text:
Where can I ask "how to make (or start making) a particular type of game"?
I'm glad the help center explicitly states that "how to make (or start making) a particular type of game" is not to be asked here.
My particular question would be "Is a game like this [idea] even feasible with today's technology?" But I guess it is similar enough to the provided forbidden question, so I avoided asking. But where could I possibly ask something like that?
If you are interested: [idea] = open world realistic crafting (real time (?)) life sim where the player can do anything he likes. I'm wondering about the size of the memory in use ingame for all the entities that are found within even a normal household (I think there are 100 different things on my desk already) and the enormous CPU required to simulate everything happening at once. I'm not even taking a proper 3D model into account, text-based seems horrifying enough in terms of resource use.

First of all, thanks for having taken the time to read the help center before asking, and second of all, thanks for asking this in meta :)
Now to answer you question, yes, you're right, both of these are off-topic/too broad here.
We generally suggest users asking these question to come visit us in chat. Lots of game idea sharing has been going on there in the past, and some users have really found it useful. Alternatively, you can visit a site more open to discussions like GDNet.

As a side note, the section of the help center you linked to has a starting point to help you find out how to ask these questions: take a look at the section Where can I ask subjective, discussion, and other questions not fit for this site? Although it's suggested to use Reddit too, I've never been there so I don't know about it.

Well, the site association bonus has to come from somewhere ;)

@SK19 Oh, yeah, that's no way a guarantee that the user knows how the help center and meta work :)

"Is a game like this [idea] even feasible with today's technology?"

This is a yes-or-no question; these tend to be a poor fit for this site. There is almost always a follow-up question or two behind such a query. That follow-up question (which may be, for example, "Okay, then how?") is usually too broad. When it wouldn't be too broad, it's better for everybody if it were just asked directly. It gets right to the point, saving time for the asker and any future users in search of a similar question.
In the specific sense, this question is fairly time-sensitive because of the "today's technology" clause. Further, feasibility can have a lot to do with one's own abilities and resources, which makes the topic fairly subjective and thus is another strike against it being on-topic here.
But like Alexandre says, we'd be happy to discuss the topic in the chat or direct you to other places on the internet where you can get the answers you need unconstrained by StackExchange's somewhat rigid framework.

"one's own abilities and resources" In fact that wouldn't have been an issue. Time and money for development isn't important for me atm, I'm at an early conceptional stage where I'm working out the idea and feasibility in terms of technology. There are enough games which have some aspects realized, I'm looking for the general form, so to say the holy grail ;) The hint with the chat is well received, I may do this when I have more than a few minutes at hand :)

Asking if technical challenges are solvable can be a legitimate question. But only if the technical challenges are defined well enough that you can at least pinpoint the order of magnitude.

open world realistic crafting (real time (?)) life sim where the player can do anything he likes. I'm wondering about the size of the memory in use ingame for all the entities that are found within even a normal household (I think there are 100 different things on my desk already) and the enormous CPU required to simulate everything happening at once.

The counter-question here would be "what level of detail do you want to simulate"? This can be anything between a crude physics rigidbody simulation of some household items (was possible decades ago) to a simulation of every atomic particle in the universe (would require a second universe with even more mass and energy than our current one).
If you want us to tell you if what you want to achieve is possible on current hardware, then give us concrete numbers. Like "Render a model with X polygons" or "Simulate a physics system with X box-shaped bodies". Also make sure that your terms are properly defined. "A galaxy with 1 million stars" is not a meaningful definition unless you tell us what a "star" is in your simulation and what properties of them you do and do not want to simulate.
Then we can provide you a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the required hardware resources.


text:
What are reasons our community has found for closing questions?
Over the years, this community has decided what kind of questions should be on- or off-topic for the site.
Some of these decisions have been integrated into the Help Center and into the Close/Flag reasons. While we have control over some parts of the help center and the close reasons descriptions, not everything can fit comfortably in there.
What are the different reasons that a question would be off-topic here that are not listed in the Help Center or in the Close/Flag reasons and what's the meta discussion that has lead to these decisions?
Also, could I get more information about those close reasons that are currently listed?
Like any other reasons, if there is a way to edit the question and bring it on-topic, this should be done instead of voting/flagging to close it.

Note that this question/answer is really meant to be a summary; it's kind of a directory to find at a glance discussions of why we'd vote to close.

The question is asking for legal advice.
We're not lawyers and this is not a legal advice site. Meta post
The question is asking if product X has feature Y, or if Y is doable with it.
It's a "what technology to use" in disguise, it doesn't age well, etc. Meta post
The question is asking what technology should be used to do X.
They're not very useful for future visitors, and are most of the time very broad, making them unanswerable with a 'definitive' answer. Meta post
The question is asking how game X implemented feature Y.
Similar to "what technology to use". Not only does it have the same problems as that question type, but it also suffer because often nobody out side of the dev team for game X knows how game X did it. Meta post
The question is purely about programming, and is not asked in the context of a video game.
While game developers can answer these questions, there is a better audience on SO to answer it. And we prefer questions geared toward game programming. Meta post Note that generic questions in the context of game development are fine. Meta post
The question is asking for a 'list of x' (even a 'list of one x').
Although the consensus was that it was OK at some point in the past, moderation policies have shifted to "list of X" questions not being useful. Meta post (Maybe this question should be closed because of this reason??? :P)
The question is a recruitment advertisement.
Stack Exchange sites are not for recruitment. Meta Post

If you know a reason that is commonly used in the "off-topic/other...", please, by all means, add the missing them to this list.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Why never any notification of moderator elections?
Perhaps my absence from meta is the issue here: I very rarely spend time on meta; what time I do spend on gamedev is devoted to teaching i.e. answering questions on the regular site.
I haven't once been notified of the opportunity to nominate / vote in a moderator election, in spite of having been active here for 7 years and on the site frequently through that period, even when not actively answering questions.
Can anyone say why it is that I'm always notified of stackoverflow elections  via the regular site - I also don't spend any time on meta there - but never of the ones for our site? It is rather frustrating.
Is this is a feature that is lacking on gamedev, specifically? Do others get notified; if so, how?

I can't say why you haven't been notified but I'm pretty sure I've seen a news like this on the main site during the last election.

If you consult this page (I hope it's the right link, I can't see what's in there), do you see the notification "election" on October 23?

@AlexandreVaillancourt I do see two notifications there for Oct 23 & Oct 30 2017. What I'm having difficulty believing is that I could have failed to see them at that time. Not a week goes by when I'm not on SO/SE. If that was the case, and the notification was at all clear (red icon on inbox), I'd have seen it and voted at once.

@ArcaneEngineer I don't recall the case for the GDSE election, but I do recall seeing the red dot icon on my in box for my SO election notice.

You should get notifications (viewable via the “inbox” icon in the top navigation bar) for elections on any SE site where you are eligible to participate. I have two at the top of my list for the StackOverflow election right now. I am fairly sure I had similar notifications for Gaming as well, since I voted in that election (but don’t visit the site all that regularly).
There are also “event” banners in the community bulletin UI for the site, above where feature meta questions appear. Often there will be featured meta questions as well, especially as the election goes on.
I can see it being pretty easy to miss these (particularly the inbox notifications, if you visit infrequently and get a lot of other notifications in the interim), so I think there is an argument to making elections more of a special-case, obvious notification elsewhere.

Hmmm, currently for SO, I see a notice for the current election cycle when I mouse over my inbox. But when I view all my messages, it doesn't show up as a proper message that I can click & read. Maybe this is a "feature"?
Mouse over view:

View all messages view:

It is very easy to miss the notices in the “all items” view.

@JoshPetrie I agree, however my point is that even if I do happen to notice it, I cannot open the election notice in that view. Unlike the other messages, there's no message link & no description - it just says 'election'. That's why I suggested it might be a bug.

Yeah, I think so too.

@JoshPetrie I've posted it as a bug over on SO meta. Guess we'll see where that goes.

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


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Are questions asking to convert TechnologyX to TechnologyY allowed?
I've seen a couple of questions pass by in the past asking for help to convert TechnologyX to TechnologyY, for instance:

How can I convert this chunk of Direct3D code to the OpenGL equivalent?

or:

How can I convert an algorithm written in C++ to Java?

Are questions like these allowed, and why? If not, what would be the reason(s) to close them?

How can I convert this piece of TechnologyX to TechnologyY?

should not be allowed, because it is basically asking for manual labor with too little benefit to anyone besides the asker.
However, if the asker goes around making some research and comes with the question

How can I implement this algorithm in TechnologyY?

while giving a detailed explanation of the algorithm, I believe it should be allowed. Because then it would serve an educational purpose as an example of the implementation of an algorithm; benefiting both the current asker and the future visitors.

They should be allowed, but should be subject to something similar to the criteria for acceptable debugging questions:

If problem is concise & generic enough to have wide applicability, the question is on-topic.
If the conversion in question involves going to or from code that has a wide user base who might have similar problems, the question is on-topic.
If the conversion request is essentially crowd sourcing the development, the question is off-topic.

Beyond that, there's still the matter of quality - on-topic conversion requests that show little to no research should be down voted accordingly.


