text:
Make the edit link for question be more noticeable
Instead of editing questions folks write lots of comments.
I usually type "please use the [edit] link to add more information on your original question", and the usual response is one or more comments with the requested information.

After endless times experiencing this, it is clear to me that the [edit] link is not so clear to others.
Is there a way to make it stand out more as a clickable link? Should it have a box around it or some other design element?

While I agree with your reasoning, this would just clutter the screen for me, since I already know where the Edit button is. This would probably work better as a feature that disappears after the user has 20 rep or similar.

Most users do not see the edit option... Sometimes I even write "use the [edit] link at the bottom of your question (between share and close)" but even then most folks just write more comments...

or tell everybody to turn on keyboard navigation and just press E on any question page.

@David thanks! Where would I find such shortcuts?

To me making it more visible isn't really going to work; there's a popup asking if user is sure they'd like to answer their question anyway. If they don't see that then chances are they won't see any buttons below the question as well. Probably some more visual information on that popup could work while I'm not sure

Ok... so from now on, I will keep it very simple: "Please press E to [edit] the question (or try the link at the bottom of the post: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lXFuK.png) ... or leave a comment if that is too complicated..."

@cegaton no, no. keyboard navigation is not on by default, you can't tell users to simply press E.

@David bummer...


text:
Why there is no button for attaching a .blend directly in the editor?
I hope I won't be penalized that this is the question related to this site, not the Blender.
My question why there is already no button in the post editor that would allow to attach a .blend file using http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com, something like this?

I don't find handy to repeatedly paste the link into comments for almost every new question that needs more investigation of the scene.
I believe the implementation should be really easy... or is there a reason why the button (or just a simple link) is not already here?

Related: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/630/announcing-blend-exchange-a-new-solution-to-blend-hosting/634#634

Jan, I see you realized that this type of question is off topic on the main site (its only about blender). However this is exactly what the meta is for, questions about the BSE site.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Should we have a "Best Practice" tag?
Today I found that Graphic Design Stack Exchange has a best-practice tag. And while not so large in number, tagged with it are some pretty helpful and interesting questions. I immediately thought "why don't we have that over at BSE?" and I recalled that there was some rule that was basically agreed upon by the community that we shouldn't allow "best practice" questions because they would be too broad, or would generate answers that are opinion-based. Ah yes, here is the post I was thinking of: Best Practices for Learning Blender [Closed]
Now, in that particular example I think the question fails because it's essentially asking how to use all of Blender. But is it inherently wrong to ask a question about the best practices with regard to accomplishing a certain task within Blender? And could such a tag, if given a clear definition including clear usage guidelines, help to serve the community?
A keyword search of questions within Blender Stack Exchange containing "best practice" reveals that they are not so uncommon.
But isn't it then perhaps sufficient that people trying to learn Blender with less trial-and-error and more attention to theory and workflow can simply use the search field to find these questions? Is there any real benefit to having a tag?
Here is a Meta question proposing a best practices page. I can see why it was not a popular idea. We don't want to write entire tutorials, and we want to keep our content here concise.
I can't help but wonder, is the nature of the questions at BSE different enough from GDSE that this sort of question should be handled differently? Would adding such a tag open Pandora's Box and lead to a flood of vague and rambling questions that pave a wandering trail off into Opinion Forest? Or could some good come of it if we instruct users to keep it to a specific topic or tool?
What do you all think?

In regards to your thought as to why Best Practices for Learning Blender was closed:

Now, in that particular example I think the question fails because it's essentially asking how to use all of Blender.

No, the question was closed because 'best' inherently refers to someone's opinion and therefore cannot have a 'correct' answer, which is why it was closed as Primarily opinion-based.
And if we look at the close reason description:

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

I can't really see any way that a best-practices tag wouldn't be entirely comprised of opinion-based questions, which would then be closed.
I can't really speak as to why the Graphic Design StackExchange might be better suited to have a best-practices tag, but as you point out, they have very few questions tagged with this. Out of their 22,000 questions only 57 have warranted the use of this tag (47 when you exlude duplicates and closures). This doesn't say to me that this tag is entirely valuable.
There are of course best practices that blender users use, but how would we work out which questions deserve to be immune to the Primarily opinion-based closure reason? Would it be helpful to the user to potentially get conflicting answers because people disagree on what the best is?
Personally, I think this tag would only introduce ambiguity into what questions are on or off-topic. We already have a way of finding out the best way of doing something. It's asking a question. The best way of doing something (is that really any different to best practices?) is the answer that gets the most votes from the community.

