it's hard to say for sure without the actual text of the question.
My gut feeling, though, is that you'd want to ask it elsewhere, maybe on GDNet.

Lifespan is a very central question in MMO development, and indeed central to any game model where there is expected to be more than a single release per platform - FarmVille-style casual social games, for instance.
If it were considered off topic, this SE would need to be renamed.
However, you aren't specifically asking for factors in calculating lifespan or anything, but rather just whether indefinite lifespans are possible for "large-scale" MMOs. A discussion of what constitutes success in MMO terms is a complex topic in and of itself, but there are a reasonable number of MMOs which have been continuously running for years, and at least one (Furcadia) which has been running for 20 years this year. Ultima Online is 19, though I'm not sure it's been running continuously.
As, until recently, the lead programmer of Furcadia, I'd be very interested in discussing some of the technical design decisions that were made to handle two decades of longevity (how to weather the thin times), which is in a way the exact opposite concern to the scalability issues that everyone normally worries about for MMOs.
Bartle's "Building Worlds" for example, stresses scalability very heavily, but carries the tacit assumption that if people start leaving, and the elder game becomes stale, then the game must die, and that assumption seems reasonably entrenched in the MMO design community.
I'm just a newbie to this community, but to me, this feels like an on-topic, critically important, and interesting question. In fact, it's exactly the kind of question I'd hope to see being covered in this community.

On the subject of the MMO you were developing, I wonder: Isn't the scalability solution rather simple on the server side? Utilize cloud servers that scale for you automatically matching server cost (expenses) to player volume (income)? Obviously "The Cloud" marketing term wasn't around back then but I imagine it was just as possible to do then as it is now. And then I imagine it was more difficult faculty side because a Cloud HR department would be more difficult, firing and hiring according to player volume.

I imagine you'd have needed a strong dev team for large expansion to maintain player interests, so keeping an indefinitely small dev team seems like it wouldnt be viable if you're going to expand the game fast enough to generate new and returning player interest for a 20 year span. And also I'm curious about advertisement, I notice many big MMOs who probably have a big enough budget for advertising, dont advertise internationally at all, and it seems the advertisement would be really important for longevity. Reminding people the game is still alive and kicking and all..

@Viziionary If this question is deemed off-topic, then all that would be something you could never read or write about here :)


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Beta Testing Request?
Can we request or post a request for beta testers sign up in here? New to this section, used stack Exchange for work work but now using it for game development. Little new to these rules

You can probably do that on gamedev.net

No, you can't ask for beta testers here.
Check out the help to find out what kind of things you can ask about here, and what you can't ask about. Further, questions about the site should go here in meta, questions about game development go on the main site.


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Altering question to hide details after answer
Look at this: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/posts/118088/revisions
I don't think this type of behaviour should be allowed in this site. He asked the question, received the answer, and hided everything that answers were bound to. So what about future visitors? How can they understand the answers without understanding the question?

Modifying the scope of a question or changing it so much that the provided (and maybe accepted) answer(s) no longer make sense is not allowed. The edit should be rolled back (click on the edited [date] link to see the rollback option).
The question poster is now suspended. He is most likely related to this issue and this issue.

This is correct; this behavior is considered vandalism of content and should be reverted; repeated instances of this behavior should be communicated via moderator flags.


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A bit of kindness vs. Ripping into newbs' attempts at answers
I don't have much experience with meta on this site, though I do remember this question. Per the accepted answer there, I agree that constantly coddling those who post new questions of poor quality, repeatedly, do not deserve ongoing attention and must have their questions closed.
However...
First, I'd like to say a couple of things. I've gone through some life changes since I first got on this site 5 years ago. I've realised the real value of kindness, and I remember a certain senior player on the site who made life hell for me when I started out here (who is happily no longer around). I also remember a phase where I made life hell for some folks; I was dealing with my own issues then.
I appreciate that this is a gaming-related site and gaming has a whole set of stigmas around it: competitiveness, rampant bravado, intellectual duelling, etc. etc. I'm not boxing this site as being only those things, but they sometimes come through. Some apply to programming more broadly.
Do we have to criticise new users into hiding, and downvote their humble attempts at answers over the most trivial things, putting them on -1 before they can even think, or for things that are just unreasonable? We all know how the -1 dynamic works; once you hit -1, chances of getting any upvotes are pretty much annulled. That should be saved for worst cases.
I don't like this kind of thing when I see high-ranked members doing it, members with a vested interest in this site. I'm in my late thirties now, and I try to accept that I'm not one of the younger folk anymore, and I'm not new to my field, either. I have knowledge to impart, and with that seniority comes a duty to be kind to those less knowledgable and reputable... and often younger.
One must appreciate that tearing up and throwing out the window what people have put time and effort into crafting - their answers - is a slap in the face and gives you and the rest of us high-ranked users, a bad name... Why? Because that's the nature of privilege. I have had hateful comments directed at me before on this site due to my perceived privilege, undeserved. We are grouped that way in the newcomers mind... as top-rankers. In spite of the fact that the vast majority of the top members on this site are peaceful and at ease in their position - just as they should be.
Let's not be stackoverflow. We're a smaller community with far greater control over how we treat newcomers. We set the tone. It's one thing when we old hands duel amongst one another... quite another to pick on a greenhorn. Just please, think twice before dropping someone to -1.

What specifically is prompting you to make this post?

Josh, use your imagination. If I'd wanted to say, I would have. I am instead making this into a general appeal.

I'm confused though, when you say, "I don't like this kind of thing when I see high-ranked members doing it," what are you referring to? Downvotes? You can't know who is downvoting what, you're only surmising, so it would be nice to know what that is based on. When you say "We all know how the -1 dynamic works; once you hit -1..." what evidence do you have for that? When you said " I have had hateful comments directed at me before" you imply that this is related to hateful comments, so where are they?

What I'm trying get at is not that you're wrong or that you're making up a problem that doesn't exist, but that right now this reads a little bit like a rant without much in the way of concrete suggestions for action or improvement... or really identification of a problem other than accusation that people are being mean to new users without justification.

Not at all, in some cases it is very clear who made the downvote. We can argue that, but it is pointless. You can say with an 80% certainty from time to time, and that also involves watching the habits of individual users who appear and make comments etc. at certain places. You and I know that when we see it... and I believe that even you as mod can't see the actual votes.
As for the hateful comments, those were removed a long time ago.

Josh, yes, I can see that. I do feel slightly that way right now. But the truth is a little bit of kindness goes a long way and I think certain folks could use a reminder of that fact. I don't want to get into specifics further than that.

Well, it sounds like you're specifically talking about votes on answers by new users? So can you link the answers or the questions where you see those votes? You're not outing anybody by doing so, since whatever information you'd be revealing is already out there to anybody who wants to trawl the list of new users for all posted answers and examine the votes, which anybody can do (but is just really tedious).

Fully wrong answers deserve a downvote outright as the downvote can be retracted when they edit their answer. I'll therefore assume you mean we should be nice about "slightly wrong" answers. Well, only skilled users are capable of discerning what is "slightly wrong" about it, a newbie looking to learn (aka every end-user of the information) will not be able to discern though and will instead become misinformed; propagating myths and ignorance. The same argument applies to "mostly wrong" answers, leaving only "correct" answers which clearly deserve an upvote. What class of answers did I miss?

@MickLH. Really the question is, "In what circumstances is it necessary to make an answer sub-zero?" Very few, IMO... Many of the best Q&A sessions I've seen on SO/SE didn't focus on tearing down poor answers, but rather upvoting the good ones. We're getting into SE fundamentals here which is fundamentally(!) moot. But it is about how we choose to use the system, clearly.