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Why this question doesn't get answers?
18 days ago I asked my first quesiton (about how to get records to make archivements) in this site but I notice that no one have answered it, and I don't know what to do.
I know that my question isn't too bad (or I think) because it doesn't have any downvote nor flag. But it also doesn't have any upvote, visits or answers.
I want to know what can I do in order to improve my question, so it may get an answer. The problem is that it's my first question in Game Development and my first game I am doing, so I both don't know how works exactly this SE (how to make good questions) nor I know what thing I am trying to ask, I'm new in this and I am not sure how to explain myself.
Do you  have any suggestion to improve my question itself or the way I wrote my question?
P.S: I'm sorry if this question isn't for Meta, I am also not sure if this can be asked on Meta, but some days ago an user suggest me to ask this if I doesn't get answers. If this isn't allowed, I'll delete the question inmediately.

A good clue is the first comment:

I'm not sure if I completely understand your question...

If other users have trouble understanding your question, they usually won't answer it. (Since you probably don't want answers from users who misunderstand the question)
It looks like your question outlines a viable approach to getting the behaviour you want. So the first point to clarify is: does your code work?

If it does not work, try editing your question to describe the specific problem you've observed with your code that you're trying to fix.
If it does work, then ask "what is it I want out of this question?"

Is there something about your current working code that you dislike, and want to improve?
If so, try editing your question to describe this specific aspect you're unsatisfied with, and ask for ways to improve that aspect.
Are you concerned about the performance of this code?
If so, try profiling the code to measure how big a problem it is (it might not be a problem at all), and identify what specific parts are the bottleneck. Then edit your question to describe those profiling results and ask for ways to fix the bottleneck.
Are you just curious about whether you're approaching it the "right"/"accepted" way?
In my opinion, this doesn't make a good Q&A question - no users here are the arbiters of what implementation of a feature is "right." If the code works and you like working with it and it performs well, then it's "right enough" no matter what someone on the Internet says. ;)
If you really want open-ended feedback on your code, you can try the Code Review StackExchange instead.


text:
Are questions about hacking games off-topic?
Are questions about hacking games off-topic here? Eg. adding infinite cash etc.

It depends on how you interpret the term "hacking".
Questions about modding a game (i.e. to add to or modify features of an existing game to make it more fun or more challenging) are on-topic.
Questions about modifying a game in such a way that you gain an unfair advantage over other players (i.e. in an online/multiplayer game), then it's off-topic, as it's not game development, it's cheat development.

Note that if you ask specifically about modifying the single player game X, even if it's not off-topic, you might realize that you won't get much answers because that's not really what this community is about, and the amount of users who could give you an answer is low.


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Should we treat questions about assignment in a different way?
I've encountered a couple of questions where there was clear signs that the question was about an assignment of some sort: either there were more than one writing style in the question, the code clearly mentioned "question1", or there was a screenshot with a window titled "Assignment 2".
Should we handle these questions differently than the other questions? If so, how should we handle them?

As a benchmark, here's the related SO-meta topic linked from the SO-FAQ:
How do I ask and answer homework questions?

Is there a protocol for bringing this back up for discussion? In light of this question, I realized that my answer below was assuming the homework questions would need to be at least somewhat game dev related. I'm reluctant to edit after it has been voted on, as it may no longer reflect the degree to which others agreed with it.

Personally & as a teacher, I think it we should adopt the SO stance on homework. There's nothing unique to game development that warrants altering their protocol. Here's my summary of the SO community wiki answer, paraphrased in places to fit this site:
Guiding principles:

It is okay to ask about homework - GDSE exists share knowledge and this includes helping students.
Providing an answer that doesn't foster learning is not in the student's own best interest. Therefore you might choose to treat homework questions differently than other questions.

How to ask about homework

Make a good faith attempt to solve the problem yourself first.
Ask about specific problems with your existing implementation.
Admit that the question is homework; do not use a “homework” tag, but mention it in the question text.
Be aware of school policy. If your school has a policy regarding outside help on homework, make sure you are aware of it before you ask for / receive help on GDSE.
Never use code you don't understand. It definitely won't help you later (after school, in later assignments, on tests, etc.) and it could be, at best, very embarrassing if you are asked to explain code you turned in.

How to answer and moderate homework questions

Try to provide explanation that will lead the asker in the correct direction.
It's usually better not to provide a complete code sample if you believe it would not help the student, using your best judgment.
Recognize that homework is likely to include artificial constraints, and honor those constraints. Also be aware that these constraints may affect whether or not a question should be closed as a duplicate.
Don't downvote others who answer homework questions in good faith, even if they break these guidelines (unless the answer would merit downvotes even if the question weren't homework related).
Be respectful when guiding towards best practices & good habits, even if it's something that seems obvious.
Don't downvote a homework question that follows the guidelines and was asked in good faith.
Be polite when asking if a question is homework.
Use your best judgment. Remember students are new programmers and often don't yet understand what is expected of them on this site. Help them to get that understanding.

Importantly, how not to ask a question about homework: Dump the assignment text onto the site and say "solve this for me please". I see that far too much, and those questions are probably what give "homework questions" such a bad name. A well-written homework question won't be distinguishable from a question arising from a personal or work project unless it's explicitly stated.

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


text:
Can I post a picture of my MMO prototype here for opinions? Or is that a bad idea?
Very new to the site so please bear with me. I would love to post a picture of my MMO concept that I built and gather opinions on it. I can take constructive criticism, but I guess I'm afraid of the thought of someone stealing the idea? I would love to post it though.

I've moved your question to our Meta site, which is where we ask meta questions — questions about the site itself.

Relevant: Where can I ask open-ended questions instead?

If you want open-ended opinions on your game, then this is not the best site to gather them.
StackExchange Q&A is geared toward solving concrete problems, and questions that have a concise correct or working answer. Opinion polls don't really fit our format.
You can try a more open-ended discussion site like the forums on GameDev.net, or earn a little rep here by asking & answering questions to be able to access our informal chat rooms.
Generally, I wouldn't worry about someone stealing your game idea. Especially for something like an MMO, the idea isn't the hard part, it's the years and fortune invested in implementing and executing those ideas. Everyone who's ever touched a game has more game ideas than they'll have time and resources to make in their lifetimes, so there's an excess of supply, and everyone would rather make their own ideas than take yours. (At least until you've done the hard work of proving it's commercially successful — that's generally when the clones show up. Until you're making money or rolling in heaps of users, nobody cares)
Or, to put it a more bluntly, your game idea (probably) sucks  (archived version). And that's OK. Most ideas suck. It's the process of refining, improving, executing & building on ideas that might suck on their own that eventually makes a great game. No one can replicate all that hard work from a few concept images alone.

I appreciate this. I truly do. Thank you!

Regarding "most ideas suck": Always remember that the most selling game of all times is a box stacking simulator.

We'd totally be happy to talk to you about it in [chat]! (once you have the rep, but that's not hard to get)

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


text:
Should there be a notability qualification for tools-based answers?
We currently have a policy of no tools recommendation questions. However, for a given task X, often the most useful answer is "there is a tool T that does X".
Example:

Question: How do I debug a C++ program in Linux

IMHO Good Answer:

use GDB (website link) (documentation link)
example commands to debug helloworld

Less useful answer, due to restricted applicability

emacs has a gdb frontend where you can interactively set breakpoints and debug

Least useful answer, due to non-notable tool / advertising

Yesterday my dog just released SuperDebug1000 which
      you can find at doggercompany.com/shop. You can set breakpoints from the commandline.

Question:
Q: Should "notable" tools answers be allowed, and what is a good way to define notability?
Followup Q: If tools-based answers are allowed, should "Are there tools to do X?" automatically be converted to "How do I do X?" with the expectation that some of the answers will be tools-based?

Prior art: Wikipedia has a policy at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability that describes what kind of subject is allowed for an article. Criteria include having multiple 3rd party references and not being an isolated event with little lasting impact.

Friendly reminder to everyone that if that last answer is "There this cool new tool" instead of "My dog just released this cool new tool", that's spam and should be flagged as such (optionally with a comment to let them know). Disclosure about your relation to a product you mention, whether it's free or not, is mandatory on all SE sites.

@NicHartley could you provide a link to the policy in question? I found How do I mention my own products in answers?, but that doesn't seem to be canonical or system wide.

@Pikalek Sure! It's this. If you click "flag" under any post, then look at the reason about spamming, it's linked there as well. That policy is network-wide, by the way; it's the same page (aside from a different header) on every site on Stack Exchange.

I think "What tool to use" is always less useful than "How to solve the problem (with some tool)"
I think most if not all tools-based inquiries can be rephrased in terms of finding a method or workflow to solve a problem.
In such a form,

"Use this tool in this particular way"

is still a valid answer.
For this reason, I don't think asking users to frame their questions in terms of solutions to problems rather than lists of tools is particularly onerous, or shuts out desireable questions and answers.

