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Game Art? Should Questions go here or in a new wiki?
Seems like a lot of people may have questions about game art, especially 3D programming techniques. A lot of people like myself are self-taught and continually trying to pick up tricks that art-school types may have received via formal course-work.
What's the appropriate venue for art-related questions?  Should there be a new "Game Art" or simply "Artists" wiki for such questions, or is Game Development the proper place?

If I recall correctly, there has been an attempt at a graphics (or 3D graphics?) oriented Stack Exchange site, it didn't make it out of beta.

Interesting, not surprising though... Game Development itself seems pretty low-use.  I asked one XNA-centric question and received no replies for weeks, where I've seen similar questions answered quickly on App Hub.  My new approach is to post on both sites, assuming the App Hub one is most likely to "hit" a good response.

Ah found it, it's still in public beta: http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/ and there is a suggestion for a SE for creating art: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7250/art-creation

Cool thanks, you should post that as an answer so I can give you full credit. :)  Tetrad's answer I feel is less complete than yours.

Specific art questions are on topic for this site.  I don't have any examples offhand of good art-centric questions, though.

There was one that was somewhat specific, but it was closed as they had asked the same question at the graphic design beta, which seems like a good place to direct those types of questions in my opinion.

So would the correct answer be http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/ then??

no, unless it's a graphic design question. http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/faq  3D art is off topic there.  2D art might be.

There is a Graphics Design stack exchange currently in beta.
Additionally there is a proposed site that seems to fit the desires you have, covering art creation in general. From the proposal:

Art Creation
Proposed Q&A site for artists, painters, drawers, caricaturists,
illustrators, cartoonists, graphic artists, engravers, sculptors, etc.
Basically art techniques and methodologies.

However, I don't know how long these things generally take, but the Art Creation site was proposed nearly a year ago and only has 10% commitment. Seems a long way off from the 100% needed to start beta. I guess it's time to start some promotion of your own if you want to get the site off the ground :)
As far as where the questions should go. I agree with Tetrad that on topic questions should come to us, I just don't think they have the same chance of being answered. Personally, if I had an art question, I would go for the site that's more likely to get the question answered, Graphics Design.


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Can we automatically convert tabs to spaces when users input code?
Obviously this is personal preference when you're creating code on your own machine. However, since adding tabs to a text box is not (as far as I know) natively supported in most browsers. Three or four spaces would make editing/formatting questions and answers easier. This wouldn't need to be done on paste (though that would be nifty), but could be done at question/answer save time. Is something like that feasible?
For example:
    Two tabs
    Eight spaces

Appears in the editor like:

Which makes it annoying for lining up things for formatting. Maybe this is just nit-picky, but it would be nice to have some consistency.
EDIT
Allow me to make this clearer, there seems to be some confusion.
I clearly agree that mixing tabs and spaces is bad. This post is advocating for not having both. Since browsers typically only allow spaces as input, I'm saying we should automatically switch to spaces. Otherwise, if you want to edit code that's been pasted in with tabs, you can only add spaces, therefore mixing tabs and spaces. If the editor converted tabs to spaces, we'd never have mixed tabs and spaces.

you mean other than the currently implemented 4 spaces? you know inserting 4 spaces works exactly like a tab

Well not exactly like a tab, but yes I'm aware that I can use spaces. However, if I copy and paste my code that contains tabs, they remain tabs even when saved. This means if I wanted to easily change the formatting I'd have to convert it to spaces or edit it outside the browser with tabs and paste it in then.

still you can use spaces even if you are editing a code which is indented by tabs. but I agree with you saying it's easier if all of them were the same.

Upvoted for great justice. I'd like to see this. Formatting on-paste might be a better idea because otherwise any adjustments to your code in the editor might look completely different when you post it.

some text editors support tab->Xspaces, and reverse such as notepad++. though I can see a possible issue having to copy over just to copy it again to SE

Yeah, it's easy with find replace is most text editors. And I've done with when editing other people's code, hence the request.

Much more clear now.

So is the question 'Can we', or 'Should we'? Because the former is a technical question, the latter a question of policy. I'm not qualified to answer the 'can', but might be more inclined to answer  the 'should'

@MrCranky I think it's fairly obvious that it can be technically done, with the easiest solution being at submission time. Feel free to read it as "should we".

I like the initial idea, but at the same time. I am going to play some "devil's advocate".
first the system would have to know the difference between code, and text upon insert, and the system does not know this until after the tags have been processed (which for many users myself included not even entered until after the question has been written/copied) so the system would have to know what code looks like.
the only way to implement this cleanly would probably require users to use XML/HTML tags for example: (not that [ is equivalent to <, and ] is equivalent to > )
[Code]
//paste code here, and have tabs converted to 4 spaces

[/Code]
which are valid tags, but some users myself included don't use them, and just want to be able to paste in code, and have this kind of functionality there
the other thing that I could see is for those users that purposely format their code with tabs for spacing of comments to the right of code test (for clarity/explanation)
TYPE varName        // this var does ______

so that it is not confused as part of the code line just in case color formatting doesn't  like it, and say that I just wanted 2 slashes.
but on the other hand I really would like something like this, and would appreciate it being implemented across all stackExchange sites, and probably the metas as well (code sometimes ends up on the meta sites)

"first the system would have to know the difference between code, and text upon insert, and the system does not know this until after the tags have been processed" This site doesn't use BBCode tags; it uses Markdown. You indent by four spaces or one tab for code. The system can understand immediately upon insert what's code or not.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the user doesn't currently have control over the number of spaces used to represent a tab character in their code? Does Markdown assume exactly 4 spaces per tab, always? If someone has written code with an indent-width of 2 but with spaces instead of tabs in their code, does the system handle that properly?
Indenting is the easier of the two cases, because regardless of the tab width, the indents will look 'right'. But for mid-line tabs, you're mixing single characters with the tabs, and unless they happen to use the same tab width as the site / browser, then regardless of whether they're kept as tabs or converted to spaces, mid-line tabs will not line up correctly, without the ability to set tab width on a block by block basis, it probably won't look right.
I'd say converting tabs to spaces on pasting (or at some other convenient point) has definite merit, but I think it would have either have to be a) an optional feature, or b) allow setting what the tab width actually is. Otherwise people with a tab-width other than 4 are going to be continually annoyed that their code is being 'fixed' to use a different tab width, and not giving them the option to keep the tabs they wrote it with.

If people are mixing spaces and tabs in there code,  I feel no remorse for their code not looking good when they move their code to a different format.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm pointing out that although indents will look right at any tab-width, mid-line tabs will only ever look right if the tab-width is the same as the user's.
Fundamentally though, I think it's a good idea, since it removes any ambiguity, and it's probably no worse than the current system where it's difficult to add tabs to code after it's been pasted. But if it screws people with tabs set to 2 or 3 wide, then I think having the option to turn it off might be prudent.

People with tabs set to 2 or 3 wide deserve to be screwed with.  :)  (Speaking as somebody who worked for many years at a studio that mandated two-space tabs.  ;) )

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sort: votes


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user names in comments should not count toward the total characters
I can understand that there is a minimum number of characters (to prevent spam)
but at the same time I sometimes want to include a deal of information into my comments, and end up short by a few characters, and it usually ends up being when responding directly to users that have longer names.
the system already understands to look up names when an "@" is entered into the comment box, so maybe having the system ignore the "@", and the characters that follow (unless it does not resolve to a user name)
this is a lot more feasible then another similar request that ignores all "`" marks, but when I consider the abuse of that it just makes my head spin.

I thought you only needed the first 3 characters (or enough to make it unique on the page) of a username for it to link/notify, so couldn't you just shorten the username in those instances where this is an issue?

If this matters that much to you, then you're using comments too much. Is the difference between 585 characters and 600 characters so great that it is absolutely essential to getting your point across?

granted some times I can be long winded/verbose in my comments, but I also try to add detail/clarifications to my comments that might in some cases over the top, but in others given needed information on the given post (question/answer) at hand. though when I see that my characters are almost up (within 100 or so) I do give a good read over the comment, and try to trim if I can.

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


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handling "feature like game X"
I have been seeing some questions that refer to some gameX. in some cases I have heard of, or even played the game in others I have not, and I feel the OP does not explain what the feature is, or even give information about the game itself. like this question, or this before edit
In the second example I asked directly for the OP to give reference to the games in a comment. is this appropriate, or should I take different action?

IMHO it really depends. We already discussed Is “How was entire game X made?” off-topic? And the answer is similar. People asking how game X was made doesnt have any sense, but asking how can implement a feature similar have.
On the second example, the OP wants to implement a Lobby server to link 2 random clients. He just didn't know the name and posted the games as example.
It would be great if someone that understood the problem in these cases go there and edit to precisely say what the OP is wanting to implement.

So, request further information on the specific feature desired rather then the game itself ( similar to what question 2 already had ), and attempt to disjoint the request from the game it is "similar" to, or taken from?

Exactly. We actually don't want to know that "game X have feature Y", we want to know the problem the OP is facing. If his problem is discover what technology did the game used, so it is offtopic. But if his problem actually is implementing a system, and the mentioned game was just a example because he cant explain better, so try to "fix" the question.