@ArcaneEngineer `"In what circumstances is it necessary to make an answer sub-zero?" - Simple, when an answer is objectively incorrect, and just happens to have zero score.

@MickLH Please explain to me how that is necessary. Here, I'll answer for you: It isn't.

In what circumstances is it necessary to vote?

@AlexandreVaillancourt Now we're getting into the realms of the silly. Clearly, it isn't the same thing. As noted, we can see plenty of examples of good Q&A elsewhere on SE that didn't resort to downvoting 0-score answers.

Generally speaking, if I find an answer that is of poor quality, I do check to see how new a person is. If they are low reputation, I typically give them a few pointers. If the answer is salvageable, then I'll see what I can do to fix it, or make suggestions on how to do so. If not, then I'll recommend it for deletion, after a comment.
If it is evident that the user is simply trolling, then I downvote/flag without hesitation.

Reflects my views exactly.

I agree that being helpful and nurturing towards new or relatively inexperienced (in terms of activity on the site) users is important. Further, it's always important to be nice and civil to one's fellow users, regardless of their experience with the site. And certainly I think that there's always room to do this better, for all of us.
I don't completely agree with the idea that voting down a question is mean or otherwise inappropriate in and of itself. StackExchange tries to encourage or enforce the idea that you vote on the content not the person. True, that content is tied to a person and the effect of voting on that content is reflected in a number on that person's profile. Ultimately, however, I think the more important goal for the site is the curation of good content, and that that goal takes priority -- even if by just a hair -- over concerns about the psychological impact a negative score or minor dip in one's reputation will have on a user.
That is not to say, however, that entirely disregarding the person on the other end of the post is acceptable. Good content doesn't happen without good users, and I think it's true that we could all spend a little more time to take a look at the history of a user we're about to down vote, and if that user seems new or inexperienced, maybe think a little harder about leaving an explanatory comment as well to help the user learn. Or at least help them feel that there are people on the other end of that score widget and not droves of mindless internet hate machines.
There's nothing we can do to police voting, by design. Your votes are yours and barring flagrant violations like sock-puppet or serial voting (which we do have tools to police), you can do with them what you will. But please, do vote conscientiously. Remember that we are a community of people with a particular common interest, and while we want to build something that is itself greater than that community, we can't do that without welcoming new people. And showing them the ropes.

Unfortunately, I think this will fall on deaf ears.
Those who care don't hit new users head with a hammer, and those who should care, those your post targets, probably don't read meta, or don't think the message is for them.

Additionally, what does imply refraining from downvoting a question from 0 to -1?

From a poster point of view it is "My answer is neither useful, nor not useful.", i.e. "My answer is OK; I'm not too bad!" (while it's wrong).
From a voter point of view "Ok, well I'll wait for someone not smart, or someone cuddly, gives them an upvote (just to be kind?) so I can then downvote it to bring it back to zero." This strips the users from their own rights, i.e. using the site the way it was designed. Downvoting is not free, it has a cost, and in my humble opinion, never done lightly.

This would then raise the next question: "Could we not downvote new users from square one to square zero, in case someone upvoted the question?".
Why should there be a threshold where one would refrain from voting, and how is it based on 0?

I know how it could feel getting -1 (or below), but to be honest, stack exchange sites are based on content. If someone posts poor, bad or inaccurate content, a downvote should go to the post (not to the user). The user then has ways to fix it: he/she can delete the poor post and re-write one better, or try to improve it.

In conclusion: I take your post as "Let's be more kind and more friendly with the users." Yes, I agree. Not using the downvote button is not the solution. The downvote should be used, as well with comments. If one downvotes, it would be a good practice to 1) leave a comment and 2) come back later and remove the downvote (and maybe upvote) if the answer as been improved.

Mm. It really does depend on just how bad the answer is, in my opinion. I still say err on the side of avoiding that unless you're dead sure it's a horrible answer.


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How should we handle questions about performing a task with a specific tool?
What should we do with questions that are tagged with, or otherwise asking about performing some task in  when the problem in question is not actually specific to tool X or is easily generalizable to tools other than tool X?
Specifically, consider this question about creating an afterimage effect. The original, unedited text of the question was:

How can i make a particle system like this? im new in game developing
  specially in particle systems. i saw this photo on one of the posts
  here in gamedev.stackexchange but i cant comment so yeah

It included Unity tags, and made reference to Unity in the description. Unity is, in this case, an aspect of the question that can be generalized away (that is, one could also easily ask "how to create this effect in [Unreal|SpriteKit|libGDX|et cetera]?"
Should we generalize such questions to remove the tool-specific aspects (and if so, where do we draw the line for determining when to do so), or should we allow all potential permutations of such questions to exist for all potential values of tool X distinctly?

I thought we had this discussion already, but I cannot for the life of me track it down. If anybody else can, please post a link here (although it's probably been long enough that we may was refresh the community consensus).

I think that when possible, we should strive to make questions as generally-applicable as possible. I don't think we should allow for questions to vary only in which engine the asker happens to be using, with some caveats:

If a question is only making reference to some tool or engine to indicate that's what the user is asking, and the topic of the question is not a task specific to that engine, I think we should try to generalize the question where possible.

For example, the process of cooking or compiling data to runtime-ready formats is not something every engine does, and something every engine does fairly differently. So a question about fixing some behavior observed while cooking assets in Unreal is a reasonable Unreal-specific question, and shouldn't be generalized away. However, the task of creating a pizza-cheese-like graphical effect is not generally something that is engine-specific itself, and should be generalized.
This doesn't preclude answers being technology specific (and to that extent, I'd say that the process of generalizing a question should be to remove tags, but not necessarily to excise all references to the specific tool/engine in the body text). This way, we establish a pattern of a canonical, agnostic form of question and an associated set of answers, some of which may deal with the specific processes of accomplishing the task in a specific engine, versus just describing a general overview. This creates good duplication targets, it creates good, all-in-one-place threads for search engines to index, and it provides a compelling benefit for users to post new answers addressing the problem in other specific tools, if so desired. How can I trigger code once is a great example of that sort of question.
Conversely, though, we shouldn't be overzealous in generalizing questions:

If the specific text of a question reveals the problem is really related to bugfixing/tweaking some problem specific to the implementation of the general task in some specific tool, we shouldn't attempt to generalize that away.

For example if the question in the original post were asking something more specific, such as "what knob do I need to twiddle to make the afterimage sprites fade out over time," that's not something I think we can turn into a general question, so this isn't a blanket rule.
In summary:
If the user doesn't know how to perform the task at all, the question is probably suitable to be made as general as possible (although answers can be tool-specific). If user does know how to do the task, but is having a specific problem with it (possibly as relates to a specific tool/engine), it probably shouldn't be generalized.
In the long run I think more general, canonical questions are better for the health of the site.

I believe equivalence classes can be a way to partially generalize questions "on the fence" between specific and general. The example question could lose engine specific tags, and instead gain a tag representing classical particle systems as we know them.

How do I voxel in Unity? [voxel] [unity]

If they don't know how to voxel, [unity] is meta and should be removed.
If they know how to voxel, [unity] should* be generalized to [ecs].
If it is truly a Unity-specific implementation detail regarding voxels, they are both good tags*.
*If [unity] remains valid under certain circumstances, you'll be spending a lot of time because many beginners probably don't realize that Unity is just one of many ECS-based game-builders; they probably think it's unique in some way. (a lot of time)


text:
Why was this flag on a spam comment declined?
I recently found this comment below a question:

It sounds like you might want to complete more of your course before taking off on your own. Check out my profile if you'd like a free trial for a training site, they have a few nice courses for people getting started with Unity, and when you're ready, you can take my advanced course :)

This is obviously not an attempt to improve the question or get it answered. It is solely an attempt to get someone to subscribe to a paid service provided by another website. The link in the author's profile seems to include an affiliate-ID which makes me believe that they get some form of incentive for advertising this website.
So I flagged the comment as "other..." and in the free-text description I described it as spam and referenced our "how to not be a spammer" guide.
But to my surprise, the flag was declined and the comment was not deleted.
Why?