In contrast, if I ask the question

"Is there a tool that does X? / What tools can do X?"

then the answer:

"Yes, there is a world-famous tool that does that, called XYZ"

is technically valid, but much less helpful than the example above that had to actually include an outline of how to apply the tool to the problem.
The fact that the tool has worldwide notoriety doesn't make the answer itself any better, it just means the user might have better luck googling for an actual solution to their problem when the answer leaves them lacking further guidance.
If the tool is complicated for a new user to pick up, or solving the problem with the tool is non-trivial, this is likely to lead to follow-up questions asking, "Okay, I have tool XYZ, now how do I make it do X?" in which case we might as well have asked how to do X in the first place. ;)
For this reason, I think it's reasonable to edit / ask for questions to be edited to focus on methods to solve the problem, rather than solely identifying tools, to encourage more constructive answers - not just "giving users a fish"

should "Are there tools to do X?" automatically be converted to "How do I do X?"

That's my usual editing policy, myself. If I see a question where the problem is clear and well-defined, I'll try to convert it to the form "How do I solve this problem?" rather than "What tools solve this problem?" or "How did Game X solve this problem?" instead of putting it on hold or down-voting.
I don't think tools are evil or poison to a question, but I do think they can distract from or mask the root issue.

I agree with this, especially the bit about editing to make questions about how to solve a problem in a broader sense. Answers that themselves refer to tools can be fine on their own merits, but I find we get much better answers (that may or may not reference tools) the more the question is about "how to" rather than "what can."


text:
Can I advertise my GitHub repository in the chat?
Can I post a link with a small description in the chat, about my MIT licenced GitHub repository?

What do you want to say about it in the chat? Are you looking for input/feedback from the users there?

@DMGregory Something along the lines of "hello people, this thing exists", nothing more particular than that. Feedback is always good as well, of course.

If it's relevant to the discussion going on, or if you want to start a discussion about it (as in asking for critique or opinions on it), then it's absolutely fine to post a link to your projects.

Thanks for asking this in meta!

People in chat are there to chill, discuss about game dev and related topics (and random stuff when not talking about that), and for occasional drama. Some users are regulars and some pop in once in a while to ask a question or two.
Having someone pop in, post a link to a not really needed resource ("yeah, it's about gamedev, but I don't need a new engine now, I have mine already or I'm using Unity anyway") and leave immediately can be considered rude and spam-ish, specially if the user doing so is not seen around in chat often.
So, yeah, sure, you can post a link, but will it be useful to chat users? (They generally seek specific advice, so it's more like "pull" rather than "push".) And if a user finds it spam-ish and flags your message, and 5 10k-rep-users agree that it is spam, your message will be deleted and you'll receive a small chat suspension.
I would suggest that you hang in chat, wait until the discussion is appropriate and tell the specific users about your link when/if it could help them. If your link is about doing a very specific thing in Unity, there is no need to bother someone who's working with SDL or Unreal with it.
Another option would be to hang in chat for some time until users there get used to see you around, and post your project at that time. I'm sure people wouldn't mind once they get used to you.
Just don't annoy people :)


text:
I thought the enter-key would make a new line while typing a comment, but instead, it submitted it b4 I was done writing. So
Meta: I thought the enter-key would make a new line while typing a comment, but instead, it submitted it before I was finished writing it. So, should this be changed?
I can see how edits-only-within-5-minutes is a good idea. But I wasn't expecting the enter-key to submit my comment right away. And I'm the type of person who can only write a really long "first-draft" to my comments/posts, after which I have to cut it down to a reasonable length before submitting. So I like to put enter-lines in between. 5 minutes wasn't enough for me. And I'm guessing that shift+enter is an option, but I didn't know at the time.
It's not a big deal, but just suggesting a meta-topic. Thoughts?

There's no mechanism accessible to the community to configure this, so this is a feature request for the SE team.
Shift-enter is an option, but it doesn't "do anything." It inserts line breaks in the input field, but the line breaks are not preserved when the comment is rendered.
(There are shift-enter line breaks between each of my sentences in this comment.)

I think this is a case of requesting functionality that is not suitable for the intended purpose of comments.  You shouldn't be making long first drafts of comments; they're not intended as permanent content.

I know comments should be short. That's why I edit them after. i.e. what I meant was: i'm bad at writing concise comments. So I wanna edit them into concise ones before submitting, with a few lines in between. Sorry if i was unclear.

This is a site wide feature & has already been raised on SE meta.
The presently stated rationale is that line breaks would lead to longer, more conversational style commenting. Comments are intended for brief meta Q&A rather than discussions.
From time to time, I've found myself trying to line break my own comments - I've always found that my content could either be made more concise or wasn't suited to comments to begin with.


text:
Do recruitment requests need to be explicitly addressed in our help section?
Comments on this question raised the issue that recruitment doesn't appear to be clearly mentioned in the on-topic & off-topic rules.
My question is: should it be explicitly covered? Does it come up enough to warrant coverage beyond meta?
I realize we cannot exhaustively list everything that is & is not in bounds for the site.

It's just an extra bullet in a currently-reasonable-brief list, so I added it (with a link to this meta post).

Thanks! I'll leave this open a bit to invite other viewpoints.


text:
Stack Overflow has stated the community isn’t very welcoming and asks for change. How do we do that here?
Read this if you haven't...
https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/
This has been an opinion of mine here, that we are not always friendly or welcoming.  I see us as not always that helpful, and we don't make an effort to provide useful information to guide those that don't know as much as we do.
So...
Read the article.  Look at it from the perspective of how this particular stack feels, not necessarily to you (people who participate more), but to the general larger community of users here.
Here are the primary points the blog brings up...

Let’s shift  from “don’t be an asshole” to “be welcoming.”
Let’s do something about comments.
Let’s make it easier for new users to succeed.
Let’s stop judging users for not knowing things.
Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness.

If you look at how our stack behaves, numbers 3, 4, and 5 are where we can do our best to improve.  This line particularly resonated with me, as I've precisely seen it happen here...

And little makes me sadder than comments on answers saying, “Don’t answer questions like this – it encourages them.”

So, how do we make it better here?

Well that's a great start - I bring this up and I get downvoted...

Do you have specific recent examples of where you think the community has been particularly unfriendly or unwelcoming?

Or, if it’s more that you agree that the issues brought up in that article are prevalent here, which of them do you feel is the most problematic? Which do you feel would benefit from some kind of directed community approach versus each user individually looking at his or her behavior?

It might help for everyone to clarify who/what is meant by community, us & we. StackExchange in general? GD.SE specifically?

I'm looking for discussion about the article, not my personal beliefs.  And yes, I do agree with it.  And reading it, I do see examples of behaviors they cite which I believe exist here.  Focusing on specific posts is not the point of my question, focusing on the larger ask of the article for change is.

Without specific issues I can't think of how to respond other than "yes, this sounds good, let's do it" (and I'm about to post an answer to that effect). But I'd still be interested in hearing about the circumstances that held you to that opinion prior to reading this article; unraised issues can easily go unaddressed. If your concern is about "naming names" or similar, I can set up a moderated chat to buffer the specifics, if you'd like.

I am amused that you picked the opposite set of bullet points than me for "things we can focus on here specifically." :P

Heh yea I just edited them into my question just as you were writing your answer :)

You're right about the "don't answer off-topic questions" comment though; we should probably stop doing that / start discouraging it. It hadn't really occurred to me before, but now that I think about it it does feel very much like the old "fix your accept rate" commentary we'd get when SE showed an asker's accept rate... which they rightly got rid of.

Here's a meta post from 2014 that covers this a bit.  I basically still agree with that answer.  https://gamedev.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1601/how-can-we-encourage-people-who-repeat-posting-low-quality-questions/1606#1606

That blog has, in the "Getting to the <3 of the problem" section, a good series of calls-to-action. Summarized aggressively, they are:

Let’s shift from “don’t be an asshole” to “be welcoming.”
Let’s do something about comments. Condescension and sarcasm have been reluctantly tolerated in comments for too long.
Let’s make it easier for new users to succeed.
Let’s stop judging users for not knowing things.
Let’s reject the false dichotomy between quality and kindness.

All of these are great.
But they all have to be individual choices on the part of the people actively engaging with the site. Short of having the community moderators handle flags when things get particularly out of alignment from those guidelines (as we currently do), it's hard for me to see what an actual, actionable community project (like the MathJax one) or policy change would be here. Everyone should just try to keep these things in mind.
For my part, the two things that stick out to me the most in the article in terms of how they manifest on this site are the first two bullet points. In any community there's a schism that eventually develops between the "old guard" who have been around a long time, and the newer, potentially more transient population of neophyte participants. The users who have been around a long time have a lot of experience to pass on, but that experience can also introduce a level of jadedness that can easily come out as (unintentionally or not) a sense of entitlement regarding the rules or a condescending air. I think trying to be especially mindful of that is something we can all do here.

I have only been in this forum for research so I don't know of any problems that have happened here. However I have been an active participant in Stack Overflow for over six years. I'm in the top 23% percentile for reputation. I've been in technology for a long time so I'm used to arrogant engineers and know how to forcefully handle them. I also have a lot of experience in consulting where you learn how to communicate with users that may not have experience in technology in order to provide the best product for them. You don't show off or be condescending to them if you want to have a good reputation for years to come.
When I first joined Stack Overflow I only used my company name but a while back decided to add my name to my profile when I was looking for work in the careers section. I began to notice more and more hostile responses, including downvotes within a minute or two of posting something even when I made it clear that I was beginning to learn something. I was not sure if the problem was a change in the moderators or if I was dealing with bias. I still ask questions there when I need to but I'm on guard at times just wondering if I'm going to have someone demean me for something. I am a female of color. For now I will only use my company logo and may remove my name from the profile until this issue is more under control.
This blog post is a good step forward acknowledging a problem that they were not willing to do in the past. If this is not resolved this could jeopardize future funding as many are no longer tolerating this kind of behavior and will go elsewhere if they are not respected.