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C++/CLI syntax highlighting
Since it's come up, and it's worth distinguishing it from c++, I've added a c++cli tag to the site. It doesn't trigger C++ syntax highlighting though.
I request that the c++cli tag offer C++ syntax highlighting.

Probably this should also apply to the eventual C++/CX (used by WinRT in Metro) tag that surfaces.


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How much should one edit for readability?
Occasionally, there are questions that have good content, but are poorly written -- bad punctuation, grammar errors, no paragraph breaks, and sometimes just a bad grasp of English.  Good questions mind you, things worth asking, but just poorly written.  One today started with "Me and a friend" that got me thinking about this.
My theory is that when someone reads a poorly written question, they don't give it the real consideration it may deserve.  It's too easy to focus on bad presentation and ignore good content.  I've seen answers (and comments) where readers are failing to "translate" the question, and are just assuming it's a bad/dumb question based on the presentation.
So to that end, what do people think about "uplifting" questions that are inherently good, but poorly written?  There are definitely wrong ways to do this - snarky ways.  And one doesn't want to make the OP feel dumb in the process or be a "grammar nazi" about it.  But still, some could use a bit of help I'd think?

Be bold with editing, but respect the original author.
What is the etiquette for modifying posts?
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-great-edit-wars/
Fix grammar, spelling, links, remove "hi" and "thanks", and all that stuff.

I try to edit my questions for readability, ensuring that inverse pyramid style where the most important part comes first and the less important later, the question part is clearly marked, footnotes are indeed moved to footnote position etc. -- yet I mostly always close them with a thanks. What's so hurtful about that word of appreciation?

It's not that it's hurtful, it's just that it takes up space that doesn't need to be there.  It's a personal style thing, and if I'm going to edit a post for readability or other reasons, and there is a hi/thanks, I'll remove that too.  I will say that salutations are more annoying (and most are automatically culled).  See this meta thread for more details: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts


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Are questions about pinball on topic?
Are design questions related to pinball on topic here? I mean in terms of fun factor, layouts, scoring setups and the like not the actual physical tables since I'm working with a virtual one anyway.

Most (all?) questions on the site are about computer/video games.  I don't have a problem with it but you might get either no answers or maybe people complaining that it's off topic.

I'm pretty sure we've got questions about virtual board games and no one says they're off-topic. This is either the same thing or even closer to video games, since physical pinball machines are basically video games. I don't understand the hate for pinball on Stack Exchange. :/

With all due respect, how is this an answer? He asked exactly if this is in-topic, saying "people might complain it's off-topic" is kind of recursive...

@lohoris The site is community moderated. I'm just one guy with an opinion. It's entirely possible for community members to vote to close the question as off topic without any intervention from me. And if they do, I'll probably not reverse their decision. I'm just saying I wont close it outright because of the subject matter.

Sure, but there are some guidelines in every stack exchange, with the precise intent of determining what is and isn't in-topic.

Right. That's what we are doing now. I put out my opinion. People voted on my answer. Other people can feel free to make their own if they disagree. It's a fluid process.  Things that were formerly on topic are now not, and vice versa.


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Vote to close is missing a spam option
When I saw the contents of the question https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/29067/how-to-create-3-dimensional-effective-game-in-java it was immediatly clear that it was a spam message, but when I voted to close I couldn't find any spam option, so I chose the off-topic option which others had used as well.
There is the flag as spam option though, but I'm not sure how close votes and flagging are related

Spam should be deleted, not closed. Deletions are done by moderators, informed by flags. Closures are done by the whole (high-rep) community, and can be undone by the community if there's disagreement or the question is fixed.
As shown in that question, you can hasten the deletion process to cause a "community delete" by downvoting; high-rep users who are not mods can delete questions that are very downvoted.

Just to add on to that, what we usually do for spam users is "destroy" them, which deletes all content they own.

So the next time I see spam I should flag for spam and close-vote for offtopic?

@RoyT: Don't waste a close vote on it. Just flag it. If you really feel it's necessary, downvote it.


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How do I start a chat room?
How do I open a chat room in chat? Do I need more reputation or something? Is opening a room possible?I couldn't find any mention of it in the chat faqs, or anywhere, and I tried asking this question in the sandbox, but no one answered.This should really be explained in the faqs.

It's a privilege you gain with 100 reputation: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/privileges/chat-rooms, but there is no mention of this in the chat faq: http://chat.stackexchange.com/faq. Maybe a note should be added.
It should also be noted that all chat rooms are public and indexed by google. The only reason to make chat rooms is to not disturb those in other channels.

When you open the chat window (chat links in on upper right) you get a message box

Welcome to The Stack Exchange Network chat! You'll need 20 reputation
  to talk here. This site is moderated by the community, so please be
  respectful of your fellow The Stack Exchange Network users. And while
  you're at it, check out the FAQ!

I don't know about opening new rooms though.


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'Getting started' questions - shouldn't we have something for this?
I see that we closed another 'how do I get started' question, as the FAQ forbids them. Fair enough. But in my opinion it's a valid question, and only judged invalid because most of us have moved past that point and no longer see much value in answering it. This means that absolute novices are locked out of GDSE until they've learned enough to have better questions to ask - but they may never reach that point without some help at the start. Closing or voting down bad questions may keep the quality of the site high, but doesn't help to grow the community.
Stack Overflow is not completely averse to helping people get started, eg.:

Language Books/Tutorials for popular languages
How to learn C and Objective-C

Admittedly many similar questions are closed, but I think that questions of this nature that are asked in such a way that the answers are useful and generalisable are themselves of value.
I don't think we should allow this sort of question over and over again, as it obviously doesn't contribute much, but we should have somewhere authoritative to direct people when we close their question. We should probably have a community wiki question like, "What are some good resources for getting started in game development?". There would be many answers, some good, some less good, but the voting should bubble the best suggestions to the top, making it a good resource for beginners to consult.

We've somewhat already discussed this.
A small idea to prevent new users from posting subjective questions
We kind of already do have questions we can point beginners to, they're just closed.
Must read game development books
Good game design books?
Free ebooks about game development
What are good games to "earn your wings" with?
This somewhat mirrors some of SO's popular threads (but not all of them), for example:  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read
Somewhat relevant discussion on other sites' meta, although there doesn't seem to be a consensus:
Where do books & learning sources questions belong?
The problem is, unless that list is actively curated and updated then the links are going to stagnate.
A relevant discussion in the chat room: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3027959#3027959
Personally I'm of the opinion that we should close "how do I get started" questions, but put a link in there to the gpwiki how do I get started page.  And reinforce that SE's Q&A format is better for specific, answerable problems

Personally I don't think the gpwiki page is a good resource, which is why I'd prefer us to have a selection of possible starting points that we can vote on.

As for, "unless that list is actively curated and updated then the links are going to stagnate", that is true of any answer that cites references and external resources. The alternative is to say, "Links will break, but opinions are worthless, so let's pretend the question doesn't exist". I appreciate people want to keep SE full of good questions and answers, but I think that we have to be wary of closing the site to novices by saying that this community of experienced people is basically not allowed to help them because they don't know enough yet.

Two points: 1) if you don't think gpwiki is a good resource, there's nothing preventing you (or anybody else) from improving on it (it is a wiki after all)

I'd rather steer the site towards being useful for experts and not novices, because experts are going to be the ones that are generating traffic from other experts, providing answers to questions, and in general adding the most value to the site.  All of the off topic questions in the FAQ are geared towards keeping the site interesting for the people who have the most to give.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/11/question-closed-and-its-probably-best-that-way/

The one thing that all experts have in common is that they were novices once, so every novice we turn away is a potential future expert who will give nothing to the site. One answer that caters to beginners is hardly going to dilute the quality of it for experts, and to be fair most of the questions here are of little interest to real experts anyway.

I don't agree with point 2 above, and heartily agree with Kylotan's comment.  Some experts are also teachers, and in fact these so called "off topic" questions are in fact quite interesting, and exactly the thing that some people can answer, and answer well.

Note that I'm not against novices using the site.  I'm firmly in the "no question is too simple" camp.  The point that I'm making is that subjective questions ("how do I get started") are bad questions and should be removed.  Bad questions drive away experts.

@Tetrad still sounds quite snobish as soon as you say anything toward the line of "usable to A, but not B" besides anyone who claims themselves "expert" is probably just inflating their ego. I like the idea of maybe putting something in GDSE's FAQ about please read through this link before posting.
A person can be an expert of a subset of the whole, but not an expert of all, and everybody starts somewhere.

It's not a matter of people being novices.  It's a matter of bad questions driving away people who can answer.  Read the other blog I posted, and read this one as well.  http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/  StackExchange works best for questions that can be answered objectively and stand the test of time.  "How do I get started" is going to be subjective, anecdotal at best.  It'll be the kind of question that garners a lot of low-scoring answers that are all equally valid.  They aren't interesting or useful, and dimish the value of the site as a whole.

I'm going to continue to close "how do I get started" questions as not constructive.  People who ask that should really be reading articles, blogs, books, and podcasts (like this one) to get to where they need to be for themselves.  SE isn't designed to be all things for all people.  At its core it's about expert answers to questions.

I think the FAQ is pretty clear and the main problem with bad questions is people not reading it. Or not understand what 'open question' and 'objective answer' means. I'm not an 'expert' myself, but I find the expert/novice stuff a moot point. "If the anwer is a book, don't ask" sounds pretty straightforward to me.