The author's disclosure of affiliation is extremely clear.
The author's activity in other comments and answers clearly demonstrates that referencing his course is a minority aspect of his participation.
The overwhelming majority of the other answers posted by the author have nothing to do with the course and clearly indicate solutions to problems, et cetera.

I don't think the comment in question fits the metrics appropriate for flagging it as spam. It is permissible to refer people to software or other off-site resources you-the-poster have some affiliation with, after all.

Always the voice of reason.


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Is this new user just that good?
Maxim DC, a newish user, posted half a dozen answers all at the same time. All of them have +1 vote. Except for the one on my question (https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/119364/41345), because I downvoted it for being a poor answer.
Is this new user just that good that all of his answers were upvoted as soon as they were asked? (At least within 7 hours, which is when I saw it.) Or is my spidey sense tingling for a reason?

Respectfully, I wouldn't consider his answers to be "that good," they're mostly brief screenshots from the unreal editor with a sentence or two of brief explanation. People like easy answers and screenshots, it gets their attention, maybe even enough for a +1.

I just think there are carebears out there that like to 'give noobs a chance'. Fortunately, not too many users sabotage the site like this.

@AlexandreVaillancourt my skepticism comes from his posts which aren't 7 hours old. Most of them have downvotes. Then all of a sudden, at the same time, a lot of upvoted answers.

Respectfully, the user in question does not appear to be particularly outstanding, especially in comparison to other users that have been around for as long. That is not to say they are particularly bad, but you can point to more opportunities for improvement than opportunities to learn from.
It is entirely likely that this user was simply flying under the radar of users that would normally enforce a bit more quality control; since the initial post, all but one answer has been lowered to at least a score of 0. Several answers have also been deleted.
With a score of less than 125, the user has asked one question with an average score of 0, and provided 13 answers with an average score of roughly -0.25 -0.5. Without wanting to browse and vote on this users entire history, I have looked at their highest voted answer (without actually being accepted), and their lowest. In doing so, I felt obliged to cast one down vote, and refrained from further voting altogether.
The highest had a score of +2, but I felt it was posted with the intentions of a comment, and it doesn't seem to answer the question. This answer has since been removed, leaving only an accepted answer with a positive score. The lowest has a score of -6, and was a clear example of a codeing snippet without any explanation.

There is no conclusive evidence of voting fraud on behalf of any party as of this writing.


text:
How to handle seemingly irrelevant language tags?
In the C++ tag and I've seen several questions about various APIs and tools that don't have a single line of C++, ask a question that would specifically apply to C++, or ask for their question to be answered in a C++ implementation.
Questions like:

glsl applying shader
Can't load own .obj-files from Blender to DX11
glsl 150 struct in uniform buffer object
variable number of lights in a glsl shader?
Non-real time simulation of overlapping repulsive balls

These do not contain or relate to C++ and are general GLSL/OpenGL/DirectX/CUDA questions that could easily be answered with language agnostic solutions or without any code at all. Would it not be better to expressly ask for the solution to be given with a C++ implementation in mind instead of the question being tagged with c++? Would it be beneficial to remove the c++ tag in questions like these?
I've read Are language tags useless? and its accepted answers and I really don't see a benefit in searching/filtering for an unrelated tag.

Remove the tag if you can.
We should not be artificially making our questions more specific than they need to be; see also this recent discussion.
Try to make other improvements in your edit as well, especially if you are under the reputation threshold that still requires your edits to be approved.

Thank you, that was basically what I was afraid to do, I figured I'd just be making a mess for the mods if I started making a bunch of edits where I only removed the C++ tag to clear up something that probably doesn't bother many people much.

@MattJensJensen It won't cause problems. Edits that require approval (as yours currently would I think, given your reputation) often do get rejected for being too minor though, which is why I suggested trying to make other substantive edits as well (or at least include a good edit comment).

I'll do my best to try to provide some more substantial value to my future edits, I felt bad immediately after re-tagging a question very similar to the ones I've linked to in this question realizing that someone actually has to go through and approve that minor edit.


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Getting game questions from stack overflow over here? (not merging but recommending them to post here)
I was looking over in the stack overflow questions and every now and then there are some questions relating to Unity development or strange things that are happening in someones game.
Why can't there be a little note that gets shown the the person writing the question with a certain tag (e.g. Virtual reality, one of the popular game engines, etc.) that just tells then there is a dedicated stack exchange for questions like this?
Would't it be better to post here to get answers from actual game developers and people that use the tools on a daily basis rather than general developers?

I don't think we'd have any problems here to deal with questions migrated from SO, however, I think this would be better discussed on the SO meta than here.
An option would be to simply leave a comment to the OP, telling them that there is a GDSE where they could probably get more/better answers, and that they could use that in the future.
I don't think there is a pre-defined path from SO to here in the flag/vote system, but another option I see is flagging questions for moderator attention, suggesting to move the question here. But before flagging, you should ask how this would be received by the moderators community there: you don't want to be tagged as flagging uselessly. And I don't know if mods move questions with a great ease, a smile and a happy heart, or they get annoyed every time because the process is not fun...

well i leave comments from time to time but i don't like doing it. Most of the time it comes across at rude and it doesn't contribute directly to a solution... I just figured it would be an easy way to help other stack exchange communities grow with little effort.

This idea of more actively promoting that questions asked on SO with certain game-development-related tags (unity, for example) be asked here instead is really something you'd want to bring up on the SO meta itself.
Game development questions aren't off-topic on StackOverflow though, so it's totally valid for those questions to be asked there.
Indeed there are quite a few questions on SO that appear to be game development related, but in fact are what we'd consider here to be game development adjacent (that is, the asker is making a game and describes a problem within that context, but it's fundamentally a basic programming issue and thus better suited to SO). I've occasionally poked through the game-related tags over there and not found a lot of questions I'd really be happy having here.
Automated tag-based suggestions can't pick up on those nuances and might very easily result in an unpleasant experience for askers, who start asking on SO, are suggested to instead post on GDSE, and then get their question immediately closed with the "ask this on SO" close reason.
It could also encourage cross-posting, which isn't cool.
I don't personally feel the need to campaign for this kind of thing; our community is different from the StackOverflow community, and we should respect their community and guidelines as they respect ours. There's definitely overlap in content sometimes but I think that's fine, I don't really think that each SE site needs to be so rigidly silo'd off.


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Why was this question about Play store reviews closed?
The question is this one.
The user, although a bit confused about the site structure, wants to asks the following:

Is it normal to not receive game reviews suddenly in my PlayStore deployment?

Which, in the particular spirit of the question can be understood as:

Or there's a gotcha in Google Playstore I'm not aware of?