This blog post IMO ignores some fundamentals facts about SE

The site is "elitist" by its very own design: Best questions, Best answers. It's not an bug, it's a feature.
The site is much different from chats, reddit, and other forums as it is not meant primarily for discussions and this causes misunderstandings with new users.
New users who don't read the rules and jump right in may be more likely to take personal offence when the rules are tersely pointed out or questions closed.
In any fields we only hear the squeaky wheels.
Inevitably on all SE sites it will become more and more difficult and frustrating to find good questions that haven't been asked in one form or another.

Unless someone comes forward with examples of clear hostility that is not dealt with (especially sexist and racist one as the article implies) I'd rather apply Hitchens's Razor, and a variant of Hanlon's Razor.
Hitchens's Razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"
There are no proof provided, just claims (hearsay) of complaints by newcomers.
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶i̶t̶y̶ having to constantly deal with people not reading the rules.
And yes, this is the internet: there are A-holes! A few easily banned bad-apples doesn't demonstrate a rampant problem.
A few jerks doesn't mandate we all start walking on egg-shells and post with little <3 to not hurt the very most sensitives who might not feel welcome enough.
(  <--- following the EVP of Culture and Experience's example. Don't hate: It wouldn't be very welcoming of you.)
We won't be able to get anything done right if we have to do all this to not accidentally hurt someone's feeling.
From the post itself:

And we're all unpaid volunteer: I feel (see how this works?) that it's borderline entitled of SO to demand (and I feel it's a demand, and you can't question the validity of my feelings, no you're not allowed to. "you're done.") we be more welcoming without even any objective proof of an major rampant problem.
Especially compared to the total number of users, questions, and answers.
And I feel the  in my post are warranted to drive the point. -Reductio ad absurdum If his blog post is to be the example to follow and all feelings have to be considered valid without questioning as is argued for in EVP of Culture and Experience's blog post.

PS:
This whole "feelings" thing is a downward spiral ripe for abuse where disingenuous people will just bully others by cries and complaints and we'll all be dealing with more drama than is worth.
Good people will leave because who wants to deal with all that drama? (Other than other drama-addicts).

I take a few issues with this. 1. I don't agree that quality and friendliness are a zero-sum game, and that any efforts to improve friendliness must necessarily reduce quality. One could argue that a more welcoming community will tend to attract and retain more users to collaboratively edit & improve what we have. 2. I don't agree that we lack evidence of a problem. I brought this up in the Election Q&A with some additional links for further reading. 3. I think you've misunderstood the use of feelings here. (continued...)

You seem to take this to mean "if someone says they feel X is Y then we know X is Y" - but that's not the way it's used in the source. The source uses it to say "If someone says they feel X, then we know they feel X" - ie. feelings matter when what you're concerned about is users' feelings. If a user feels a site is unwelcoming, then they're not likely to participate, and that has concrete reality. That matters to our ability to attract and retain users and scale our community. It's not giving feelings power to trump all considerations - it's recognizing that how we are perceived matters.

But that is the crux of the problem. We don't know if their feelings are valid. Some people really feel there are lizard-people out to get them.
This guy seem to think we're just being condescending and I quote: " I know what branching is. I'm glad you're teaching the children about branching"
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/158173/does-cause-branching-in-glsl/
There ALWAYS will be people who "FEEL" under attack no matter how welcoming and nice we are. Without any concrete data to evaluate we can't assume the validity of the complaints that are just hearsay from SE right now.

[Some unknown number of people feel unhappy, and just believe us when we (SE) say so without a shred of data.] isn't a good enough metric for a call to action. On a site with a immense number of visitors some are bound to be unhappy.

And conversely: On a site with a immense number of visitors some are bound to be legit total jerks. That's life and nothing that can be improved upon. We can kick them out and we should also kick out the equally toxic always-upset-I-thinks-everyones-hate-me people.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good


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What's the alternative for answers to off-topic questions?
I felt this is probably a substantial enough topic to splinter off, discuss & develop some community consensus about.
This meta raised the matter of how we shouldn't deal with answers to off-topic questions. Specifically, it calls out posting comments to the effect of "don't answer off-topic questions".
Yet, stating what not to do is doesn't necessarily cover what to do instead. That's what I'm asking here: what should the response be? In particular, is there a way to address the situation that is welcoming to users who seemingly don't see the problems they might be perpetuating? And ideally, are there solutions that don't create more problems than they solve?

I don't think we need to do anything. We got along fine for years before this became a trend, and we'll get along fine without it for years if we start deleting the "please don't answer off-topic questions" comments when they pop up from now on.
The justification we seem to have gravitated towards for this is that failing to do so causes more off-topic questions. But I don't think there's actually data to back that up. I think it's just a theoretical point we've clung to in order to make ourselves feel okay about it.

Are we expected to leave these answers totally alone, or should we treat them just like on-topic answers, upvoting good ones and downvoting bad ones?

Yeah; they're just answers. I'm proposing we treat them no differently than any other answers on the site.

I tried something new with a question that came up today:
Is there a stable Unity release for linux?
Rather than closing it immediately, I posted an answer giving the current info and also explaining why this particular site is not the best place for such questions:

No. At this time the Unity site still refers to the Linux editor as an "experimental" Beta feature.
...
In future, please direct this type of software query to the makers of that software. Because it's time-sensitive (maybe in two months there will be a stable Linux build released), handling it through our Q&A here risks leaving misleading signposts for future users.
(So, if you're a future user reading this after May 2018: don't take my word for it — check the manufacturer's website for the most up to date information)

Technically this is an answer to an off-topic question, but I'm hopeful this gives a friendlier experience for the asker and visitors who happen by the question, while still having the effect of teaching that this type of question is not appropriate for this site.
So this may offer another avenue to deal with answers to off-topic questions: edit them into a form like the one above, where the answer itself instructs about why the question is off-topic.
This strategy wouldn't work for all off-topic questions, but maybe those that are "topic-adjacent"?

The question is about game development (we shouldn't go way off-scope)
The question is readily answerable to some extent (we shouldn't invest a ton of time on off-topic questions, but if it's trivial to answer there's not a big cost)
The Q&A does not fit the StackExchange model for some reason (eg. time sensitivity, reliance on external resources, etc.)

I'm not sure whether this is a good solution to the problem, so I submit it here for the community's review.

I can appreciate the effort & am glad to see us try some different things as we work this stuff out. Were you still planning on closing the question? Isn't there a risk that seeing a mod answering will be seen as condoning such off topics questions?

@Pikalek I've gone ahead and closed the question (didn't want to do so immediately since it would have the effect of locking in my answer as the only one allowed - I wanted to leave some time for other voices). Myself, I'm not sure that seeing users answer off-topic questions encourages asking off-topic questions. In most cases where someone's asked a clearly off-topic question, I haven't seen much evidence that they've looked at ANY previous questions. ;)

I have a few concerns with not doing anything about these anwers:

How do we justify even closing these questions? "Sorry, but your question is a type of question that can be only answered up to the point where 5 people with close rights have seen this or a moderator sees the question." This might make new users feel that they're being treated unfairly, since some off-topic questions might have answers, and their don't.
Will this affect the deletion of closed questions? I'd assume closed questions without answers get cleaned up more frequently, but this is just a guess.
Voting behavior: How are we supposed to vote on off-topic answers? I feel like the most frequent off-topic questions that get answered are of the type "how to get started?", and the off-topic answers to those are often very opinionated. Should one vote up if they agree with the answerer's opinion, and down-vote if they disagree?

I agree that it's not the nicest thing to say "Please don't answer off-topic questions." After all, the user is being generous and providing their input to a question they feel they know the answer to. However, I personally believe that we'd be best of deleting these answers. Stack Exchange's purpose is to be a good collection of questions and answers, and I feel like dead weight like off-topic answers are not something we should have to deal with.
That said, I wonder if it'd be possible to perhaps get a custom deletion reason for these, with a very kind reminder about the site's purpose?

I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make with (1). We justify closing those questions because they're off topic. Answers -- whether they exist or not, whether or not they've been deleted, and whether or not somebody has commented on them -- don't have anything to do with how on-topic a question is. So I'm confused about what you're trying to get at here.

My point here is that users asking off-topic questions are not treated equally: their chance of getting an answer depends totally on how fast their question is closed.

I guess, sure, but I don't see that deleting answers from closed questions helps. Now ones "chance" of getting an answer depends on how fast the question is closed and how fast any answers posted are deleted. Deleting answers off closed questions seems not only pointless, it seems like it actively prioritizing strict adherence to dogma over trying to help people.