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


text:
Do you know of any trustworthy blender tutorial forums?
I was wondering if you know of a trustworthy blender tutorial forum, as in with tutorials that are up-to-date and idiot proof?
I don't want to ask questions on Blender stack that are not acceptable for the site.
Thanks and sorry if I "put my foot in it" again.

Blender.Stackexchange definitely isn't the right place to ask these questions as it's asking for tutorials. However I don't quite think there are any sites for that. General recommendation - try BlenderArtists.org, but the most useful is use tutorials from known tutorial creators (BlenderGuru, CreativeShrimp, BlenderDiplom, BlenderHD etc) and search engine to find the rest from what you want

Try Blender cloud. Not free, but trustworthy.

Here's a list of resources, if you haven't found it already

Thank you everyone <3

As stated above, questions asking for links are discouraged. This has been discussed here: What is the proper action for a question that requests links to tutorials


text:
narrowing down terms of blend-exchange
Recently I read a comment here about very long-range licence regulations on blend-exchange. It states:

You grant to blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, adapt, publish, translate and distribute your user content in any existing or future media. You also grant to blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com the right to sub-license these rights, and the right to bring an action for infringement of these rights.

This indeed is very heavy. I'm allowing them to do nearly anything with my blend file. Until now, I often recommended new users this service, as is usual here, but after reading this, have a bad feeling about it.
I understand that a website with user content need some kind of long-range rights to host and distribute this content. I know that this service is offered with best intentions and free of charge, which is greatly appreciated. But following these terms it would also be possible to sell all blends there, or am I wrong? What happens if giantcowfilms is sold itself? Couldn't the terms be narrowed down to what is just neccessary to allow permanent storage and for using them here on BSE?

I've let giantcowfilms know about this question. He is the one that runs the whole blend-exchange site.

The reason that is so broad is to try and make the site as permanent is possible - I didn't want any license restriction to get in the way of a plan to finance additional storage (I have no intention of ever selling them for profit). For example, if I were to take donations to buy additional storage that I could not afford, I would want the license to be completely permissive of that. If it came to it, I might even need to put ads on the website (heaven forbid), which in a round about way would constitute selling the content. Either way, I want the current blends to stay and I want to continue being able to take in new blends.
If I had a a lawyer, I'd look into changing it to make it explicit that the blends could not be used for profit, but I just don't know the full implications of such a restriction (for example, maybe the fact that the advertising service I use makes a profit would be an issue), so I think I will leave it for now.
As far as GiantCowFilms.com selling itself, It's my personal site, and I see it as very unlikely anyone would even want to buy it (and they'd need to make me an offer I could not refuse), and if they did, blend-exchange would probably at long last get its own domain (the use of the sub-domain is a cost saving measure), and there would be restrictions on what the new owner could do with the blend-exchange sub-domain.
P.S.
Speaking about costs - blend-exchange has used up roughly 75% of its space, so at some point we will have to start looking at either finding more free methods of getting space - or look into ways to finance more space. If that falls short, we might have to start removing infrequently viewed/downloaded files, which would be sad.

Thanks for your detailed answer. Again, please don't misunderstand me: I'm not questioning your intentions. But even some of the most promising relationships may get divorced sometimes, or accidents happen.
So, it's to a lesser extent a question for you, but more for the community. If the majority is happy with so extensive terms, so be it. But all these rights should only be given as they are needed to provide a permanent storage for BSE.
Oh, and I would happily provide my part of donation to keep the service runnig, if it comes to that.   :)

Out of interest, how much space would you save by deleting all blends over (for example sake) 1 year old with no downloads?

@batFINGER Removing those files (no downloads) would save around 327 megabytes. If we were to remove files with less than five downloads would save around 1.73 gigabytes.

@GiantCowFilms and how much space they are taking in overall? Or to be more specific how much % could you save by deleting them?

I'll just give my opinion of blend-exchange's license, because I'm in no position to change it.
Yes, it is overly broad, and surrenders all rights to blend-exchange. Could it be narrower? Probably, but like GiantCowFilms said in his answer, we are not lawyers better to play it (very) safe then run in to some stupid legal trouble down the road.
Two reasons why the terms do  not bother me.