Which is short, scoped, related to game development (actually: publishing), and above everything asking for facts or references. It is not a: was my game so crappy? or something alike. The OP even asks for the possibility of a weird behavior (Players unable to ...).
But above everything, he's asking for experiences and facts (Is it normal?).
In fact, if the first comment was more elaborate (the one which starts Yes, it is normal), it could be promoted to an answer.
Perhaps the question itself could be seen as bad quality and downvoted, but making a quick assumption as is asking for opinions and using a moderator close vote on it instead of leaving the chance of VtC to the community sounds a bit unilateral.
Edit: Before god-fingering the question, remember the same Help Center about subjective questions:

inspire answers that explain “why” and “how” (in this case, the user tried to understand his problem).
tend to have long, not short, answers (not explicitly covered by the user).
have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone (in this case, the user was not ranting but asking).
invite sharing experiences over opinions (by asking it is normal the user is expecting facts).
insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references (not explicitly covered by the user).
are more than just mindless social fun (in fact, he had an actual problem).

From the tone of the answer, it eas easily seen that points 3 to 6 were covered (since the user, although having an attempt of hypotesis, wanted to know how normal is and about facts).
Additionally:

The user tried to undestand what was happening. Reasons involve a why. He wanted to validate his (ill-formed but present) hypotesis.
The user never asked for a list of experiences. Just understand what was going on.

Asking for a list of people's experiences is not on topic. From the help center:

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed,
  avoid asking subjective questions where … every answer is equally
  valid...

My experience with reviews on the Play store is completely valid and factual. So is Almo's. So is Jon's. So is everybody's on this site. That's not the kind of question we consider on-topic.

Perhaps the question itself could be seen as bad quality and
  downvoted, but making a quick assumption as is asking for opinions and
  using a moderator close vote on it instead of leaving the chance of
  VtC to the community sounds a bit unilateral.

It is unilateral. Such is the power granted to the elected site moderators; we were not elected so that we would not use the abilities given to us to moderate the site. The community still has the power to both (a) individually overturn the closure by casting reopen votes and (b) set the policy of the site, within a certain degree dictated by StackExchange, alter the policies of the site.
If you'd like to personally propose updating the site policies to allow such questions, you are welcome to craft such a proposal here on meta.

So you should remove everything about subjective questions in the help center since it is misleading. Quoting: invite sharing experiences over opinions., insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references., are more than just mindless social fun., have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.

Some subjectivity is fine; certain kinds of it are good, acceptable, and welcomed. But what this question is asking for right now is just for people to talk about their experiences, there is no one experience that makes sense as the accepted answer to the question... it's just a discussion, and thus a better fit for a discussion forum.

The "Some subjectivity" that says "It seems simple enough: Fact good ..." for a user asking about how normal an event is?

The same "Some subjectivity" enumerating the exact 4 points I told in the former comment?

No, those points do not apply here at all. Generally the way you need to look at on/off topic policies is that we start with what is on-topic. That creates a broad set of possible subject matter. We narrow that down by applying further guidelines about what is off topic, so those generally take precedent. Asking for list-of-experience answers overrides, generally, any other on-topicness (so, incidentally, does asking yes-or-no questions).

He did not ask an explicit list of experiences. He asked about it being normal.

...which is defined by what, exactly? Other people's experiences. It's also a yes-or-no question.

There is no "What are your experiences about low reviews in PlayStore"?

Other's people experiences, yes. Experiences listing, no. The difference between P and P# in computer science, and the difference between polling and websites like Software Recommendations in this community. He had a specific problem or question. Never asked a list.

In fact, "Other people's experiences" is one of the accepted points in the same article you gave, which is the one in the help center. Quote from the article: """but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions"""

I'm sorry, I don't agree, and I feel like we're just talking in circles around the issue now. I stand by my decision, but would certainly welcome proposals from the community for updating our site policies.


text:
What causes my question to be advertised on other SE sites?
It was so weird seeing this ad after being the author of the question only yesterday.
This got me curious. How often are these ads generated and circulated? Are they automated by the SE network, or do moderators suggest them? My question hit the hot-bar and therefore got attention, but I dont know if you'd consider it worthy of introducing new people to the site.

One word: 'magic!'.

Otherwise you can look this on meta.se.

That's generated by "Hot Network Questions" filter, which is automatic and based on vague criteria.
It also has a mostly-deserved reputation for publicizing questions that are actually very inappropriate for the parent sites.

Was mine appropriate by your standards btw? Im new here, and not very familiar with what you consider good questions.

@Viziionary It's fine. I probably would have voted to close it, personally (I think it's a bit borderline), but since my votes are unilateral and binding I didn't.


text:
Are questions about ways to promote your game on topic?
Is a question about ways to promote your game, pricing, distribution way, etc.. appropriate question for the game dev community? If not which one would be most suitable if any?

It depends. Generally questions asking for lists of things, regardless of the topic, aren't on-topic. If you have a specific question about a specific method of promotion or distribution, or a problem you're having with it, that would probably be on-topic.
But if you're just looking for ideas on how to promote or market things, you may want to try asking somewhere like GDNet.

@vadim And remember, it's not about how to promote your game specifically. It's about the specific method of promotion or distribution. We don't want to see a link to your game in the question.


text:
How much room is there for "good subjective" on gamedev.stackexchange?
If I look at the highest voted closed questions, I find myself wondering if gamedev.stackexchange is overly cautious of subjective questions, to the detriment of the site. I know they discourage me from asking some of the less objective design-oriented questions I think might be of value on this site. Perhaps that just means I'm wrong about what kind of questions might be of value here.
I'm not saying high vote-count makes a question good for the site, but it's a helpful filter to find some questions where one might dispute their being closed.
Good games to earn your wings is, while broad on the surface, something that a lot of experienced developers talk about when giving advice to those who want to learn to make games. The answers there, while broad, are an asset to this site.
How to prevent 'too awesome to use' syndrome is a good game-design question, and good answers have been given to it. It was closed for being primarily opinion-based, but I feel that most questions on game-design would have the same shortcomings, regardless of how well they're worded, and regardless of how valuable they'd be to a game development community. (Also, I think a lot of questions that do use the game-design tag are similarly subjective, but have thankfully dodged closure)
I understand that not every stack exchange community has the same standards of subjectivity (the incredibly useful worldbuilding.stackexchange couldn't possibly exist without far looser subjectivity standards than stackoverflow), but I just wonder: Does the existence of helpful and yet more subjective stack exchanges + the existence of helpful and yet closed game design questions on this exchange perhaps suggest we should open the doors to less objectively answerable questions?
Could we use some more "good subjective"?
Or perhaps... do we already have more "good subjective" than I'm implying, and are the examples I've pointed out the exception? (in which case, can their "closed" status be reconsidered?)

I find myself wondering if gamedev.stackexchange is overly cautious of
  subjective questions

There's a lot of subjectivity in game development, even within the technical domains like programming. Often times that subjectivity is either discussion-based (which has no place on an SE site) or highly-contextual. The latter could be appropriate here and could be a strong contender for "good subjective," but that context needs to be specified or the question falls back into the extremely broad, discussion-oriented kind of query that's a better fit for a forum.

to the detriment of the site

It's one think to not like that we close a lot of subjective questions. It's another to assert that doing so is damaging the site in some way. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm also not seeing any evidence for such a claim.

I'm not saying high vote-count makes a question good for the site, but
  it's a helpful filter to find some questions where one might dispute
  their being closed.

That's good, because vote count is definitely not a metric. Consider also that many of those questions are very, very old relative to the site's total lifespan. That both means they've had much more time to accumulate votes and also that they come from an era of the site when it's focused was being defined.
Further, the number of concrete times somebody has actually attempted to bring up any of those questions for re-opening? If you include your post as such an endorsement, I can probably count those occurrences on two hands instead of one. But generally it doesn't happen that often. There aren't any pending re-open votes on any of those questions and they are very rarely referenced in meta topics like this.