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Are the tags "concept" and "conceptual" useful here?
Recently, I noticed the tag conceptual applied to a question. I was surprised to discover that other questions have this tag applied, because it seems like a meta-tag.
The handful of questions in the tag interpret it rather loosely. Should we clarify/synonymize or delete this tag (and related tags like concept, which don't yet exist but could easily be pre-emptively captured in this discussion)?

I don't see that this tag adds any value as-is; I am personally in favor of adding it to the blacklist.
I can't see a useful path towards clarifying it. The obvious attempt, "game-concepts," seems like just another way to say game-design except that it invites opinion-based questions like "here's my game concept, what do you think?" which aren't on-topic here.
The tag is often used in a way that seems to simply categorize the question, as in "I don't actually have this problem, I'm just thinking about the problem conceptually." It's not useful in that context.
Consequently, I think it should be removed.

I was thinking of posting the same. The most constructive uses of it seem to be "please explain this concept" which could as easily be "please explain this term" under the [tag:terminology] tag. I don't think conceptual adds anything beyond what our other tags cover.

Failing any real opposition and having at least some moderate support, I'm going to start removing these today.

...and it is done.


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Should we nuke "learning resources recommendations" answers / questions
Questions such as this which was dug back up due to an edit to update a link:
Good resources for learning about game architecture?
Now almost 8 years old.
The issues I see with keeping it visible and search-engine-discoverable:

It's unfair to other (better or worse) books/resources/authors that didn't make it into the answers before closing.
Those works/resources will likely become stale to varying degrees and maybe not something I'd recommend to beginners.

For example as an extreme example I wouldn't recommend K&R's original first edition "The C Programming Language" to a beginner.
Or a book teaching Glide wouldn't be a very good starting point today either, eventually any suggestions will also contain obsolete information that will confuse beginners and affect the signal-to-noise ratio of good, up-to-date resources.

It's already a community wiki, intended to be easily edited to correct out-of-date information.

All of the answers should be merged into a single one, which would list all of the still relevant information (so: edit the first with the content of the others, then delete the others).
Then the warning suggested by DMGregory should be added to that answer.
This way we keep the content focused in a single answer, and users will only need to edit that single answer when need be.

I think if anything should be done, this makes the most sense. It's a community wiki, so having a single answer with all the resources allows others to modify/update/add/remove from a single list.

Answers should be edited to include a header:

Warning: this list of resources is not maintained and may be incomplete or outdated. We recommend using a search engine to get the latest updates in this area, or asking on discussion forums like GameDev.net or Game Development Chat

This preserves whatever value there may be in the existing Q&A, while informing users that that they should apply their own judgement & research.

Answers should be deleted but the question kept, closed, to keep the "duplicate of" feature.

I think the point of duplicate questions is to help users find answers to questions that have already been asked. If we delete the answers, they will not find answer to their question.

I'd agree - if we delete all the answers, I'd as soon delete the whole question, otherwise it's just a dead end cluttering search results.

The point of leaving it is so when people search to ask the same question, they find it's been asked and closed as off topic. Not sure it's worth deleting the existing answers.


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List of hex grid questions missing the 'hexagon' tag
I'm aware of this question in Meta: Do we need tags for 'rectangle', 'circle', 'triangle', 'hexagon' and 'shape'?, and as a hex grid nut I think the 'hexagon' tag is a special case.
Having said that, I've found a list of questions related to hexagons (as in "hex grids") that are missing the 'hexagon' tag:

Tweaking Heightmap Generation For Hexagon Grids
Technical differences between square and hexagon for a grid?
How to orient a hexagonal tile on a geodesic sphere (Goldberg polyhedron)?
Hexagonal Game Board Modal?
Showing range on hexagonal grid
hexagonal grid Mouse over
LibGDX hexagonal tilemap getting adjacent tiles
Error in Finding Nearest Hexagonal Tile
Applying Textures to Hexagonal Tiles Seamlessly
Elevation model for hexagonal game grids
Generating vertices for group of hexagons
Find connected hex of same color
Getting neighbors of hex tiles in 3D space
How do I calculate hex coordinates from a ring and index?
White dots artifacts when applying borders to hex tiled geometry

I'm not advocating for a massive serial retag, as I know (and I've felt in other SE sites) how disruptive those massive retaggings are, but hopefully something slower and calmer could be done about it.
It would be nice to have 'hexagon', 'hexes' and 'hexgrid' search results under the same tag.
After all, this SE may be the best online resource about hex grids, bar the excellent guide at Red Blob Games.

I still feel that hexagon is too generic as a tag.
You have a point that all these questions are logically grouped under the concept of a hexagonal grid, however, so I don't immediately see anything wrong with a tag for hexogonal-grid or similar (the grid being the important part).

I think 'hexagon' is not that bad as a compromise, because the calculations involving a hex grid are related to the specific geometric properties of the hexagon. 'hexagonal-grid' may be better though. Anyways, my post was more about (my perceived) need to add a 'hexagon' (or 'hexagonal-grid') tag to that list of questions. Maybe I should edit the question to clarify?

I think it's clear enough you're proposing adding a tag to those questions, and that's fine. I just don't think "hexagon" is a good candidate. The consensus is already to blacklist it (so by adding it, you'd just be making more work to undo it and re-apply something more appropriate); in general we have far too many tags here that are pointlessly broad, making them useless. More concept- or technique-specific tags would be better, which is why I think some tag that includes the grid aspect in the name would be better.

I just went ahead and made [tag:hexagonal-grid], so it should be possible to apply that to the appropriate questions in the list now.

I'm the first follower of hexagonal-grid, yes!

Shoud we remove the tag 'grid' from questions tagged, or to be tagged, with 'hexagonal-grid'? An example: Finding all hexagonal grid coordinates inside cover arc.

@Rodia In general, probably, as it's likely redundant (unless perhaps the question is also about conventional grids as the grid tag covers).

All the hexagon tagged questions have been moved to hexagonal-grid now, except for this one (edit was rejected by the poster), and two others that are not related to hex grids but genuinely to hexagons. May need a mod to edit these three questions and burninate hexagon once and for all.

Unless I'm missing something, why can't you just do an edit a day (or whatever pace you feel would be non-disruptive) in which you apply the tag to a question from your hit list?
Granted, at the moment, your edits would need to get approval, but since you don't want a fast disruptive process, this shouldn't be a problem. I think it also grants you a bit of rep in the process. Seems win-win to me.
That being said, please make sure that hexs are a core part of the question when tagging. For instance, the last question (White dots artifacts when applying borders to hex tiled geometry) seems borderline - to me, that problem isn't about hexes per say, but issues with aliasing & diagonal lines. Since it is likely that others implementing hex grids might run into similar problems, it's probably okay to use the hex tag there, but hopefully you get the idea - a problem can utilize concept X without necessarily being about concept X.

That was my first idea, I edited today Recognizing a hexagonal clickbox, but got a declined review, which I somehow understand. Good catch about last question, I had my doubts too, but I think ultimately it's hex grid related. I totally left outside the list questions mentioning hexagons as a trivial part, and questions about that Super Hexagon game :)


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Clarifying tags within blatantly off-topic questions
A new user recently suggested a few edits that came up via the review queue. These edits were all to improve the choice of tags, often replacing a generic tag with several tags that more accurately cover the question.
The problem is, every single question had previously been closed. This leads me to wonder whether tag improvements where the question is blatantly off-topic (for example, old questions that have been closed as "getting started" or "asking where to start") actually offer any improvements to the question.
On one side, the edit does nothing to make the question more accessible. At the end of the day, the question is still off-topic, and will remain closed. On the other side, the tag change does help to clarify the scope of the question; at least, if one is browsing questions by tag.
Should these minor changes be approved, or rejected? Does it actually add value, improving the tag choice on off-topic questions?

Generally, I'd probably reject them.
I view closed/on-hold questions as having a higher bar for what constitutes an acceptable edit. I will reject edits that I do not feel are trying to actively and substantially improve the question relative to whatever caused the question to be placed on hold.
The major exception to this is when making tag edits to remove or adjust tags that have been blacklisted.


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Is there a fundamental difference between "hacks" and "mods?"
...as far as the scope of this site goes?
hacks is on 13 questions as of now, wheras mods has ~150. Is there a fundamental difference between these two tags, as far as what we consider appropriate and on-topic here goes?

There is a fundamental difference, but I would like to explore if the difference is considerable enough to warrant a separate tag. It is clear that very few of the questions tagged with hack are on topic, as most have already been closed, and the few that remain present a suitable alternative.

While I agree with the observations made by Byte56, I see a lot of problems in the use of the hack tag, and would like to propose an alternative.
I won't go into actually defining the difference, as I believe Byte56 has already hit the nail on the head:

Mods are utilizing some developer approved method of modifying the game. ... Hacks are attempting to achieve the same result, but via non-approved methods.
- Byte56 ♦

Usage of the tag hack
As mentioned, there are only 14 questions using this tag. However, of these 14 questions, more than half have been closed.

3 of these questions have been closed as duplicates. None of the "original questions" use the hack tag. Instead, they use anti-cheat or security.
5 of these questions have been closed as off topic, commonly citing "too generic" and "too broad" as the close reasons.
Only a further 5 of these questions remain open. They almost all contain the tags anti-cheat or security, and at least one1 also uses the mod tag.