Maybe having a section on "getting started" in the faq might alleviate the issue. Mostly, beginners are lacking an overview over the field, which leads to questions without focus.

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


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Add migration path to code review?
A lot of questions we see around here are "my code doesn't work" and the OP is just asking someone to look at his code and fix it for them. It might be nice to have an easy migration path for these to https://codereview.stackexchange.com/
Thoughts?

are you talking about cases where OP has not made an attempt to have a http://sscce.org/ example, or are you talking about any question that involves code?

Doesn't seem appropriate.
From the FAQ:

What kind of questions can I ask here?
Code Review - Stack Exchange is for sharing code from projects you are
  working on for peer review. If you are looking for feedback on a
  specific working piece of code from your project in the following
  areas…
Best practices and design pattern usage
Security issues
Performance
Correctness in unanticipated cases

then you are in the right place!
However, if your question is not about a particular piece of code and
  instead is a generally applicable question about …
Tools, best practices, improving, or conducting code reviews
Trouble-shooting, debugging, or understanding code snippets
Higher-level architecture and design of software systems

then your question is off-topic for this site.

Key things I took from this are:

"... working piece of code from your project ..." is on topic.
"Trouble-shooting, debugging, or understanding code snippets" is off topic.

That all being said, I could see a reason for adding it for actual code review questions but I feel like that doesn't happen very often here.

In the few cases where it actually makes sense you can just flag for moderator review as we can migrate to any site.  But the general "here's my code what's wrong" questions are off topic for code review.

I should have read the faq first, I think these questions in general are just unconstructive.

Migrated from comment to Answer
I can see where the questions of "here's my code find whats wrong" can be unconstructive especially if the code is not functional, and the OP has not made an attempt to create an  SSCCE example.
But I would think that maybe migration to codeReview might not be best, but maybe to programming, or SO.
If the question is maybe about the code not working to the extent of addressing the functionality of a game, or gamedesign principal, so "my character moves like this, but should be moving like this" would be mostly on-topic here (GD), but "my fileIO function isn't outputting, or reading right" would be off-topic, and better suited for an SE that more directly addresses general programming functionality.
I think the big take away isn't so much that all "my code isn't working right" are off-topic, or unconstructive, but instead each should be looked at in isolation as to if the problem with it pertains to Game Development, or if it is a general programming problem/error, and then migrated accordingly if need be.
considering that a good majority of game development (even in most engines) has to do with some level of programming we shouldn't be forcing away questions on helping with programming tuning/functionality, but we should maybe try to at least ask people to have their coding question pertaining to the game development aspect, and not so much the "it just doesn't work" those need to be boiled down to SSCCE, and might need to be migrated to programming, or SO.
[slightTangent]I think users should realize just because your programming for a game doesn't mean that your actual question can only apply to game development. much like most questions about finding a new pathfinding(A*) heuristic can also be about algorithm optimization, or communication between game entities could really be about message queuing between data objects.


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Are "why did game X do Y questions" not constructive?
I am bringing this up because of this question:
What constraint (if any) limits crowd animation variety?
What's being asked in this case is: why did these companies make this decision?
I feel like this is a rehash of the situation dealt with in Is “How was entire game X made?” off-topic?

The exact answers are unknowable, unless someone from one of these companies is here. Different companies might have done the same thing for completely different reasons.
Any answers we do get will be speculation.
It doesn't help anyone to know this. If Game A was limited by memory and Game B limited by budget, that has nothing to do with you, the developer of Game C, facing your own unique challenges. This is not a practical, answerable question based on an actual problem that you face.

As Jeff commented on the other discussion's question, it's trivia.
A more helpful form of this question would be to, upon encountering a situation where you have an actual problem here, ask about it.

You say, "What's being asked in this case is: why did these companies make this decision?"
I disagree: what they're asking is, "What are the factors involved in systems like this which result in such outcomes?"
The question linked to was quite careful to avoid asking why a particular game made that choice, and instead was querying the type of limitations and constraints that presumably make it impractical for every character to be have completely bespoke animations.
The answer to such a question is often useful - as Tetrad said, there are performance considerations which make this approach more efficient.

Huh. That actually makes it quite a wise question to ask. I agree! Thankyou. :)

I would take it on a case by case basis.
In that specific example, "because it's likely that it's significantly cheaper/faster to skin one model and draw it a bunch of times instead of skinning a bunch of different models for the unique frames of animation they are in" is a good answer.
It's really questions that would give nothing but bad answers that I would worry about.
The "trivia" comment is mostly about "which tech did this game use", which is trivia and not very useful.

Kylotan has me convinced these can be good questions, so I agree with the case-by-case basis, and that this could be a good question.

I think there are many common sacrifices or trade offs the games make that are useful for people to know.
My answer to the crowd question was mostly speculation, (though I was a producer on the London Olympics game from Sega for a short time), but I think speculation is also interesting.
If I was developing a game that had crowds, I think it would be useful to search the site for crowds and basically browse the issues other people faced. It might solve a problem I didn't even know I had yet.

though isn't that almost the point. that almost anyone can come and postulate an answer without direct experience, or proof of concept, and just speculation. isn't the speculation in, and of itself requesting a conversation/discussion?

But I think the speculation is constructive. It gives somebody something to start with until somebody comes along with facts. The speculation might move them closer to finding their answer.

As it was my question, I should obviously submit an answer here.
I'll start by saying that I welcome this discussion and that I do believe my question and potential answers would be constructive.
What I think is bad about the question, perhaps, is that the pre-amble to the question names a specific game.  "I was playing Tiger Woods..."
Now, if I reword the intro, and I will after posting this because I believe it is necessary, to say "I have noticed in many sports games", I think it widens the context.
If there is indeed somebody in this community who has experience in creating any sports game with an animated crowd then I fully believe that they will be able to provide a constructive, authorative answer.
With that in mind, I think that:

Why do sports games have little variation in the crowd animations?

...is no different to:

Why do MMORPG games have...?
Why do racing games....?

As I said, I welcome this discussion.  It is a community after all.

"What I think is bad about the question, perhaps, is that the pre-amble to the question names a specific game." No, I'm aware of that, hence my second sentence.

Can't "These companies" mean "Game Development companies in general"?

I can understand the want to know "why", but at the same time that is not the point of a Q&A site (it is a matter of popular debate). sites like GDSE are interested in "how" questions, or "I am trying, and not successeding at X" questions (these will probably be better posed as the former then the latter). we are here to help people that have problems, and offer solutions, and not to play guessing games on "why". now if this was a site that had moderators from nintedo we could maybe ask those "why did nindedo do X", but it is highly likely that even there they would be removed, and/or closed.


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Why are the moderators on this site closing all the good questions?
Not everyone is an advanced programmer.  Some of us are new and want to learn the basics and so have basic questions.  I think it is really dickish of you guys to keep closing questions for noobs.

Are you serious? Well, you didn't get the point of this site then. If you want a discussion, then go to a forum! I know it's a bit stressful when your question gets closed, but don't spam with questions like this here!

this is a q&a site. try a forum like gamedev.net or the chat here if you don't have an answerable and constructive question to ask.

Read the FAQ for more infos.

You are going to need to give examples.

I really want to close this question as a dupe of this one: http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/542/request-relax-a-bit-on-moderation-and-dont-be-so-eager-to-shut-down-questions

Basic questions are perfectly acceptable. However, basic questions that lack key information or show complete lack of research get closed. For example (if this question weren't totally off topic and I've voted to close it as such), you ask about why "all the good questions" are being closed, but you don't provide any examples or link to any such questions. In my opinion none of the "good questions" are being closed. You've left out key information. Am I just supposed to guess which questions you're talking about? If we're left to guess your meaning, you won't get the answers you want.
Same thing goes for many of the questions I assume you're talking about. For example a recent question that was closed:

iOS Game Development
I'm an iOS app developer. But I dont have any gaming development experience and I'm excited to learn and start. Can anyone suggest from where I should start? When I search internt I find lot of buz words. Game engines(like Cocos2D), openGL, iOS GameCenter development etc. I'm confused. From where should I start among those. Appreciate your help in advance. (Source (deleted))

This was closed because it's not a real question as defined by the FAQ. The gamedev stackexchange site is for practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. The question above is not really answerable and its practicality is questionable. The OP doesn't say what they want to do. It's like asking: "Should I use a hammer, screwdriver, sailboat or lemon peels?". Without telling you want I want to accomplish, it's pretty difficult to answer. Beyond that the question is so broad it would be impractical to try to give an answer. I can imagine an entire book on how to get started in game development for iOS. Are we supposed to write all that to answer the question?
So, where does one get started? It totally depends on what the person knows already, how they prefer to learn and what their ultimate goal is. It would be impractical to attempt to make a generic answer for everyone and it wouldn't even be a good answer.

As an aside, I think this is an example of a great answer to a bad question.

It's not that your questions are being closed for being noob-ish or silly, it's that they do not meet the criteria required for the site. A good question has is specific, has a single 'best' answer, is not readily google-able, and is not a repost of a previously asked question.