Good games to earn your wings is, while broad on the surface,
  something that a lot of experienced developers talk about when giving
  advice to those who want to learn to make games. The answers there,
  while broad, are an asset to this site.

You can make a pretty strong argument for most closed questions that the answers are an asset to the site. That's not what the site exists for, though. It is not trying to be all things to all people, not trying to be the one-stop resource for all game development questions. It's trying to be a very specific thing, focusing on specific and mostly-objective (ideally canonical) questions with similarly-described answers. There are plenty of other excellent sites for discussion and broader "theory crafting," for lack of a better term, within games, and we aren't trying to replace those. Indeed, we often try to direct people there when their needs are pretty obviously at odds with what this site provides.

How to prevent 'too awesome to use' syndrome is a good game-design
  question, and good answers have been given to it. It was closed for
  being primarily opinion-based...

I don't remember closing that, to be honest, but re-reading it now I probably still would. I think the issue with the question is, as I've noted before, a lack of appropriate contextual scope. It's presented as a question about a mechanical aspect of game design without any sort of scoping through a genre, through the specification of additional extra mechanics, and so on. I think that makes it too broad (so I concede that 'opinion-based' is not what I would use to close it today). But that was two years ago.

Does the existence of helpful and yet more subjective stack exchanges
  + the existence of helpful and yet closed game design questions on this exchange perhaps suggest we should open the doors to less
  objectively answerable questions?

Potentially. But how would you do that? What is your proposal for "opening the doors," exactly? I don't mean to be harsh, or to pick on you specifically, but but when you want to change a policy you should probably have some kind of idea how you want that change to look like in practice.
I look at these questions and I look for things that give the question a lot of context. Ones that put the question in a framework defined by the game being developed. Questions that provide enough of such context, I think they make "good subjective" questions. Questions that don't, I think they make "bad subjective" questions.

Thanks for the very detailed response, Josh.

(Tried to newline...) I think the two most important points of clarification I need to make can be answered in pretty much the same way. When I say "to the detriment of the site", I mean that previously closed questions (especially high-voted ones, as they are easier for users getting to know the site to come across) set expectations for what's acceptable or not, and so users are discouraged from posting similarly subjective questions. The solution (and my proposal for "opening the doors") is re-opening them (or even just changing to protected, since they are so old).

Regarding the need for the context of the game being developed, I wonder if that's actually a helpful indicator of good vs bad subjectivity. There'd be a lot of overlap between answers for the "too awesome to use" problem (a common trope in games) for different games and genres. And if the asker isn't actually asking for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the community (as is encouraged on SE), should the asker have the same question multiple times for different genres? (my own answer to that would be "yes, if it mostly changes the answers", which is debatable in this specific example)

@JibbSmart The [help] and meta are generally better places for people to be going to find out what is and isn't on-topic. Open and close questions serve as signposts, yes, but it may not be clear from the questions themselves (in isolation) why they're on or off topic. Re-opening those questions would tacitly endorse them as on-topic, so I don't want to do that (unilaterally). You could make a case-by-case argument for each of the questions on meta though, and try to get community support for it (five re-open votes).

"Protecting" a question doesn't do anything useful in this context, really. It prevents sub-10 reputation users from answering it. I do think that the answer to "should the asker have the same question multiple times for different genres" is "yes, if it mostly changes the answers" in the general sense and that having a game-specific context around an otherwise subjective question does tend to make it a better one for the site.

The help center is helpful, and all, but examples tend to illustrate better, and I wouldn't fault a user for looking for practical examples of what is and isn't accepted. Thanks for the answers. I'll consider whether I want to put the time into case-by-case arguments for the topics I do think should be re-opened (and considered on-topic).


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How should we handle the 'inspector' tag and 'unity-*' tags?
The inspector tag mainly seems to exist to refer to the Unity inspector. There are fourteen questions with the tag as of this writing.
As a tag, "inspector" alone is far too broad (not only Unity has a property inspector UI, for example, and it's generally unreasonable for one to be considered an "expert in inspectors").
So the question is, is it worth scoping this tag to Unity by renaming it unity-inspector? We have a similar tag for unity-editor. On the other hand, I don't really see that unity-editor adds any significant value that isn't covered by the unity tag already. Certainly a quick scan through unity-editor seems to indicate the tag is misapplied very often.
What should we do here?

I don't think unity-editor or unity-inspector add anything significant search-wise, and I think they just muddy up the tag pool.
I propose we link unity-editor to unity as a synonym and blacklist inspector outright.

I have removed the tag inspector.

Should we delete [tag:customeditor] as well?

@AlexandreVaillancourt I merged it into unity this morning, I think that's probably reasonable for now.


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Are questions about games created using Scratch on-topic?
There is quite the library of appreciated games made using MIT's Scratch program. The program uses stackable blocks and pieces instead of raw code.
I'm wondering whether discussion or asking for debugging help about development of  games using Scratch would be on-topic here.

As long as they are within the scope of the site (see: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) then yes, they would be allowed.
For questions that are dealing strictly with the programming - just remember to ask yourself.

Would a professional game developer give me a better/different/more specific answer to this question than other programmers?

Hurdle one cleared. Based on past experience, I would have to post a question requiring the tag in order for it to be created. That correct?

@scriptHero Yep.


text:
I have a specific question about [specific-question]
specific-question has no description and ironically isn't very specific. The 6 questions using the tag don't have any similarities.
Also, if your question isn't specific, then it is off-topic or too broad. Does this make all the other questions on Meta Game Dev SE too broad? Any good post should already be specific.
I request this specific tag to be burninated. It is terribly vague, and lacks practicality.

The 6 questions using the tag don't have any similarities.

They are all about a specific question, as opposed to about a more general policy.
I don't really think this is a useful tag, though, so I've removed it from the questions that had it.

Well that was very specific and to the point, maybe you should tag this question with [specific-question].
... wait in what context are being specific here?
Yup, I agree, lets get rid of this ... vaguely specific tag!


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How can we improve the tutorial tag definition?
I saw a new user asking for paper2d tutorials & getting down voted. There were no comments indicating the reason for down voting, so it being a new user & all, I commented that asking for tutorials was not on-topic. The questioner challenged me on this, citing the tutorial tag. To me, the tag definition doesn't really indicate this sort of question is off topic, but when I reviewed other questions with this tag, things seemed mixed. Many questions requesting tutorials are down voted &/or closed for being off topic, too broad, etc. A few are highly voted, but closed for the same reasons.
I do not yet have full tag wiki privileges & rather than leave it to trial & error, I thought it might be better to hash it out here - should the tag definition be changed to better reflect the community's interpretation?  If so, how?

What's the tutorial tag even supposed to mean? "How to get started" is off-topic, and to me asking for a tutorial is the same thing.

The presence (or absence) of tags is not an indication of what topics are or are not permitted here. Tags are for describing what a question is about for search and filter purposes; any user above 300 reputation can create them.
What is on or off topic is decided primarily here, on meta, through discussion. One user cannot unilaterally decree what's on-topic simply by creating a tag for that topic.

The tutorial description as of this writing is bad, as it doesn't reflect the current site policy of disallowing questions asking about how to get started or questions asking for lists of tutorials:

Hands-on teaching material for learning different elements of game development. Sometimes also used for topics on "in game tutorials".
For those who want a more direct approach to learning game development, there are plenty of tutorials available. Under this tag, you can find a variety that spans from demonstrating core concepts of design to illustrating the basics of common game genres.

The tag was created in 2011, before our current policies came into place, and simply hasn't been updated. There is a place for this tag on the site: asking questions that relate to implementing tutorials in-game, such as this one or this one.
I will update the tag to account for this, and strip the tag from the questions where it no longer belongs.