It is for storing blends use in questions and answers. Ideally it should be small test cases showing a problem, or the completed solution. There is no reason to upload a full scene.
This is the internet... Youtube and google drive's terms have very much the same effect, yet we all still use services like those.

Let me elaborate on #1.
Say I'm writing a question, and I need to include a blend. If I'm doing my do diligence I will start a new file and recreate my problem (that in its self will solve many issues). I'm not concerned that blend-exahcnge has the right to sell my blend; it only contains a problem!
Or say I'm writing an answer, this one as an example. Whenever someone writes an answer they are sharing knowledge. That kind of sentiment does not bode well with "you can not use my blend."
I made that blend just so people could see exactly how each method in my answer works. I gave the knowledge away in my answer, the blend is just another way of sharing it.
When you look it is like that, it is hard to come to the conclusion that the terms restrict usage.  If you have something that can not be shared, you probably are not writing your question as best you could.

As far as the Google Drive terms and conditions go, this is what they say: "When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content." So, you're not keeping any more rights by using Google Drive.

And Blend-Exchange using Google Drive internally, so we kind of need those rights to then give them to Google. This is exactly why this is so messy and why I'm nervous to change anything.

Oh boy, that's even worse than I expected. See, that's the problem with too broad rights – the uploaded blends are not only given to one person, but submitted to a giant worldwide data kraken without the users knowledge. I agree with David, its not a really big problem, since all blends are about problems, or cutted down to simple meshes or parts of them. Still, I'm not at all happy with this. But if the majority of people here is fine with it, I guess I have to accept it.

@ScottMilner That is why I brought up other sites' terms. Not to suggest one is better or something but to show that this type of surrendering all rights stuff is kinda normal on the internet.

Just because it's normal doesn't mean it's the way it should be, though. And it's within our power to control our little piece of the Internet. (:

That's what I hoped to start: a discussion about what should be. But most people here seem to be content with the status quo, so be it.


text:
Removing the tag for which a question was dupehammered
I noticed @cegaton had closed this question as duplicate using his gold cycles tag.  Just playing the "devil's advocate" I am in no way questioning @cegaton.
Consider some hypothetical question, which has been mis-tagged with nothing-to-do-with-the-question
The "issue of law" as I see it is, what if I edited, and removed the mis-tagged nothing-to-do-with-the-question, because when searching by tag we don't want to come up with a result that has nothing to do with the tag,  the question couldn't then be closed by a user with a gold nothing-to-do-with-the-question tag.
What if it already had been?  I'd feel then that I'm questioning someone that knows more about nothing-to-do-with-the-question by removing the tag.

This question was a good example of editing out tags that have noting to to with the question...

Speaking just about the linked question, yes you absolutely could of edited out the cycles tag (I went and did it). That question has noting to do with any rendering, it is a modeling question.
Now when a question is closed as a dup, even when it was gold tag closed, you editing the question will not change that. (Except in some cases it will go through the reopen review because it was "Edited after being closed.")
In this instance the question being closed by someone that holds the gold close power makes no difference. If a question has nothing to do with a tag, remove that tag.

Still pretty off with the cycles stamp which is what I think was the main issue.


text:
How can I upload any other file types like .py , .obj,
Importing Another file formats not .blend or img only
I know that I can import a .blend or an image file but,how can I
Import other formats like .py , .obj , .dae .....
How can i make it in blender stack exchange ?

As far as .py goes, that can just be copy-pasted as a code block. .obj and .dae can be imported in to a .blend and uploaded, but that won't always work for every question.

If you're thinking to upload another file format by itself, chances are your question probably isn't Blender exclusive, if not, it should be fine to embed it into one and outline the problem you're having with said file in Blender in a project context.


text:
Old duplicate, poor problem description and no helpful answers
I wanted to ask a question on how to import colors (materials) from .stp files. A query brought up a similar question with answers (Want to import an STP file to blender with colors), that contains virtually no information. The question doesn't cover the topic well inmho, and maybe this is why there are so few answers.
The question also is over 1,5 years old. So: is it okay to post a new question? Knowing that it is definitely a duplicate?
When I would edit the question, in order to cover the topic, I'd rewrite the whole thing -- that doesn't sound right.
As this is a primarily opinion based matter, I'd suggest to drop your thoughts in a one-line answer and vote for one another, after a few days I'll select the answer with most upvotes.
thanks & bye,
yann

I'd recommend that at any point you find an old post that matches the criteria you described and you are positive that your update is an improvement then go for a new post while linking to the old one.
Explain what you found lacking and detail your post around its shortcomings. It doesn't hurt to refresh an old topic and possibly bring more attention or attract better answers. It could possibly be marked a duplicate of yours in due turn.