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Reputation not updating properly
I currently see a reputation of 31 in my profile with four badges. So far I have answered two questions: One received neither up-, nor down-vote but the other one received 5 up-votes and was accepted as an answer.
Yesterday - before my answer got accepted and once more up-voted (from 4 to 5), my reputation was already 31, and now, after an accepted answer and an update it's still 31?
Apparently my answer got accepted about 9 hours ago - is it possible, that my reputation has not been updated yet?
In my reputation-tracker the accepted & again up-voted answer does not even appear, the last recorded reputation change is from May 29.
EDIT
I just noticed, that if each up-vote is +10 and I got 5 up-votes, then in fact two up-votes are missing? Because 5 * 10 = 50 + rep for getting accepted as an answer.

On all SE sites, reputation by casting a vote applies immediately. But it'll take some time before you see the changes caused by deleting a post or undoing vote up or vote down. As far as I know (and have experience) there is nothing wrong with the system. But about why you didn't receive those, I've got a theory! if you check your profile now it indicates you didn't answer that question, that's because your answer is now considered as "community wiki". In fact any answer that has more than 10 edits is considered as community wiki. which means you won't get any benefit from vote-up, and you won't receive penalty for vote-downs. Now If I'm not wrong, your answer had 3 votes before your 10 edits, so you received reputation for it, but other two votes and the accept happened when you were not owner of that answer. And the reason why you could see the answer with 5 votes in your profile should be the fact that these kind of updates take some time to apply. I'm not sure if I could explain it good enough, ask me if you still have any problems.

Oh I think I get it - what a bummer :(. I had to edit the answer a (felt) hundred times - because the question was initially unclear (I think it was edited later on by the OP) and the OP always requested additional infos in the comments -_- ...

@Zainodis Gajet is correct about the votes not counting towards your reputation due to community wiki.  This doesn't change the fact it's a great answer!  I'm sure more reputation will head your way.

@JarrodDixon Thanks for the nice comment, really appreciated :)

@Zainodis For the record: this is one of the reasons to bring discussions into chat. Discuss things at length with the person asking for more information, talk about whatever you want and resolve their further questions, then go back and do a single large edit to your post containing all the information relevant to the solution (or a couple of large edits along the way - up to you).

@JonathanHobbs I guess you're right, however how you tell that person: Meet me in chat (As I can't drop him a message, except in the comments)? The whole thing stretched over days and I am not always on, neither was the OP I guess. And I really wanted to help him. In the end I concluded it's all right, at least he got his help and can move on with the game he's working on and I guess that's the whole point of it :)

@Zainodis Go to chat and create a room, then link to it.

@JonathanHobbs thanks for the hint, I'll keep it in mind for the future.


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What are all these edits by 'Community'?
I keep seeing old questions popping up, marked as changed by the 'Community' user.
Today it was these:

Help for choosing a cost effective game server for Flash client
Events and objects being skipped in GameMaker
2D character controller in unity (trying to get old-school platformers back)

What's going on here?

If you look at the user's profile it reads:

Hi, I'm not really a person.
I'm a background process that helps keep this site clean!
I do things like

Randomly poke old unanswered questions every hour so they get some attention
Own community questions and answers so nobody gets unnecessary reputation from them
Own downvotes on spam/evil posts that get permanently deleted
Own suggested edits from anonymous users

So I think we're seeing those random pokes. Now, as for why it picks the questions it does, I don't know.

I believe it simply randomly picks questions with no upvoted answers -- the three questions under discussion certainly fit that criteria at the moment.

@JoshPetrie Yep, that's basically what it does.


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Math related game programming question
I'm trying to make a game engine in C++ using openGL and I've been stuck trying to create an importer for Collada Documents. My big issue is that the collada documents use math slightly more advanced than my personal knowledge, and so I was confused by the compression they use when saving polygons/polylists where they only give two of three coordinates for a surface normal and for one of two tangents on a given plane and the third must be calculated.
I was wondering if this question would be most appropriate on here or if it should go on the Math SE or if it should be on SO. The reason I assumed here is because it relates more to the collada compression methods than the programming or math itself, and I think that if someone happened to know this (perhaps game designers may have used .DAE files in their own projects) they may be able to explain it a bit better than I could as the question to programmers or mathematicians.

It's probably fine here.


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Tag summaries are oblivious to tag linking syntax: [tag:this-thing]
We've recently added a summary for the time-management which includes references to the tags timing and time-travel, using the very same fancy tag markup I used just now.
The syntax doesn't get parsed though and just shows up in plain text. Go look at the tag summary right now above the questions, or look at the autocomplete for it in the Ask Question page. You'll see what I mean. I've opted not to edit it further just so you can see this happening (not a huge problem since the tag is only rarely used).

I imagine the best case scenario for the fix would be that we see time-travel this fancy thing. In the autocomplete dropdown it should probably do nothing but look pretty - it could insert the mentioned tag instead, but this could lead to confusion and errors if someone clicks on that box to pick that tag for the suggestion, and accidentally click on a link to another tag mentioned in that description.

The summaries do not allow anything fancy. They are plain text only, and very much by design. That's also why you do not see a preview for the the excerpt when editing the tag wiki, unlike for the main content – there's nothing to preview.

Thanks for the explanation! :)


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Add a label showing server time to SE pages
well, I'm pretty sure it won't be more than two or three lines of code, But I would appreciate a simple server time somewhere in page (maybe in it's footer). The things is one can't really tell when a day ends and when a new one begins! I'm not sure how many people will need this but still it would be nice to know when the day number is going to be changed!

Why is it important to know?

It helps if you know where the day rolls over. since there are many things that are bundled with day cycle in this site. for example we have daily reputation (and also it's cap), and the visiting streak.

In your profile, if you hold your mouse over seen: 1 second ago, it will display a tooltip with the near current UTC time. I will assume that days roll-over at midnight Zulu Time.

that does help actually :D


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What happens to questions that are closed?
The FAQ didn't seem to indicate what the [closed] status indicates when applied to a question.  Aside from the obvious (such as additional answers are not allowed), what happens to them?  Do they eventually get deleted?
Here's an example:
What are some programming design patterns that are useful in game development?
This question was closed back in January, but it's still around...

Do note that closed questions can still be useful. We still have useful information available in closed questions - they're just closed whilst leaving the information available for people searching for it.

Do closed questions ever get deleted?
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/


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Deleting this inappropriate answer, please
Is it possible to delete this answer by any moderator or anyone who has the privilage to do so?
Link to the Question :: What can I do to make sure that I have the energy to work on my game while working full-time?

That's what the "flag" button is for.


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Is it right when forum formed question gets up-voted, but simple question gets downvoted?
I've seen couple of forum questions and they get upvoted:

they are about problem of one person in certain code
code problems,bugs are caused by mistakes and lack of understanding of programming languages
to answer them is needed discussion often provided via comments and edits
answering them won't help anyone else reading this question
it mistakes a lot of people, because the question title looked like thing they were looking for

I've seen couple of good simple/malformed questions and they get downvoted:

users posting them are newbies at SE and don't know how to ask questions at this site
simple question, but user is newbie in certain area and don't know how to start
user don't know very good English to explain its problem

Is that right??

"good simple/malformed questions" If they're malformed, then they need to be closed until they're fixed.

No, it's not right. Most of those should be downvoted and some closed, except for users who don't know English, and their questions should be edited. Please downvote most of these questions - remember that downvotes for questions are free!
The sad reality is that it's easier to see if a question is a "getting started" question than it is to see a question is a discussion question or "debug my code" question.
For questions of these types:

it mistakes a lot of people, because the question title looked like thing they were looking for
user don't know very good English to explain its problem

If you submit an edit, and the question is worth editing (i.e. please don't turn poorly-written "how do I get started" questions into well-written "how do I get started" questions), the edits should get approved. I try to come through at least every other day and approve pending edits, and there's so few I imagine the other high-rep users are also.


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use gamedev as support channel for game framework?
We are considering to use gamedev.stackexchange.com as the primary support channel for the html5 game framework craftyjs. Would this be appropriate? Look at our google group to get an idea of the kind of questions.

As long as they're not "general javascript" questions that would be better suited to SO I don't see why not.

I think it would be appropriate. But answering the same questions on SO (where they would fit too) instead could give you more visibility. When a developper has a programming problem, he will naturally go to SO first, even if he is developping with a game frameword.


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Should "pity up-votes" be discouraged?
I regularly see people up-vote questions that are about to get closed. Usually the question is an obvious duplicate or a "where to get started" question. I think it's a good idea to try to set the OP straight in the comments and get them pointed to the help they need. Also, if I can see that the OP is really trying to create a good question (albeit off topic) or apologetic about their mistake, I can see not down voting. But wouldn't up voting such a question only give people the wrong idea? Should we discourage people from up voting questions that are "bad"?
Examples:
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/32589/first-programming-language-c
Easiest way to create a 2d game in Java?

Secondary question: "How should 'pity upvotes' be discouraged?"

I suppose just by asking. But that's a good question, since it's not clear who up votes.

For every pity upvote there's a knee-jerk down vote that needs to be countered sometimes.