Well, I started stripping the tags at least. There's 80+ questions so tagged, so I don't want to spam them all to the front page all at once. EDIT: Mostly cleared out now.

I agree with the proposed limiting the tag. The purpose of of tags as you stated seems counter to my understanding of Jeff's definition: the tags page is an essential map of what your community is, and is not, about. Debating the nature of tags in meta seems logical, but expecting new users to research meta before posting does not. Not trying to be argumentative; being relatively new, I'm trying to learn.

@Pikalek I don't think Jeff's post disagrees, I think it describes a different aspect of tags. One can look at the site's name to see what it's about (game development). Then one can look at the list of tags to see more specifically what topics within game development the community covers. That's what Jeff is saying; not that tags are the mechanism by which a given subject is determined to be on or off topic, but that the tags can be a map of what has been determined to be so. Indeed, there are plenty of valid "game development" topics that we do not consider on-topic here.

@Pikalek The on-topic mechanism is generally start with a broad topic (game development), and narrow that by describing exceptions; things that don't fit in (such as questions that are discussion-oriented, opinion-based, et cetera). Further, on-topicness is determined through discussions like this one. Any random 300-reputation user cannot create [tag:faa-regulations] and suddenly say "FAA regulations discussion is now on-topic here!" The community will eventually see the bogus tag, and as you did, post something on meta where we will decide what to do (or point existing policy on the issue)

@Pikalek As for new user expectations... I don't think we expect them to read all of meta before posting, that'd be crazy. I do think we expect them to read the Help Center, which does outline the basic high-level on- and off-topic rules. That would have covered the case of this example question you linked to. Not everybody reads the Help Center, and that's fine, we're happy to provide guidance to those new users... provided they respond to that guidance in a civil fashion (which, sadly, not everybody does).

That makes sense. Having not created a tag yet myself, I had assumed there was some sort of approval process (other than meta discussion) that a tag from a lower rep user would subjected to. The Help-Center expectation is reasonable. My read on this case is the new user got mixed signals from a vague & out of date tag definition. Assuming users read it, the updated definition should help mitigate future repeats. Thx.

I'd like to see tutorial requests as a possible valid type of question on many SE sites not just game dev.
Does seem odd to have a tag for it then disagree with the validity of a question when it's used.
That said ...
The tag itself could be a means to tag questions also tagged with community wiki as a means for users to essentially use SE questions as a means to document / blog something as a subset of the community wiki.
Maybe the issue here is that it hasn't really been ever applied correctly and so should probably be removed or renamed to something more appropriate.
Further thought ...
Vague / very wide in scope questions are generally discouraged on pretty much all SE sites, so maybe this tag should simply be removed to prevent encouraging that.


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Is the "artifacts" tag worthwhile?
A description and wiki was added to artifacts recently. The tag has nine questions as of this writing.
Is this tag actually useful? Can one become an expert in artifacts, or should the tag go the way of similar meta tags like bugs?

My stance would be "no," the artifacts tag isn't useful in either it's current form or any more-generalized form. In both cases the tag is describing what is being observed in the question, not the problem attempting to be solved in the question.
Even when localized specifically to rendering artifacts, it's very possible for two artifacts to be caused by two very different rendering issues such that it's unlikely that there exist a significant body of users out in the real world with dedicated experience fixing all forms of potential undesired rendering behavior... and thus nobody would every put the tag on their "highlight these tags" list. Certainly, at least, the people who would are also the people who'd use existing tags like graphical-effects or some tag more specific to the graphics subdomain involved.
If we were to remove the graphics focus from the tag description, it would only make the problem worse (then it would cover audio artifacts as well, for example).
Consequently I think we should treat this tag like we treat bugs and blacklist it.

I agree that it's not useful. I didn't see any usage that would not be synonymous with bugs, errors, etc. I don't think a tag describing what is being observed is necessarily bad though - E.G. Deadlock on SO.

@Pikalek This isn't SO, though. I concede that on a case-by-case basis, it's possible certain tags primarily focused on the observed effect may be appropriate because they also scope question context (the same way platform and API tags do). But I don't see a good reason for this tag specifically. I've removed it and added it to the blacklist.

Fair point about GDSE not being SO. Observed effect that scopes question context is a better way of stating what I was trying to convey.

Personally I think the tag should continue to live on, maybe renamed to "graphical-artifact". The thing is, artifacts are not really any type of "effects" at least not desirable ones; So I doubt anyone will tag his question.
If I were to ask a question about those kind of graphical issues, I think this tag would be the best option we had indicating we are actually asking about solving a bug!
Looking at the search results for artifact also shows we actually do have a lot of questions about the issue, but people don't like to tag their question for some reason, which makes going through similar question a bit harder.

So you think the tag should exist, but that nobody will use it? I don't understand your first sentence. Remember that tags are not for every topic mentioned in a question; we blacklist plenty of tags that, if you were to put the word in the search box, still have tons of results. That seems like a flimsy argument for keeping this tag to me.

Further, about half of all questions are about solving a bug in some form. The point of tags is not to mark a question with what the question observes, it's to mark the question with what the problem being solved is; the content of the question rather than a product of the attempt. The fact that a problem results in a graphical artifact is a consequence of the user attempting to solve some higher-level problem; that higher-level problem should be the tag.

I think the tag should exist, and we should add it to the related question which are not marked by it. Also many of these questions do have artifact in their title. I have a feeling people don't know "artifact" can be used as a tag. In the end, I think it adds more information to the question (before you open it/ while searching). First it means something went wrong, and second it tells what exactly is wrong.

Tags are not just "for adding information to a question" though. They're for adding a specific kind of information to a question; information about what the problem is. Not observed effects of the problem. It's why we don't tag questions with "bug" or "problem" or "compiler-error" or "looks-funny."


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Why does a tag exclusion search find posts containing the text of the tag?
I was curious as to if I could filter out posts with a particular tag & the result was not what I expected: it appears that give back results don't have that particular tag, but do have the tag's text somewhere in the post. The search results description seems to back this up, E.G when I search on '-[2d]' it says:

results found containing
"-[2d]"
tagged with
not 2d

For clarity, this was using the search box in the upper right corner. When I tried this search directly from the URL, it discard the search request entirely.

"-2D && -[2d]" will do what you seem to want, but it does seem like any sort of -[tag] query will search for the text in brackets unless explicitly disallowed; that's odd.

Since this isn't GDSE specific, should I ask this on SO meta instead?

No, it's fine to ask it here, the staff monitor the bug tag across all sites.


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What if I want to ask a question that isn't appropriate on any SE site?
I have a question about my Game Development Stack Exchange post.
What if a question cannot fit in with any site, or is marked off topic to any StackExchange community? What if it's not a question normally asked, or it's hard to find a solution, like mine? If I were to post it on other communities it will be marked as off-topic too. It's like this question is an oddball and a missfit from that Christmas story.
Seriously I don't know where it fits or how to ask it.

If a question is off-topic on a given StackExchange site, it shouldn't be asked there (and will be closed, like yours, if it is). If a question is off-topic on all StackExchange sites, it shouldn't be asked on any StackExchange site.
The SE network is not about hosting all possible questions. It's about hosting a specific subset of all questions: those with objective answers (generally).
There are other places on the internet where you can ask questions that would be off-topic on all SE sites. For example, you could ask on GDNet.

so for what community can this question can be asked in because i have trouble with telling what community the question fits in.i used game development because is has to do with a game boy rom

i like the suggestion but i have trust issues with other sites because my instructor suggested stack exchange for my programming needs. btw is there a thread that can help you with what goes where.