Thanks for asking on meta :)
I'd say yes, it is definitely fine to post a new question.
The main purpose of closing duplicates to redirect information on one topic to one place, but if the information in the one place is stale and no longer suffices to answer the question, this means new information is needed. It makes sense to keep this separate from the old information (but linked).
I would link the old question in your new question and give your reasons for asking it anew to prevent hasty close votes and getting the same answers as the old question.


text:
What is the purpose of tag wiki excerpts?
The guide for writing tag wiki excerpts states:

The usage guidance, or tag wiki excerpt, is a short blurb that describes when and why a tag should be used on this site specifically.

And the guide for writing the full tag wiki states:

The full tag wiki is a detailed introduction to the topic, suitable as a destination for those curious about it.

Now looking at some of the most common tags here, the python tag has an excerpt:

Python is an object-oriented programming language. In Blender, it is used as a general purpose scripting language and to create add-ons to extend Blender's functionality.

It does not mention "when and why a tag should be used" but rather goes into explaining what python is and what it means to blender, which seems pretty similar to what the full tag wiki should have.
And the modeling tag:

Modeling refers to the process of creating 3D objects or entities using a 3D modeling application. This tag is used for anything related to modeling including techniques, tools and tips.

It also explains what modeling is even before explaining the "when and why".
My question is, when writing the wikis for a tag, should I follow the guidelines or follow the same convention as most of the wikis on the site? I also want to know if they are generally accepted or do they require updating to match the guidelines?

This is a somewhat tentative topic as we have been very lax in curating our tags. We have a quite a bit, people get the privilege to add new random ones and there are not many people willing or able to police these and occasionally we have to delete one or two here or there so the quality is very inconsistent as you have noted.
Those tags are also in our first 10 tags created, no strict rule was ever enforced when creating tags except that they should ideally define usage and give a short description and provide links where possible (notice most of these have the "this tag is used for...").
To answer your question, we'd love if users could follow the general SE guideline but this requires effort and from what I've noticed the excerpt is good enough for most cases as people readily just look for the keyword and plop it on their post. The blender manual is a much better introduction to said topics and as we are a visual learning type of site, cramming gifs, introductory material and steps into a full tag wiki takes time and a link to the manual I'd argue would suffice just as well as is done in the python tag.
So to conclude, the excerpt is good enough as a quick intro while detailing usage. In the full tag wiki, maybe a small introduction quoted from the manual and a link to the appropriate page.
There is also a small +2 for improving wikis. hint hint :)


text:
What is the blender internal Vs regular posts?
I'm relatively new to blender. When asking a question on this forum, I noticed one of my post got edited with (blender-internal) in the tag, could someone explain this?

Tags help organize the sites content. Questions about Blender internal will be tagged as such, questions about Cycles the same, modelling, animation, etc...Don't worry about it if your question gets an edit,  edits help the quality of the site overall (as long as they are useful). If you disagree with an edit, you can always roll it back. But I see this one to be useful myself.

From the Blender SE Help Site:

A tag is a word or phrase that describes the topic of the question. Tags are a means of connecting experts with questions they will be able to answer by sorting questions into specific, well-defined categories.

In your specific case, since your question dealt with texturing in the Blender Internal render engine (as opposed to the Cycles render engine), the tag was edited in by another user to help clarify this.
As @Timaroberts said in the comments, tags help to organize the site's content and to help other users easily find questions relating to the topic they are wondering about.


text:
Does drafts' lifespans start from the initial draft or from the last edit?
I am currently writing a relatively big answer, so I am making use of drafts to work on it a bit everyday as I don't have much time.
I understand that drafts will be deleted after 7 days. What I don't understand is, will those 7 days start from the time I initially started to write the answer or will they reset every time I edit the draft?

Related - https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251432/how-can-i-draft-multiple-posts. It could be more efficient to use text editor and save it there to avoid any confusion. In the reference post only week lifespan is mentioned.