0) It has already been discussed here Almost every question get's at least one up, even if they are bad
1) It may or may not be a systemic issue: Is there an actual "pity" or "sympathy" upvote problem?
2) The opinions all over the place Towards Preventing "Pity Up Votes"
Opinions regarding "Is pity-voting a problem?" from that thread:

"Yes it's a problem, and the problem is that a pity upvote counteracts 10 downvotes. We should rebalance the score, either by making downvotes more punishing or by making upvotes on negative scores less rewarding"
"No; I upvote a -5 question because it's actually a -2 question"
"No; I want to encourage a new user to participate. The negative score is enough to indicate an issue"
"Mu; People will vote how they will"

Thanks Jimmy, I looked around gamedev meta, but not the main SE. Oops. This is as answered as it's going to get in those threads. Thanks for looking into that.


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Is this user spamming?
I'm very new here so I may be wildly off mark, but after reading the FAQ again I'm not sure if this is kosher.
I saw 3 simultaneous questions from one user here 1 hour ago and so I decided to have a look as two were definitely not up to the normal standards (I dont have rights to vote yet so I cant do much about it or flag them).
Questions here: What's the reason behind collision-boxes?, Writing a Massive Multiplayer Onlinegame by Own How to handle a Block World like Minecraft
Wondering how he got so much rep while asking these kinds of questions I looked at the profile and it seems the user posts alot of questions of SO which are answered and the answers accepted allowing the user's rep to reach that point where it crosses sites.
So I guess my question is, is constructive question spamming for rep gain considered spam or do we have a http://xkcd.com/810/ on our hands here?
[Obviously its just as likely as it a new user who hasn't read the FAQ and I'm being very paranoid!]

I think it's just a case of I-want-to-make-an-awesome-minecraft-MMO-itis and not intentional spamming.

I fail to see the spamming. He was asking several questions in a short period of time, but some people are curious :)
If you have at least 200 rep on any stackexchange account and associate that account with another one, then you get 100 reputation as a starting bonus. Nothing fishy here.
Also some of his questions got downvoted so heavily, I really doubt he was asking this for the reputation.

Cheers, good to know! (sorry for the massive lag, I've been off on holiday)


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Are "code reviews" allowed?
A "Code Review" Stack Exchange exists currently in beta. I often see code review type questions on Stack Overflow, where the community adds comments recommending the OP posts the review on the Code Review Stack Exchange, instead of Stack Overflow.
Given that games programming is a specialised subset of programming, would it be acceptable to post code review type questions here (as total visibility would be poorer on the Code Review beta, and the target audience would be better suited here)?
I have written a small Snake game that's only ~300 LoC, and since I'm very new to game development, I wish to know what could be improved, and would rather seasoned games developer give me advice than any type of programmer which may visit the Code Review beta.

It shouldn't really matter whether a game developer gives you the review or not.

Posting a snippet of code you're having a specific problem with and asking for help in identifying the bug or undesirable behavior, especially if the subject is very game-specific and thus likely to have better input from actual game developers, is certainly on-topic (I think).
But posting many (in the hundreds) of lines of code and asking for a generalized review of that code is not, especially since the Code Review SE exists. If nothing else this just stifles the development of that beta site, when instead we should be encouraging it to grow (where it makes sense).
If Code Review never gets out of beta, I'd reconsider this stance, but even then I suspect it is better to ask for a review in the chat or on a discussion forum site like GDNet.


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How do you link to answer?
Usually when need to link an answer i only know how to link the entire question, but how do you link a specific answer from the page?

If you look at this question, go to the first answer and look below it you'll find the following, share edit flag, share will give you a link like this.

ah i see, i thought that would just contain ways to post to social media but i found the link now, thanks!


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TeX should be supported on GameDev, like on Math.SE, Physics, et. al

Possible Duplicate:
math markdown on this site

I was editing "Detect mouse click on a bezier curve's neighborhood" and was surprised to find that GameDev lacks TeX support.
Having TeX support would hugely improve readability of some quality answers such as,

Adding air drag to a golf ball trajectory equation
How to achieve uniform speed of movement on a bezier curve?

Although the majority of questions and answers present equations in code, it's useful to be able to discuss equations in math. Mathematical equations may have better documentation, are code agnostic and are probably how people studied the concepts in school.
I would love to be able to see this work,
$$
\Gamma(z) = \int_0^\infty t^{z-1}e^{-t}dt\,.
$$

Waiting for somebody to point out that we do have TeX support, but it's obscured in the FAQ and uses different tags from all the other sites.


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Are questions about the game industry welcome here?
I recently asked a question about the size of our industry, and the reactions it sollicited were very unexpected (for me at least). A sizable part of the community (or at least a very vocal part) considered the question did not belong here, and it lead to a lot of downvotes. At the same time, another portion felt it was right at home here, and it lead to a lot of upvotes too.
Currently the scores are 5 upvotes to 6 downvote. Considering I could not vote myself, but I obviously do think the question to be relevent, it makes a perfect split between pros and against n the few people that expressed their opinion.
The question generated a lot of comments too, and these created a debate i find highly interesting.
A question that rose was: do questions about the game industry (for which there is a tag: game-industry, how aptly named ^^) belong to the site?
Or, as they do not refer to game development itself, but to people doing the game development, should they go to meta? The problem is meta is for questions about the site, not really for meta-questions about game development.
Aside for obviously wanting an answer to the question itself (which is not really the point here), I would like to know what the community feels about the game industry questions in general. And what should we do about all the existing questions with this tag?

Of course questions about the industry belong here. However, not all questions about the industry belong here -- and I do think that

Your specific question is unsuitable because it's very difficult to give an answer to the question that was asked that is objective and not highly time-sensative (and would thus be irrelevant for future visitors). It's also unclear what specific problem your question represents. That's why I voted to close it.
The "game industry" tag is fairly useless as a tag and generally more specific, directed tags are applicable.

What happened next answered if questions about the industry are welcome: they are not. The question I was talking about got flamed and closed. The message from the community has been loud and clear.
The community as a whole does not see why you would ask such a question, as does Josh. I'd say the community is narrow-minded here. This question is essential to a lot of people. It's important for people creating game frameworks or for people creating tools for developpers.
A question having a time-sensitive answer does not mean it should not go on a Q&A site. Or else StackOverflow would not host a whole lot of questions: very few programming questions have an answer that will stand against time. In fact, a lot will not survive to the next version of the relevant programming language.
All in all, knowing what was the answer to a factual question one two or even 5 years before (I have good faith in Game Development to survive this long) is still way better than no answer at all.
And a question which is difficult to answer is at its place here. It is even more so than an easy to answer question: if a question is easy to answer by having a little personnal culture or by a quick internet search, the interest of having it here is low. Answers to difficult questions are invaluable.
The question I was talking about has been closed for being "ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical". Problem is, it's not. It's very factual, very precise and very useful for market research.
Maybe the question should have been closed for being irrelevant to this site. There is a case to be made here. But it IS a real question. An unusual one. An unwelcome one, as it appears. But a real question nonetheless.

I think you are taking things a little too personally. The reaction to a single question tagged "game-industry" being closed is not indicative of the overall category of game-industry-related questions being unsuitable. Furthermore there are many close reasons, and "too localized" (in scope or time) is one of them. The site only displays the close vote that got the majority vote, not all the votes that were cast.

@JoshPetrie: the close reason that got the majority vote is the close reason for the community. That's the way a community-driven site works. I understand it is not your reason. I don't take this personally, I'm just disappointed to figure out that this site won't be a potential source of information for a lot of the data I am needing or will need in the near future.

Actually, I mentioned the close reason thing because I also meant to include the following point, which I then forgot to write: I think that this community as a whole doesn't choose appropriate close reasons very well, we just tend to pile on whichever one was voted first. But that is a separate meta discussion itself.


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Should I answer questions that do not belong here?
I downvoted and flagged this question, because the user was asking the typical "what technology should I use" stuff, and it was fairly obvious that he didn't read or that he didn't understand the FAQ. But, should I answer these questions with what I think he should use, or suggest something? Or does that belong to the comments? Also, about people who do answer the question, do the answers deserve a downvote (there is no way to be both objective and actually answer the question)?
Also, please not that the question I linked to was edited to refer only to HTML5, but it was very broad and vague at the time (and it still is).

No, I don't think one should answer questions that don't belong, because all it does it set or reinforce the precedent that it's okay to ask inappropriate questions because we'll still answer them anyway.
Now, if a question can be edited or otherwise improved so as to become answerable, I'd say one should absolutely make the edit or suggest the improvement via a comment. But until the question meets the criteria for a good question for the site, I think that answering it only helps to contribute to the problem.

What about dealing with existing answers? Leave them be? Down vote? Maybe upvote if its useful (useful, but not objective)?

I don't know how I feel about existing answers; downvoting them seems harsh but it's probably the right solution. The answer is not "useful" in the sense that it doesn't contribute to a good question/answer culture matching the guidelines for appropriate questions on the site, I guess.

@Bane, Once a question is edited to a valid and the answer suits, it will be awkward if down-voted. I would leave it be as the answer can be valid, i.e. if OP edits the question, the answers should still fit.