There isn't such a thread because StackExchange is not a discussion forum. Other sites are just as "trustworthy" as StackExchange, and you're going to have to accept them if you want to ask the kinds of questions that are not permitted here.

@user3371655 if by "help you with what goes where" you mean determine what sorts of questions are appropriate for a given SE site, you can get that info from the help center

In some cases, one or more of the SE chat areas might be appropriate.

Gook point; I'd just add in this current context that one needs at least 20 rep to be allowed to chat.

True, you do need 20 rep. If OP or others think that's a barrier, I would refer them to this meta question on how to earn rep for chat.


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Could we merge tags 'navigation-mesh' and 'navmesh'?
The title says it all.
These two are describing the exact same thing, so I suggest we only keep one.

Even though navigation-mesh is more wordy and describe more exactly what it is, users will not be confused by the term navmesh as it's very commonly used.
I suggest we make navigation-mesh a synonym of navmesh because navmesh is shorter to write, has no hyphen, and is sooo much cooler :P

Looks like Josh synonymed them yesterday—edit to mention that and mark accepted?

Oh yeah, I did and forgot to comment here.


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Should we merge the 'code-structure' and 'code-design' tags into the 'architecture' tag?
If we consider the description of architecture:

How code is structured. [...]

And the description of code-structure:

Refers to ways of organizing code, so it can be easier to work with.

And the description of code-design:

(Yeah, there is none. And only 4 open questions.)
Should we make code-structure and code-design as synonym of architecture?

I think we should merge or create synonyms for those two tags, with the final master tag being architecture.

"Refers to ways of organizing code" is essentially the same thing as "How code is structured".
"code-design", in this context, is really not about art, it's about how the code is structured, or organized, thus redirects the discussion to 1.

This makes all of the three tags quite the same. At the moment of this writing, 'code-design' has only 5 questions, 'code-structure' has 56 and 'architecture' has over 800 (not yet over 9000). This is why I'd suggest to keep 'architecture'.
Finally, if I were to ask someone

Are you an expert in code design?

then

Are you an expert in code-structure?

and then

Are you an expert in architecture?

They'd probably get fed up and ask me why the hell am I asking three times the same question.

I'm not particularly enthused about architecture at all (or engine-architecture, they both seem a bit too broad. However, the other tags you referenced certainly don't seem to add anything useful so I've merged them to architecture for now and set up appropriate synonyms.


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Is it even possible to improve complex questions?
How to improve games programming questions that need to take many aspects into account before being answered?
I asked How to program destructibles? and it has been (more or less fairly) put on hold due to "too many questions". It requires an expertise of someone experienced in the field of data structures who worked with many of those "destructible" objects (or similar stuff). I implemented only two of those over the last month and mentioned some (because there were many) of the issues that arose during that time in hope of avoiding committing further mistakes. If I don't mention them, all I'll get are answers like this one which is obviously not what I came for.
Basing on the community reaction, I realized questions regarding complex programming problems are above the level of advancement this community is willing to analyze. Should I take such issues to SO even though game development related?

As far as I can see the main problem with your question (in last edit) is the last line: Is this the same as with a destructible terrain in other games?
The original question was actually a combination of multiple smaller question. I do agree that a comprehensive answer might (should) answer all those smaller questions, but then again, with new format even answers that are not that detailed are welcome.
In general, as far as I can tell, you can ask complex questions, but you shouldn't force any formatting to answers. But I usually am accused of being to permissive, and I'm not a mod, so we should wait for higher ups to respond.

Sure it is.

Basing on the community reaction, I realized questions regarding
  complex programming problems are above the level of advancement this
  community is willing to analyze. Should I take such issues to SO even
  though game development related?

Complexity isn't an issue, but broadness is. StackExchange isn't a discussion forum, and overly broad questions don't tend to have single objective reasonably-concise answers. Instead, they tend to generate discussion, which is excellent, but not something SE wants to host (and indeed, not something the resulting site software is well-suited for).
Generally if one could write a book (or several chapters thereof) on the topic of the question, it's going to be too broad. The original revision of your question certainly fits that bill.

You're asking if things are a "good choice." It is a rare thing in game development that is always objectively the best option, and so a good answer to this kind of question usually involves back-and-forth discussion of a lot of the nit-picky details of one's projects, and/or an extensive breakdown of the list of pros and cons to a particular choice in a vacuum and long discussion of potential alternatives.
You're asking multiple unrelated questions. Each of your original four main questions could be a question on its own, and in your subsequent paragraphs you often pose one or two more questions.
You're asking us to see the future. "Will this bite me later?" for example, is not something we can objectively answer in a way that improves the site's index of knowledge for posterity (we can only really say "maybe, maybe not").
You don't scope the questions well. You don't provide a lot of detail that narrow down the problem space; without doing so, answerers need to contend with any possible scenario.

Addressing these issues will improve the question without really reducing its complexity (destructible objects are still a complex topic not matter how you slice them). Focus on explaining what you tried, what you want, what you got instead. The more specific and directed you can make your question, the better, as long as it doesn't so specific as to be "here's all my code, fix the problem please."
You'd likely run into the same barriers on SO. You're certainly free to try to ask there if you don't want to improve the question here, but I suspect you'll be met with the same result. In the original form you posted it, your question just isn't well-suited to the SE model. A site like GDNet, though, would work well because it is a discussion forum.

I guess I wanted to start a discussion because I find the subject interesting and was trying to get another perspective before I commit to a final design. So... yes, you're absolutely right. I still think questions like: "will this bite me?", "is this a good choice?" are always implied but then, since they are, they can be omitted. Is the final edit of the question more or less okay?

@CyprianGuerra It's fine to imply those questions if there is also some other concrete question there. Questions like "here is my plan, I will do X Y and Z, will that hurt me in the future?" just aren't a great fit here. I think with the edits the question is more reasonably scoped, and it already had three reopen votes, so I reopened it.


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Do we really need both of the tags glfw AND glfw3?
There is a tag for glfw which has 40 questions and a description, and a tag for glfw3, which has 15 questions and no description.
Since the first question with glfw3, there seems to have been more questions tagged with glfw than with glfw3.
I'm not familiar enough with the library to argue that we need, or that we don't need the tag glfw3.
However, since there is not a lot of questions that are tagged with that and users seem to prefer glfw, so I would think that an expert browsing the questions wouldn't mind that much browsing 'only' questions with the tag glfw.
Should we keep the distinction or should we make glfw3 a synonym of glfw?

I think we should make glfw3 a synonym of glfw because volume of questions is not big enough for it to matter.

Ditto, the differences aren't big enough for separate tags to provide a benefit for people, it's not the same kind of difference between direct3d 9 and 12.

I've merged and linked glfw3 to glfw.

@JoshPetrie Thanks a lot!


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Does cross-posting a question make it off-topic?
I saw this pretty bad question. It's basically a code dump so I'm pretty much okay with it being closed.
However, I then saw the close reason used by @Byte56:

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's cross posted here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29841735/how-to-capturescreen-shot-of-current-screen-to-share-score-like-temple-run-game – Byte56♦

I know our stance on cross-posting is "Don't" but I don't feel that cross-posting should make it off-topic (do we then reopen the question if the other copy is closed? Or when it's deleted?).
I'm not looking for this question to be re-opened, I'd have proposed closing it as a code dump.
But in the future, if a good question is cross-posted to other sites what should we do?

For the record, I'm not starting a witch hunt against @Byte56, he was just the person I saw doing it. I'd say downvoting and leaving a comment about crossposting is the way to go.