Replacing the hack tag
Though we are looking at hack and mod, I would like to suggest that we look at hack and the tags security and anti-cheat. Here are the excerpts, describing the use of each tag:

security: An area concerned with protecting hardware or software against theft or malicious or accidental behavior - often by brought on external parties - that would damage or corrupt the hardware or software.
anti-cheat: Methods employed by the developer to discourage or prevent cheating in the game.

Between these two tags, we easily cover the on-topic usage of hack. At the end of the day, the only questions that are on-topic specifically ask about preventing cheating through the use of hacks.
Furthermore, as already mentioned, these questions already contain these tags. In actual fact, "replacing the hack tag" would presently consitute simply removing the hack tag.

1 One particular question deliberately asks about creating a mod. I suspect this question will be closed, eventually, as it specifically asks "how to get started" and has only received negative feedback.

Mods are utilizing some developer approved method of modifying the game. Either through a scripting interface, API or some other method. The result is to change something about the way the game looks/plays.
Hacks are attempting to achieve the same result, but via non-approved methods.
So from a developer point of view, I think both are valid, but probably for different reasons. Mods would be used for developers wanting to create a mod for an existing game or for developers wanting to add modding to their game. Hacks would more likely be used for developers wanting to protect from hacks.
So maybe we can change 'hack' to 'hack-prevention' or something similar (which appear to be what a majority of the hack tagged questions are about). I'm not sure we want to answer questions about how to hack games. Not only would the answers be less likely to have supporting documentation, but they're more likely to become outdated as patches are pushed out or games are updated. Whereas mods are developer supported, so they're likely to have documentation and persist through game updates, so less likely to become outdated.

I'm not sure I see a reason to distinguish based on whether or not the change is "official" or not, for our purposes, though. Certainly there are a fair number of "mods" questions that are asking about making changes that can only be done unofficially since there are no official mod tools for the games in question. I hadn't considered the point about hack-prevention though. But we do have a "security" tag already that could cover that?

It's a valid point, people can use 'mods' to mean either official or unofficial.  I agree the security tag could cover hack-prevention. My last paragraph covers the sort of problems we get with unofficial hacks, (no supporting documentation, less likely to persist through game updates). But I think we can deal with those as they come up. We can get rid of the hacks tag as far as I'm concerned, just group the mod related ones into mods and the hack-prevention ones into security.


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Who should improve this question & how?
I think there's maybe a legitimate, on-topic question in How can I improve our chance to get Greenlit on Steam?, but clearly there are some challenges.
At best, this is likely to have subjective answers. And to me, leading off with a link to your game, sort of looks like a guerrilla marketing attempt. Still, marketing & approval processes seem like they pose difficult challenges to developers & if this question could be saved, it may benefit many.
What I'm wondering is:

Is it solely on the OP to improve it, or is it okay for others to attempt to fix it?
What, if anything, can be done to better align it with GDSE?

Is it solely on the OP to improve it, or is it okay for others to attempt to fix it?

You are fine to improve a question that is not yours, but it is important to ensure such edits are an improvement, and that you still retain the core intent of the question. If the original asker decides they are unhappy with your edit, or other users decide your edit is not an improvement, it can easily be reverted; Assuming you did make the edit in good faith, it's no biggie.
In situations of blatantly off-topic questions where the user has made an effort in their attempts to ask the question, I would consider making more drastic changes, in an attempt to convert the question to an on-topic question that might still help the original asker. In these situations, I always leave a comment explaining why I made such an edit, detailing how the old question would be closed as off-topic and how the new question should still help the user find the information they were after.

What, if anything, can be done to better align it with GDSE?

From what I can tell, nothing.
At the end of the day, the question asks "How can I improve the chances of being approved for Steam Greenlight". This raises two flags:

First, we need to advise the user in how to get "greenlit". From what I can tell, this is some sort of popularity vote. While there is a concencus across multiple articles that popularity does have a big impact on who gets greenlit, there is broad speculation on minor impacts, such as how Steam manages their traffic to your site and how Steam may randomly select games of lesser popularity. Ultimately, your opinion of the exact conditions in which a game is greenlit goes a long way towards answering "how can I improve the chances of that happening".
Given that we can at least agree that being greenlit is greatly based on popularity, we see that this question effectivley becomes 'how do I make my game more popular', or to a lesser degree, 'how do I make sure my game is good'.

For these reasons, I think it's fair to say that this question is unsuitable for the GDSE, and does not provide room for improvement.

Well, what can I do, instead? (inferred question)

The question should be closed, but if the intention is to help the asker, there is certainly alternatives to consider.

Comment on the original question and advise the user to try voicing their question on a relevant forum. Forums are generally far more flexible in their governing rules, and such questions are often welcomed. Furthermore, forums support greater dialog between individuals, which might allow for greater feedback.
Comment on the original question, advising the user to try voicing their question in our chat room. This will still require the user to achieve a reputation score of 20 to unlock the "talk in chat" privilege, but I think it's fair to expect at least a little effort on the asker's behalf.
While I do not agree with the inclusion of the asker's Greenlight page, as it only serves the purpose of advertisement, there is nothing stopping you from visiting the user's page and checking it out. Vote on it, comment on it, if it's good, tell us about it. Just not in a question format.

I agree with the speculation that greenlighting is in part a popularity vote & that what's popular is born from opinion. But there are things you can do to stack the deck in your favor. Identifying market opportunities, directing traffic, and advertising are not solely matters of luck & consumer whim; personally, those are the sort of things I would refocus the question on. I just didn't know how far an editor can go inferring authorial intent or if those specifics are on-topic enough for GDSE.

@Pikalek, to clarify, don't be afraid to break author intent if the original question would be closed, anyway. Just make sure you explain how we could not help with the original question, and how your changes make the difference between getting closed and getting an answer. Your changes should still reflect a question that would help the user. If you feel that your unsure, in this case would personally question the original askers efforts or wether they would even come back to look at and accept answers, consider that you might still have a good question. Why not ask it, yourself?

In regards to marketing, traffic, advertising etc (Analytics is another one) I would not consider these topics specific to Greenlight, in the context where they would be applicable to Greenlight. Any advice towards getting your game better coverage for Greenlight access could equally be for getting your game more coverage in general. While we have a [tag:marketing], most questions that actually ask 'how do I market' appear to be closed.

If such a question was written for the purpose of a good on-topic canonical answer, I would consider those with familiarity in the [tag:marketing] tag to be most on point. Unfortunately, our mods Josh and Byte are the only two users with more than 2 answers in that tag, and mods tend to have a lot on their plate.


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Inlining/reuploading images to stack's imgur. Should we do it even if it means going against 3rd pary license?
This question for meta.photo.se came to my attention:
(short version of the question)

Can we please inline images?
Can we re-upload to imgur images linked in questions? This will be useful for the future site visitors in case the original link becomes 404.

The concern of the OP is legitimate because he's been faced a couple of times with images that were no longer there and made the question useless or much harder to understand. (C.f. this fiasco with ImageShack.)
The answers were basically: It'd be useful, but you can't. Unless the original file is CC-BY-SA.
I often re-upload the images linked to by other users and in-line them in the question. Most of the time these images are screenshots uploaded by users to other services. Sometimes it's a graphics taken on the internet, and I state the source when I can.
Given the fact that re-uploading an image on stack's imgur might go against 3rd party sites and/or users licenses:
Should I stop? Should I comment and suggest to the user to re-upload their content on stack's imgur? Have I been naughty and Santa won't have presents for me this year? Should I bother at all?

Licensing Implications
In regards to potential licensing issues, unless glaringly obvious (watermarks, do not copy, etc. ), I would not worry about it. I can see several reasons; I will go in to them in greater detail.
Ultimately, if you do not feel comfortable with it, do not do it. Just because something is legally right, does not mean to say it is ethical. If you do not feel comfortable with it, no harm, no foul.
Potential for License Breach
In the event of a breach, I can only see two possibilities:

The image was originally posted in breach of the concerning license.
The image was originally posted by the owner, and re-posting it under a 'StackExchange account' constitutes the license breach.

A good rule I tend to follow is to assume good intention. If an image has been posted, I would assume that user has appropriate permission to do so. Furthermore, when we post content to StackExchange, we are stating that we have the right to do so. In fact, when we submit content, we grant ownership to StackExchange1.
According to a moderators reply on a related question, images are no different; and in situations where the user can not grant rights to StackExchange, I would not think they had the appropriate rights to post the image, in the first place. Furthermore, should we be alerted to a breach, all we really need to do is comply with the image removal.
Fair Use
All this aside, there is also the principle of fair use. In most cases, I would assume the image was being used in conjunction with a reasonable interpretation of "fair use" - especially when most of the images I intercept are tailor made, and only include fragments of copyrighted material2 for the point of demonstration. It is important to note that I am not a lawyer; If you wish to know more about fair use, I would direct any questions towards Law.SE.
Context
I think context is important, here. The post you link to is on the photography stack exchange. The replies are all from users who have seasoned reputation in photography, but in comparisson, not much else.
I think it fairly obvious that in the context of photography, image licensing is far more important. Users are asking about photography, and are therefore posting examples of photography. This would be like someone asking about their game, and posting the entire game project. As previously mentioned, the context in which we commonly use images is not as critical, in comparison. We are far less likely to encounter a situation where an image poses a risk of breaking license.
As an additional comment, the answer you specifically link to asserts that '(Moderators)policing copyright; that's not StackExchange's policy.', and issues concerning copyright are a greater issue in protection of our own user's work. While I do not necessarily agree with this, this highlights the relevance of context, in relation to the actual community.