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12 Hours of GDSE: Is quality going downhill?
I have just harvested the questions asked on Gamedev.SE in the last 12 hours (from when I started writing this). Here they are, from most recent to last:

The most popular pattern for game-related programming in C++
Do UDP game clients/servers block for receive calls?
2D jerky motion with AddForce and physics
simulating light using masks on iPad
2d character sprite customisation
Is there anything equivalent to Portal 2's linked_portal_door in any other engines?
How to make and correctly use progress bar in cocos2d-iphone?
What is the correct way of changing image of existing CCSprite?
Something like libgdx for C++ / cross-platform (with mobile) SDK
CCsprite.flipX not working!
Do Apple and Google ask for a share if custom payment is done in a free app?
Sea water shader using only fragment processor
VBO and gl*Pointer management practises?
Carmack Head Mounted Display optimized DOOM and the Oculus Rift are on the way, where are some good developer forums for this new class of HMDs?
XNA Framework sprite vectors and also scaling

In 12 hours, we got 15 questions. So let's look at how well we're doing.
#1 is pretty obviously unacceptable. If that were on SO, it'd have been closed and deleted inside of 10 minutes. It's clearly subjective, polling, and not constructive; it's not even good subjective.
#9 is likewise garbage. It's a "find me some tech" questions, which we don't do.
#13 is at best borderline.
#14 is obviously unacceptable too.
So, of the 15 questions, 4 are things that ought to be closed. The concern isn't the ratio of 4:11 (over 25%); the concern is the fact that all four questions remain open.
#1 is understandable; it's recent, and GDSE doesn't get huge amounts of traffic. But as of right now, #9 has exactly one close vote: mine. #13 again has only my close vote. And #14 has three including mine. (note: #1 was closed 1 hour 34 minutes after it was posted. Which is pretty reasonable for a site this size).
Question 9 has been on the site for 8 hours. Granted, these are daylight hours, and it's only been viewed by 35 people. Indeed, all of these questions have low view counts, mainly in the 30s and 40s.
Having these kinds of questions on the site for extended periods without closing them is a broken windows problem. It gives the appearance that these questions are accepted. If that's what we actually want to say, well, that's a matter that we should take up as a community. But if it's not, if these ought to have been closed, then not closing them is a problem.
So, what is going on here? Is this just the community refusing to close inappropriate questions? There has been some resistance to the idea of closing the obvious poll question.
Are there not enough users with close voting rights to do something about it? That suggests a deeper problem: that many users leave or otherwise aren't sufficiently active to get rep and privileges on the site. That we have a lot of new people but few experts. That's not healthy.
One thing that would be indicative of the latter is a large number of "newbie"-style questions. Things like 8 (due to the answer being something you could look up) and 12 (overly broad due to not really understanding how difficult that task is). I'm not sure if there's enough to say that this is happening, but I do have a general sense that there is a fair degree of cruft on the site.
What do you think? Is this a real phenomenon, or is it just a bad 12 hours (where the people who would close it weren't around or haven't yet dropped by)? Do we need to be more proactive about closing bad questions? If so, how do we do that?

why did you approve "Sri Harsha Chilakapati" edit for answer to "Choosing the right game engine [closed]"? I know it is completely unrelated to this topic, but everybody in chatroom is wondering WTF?

@Gajet: I... don't know. Looking at it now it's clearly spam. I apparently didn't read it very closely. Sorry about that.

If you see something that is obviously unacceptable, flag it.  It'll get moderator attention before, say, I get time to go through all of the rest of the questions.

Also I think that in the general case, if a question is something like -4 then most people don't see it.  At least that's my experience, I don't know if that's actually the case.

@Tetrad That happens for me too. (Edit: taking what I said here and putting it in an answer)

So if you don't have the rep to vote for a close you should flag instead? I haven't flagged anything as I thought it was there for more serious issues than bad questions...

Yes, you should flag.

I used to be more active in closing questions and commenting on issues. But it often felt like I was the only one commenting, giving me a rep as a hard ass. It's also fatiguing to always be running clean up, so I still vote to close, but I'm not as active about it. I only voted on two of the four you listed. Basically, overall, we either need more people that vote to close or more mods, and in more timezones.

Why was #5 deleted?

Voting to close requires 3000 reputation. We only have about 50 users who are beyond that reputation gate, and while I recognize almost all of them, many of them seem to visit the site irregularly (based on a random sampling and review of the "activity" timeline for some of the users).
Of those fifty users, even fewer participate in meta discussion regularly. My hunch is that the core group of us to contribute to meta on a regular basis is probably no more than ten people.
Similarly, of those fifty or even those ten, I'm sure we don't all agree on taking such a stringent stand on discussion-oriented or subjective (et cetera) questions, or on how strict such a stand is warranted. We are only human after all.
Given that, I'm not entirely surprised that it takes us a while to amass the critical mass necessary to close some questions. Perhaps in addition to voting, one should flag the questions that are obviously egregiously off-topic or inappropriate, as the moderators tend to review flags rather quickly?
I don't think the overall quality of questions is going down, although I'm not sure if it's accelerating beyond our user growth rate (so in effect it stays approximately the same as we get an influx of new users who ask completely inappropriate questions but also retain older users who understand how to ask better ones).

50 users, and it's vacation time for a lot of people so 'we' don't tend to visit every 30 minutes now :P.

I think that part of the problem has to do with the fact that the people who do know how to ask appropriate questions are plenty aware on how to search for answers (here and elsewhere), so you will see less "intelligent" questions here because those people know of other places to look.
Also, a lot of the inappropriate questions are coming from people that will most likely give up on game programming because they either don't know where to look for their answers or ask questions that some don't feel like answering. If you look through some of the old inappropriate questions that get closed, you will see (more times than not) that those questions are the only ones on their profiles. That and I think some of them get offended that their post was closed so they leave.
This site is open to the public so you can't easily control the huge influx of aspiring game devs, and nobody is required to help with the 'housekeeping'. I don't really see any other option than to continue doing your part and eventually, more users will hit the 3k rep and hopefully help out. I like coming here so I know when I do get to that point, I will help out.

I've been using GameDev.SE less lately because of just how many trivial, uninteresting questions there are, or how many "help my code isn't working" questions there are*.
I'm here to learn from others, and to learn by articulating what I know into really good answers or solving nontrivial problems like in that tiles-on-walls question, and there's less opportunity to do both now. It is beginning to feel like digging through trash to find the good stuff.
* On code problems:
Even these are fascinating sometimes. When it's about an algorithm or advanced concepts, I love it. I loved learning about L4D's solution to dynamic pathfinding. I also loved sharing what I'd learned about how to detect open space, developing a way to put tiles on walls, or teach a person about OO design in answering how bots should be recognised by the game engine. The challenging stuff I find fascinating.
The problem is that a lot of these aren't challenging issues. They're solved by the asker just understanding programming better, sometimes by understanding their library better. Sometimes those library-related questions are good questions, sometimes they're not and the person wouldn't need to ask if they understood how to use programming libraries.
This place should be a place that deals with serious game development issues. Questions like that though turn it more into a place where we teach people how to program. It would help to draw a line somewhere.

You're basically suggesting throwing out questions that directly involve code. That would make GDSE into Prog.SE for game development: conceptual white-board programming questions only. Would that actually be a viable site?

I don't know. I'm mainly just sharing my experience, and I don't think I've ruled out all questions directly involving code. What I have ruled out is questions by people that don't understand how to program or debug, and I have cast "I don't understand how to use this library"-type questions into a grey area where the question might be good or bad (and I'm not sure how to distinguish the good ones from the bad).

@NicolBolas Also note: code questions which don't fascinate me personally aren't necessarily bad! I don't have any examples in mind of good code questions, but sometimes someone just has no idea how pathfinding works, and sometimes someone's wondering why their incorrectly written A* algorithm is screwing up, and here's one I'm iffy about: I don't know what to do with the results someone else's pathfinding algorithm produced.

I kind of love the idea of a "Prog.SE" for game dev. I fear that it wouldn't see much activity though. Its definitely a site I would follow and participate in though.

I'd say it's mostly the fact that most people in this site are newbies. there are some active experts giving answers to almost all the questions people ask, like Josh Petrie, Byte56, David Gouvia and yourself. But as far as I can tell, these people don't even look what is being asked if the question looks like it's  worthless. besides how bad the questions are has a real big impact on how fast they get closed, like number one in your list is closed by the time I'm writing this answer. I'm not saying there is nothing wrong with out community. It is a fact that our experts are very few, and they don't check the site regularly either. So you can see there is almost all the question have only one answer and that one answer is accepted. people check the site and start from the top checking all the questions, if they have at least one answer they usually skip that question even if that answer was not accepted, since they assume that answer was given by another expert and it's not accepted yet but going to be accepted. At least that's my opinion about this site. And there is one more thing, lots of people who know something doesn't have a question, and lots of people who have a question doesn't know anything at all! just look at people asking last 50 questions, there are only 6 people with reputation more than 200, And only 3 of them are above 500. This means most questions here are asked by some newbies who found GD with a google search and think this a regular forum they can ask whatever they like as long as it's related to game development.