This close was the result of handling a moderator flag. I likely should have picked a different close reason (there are a few that might apply). With cross posted questions, I just try to get them fixed as soon as possible. I hate to see people waste their time on questions that get closed later or merged to a different site because they were cross posted. In this case, the question was pretty old and it wasn't likely I was going to get in contact with the OP anytime soon.

Tricky, I've been in the situation where i've been told "post this over here ", so my natural reaction is ... edit > copy > new site > new question > paste ... technically that's cross posting but on the advice of an admin from the source site.
Personally I think the solution here is a move option on questions, this would allow the question to be put in the right place possibly by a high rep user when it happens.
Often the reason is that the user asking the question isn't sure where it belongs (in my case that was also true if I recall).
At the same time, high rep users on the network, certainly on the main SO site seem to take the stance of "if the user didn't RTFM and immediately get it right then jump on them from as high as possible until they do or until they leave".
Closing serves that heavy handed purpose, but I think the site should naturally teach users where things belong if possible.
Feature request: function to administratively vote to move a question / just administratively move it (perhaps with enough rep) which would trigger a decent explanation given to the asker of the question resulting in a better experience overall.

move option is actually present as a moderator tool.

Migration is a process that exists as @Ali.S stated, it is however a moderator only process that is quite involved for people on both sites on the network. I don't think that it's a good solution for this as the feature stands.

My answer was really a suggestion to take that and make it both easier and more readily available to people with lower rep through the existing voting mechanism. High rep mods don't want to deal with this kind of thing all the time and lower rep users would typically pick this up without complaining about it.

Currently, we do close cross-posted questions when we discover them, generally with a custom close reason. We do re-open the question if the remote duplicate is deleted or closed (and we discover that).

Cross-posting is generally considered a negative impact to the network as a whole, and consequently shouldn't be permitted or encouraged. This is not a universal constant, as the network has no official tools to deal with it (and SE has resisted adding them), and you will find some positions on MSE that it's okay if the two sites have vastly different focuses, audiences, and thus viewpoints on the answer.
It's my opinion that closing the question is the right thing to do in this scenario.

It reinforces, very obviously, the position that cross-posting should usually not happen.
It helps alleviate some of the negative impact on the network by providing a marker to the singular question (much like duplicates do).
It doesn't imply that the question is bad or poorly researched (as downvoting might).
But it's still an action with some teeth to it (unlike a simple comment) that encourages the offending user to learn how SE works.


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Do we really need the 'infinite' tag?
As the title says, do we need the tag infinite?
At this moment, the tag has only 15 questions, and no usage definition.
The questions tagged are mostly about infinite 2d games, looping content (background), and procedural generation.

I think we should black list it as it can be applied to a lot of situations, which are not really connected.
And I don't think anyone is an expert in 'infinite'.

I agree with this.

@JoshPetrie All right, I'll take care of it.

I don't think anyone is an expert in 'infinite' - Ramanujan might disagree.

@MooseBoys He'd have to join us :)

Nobody out of game development context knows what procedural is, i bet newbies will search first for "how to make infinite world map in GameMaker" than "Procedural terrain algorithm C++"

implying they even do search

It's not clear to me from this post: do you think we should leave the tag or do we need to remove it? Or replace it?

I think it should stay, if we remove it, newbies will post questions about "infinite generation" with other unrelated tags, this is the closest we can approach "procedural" to "street language"


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Why are the Excavator and Marshal badges being awarded constantly?
Edit: This seems to be a network-wide issue. See: Meta Stackexchange
A few minutes ago a got a notification that I received an Excavator badge. This was kinda puzzling, because I already had one. Shortly after I received yet another one, which made me open the acoording badge page. It appears that this badge is awarded repeatedly to random users.

This goes on for 12 pages. Some people are also getting Marshal badges.

It's seems cleared now!

We just did a major revamp of how badges are awarded behind the scenes to drastically reduce the load on SQL Server. It now takes advantage of some pre-compute work we're doing to track badge progress in the profile.
However, I screwed up 2 queries, specifically the text names of the badges that prevent duplicate awarding. I was thinking to myself earlier "hey, maybe we should pass these in" as part of the rewrite - but it's not quite so simple. I'll take another look at this soon but when we're not fighting fires from a SQL Server upgrade. The cardinality changes which hosed some of the bigger badge queries needed urgent attention here, which ended up as a major revamp and introduced the 2 errors reported here.

-- Nick Craver

SE is currently experiencing some sort of badge-related issues. It is being worked on by the developers.


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Why was I just awared two more Marshal badges?
I've had the Marshal badge for a while. It just awarded it to me two more times.
So my profile says I have 5 gold badges, but when I look at them I only have Fanatic, one Famous Question and Marshal.

Same here, got 2 notifications, actual badge count hasn't changed, nor should it have.


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Should our scope include development of game-related utilities?
Some people are developing utilities to help players in their games. This includes things like saved game editors, fan-created modding tools, .ini file editors, adding Windows Store games as non-steam games and vice versa,... In essence, external tools that help players customize their games to their own tastes and liking.
What these utilities do is very much similar to mod development, which we already allow. They give players more options in how they want to play their game, whether they want to make themselves invincible, make their enemies harder, fix a bug with their saved game,... They're modifying existing games to either add new content or change existing content.
With this in mind, should we allow questions related to development of game related utilities?

Do you have any examples of existing questions in this domain? Generally I think it's better to discuss this sort of policy issue when there are concrete question examples available, so we don't make rules in a vacuum that end up unable to reflect reality.

Also, I removed your opinion on the matter from the question; you should post that on its own, with your rationale, as an answer. Including opinion in the meta question makes it hard to disambiguate question votes: do they mean "this is a good question we should discuss" or do they mean "I agree with the opinion presented here."

@JoshPetrie We were discussing this in the chat this noon. I wanted to create that question, but they weren't sure whether it was on-topic, since we haven't defined our scope that well yet. they told me to ask it on Meta. relevant discussion in chat: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/30424348#30424348 and beyond that.

I'd say you should ask the actual question you have, at this point.

@JoshPetrie I'll just ask it then and see what the community thinks

@JoshPetrie question asked: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/124100/is-there-a-reliable-and-fast-way-of-getting-a-list-of-all-installed-games-on-a-w

I don't really think this is worth establishing any kind of policy on at this point in time. Or possibly ever. Given the almost-complete-lack of any actual questions in this domain on the site, I think we're still firmly in the frame of reference where we need to take each of the actual questions that appear on their own and analyze them.
I don't think hypothetical speculation is warranted or productive; we can go in circles all day long:

I don't think it's worth declaring them, as a group, to be off-topic, because there is a fuzzy line between them and between questions about modding games.
I don't think it's worth declaring them, as a group, to be on-topic, because there is a fuzzy line between them and between questions about general application development.

+1 for case-by-case evaluation.

My personal opinion on this matter: Game related utilities are functionally identical to mods: they allow people to make changes to their game or their individual game state to suit their playstyle better. there is not much difference between developing a mod that gives you more points to spend versus a savegame editor to just give you those points directly.
In addition, it's not always clear where the border between Utility and Mod lies. For example: in World of Warcraft, certain mods have optional extra external applications that allow you to upload certain mod settings or similar to an online service for analysis or further usage. Examples are Trade Skill Master, Warcraft Logs, Wowhead,... these programs walk a fine line between modding and utility, sometimes hanging on one side, sometimes on another. if an addon developer wants to add a similar service, it makes sense that they might want to post questions about their external software as well.
In summary: I think the development of game-related utilities should be part of the scope. They're similar enough to mods that people proficient in mod development probably know their way around utility development enough to answer utility-related questions.