Correcting image links is an appropriate edit; but make sure others know that your making an improvement, too.
At the end of the day, your edits go towards future-proofing the question. These are the sort of edits we want.
That said, it is definitely worth addressing why you made the change, as a comment. Some users simply would not know that we prefer images to be uploaded in a specific way, and why. I personally did not know that correctly uploaded images were uploaded to a 'StackExchange account' until I raised the potential issue of answering a question in the form of a picture.

Other elements to consider, when improving an image.
I will personally make and approve edits that convert the image to the official account. I should point out that a link update is usually not the only improvement that can be made to most image links. Initially (and most of the time, indefinitely), a properly used link should look something like this:
[![enter image description here][1]][1]

    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Z2Gi.png

Notice the text "enter image description here"? This is the alternate text. If a user is unable to load the image, the alternate text should take its place. As such, you should include an 'alternate text caption' as an alternate to the image. This caption should clearly convey the same intention as the image, but in text.
You can also include rollover text, by including it in double apostrophes (" "), which is a good way to include sourcing information. I usually include a rollover text to tell the user where the link will take them to, if there is one attached.
If I was editing the question, I would change the above image link to give the following result:
[![Every banner in Terraria][1]][1]

    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Z2Gi.png "Banners @ terraria.wikia.com"

Final Considerations

It is worth addressing the fact that you should be trying to improve the entire question. If you make the edit to improve the image, but refrain from reviewing the rest of the question, this might be considered bad form. You should always give the question a browse, and make any other improvements, if applicable. Does the user use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar? Does the title make sense? Are there any other edits you could make to improve the question?

1 It is not as black and white as "you post it, we own it", but there are some fair cases where it is. Answers, for example. For this reason, a user can not 'chuck a tanty' and insist on the deletion of multiple high-quality answers on the basis that they were the author.
2 For example, screenshots that include images of a trademarked editor or other piece of software.

I have edited my question to highlight the concern I have, which is not currently addressed in this answer.

@AlexandreVaillancourt, addressing your concerns, now. I will retain the original answer, as I feel it addresses other issues that might not be as obvious.

You can, it might be useful for other users :)

When you edit questions, your goal is to make them more understandable and possibly future-proof. If this means to reupload and/or inline them, then do it. Putting the images in the text can make the reader's life easier, because they don't need to jump between sites, especially if it contains crucial information for the answer.
However, before doing this, check the img uploader's term of service, if you're allowed to download the images and use them. For example, Imgur's TOS says:

By downloading an image or copying other user-generated content (UGC) from Imgur, you agree that you do not claim any rights to it. The following conditions apply:
   - You may use UGC for personal, non-commercial purposes.
   - You may use UGC for anything that qualifies as fair use under copyright law, for example journalism (news, comment, criticism, etc.), but please include an attribute ("Imgur" or "courtesy of Imgur") next to where it is displayed.

Because you're not getting money from the answers, you are free to reipload the image to SO

@AlexandreVaillancourt Sorry, it was clear, it was just a typo

I have edited my question to highlight the concern I have, which is not currently addressed in this answer.

By uploading to SO, however, your granting said permissions to SO. Given that SO is not a nonprofit, your last comment raises concerns.

IANAL, and I don't work for Stack Exchange, this here is only my opinion on the question.

It all boils down to the Terms of Service of the site:

Subscriber warrants, represents and agrees Subscriber has the right to grant Stack Exchange and the Network the rights set forth above. [...] Stack Exchange reserves the right to remove any Subscriber Content from the Network, re-post to the Network any Subscriber Content removed by any Subscriber or former Subscriber, suspend or terminate Subscriber’s right to use the Services at any time, or pursue any other remedy or relief available to Stack Exchange and/or the Network under equity or law, for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Subscriber Content or if Stack Exchange is concerned that Subscriber may have breached the immediately preceding sentence), or for no reason at all.

As described in this answer on meta.se:

As far as rights go, your deal is with us1, and is subject to our1 terms of service, privacy policy, and cc-wiki content license.
That means that the images you upload are covered under our1 "attribution required" license just like anything else you contribute.

1 Stack Exchange
So if one wishes to improve the question by reuploding to stack's imgur account, it's at their own risk.
Some sites grant licenses that are not unlike the one used by Stack Exchange's (Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike), from which one could pull content and reupload to stack's imgur, while some others do not, in which case it could be considered a copyright infringement.
Stack Exchange will not police the content uploaded. They'll most likely wait until they receive a cease and desist notice from a copyright owner, remove the content, find the faulty user and then send them a 'you've been a bad user, don't do it again' email, do nothing or even suspend them.

So before reuploading, I think I'll

make sure that the original host site's ToS is ok with it,
reupload,
then leave a trail to the original file. e.g.: (original image)  (One could argue that it can be seen in the history.)
leave a comment to the user.

In the case the original host does not allow to copy the content and/or the ToS is not aligned with Stack's, I'll simply suggest to the user to reupload to Stack's imgur account because it's sooo much better.


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Handling duplicates where there's an understanding gap
This is a phenomenon I've seen just a couple times; most recently:

Today: Multi purpose item class design in C#

Duplicates this from 2010: What are different ways to define items in an RPG like game?

The user has a question that has been asked before, has done their research and read the previous question and answers, but doesn't understand them well enough to solve their problem.

On one hand, it seems redundant to keep the newer post, since it's asking the very same question (down to using the same example case). Keeping it divides answers & attention to the problem between two different pages, making it harder for someone searching to find the info in one place.
On the other hand, just closing the new question as a duplicate doesn't serve the needs of the user who asked it, or future users who might be similarly unclear on how to use the advice from the original question.

Is this a case where we should add/edit answers to the original question and direct the asker there, or keep both questions open, or modify the new question to ask specifically about what the original doesn't cover... or is there some other best practice?

In the general case:

On one hand, it seems redundant to keep the newer post, since it's
  asking the very same question (down to using the same example case).
  Keeping it divides answers & attention to the problem between two
  different pages, making it harder for someone searching to find the
  info in one place.

Correct, we should close it as a duplicate. It's hard to search here for a lot of the topics that come up in game development, which makes finding duplicates tricky sometimes. As a result we have a lot more un-tracked duplicate questions floating about than I'd like, but hey, that's life.

On the other hand, just closing the new question as a duplicate
  doesn't serve the needs of the user who asked it, or future users who
  might be similarly unclear on how to use the advice from the original
  question.

I agree; in cases where the asker is obviously aware of the duplicate and simply does not understand one of the existing answers, we should edit the question to reflect that very specifically, including the title if possible, to make it very clear. If it's not clear which answer the asker is referring to or precisely what they don't understand, we should close the question and ask for clarification.
Unfortunately in the specific case you raised in your post, the question had already attracted answers of a more general nature that don't deal specifically with explaining the existing answers from the duplicate. In such a case I'd rather simply leave the question closed and encourage the asker to re-ask, rather than make an edit that is so drastic it would invalidate the answers already posted (potentially causing those answers to receive somewhat unfair down votes in the future).

At the end of the day, the user is asking us to explain the answer to a question that has already been asked. In cases such as the example you have provided, they directly repeat the original question.
I would be closing these questions immediately, especially when the duplication is so clear and obvious. That does not mean we can not help the user.
You could advise them to post a bounty on the original question to draw out an answer they could better understand. Heck, if you want to help them out, you could do this, yourself. This is the intended way to encourage newer answers; not by ignoring the duplication standards we try to keep.

What if the user can not afford the bounty?
It only costs 50 reputation to place a bounty, and you only need 75 reputation to earn the privilege, in the first place. While you are free to place the bounty, yourself, the cost seems fairly reasonable for a new user wishing to seek explicit help.
What if the user does not want to post a bounty?
If the user does not wish to post a bounty, they are not too invested in receiving an answer. Simple as that. If you think other users might still benefit from an updated answer, consider posting the bounty, yourself.
I have read the original answers, and none of them cover the topic very well.
If you have the understanding and knowledge to provide a better quality answer, you should post it on the original question. We want all the relevant answers in the same place. If the new question is closed, it will still redirect to the old question. In cases such as these, had the original featured the rsought after explanation, the user surely would not have posted in the first place.
But the user really isn't understanding
Remember that we are a Q&A site; not a HowTo guide. There is going to be a certain level where users simply do not understand the context, and at that point, you have to accept that we can't help everyone. Maybe it's worth exploring why the user does not understand.
Talk to them, in chat, and discuss their confusion. This might come down to obvious falts in the original answers, providing you with feedback to create a better answer. This might also come down to jumping to far ahead, where you might be better off advising the user to learn less advanced concepts, first.