I resisted myself to the closing of #1, as I was feeling it needed an answer that could be linked to for future similar questions... until Jeff pointed to a dupe that I didn't know about.
Maybe closing questions as duplicates of already-answered (and probably already-closed) questions would cause less resistance. It gives OPs something more than "sorry, this is not welcome here, goodbye". We already have a good set of "generic answers" to "not a good fit" questions, maybe they should be linked to more often.


text:
Should we be more exclusive?
I mean this kind of thing is all over but here's an example from today:

I mean there can't be a more stereotypical noob entry "I just wanna make a game" type question.
It's a bad question because it's not specific, and what's more is it's breaking the first 3 of the FAQ principles:

Yet people are voting it up, hailing it as a great question.  Why?
I'm not so concerned with this specific question, but what it means about this site's community.  Either it's crowded with noobs who think "Yeah that's a great question wish I asked it", OR the reception of some of the more clever guys on here is too lax.  "Oh ask anything you want, there are no dumb questions."
I don't mean to turn newbies away, but are people too accepting?  Should we be more exclusive?  Why does this type of FAQ breaking question get such a critical acclaim reception?

And commenting on your reasoning for voting to close those "popular" bad questions will get you personalized answers like this :). Maybe we should have an age limit on the site :).

Well, this is simply my opinion, and while I'm not exactly a high-scorer within SE in general, I am a user.
I used to be a big user of gamedev.net, but left due to the new layout and I got sick of questions that were so localised that they might as well have had an address where to send the answer! In short it was pointless even viewing them; so, I gave up and just started to use SE. After getting used to SE a while I spotted GDSE and used that for my fix as I enjoy simply browsing the sensible questions and answers as there are clearly some very clever people on GDSE, sadly there aren't as many quality questions as I would hope that could demonstrate just how many people of such calibre there are.
I've observed (either for wrong or right) that the signal to noise ratio for GDSE appears a little more skewed than the other SE sites. It appears that the 'noise' type questions tend to be ones that are too localised to be any good to anyone other than the asker, or questions that would require an epic novel to answer! I don't like to categorise people, but I would imagine that most (not all) of the closed questions were asked by people who had minimal experience of general development, were quite young and immature and were hoping for a quick solution for their new super game. Similarly, I wouldn't be suprised if the number of people who are capable of putting a well formed and meaningful question together are about the same number of people who can answer such a question as gamedev is a little more specific than a C/C++ question on SE. Unfortunately, the number of people who care little about asking (or rather caring about) the quality of a question is much higher than the other two groups!
I agree with what you say - in fact I came to meta.gamedev.SE now to ask something very similar and found your question! Saying that, there is nothing wrong with a new user being completely ignorant on a subject, however they either fall into the category of wanting to learn about the subject or will just come back tomorrow with question number 2. Distinguishing between the two is simple, the question and the way it is written gives it away - handling it... well that's a different matter.
I would hope that GDSE could be a little more exclusive, but a big issue is that people are quite happy to put quite a bit of effort into answering what is essentially be a terrible question, only for it to be accepted, then later down the line closed; I'm assuming so they get a few points. Granted, that's their business to waste their time with somebody who doesn't appreciate it but such actions can only encourage the asker that abysmal questions are tolerated - closing or even deleting the question after any sort of answer has been posted is well... the words horse, door and bolted come to mind!
As for the upvoting of useless questions, I would probably say it is nothing more than a result of people upvoting questions which are the sort of questions they would ask. It speaks volumes of the general crowd GDSE is attracting (although to be fair, it seems that game dev in general attacts such people looking for an "easy win").
It would be very nice to stop such questions from appearing to begin with. The thing is, if somebody comes to GDSE and knows nothing about general development, or any other disciplines of game development, then they are hardly likely to ask questions/give answers that could be classed as gems. Obviously, it's not possible to test somebodys knowledge on game development (that kind of defeats the purpose of having a GDSE!), but game dev isn't isolated from other disciplines, so I don't know if there are any reasonable methods, but perhaps one (granted, it may be a little far fetched) is to ask for a minimum reputation on a relevant SE site before questions can be asked. It's trivial to get say for example 150 points on SE even just by asking some sensible questions, I imagine that would be enough of a barrier to stop these half-baked questions as effort is required which is exactly what most people who ask these sort of questions aren't prepared to give.
Obviously, this isn't exactly perfect, consider this question by philllies. Its his first question on GDSE and while I don't quite understand it, it is very clear that it is well thought out and he cares about the content... Then there is the other side of the coin. Actually, I've just checked and I don't meant to pick on him but the questions that author makes (4 so far, all negative votes and only two closed), won't be improving within a year, along with a profile that reads:
I'm 13 and incredibly cut! XD

Andy Harglesis

As I say, I certainly don't mean to single him out (I only found his question randomly), but this is why GDSE is having these, for lack of a better term, quality control issues as accounts like this exist are tolerated rather than just been given a short ban with a quick link to what questions are acceptable on GDSE.

"although to be fair, it seems that game dev in general attacts such people looking for an "easy win"" It's hard to build a community of people that are serious about game development without attracting people like them. And in many cases, people who are serious about game development will take the time to help those people, remembering the days when they were like them. And not realizing that their tolerance of this behavior brings down the quality of the site.

"Obviously, it's not possible to test somebodys knowledge on game development", I think it's pretty clear most of the time based on the type of question that they're asking.

Note that “Andy Harglesis” is a generic name used by 4chaners, 9gaggers etc. for trolling purposes. I know we should judge contributions and not users, but I can’t see anything good coming from those accounts.

Lots of votes on a question usually means that a lot of people can understand the problem set.  Easy/"noob" questions generally fall into this realm, mainly because more people can comprehend and possibly want to see an answer to a question like "how can I make a quick game" rather than "how do I set up springs in cocos2d" (for example).
If you look at the list of all questions sorted by vote count, you'll see that a large number of the super high voted up questions are all closed.  https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes  This is hardly a new predicament in the Stack Exchange universe.  You'll see on programmers, for example, they went with more of a community wiki approach.  I suspect Stack Overflow has some logic under the hood to make their older questions like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon not show up in those lists.
That being said, the best thing to do is just vote to close and/or flag bad questions.  Likewise leave a comment saying why it's a bad question.

Really, what we need is more users with high enough rep to cast close votes.  It often takes us a couple days to amass enough votes to actually close a question.

I think the cartoon question is not shown because it is locked for historical significance, rather than just closed. I do not believe we have anything special to Stack Overflow to handling these kinds of things.

As a long time lurker, I agree with @TrevorPowell. Enforcement of policies and general maintenance of the site does seem to take quite a bit of time. I would also add that editing of questions for general clarity, basic grammar, syntax, language, etc., seems almost non-existent. My point is that quality in general is becoming an issue, I'm starting to find more answers to game related problems on SO than on here.

Stack Overflow is not a democracy. Stack Overflow, and the Stack Exchange network, was built on a series of guiding principles set down by its founders. Among those principles is a zero tolerance policy for crap.
First among that is the belief that a question must justify itself. Yes, a crap question can yield good answers, but that is not sufficient reason to leave a crap question around. If someone wants to turn it into a good question, fine. But we do not waste time with crap questions just because they might lead to good, useful answers. We want good questions; we punish bad ones.
That is part of the founding principles of Stack Overflow. Of Stack Exchange. Of all of the successful sites in the SE network.
SO exists because forums were a terrible way to deal with questions. And one of the reasons for that is exactly this: every post is equally valid. There's no way to stop the flow of crap. There's no way for a community driven by principles to shut down nonsense before it does its damage. Eventually, people get tired of answering the same garbage over and over again. And they leave. This is the forum life-cycle, and it is something SO was designed to stop.
But for all of SO's great technology, what fundamentally makes SO work is the zero tolerance the SO community has for garbage. On SO, it began with its founders and the initial beta users. That culture spread among the initial crop of public users. And now, the SO community, moderators, and founders alike will tolerate no compromises on their principles. And without that, SO would be a cesspool.
Which is what GDSE is becoming.
The culture of SO was very clear, as laid down by its founders. But the culture of GDSE continues to have forum-like elements. Permissive. Let that question go, because it might "yield good and useful answers." No principles, no rigid rules and regulation. Just let anyone ask pretty much anything; only stop the most egregious of problems.
Just look at MSO. This question would never have been asked on Meta Stack Overflow. Instead, it's inverse question is usually asked: why don't we allow more poll questions? Why don't we allow more of these questions? Why was my question closed in 5 minutes? And so forth.
And in most cases, MSO users will quickly downvote and expurgate such questions. The community has said in a clear and convincing voice that there will be no retreat, no surrender, no compromise on its core principles.
That GDSE's community can't/won't do the same is a damning indictment of GDSE as a whole. It shows that we don't have enough high-rep users who follow the SO principles. It shows that our culture is damaged, cancerous, riven with those who do not stand for what makes SO great.
Moderators are supposed to be the last line of defense. They're supposed to do what the community can't, act as a failsafe when the community can't achieve the goal alone. They should be the janitors, taking out the trash. But because they see the community as "divided" on the issue, they sit on the sidelines and let the crap build and grow. They see bad questions but won't use their moderator close votes to close them, simply because they don't feel there is a community consensus on the issue.
In short, it is the failure of democracy: one side gets its way by simply being obstinate. All it takes to keep this site down is for enough members of the community to say that "garbage questions are fine." If enough of them do, then the moderators won't act, and our one fail-safe is sabotaged.
I don't really see a way out of this. So long as enough of the community clings to this forum mentality, where we believe that everyone should have a voice no matter how stupid, where we allow anyone to ask just about anything no matter how insipid, where you can get away with bad questions so long as someone comes along and blesses it with an undeservingly good answer, then GDSE will be a forum. A rathole of filth and garbage that few people would ever use as a viable resource.
Or, to put it another way, the fact that some people disagree with the SO principles does not mean that they are right. It does not mean that their voices and opinions need to be appeased. And it does not mean that their opinions should be allowed to hold back moderators from doing their jobs and getting rid of what needs to be gotten rid of.
Either we take a hard line stand against garbage like most SE sites, or GDSE should stop pretending to be a Stack Exchange site.

StackExchange isn't a community;  See the About page.  We have a duty to close questions which do not meet the guidelines laid out in our FAQ.  It's important.
StackExchange is a system specifically designed to collect and archive expert knowledge forever, and to make that expert knowledge easily and freely accessible via internet search engines.
By providing this expert knowledge freely, the Internet becomes a richer resource and indirectly makes the world a better place for everyone.  The rules set out in the FAQ are there specifically in order to assist in achieving these goals; they're specifically designed to try to generate questions and answers which can become useful Internet resources for lots of people and remain accurate and useful for decades (if not longer).
If we're going to ignore the rules in the FAQ and treat (for example) lolcats pictures as being on-topic and worthy of archiving forever just because the "community" likes them, then we might as well drop the whole "expert knowledge" pretense and just be Reddit (or less charitably, 4chan), stop our "archive answers forever" policy, and simply think of the site as a source of light transient entertainment, rather than as a part of an effort to create long-term good in the world.
Because honestly, that's all we'd be.

But man, it is a community.  The regulars and high participators dictate the culture of the "place".

related: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/11/question-closed-and-its-probably-best-that-way/

Communities are what people make them, not what you make them.  You can't declare "this is not a community" while people actually make one happen.  Well you can, but it can drive people away.

@TimHolt Dude, did you really mean to imply that I'm not a person?

@TrevorPowell +1, though we can agree to disagree on the aspect of community. It is a community with rules, just many concepts of community in real life. Break the rules? Consequences, and not just for you, but for those who have to enforce them... which we are only too aware of as we trawl through the hundreds of reviews that each new week brings.

@NickWiggill I think we agree entirely.  I was overstating my position in order to drive home the idea that at StackExchange (unlike Reddit/Slashdot/4chan/SomethingAwful/wherever), the process makes the community, rather than the other way around.  In retrospect, "not a community" has ruffled some feathers more than I intended.  But "StackExchange isn't primarily a community" just sounds wishy-washy, don't you think?  :)

@TrevorPowell I see your point now. Wishy-washy or not, it would have been more accurate to say it thus! True, it is primarily a knowledgebase.

"StackExchange isn't a community; See the About page.". The text on that page doesn't suppport this: "Stack Exchange is a growing network of individual communities..." followed by 8 other uses of the word.

@e100 ...that's a really good point.  I'm kind of stunned that I didn't see that while posting this answer.  Regardless, the usage of "community" on the page I linked is very specific.  In the link, the word 'community' is used this way:  "we bring together individual communities of experts on very specific topics."  I think that's a very different thing than the tyranny-of-the-lowest-common-denominator community which you find on other sites, and which is what this question was about.

There have been so many of these sorts of questions already. The more that mods shy away from doing their duty -- which I think is clearly defined -- the more acceptable bad questions become. It's a bit like when you see one parent who wants the kids to have a good degree of discipline, while the other parent is letting them do exactly as the please. It just doesn't work.
I really don't think it's acceptable that we with mod privileges, who've gained our status on this site knowing that there are rules to be followed, now think we can debate the rules? The rules are pretty clear, though as discovered today in this question, one can do one's duty and then discover that the FAQ doesn't accurately reflect what we as mods know the rules to be (in this case, I'm referring to rules that evince themselves via the "close" panel but not in the FAQ -- which leaves me feeling a tad let down by the site).
In fact the number of posts like this, where the scope is basically, "Please help me fix a bug that nobody else is ever going to have again" is quite overwhelming. This is why I've been advocating for a while now that this site link directly to gamedev.net from the FAQ. The problem is, this is almost certainly against SE policy.
So yes, I absolutely think we should be more exclusive as the rules make it clear we should be.

We can, but we risk being jerks.
Moderation is very harsh here IMO and not always on topic with what the actual community wants.
Let a question sit for a day and see how the community at large reacts to it.  THEN moderate it as you think this is reflected.  This may be a noob question to a mod, but maybe to others it's a very valid one.
Communities are defined by the community, not by someone laying out a set of rules that define it.  Unless that is you want to risk being an elitist club.

Totally agreed that moderation here is very harsh, or rather, very strict. I prefer not to think about whether a question follows the rules, but whether it can inspire an answer that will benefit the community. To me, that is better than just "practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face" because often they are very specific and don't offer anything useful to other users.

Moderation is harsh? Since when? This isn't the first time crap questions have been discussed. Our moderators only close the absolute worst of the worst. They prefer to "see how the community at large reacts to it." That's terrible for the quality of the site. You're talking about a question that is undeniably against the rules remaining on the site for a day. No. That's unacceptable. If this were SO, the question would have been closed and deleted inside an hour.

@TimHolt What's at issue here is not what certain people want, nor what they think the topic should be; the topic has always been a knowledgebase for game developers at large -- and that means Q&A that will be useful to others, in future. The site is the authority and always has been, and as mods it is up to us to play to those rules. Suggesting that certain disruptive individuals' wants are important, is like saying that if a school full of kids agree by democratic vote that they'd like to trash your house and garden, they should be allowed to do so. It just doesn't make sense.

If you want a sense of the divide on this issue, note that my post has 4 up votes and 4 down votes.

@TimHolt: "note that my post has 4 up votes and 4 down votes." That proves nothing, save the fact that the site is going down the drain. Go to MSO and suggest that they start allowing language comparison questions or whatever. That is a site where the "elites" have won; they're very clearly and strongly focused on being a quality site, and when crap shows up, it is quickly and effectively dealt with. People who disagree don't go there. And SO is successful because of this, not in spite of it. That's top-down leadership. It works.

@TimHolt: Game Development, as a sight, needs heavier moderation than usual, because every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks that they can make the next great game. If these people follow the rules and ask thoughtful, useful questions, that's wonderful. If they're chattering monkeys, asking pointless nonsense like what tools they should use, then they're part of the problem, not part of the solution. To let such people run free is to invite others to do the same. SO purges this stuff quickly, so people rapidly learn to play by the rules or begone. GDSE doesn't, so it's filled with a lot of crap.

Just sayin... as they say.  Your own series of fairly harsh responses @NicolBolas are the kind of thing that I don't personally agree works.  For starters, as soon as you view your community as "chattering monkeys" or clueless n00bs or whatever disparaging name you want to give them, you've failed as a moderator (IMO).  If a classroom of students isn't understanding something and is failing to follow the teacher, it's rarely the collective failure of the classroom, but often the failure of the teacher.

@TimHolt: "are the kind of thing that I don't personally agree works" It doesn't matter if you agree that it works; it does work, because that's exactly why Stack Overflow is successful. That's why Stack Overflow has a lot of highly-skilled users that continue to support the site: because it is actively hostile to garbage questions. And the lack of that hostility is why I spend much more time there than here. "often the failure of the teacher" Exactly: the failure of the moderators who are not properly moderating those "students" properly.

Sorry, but I totally stick with my "moderation is harsh" assessment. We close lots of questions that could yield good and useful answers (eg. legal questions that people are scared to answer), and allow lots of questions that are pretty worthless (eg. 101 people asking for an opinion on some entity-component system minutiae). I don't like free-for-alls on sites like this, which is why I've been a moderator over on Gamedev.net for about a decade and have closed many threads, but here the moderation is often too strong in my opinion.

@Kylotan: That a question which could "yield good and useful answers" is not important. Legal questions are forbidden because there's no way to verify any of that information. It could be some guy trolling. It could be anything. If you try it and the information's wrong, you get a lawsuit, not a compile error. The risk is too great to go promoting potential misinformation.

@Kylotan: Bad questions might yield good information. But that's not the point; bad questions are still bad questions. Questions about "entity-component system minutiae" are on-topic if they're reasonably factual. The problem is that nobody actually closes them. We have this permissive attitude on this site that allows many highly opinionated questions to remain open. We let anything go, and that's why I say that moderation isn't harsh at all. It's lenient, because it allows many low-quality crap questions in.

@NicolBolas: legal questions are not forbidden. We've covered this here before. If you're uncomfortable offering that advice, don't offer it. As for the rest, sorry, my opinion is the opposite.

I'll say it again.  The depth of discussion plus the large amount of both up and down votes is an indicator here that this is not something one can just vote yes/no on.  It's pretty divisive (clearly), and I think deserves more thought and discussion.

@NicolBolas said, " That's why Stack Overflow has a lot of highly-skilled users that continue to support the site: because it is actively hostile to garbage questions."
I'd say it's successful because people get questions answered and find answers to questions.


text:
What are "disputed" flags?
The status  of some of my raised flags is "disputed":

I know "helpful" means the flag was acted on, while "declined" means it wasn't.
What happened to "disputed" flags? What is a "dispute" in this context?

A disputed flag is a flag that has been deemed invalid by a 10k+ user but not checked by a moderator yet. For more information: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/95277