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Should edits that improve readability by changing a variable name to a more generic and understandable name be rolled back?
An edit that atleast for me improved the readability and understandability of the question by renaming a variable in the codeblock was rolled back. The post in question is
How do I make an object move to certain point?.
The original name of the variable doesn't make sense to a casual site-reader. An explanation of what the (perhaps poorly?) named variable means was added instead.
Is there a general guideline on edits as such? I came upon this SE-meta post which seems to encourage renaming variables but reminds to look at the situations one by one.

As I pointed out, there was more to the changes than the variable name. Is it that you simply have not seen these additional changes, or is it that you don't understand how these additional changes were a part of the improvement?

In general, changing a variable name to improve readability is acceptable but should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
It's important to improve readability, but it's also important to consider the mental structure of the problem the asker must have in his or her head and not distort the question so much that they won't be able to align any potential answers with their own code.

In the specific context of the edit in question, I don't think the variable rename was particularly important as the question also clearly stated the intent of the variable under its original name.
I don't think the rollback was needed either, but the edit stream has moved beyond that, so whatever.

For clarity, I feel I should mention that the description of the variable I believe you are referring to was added by me, after the rollback.

Also, the user I rolled back on has mentioned that this is a "very drastic measure"; I consider it the opposite, in regards to the fact that it was edited over the top for further improvements (as opposed to me just saying 'that's a bad edit' and rolling it back without further improvements). Is there any penalty to the user I may have missed, in this sort of situation?

I don't think so, no.

I agree that if the edit makes improvements to the readability of the question, it should be kept.
I agree that this could include naming conventions, but we must look at each case, uniquely.
I do not agree that the edit was to change a variable name, nor that it made the question more readable; in fact, there was a bit more to the edit than a single name change, and I felt the other additions only added redundancy and more incorrect grammar.

Looking at the edit in question, I found a couple of changes that lead to my rollback:

Title change: "Object moves to certain point?" to "How to make an object move to a certain point and have it stay there?"

Improves on the question, but retains the same readability issue, in that it poses a statement as a question. Statements and questions are both acceptable titles, but they do not work, together. I interpret this as a minor language discrepancy, as I see this "statement-question" format used, a lot. Regardless, in English grammar, it does not work.
I felt, at this point, adding that the user wanted to the object to stay at the position after movement completed was a bit obvious. Look at it this way, if your not moving anymore, you must therefore be "still". This might seem like a minor caveat, but I'm a firm believer in ensuring the question title sounds inviting and non-awkward. To me, the inclusion of the obvious sounds awkward.

The inclusion of "then having it stay at that point."

Much like in the title, I felt this added awkward redundancy to the question. When you stop moving, you are still, you should not need to clarify so for us. Regardless, I included a smaller addition of "and stay", which I feel confirms this requirement in a shorter way.

The inclusion of tags c# and direction and the removal of the tag vector.

A non-event for the purpose of this discussion; I initially thought the tag change unnecessary, but I was wrong. direction does seem more relevant to the question than vector, which in retrospect, appears to fit in best as a meta tag. Ultimately, we don't use tags if they only serve a meta purpose, they should directly categorise the question.

The restructure of the user's comment

Ultimately, I did not find the change to offer any improvement to readability, past grammar and punctuation. I believe we should try to use grammar and punctuation in comments, but in context, it is unnecessary.
If the asker intends to use pseudo-english in their comments, let them. Comments should not be important to the question, regardless.

Name change: wak to target_position.

In singular context, an appropriate name change, but explaining that the user wants to move to the position wak serves the same purpose.
Assumes that, in context of that specific asker's script, wak is primarily the target destination. This may not be an accurate assumption; while the value may provide the target destination, it is entirely likely that it could be primarily used for some other purpose.
In conclusion, the name change makes it easier to read for everyone else. The simple explanation makes it easier to read for everyone else, but retains its readability in direct context of the asker.

Ultimately, the edit was compared with the edit that was made, prior. I felt that I was able to best retain author intent, while make the question more readable, going off the previous edit.
The question now makes complete sense. You might say that it made sense before my edit, but it did not necessarily make grammatical sense. I take grammar into account, when I cast my votes, or rather I improve on any issues instead of down voting. In this case, I was removing my down vote.

I understand the some users may confuse correct grammar, coming from a non-English background. I know other users may simply be game developing geniuses with a less-ideal understanding of English, regardless of native language. This is all completely fine, in my book, because we have users that are knowledgeable enough to perform the cleanup, and despite the rare complaint regarding required effort, it does not require much.

Did you meant "improvements" instead of "improve ments"?

Keep in mind that a rollback is a very drastic measure. Don't be surprised if people don't like your methods.

I meant "Did you mean [...]"

@AlexandreVaillancourt, thanks for the correction. My phone autocorrects to "improve ments", much to my frustration. Ultimately, it was a rollback edit, so regardless of what the original edit contained, I still would have made the changes as per detailed. I'm sorry if you have taken any offense to it, I am perfectly happy if you wish to re-name the variable (provided you do not revert the other changes).

I really should point out that if I think its an improvement, and give a good reason why it was not an improvement, I will happily concede and consider the same argument, next time. I do not believe we retain edits on the basis that 'the user didnt like it'. I have been convinced that your name change may have been appropriate (the other answer seems to say it was not because of additions I made after the fact). Though I doubt there will be argument for the other changes, I do see users downvote and abuse  the asker because of these inconsistencies, so I always fix it when I can.


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Can we merge tags 'rectangle' and 'rectangles'?
We have both of these tags: rectangles and rectangle.
Could we merge rectangles into rectangle?

And I'm not even talking about the relevance of that tag :P

Looking at a few of the questions under each tag, I'm not seeing any consistency to tell what the tags are even used for. Can you even be "an expert on rectangles"? I have to ask if we need the tags, to begin with.

@Gnemlock Thing is, we'd have to ask that about [tag:circle] too. That was meant to be a second question!

Perhaps we could discuss both tags/options in general; it seems moot to discuss merging tags if we than discuss removing them, and given the same arguments apply equally to [tag:circle], I think it appropriate to include it. I have also found [tag:hexagon] and [tag:triangles]. Alternatively, we have the tag [tag:shape] that may serve as a better core synonymn.

@Gnemlock I've created the question here. I believe they're two different questions. Creating a tag synonym (rectangles -> rectangle) is a simple action, from what I understand, but the outcome of the other discussion can require more work to achieve.

Yes. Merging and linking (the latter especially) is pretty straightforward, usually (and in this case doesn't seem worth much thought). Blacklisting tags is something I'd like to see more discussion on, or at least let the idea percolate for a few days, so it'd be good to have a separate discussion about it.

I've merged rectangles into rectangle and made the appropriate synonym link.


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Do we need tags for 'rectangle', 'circle', 'triangle', 'hexagon' and 'shape'?
It came to my attention that there is a tag for

✅ rectangle, no description, 76 questions
✅ circle, with description, but no usage guideline, 52 questions
✅ triangles, with description, but no usage guideline, 78 question
✅ hexagon, with description, but no usage guideline, 50 questions
✅ polygon, with description, but no usage guideline, 115 questions
✅ shape, with description, but no usage guidelines, 51 question**

which all relate to more or less the same type of thing.
A question that comes to mind is, can someone be an expert in rectangle, circle, shape?

Do we need all of these tags?
Could/should we merge them all to the single shape or polygon?
Could/should we merge some of them?
Should we simply remove them all?
Are these tags only accessory to other more valuable tags?

** The shape could be relevant to 2d and 3d objects, while all of the others are only relevant to 2d (planes).

I don't really think any of these are particularly helpful as-is. I'd propose removing all of them.
The few cases where I can think, offhand, that these tags might even potentially apply (rasterization, collision detection and response, and so on) have better, more appropriate tags available already... or we should make appropriate tags (for example, circle-circle collision detection might be useful, but I don't think circle alone is).

But then we'd also need the tags rectangle-rectangle, circle-rectangle, triangle-circle, circle-line, etc, wouldn't we?

Maybe. Certainly we shouldn't be creating them pre-emptively. What I mean to suggest is that if all ~75 questions tagged with 'rectangle' end up being about collision between two rectangles maybe that's worth a tag of its own rather than using both "collision" and "rectangle" (persuant to our earlier discussions about avoid doubled-up tags)

[tag:circle] I can almost see being useful, since there's a particular style of math that usually comes into play when circles/spheres/arcs are involved - radius checks and unit circle trig, occasionally special facts about tangents and chords... so, that might be a legitimate specialty, at least on a math site. But I can't see anyone trying to search for "circle" questions to try to solve a particular gamedev problem, or a game developer identifying themselves a "circle expert"

In various SE metas, I often see this judgement of, if a thing can't improve outcomes, it might be redundant. Looking briefly at the rectangle questions, the word rectangle itself appears in the titles, so I guess the questions do significantly relate to rectangles. But if someone was looking for a question about rectangles, would the tag would be so much more helpful than the word being in the title? One reason to look for rectangle questions would be to earn points by answering such questions well (a "rectangle expert" user story so to speak). But titles would work in that case.

If we decide to remove them, I have some time to edit them all out.

I have begun the process of removing all these.