^^ I try not to rely too much on the draft system. I typically copy unfinished answers to a text file to save them for later, then paste them back to continue working on them.

Yep, sounds like your are asking for lost work. Relying on a draft system to safegard your work seems feeble at best and is bound to lead to sorrow. Use the editor but save it locally.

I took your advice and wrote everything locally instead. Other wise I would have been taking a risk with a 2000 word answer:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/94991/trace-visualisation-in-3d-how-to-wrap-curves-onto-a-3d-mesh/95577#95577


text:
Favorite BSE post of the year - 2017
Well the winter bash is almost over and the hats are nearly gone, that means the year is close to its end and it's time to look back.
What was your favorite post from BSE this year?
Question or answer, post the link as an answer below.
By favorite I mean anything you found awesome, learned something new, was surprised by, impressed, etc.
This is not necessary a best of list, more like the most memorable post from 2017.
What a year BSE has had. We have had 12,098 questions and 9,435 answers (and counting).
Here's to an even better 2018!

Well to get things started off, Volumetric Windows 10 logo effect by Rich Sedman. A great answer.

Should the answers be comments or answers?

Trace visualisation in 3D - how to wrap curves onto a 3D mesh by @OmarAhmad one of the brightest answers in this site.

@David Are self-nominations allowed?

@ScottMilner sure.

Ok because SE auto converts to comments "trivial answers" (answers with links to other answers) I guess there will be one answer with a list of links.
Add your favorite post to the list below.

Volumetric Windows 10 logo effect by Rich Sedman - David's pick
Trace visualisation in 3D - how to wrap curves onto a 3D mesh by OmarAhmad - cegaton's pick
Rounded Indentation on Cyclinder by Paul Gonet - Duarte's pick
Mix colors from different objects at collision (Rigid Bodies and Particles) by Scott Milner - self-nomination


text:
Custom error/404 page status?
It was almost two years ago that the creation custom 404 and other error pages was offered.  Several good ideas were presented and voted on, but there was no final official decision and we still have the generic error and 404 pages.
Is there any way this effort can be resurrected?  I think it would be cool to have our own, and I really like some of the ideas presented (not just my own :P ).

We could also do something like the Blender Manual 404 page: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/404

I think more suggestions for page ideas should probably go on the original post (linked above).  Here I am inquiring as to the status of this project as it seems to have been somewhat forgotten.


text:
Should we inform users about Multiple Vulnerabilities in Blender?
Sources:

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple Unpatched Vulnerabilities in Blender Identified
Talos security advisory for Blender product (TALOS-2017-0451)

Secondly, I'm not asking about discussion how dangerous is it, what's
  the BF stance on it and other unrelated things.
There are vulnerabilities, there is possibility to use them and that's all I care about in this question.

Introduction:
If you read from sources there are some vulnerabilities regarding opening .blend files which could be prepared to do nasty stuff.
I myself had couple of times thoughts about downloading .blend files from questions/answers but it was all. Still I've downloaded them, opened them and even run scripts inside them (if the question/answer needed them).
Citing from Talos:

An attacker could weaponize these vulnerabilities and utilize social
  engineering tactics in conjunction with a spear phishing email to
  remotely exploit and compromise a targeted user. Other possible
  scenarios where attackers could exploit and compromise users include
  cases were malicious files are uploaded to sites like GitHub, Google
  Drive, and Dropbox for sharing with intended victims.

In our case it's even easier. Attacker can just ask question with malicious file. I don't know statistic how many of users is downloading them from Q/A. Still this could be dangerous.
I know that you can't trust anything from the internet (yet it doesn't prevent from opening every .blend file from here) but .blend files are probably for many like .jpg. It's not .exe, .vbs, or .js so it can't be harmful right? Especially when it comes from good people that are politely asking us or answering our questions. They should be good. Right?
Question:
Should we in any way try to inform users that maybe not now, maybe not in near future but .blend files can be harmful for them?

I always never load automatic scripts, from those files, but... Imho the reputation system could help to avoid any random user to post evil .blend files, but that will impact the chance to get an issue solved (from new users) and anyone can put another link from anywhere... or not?

Blend exchange does have a disclaimer on the download page noting that .blend files can contain malware. I doubt many people read it or heed it, but it's there. I'm not sure what more we can do?

The preferences include an option to enable/disable Auto Run Python Scripts. My understanding was that this would protect against malicious scripts - and I always check scripts before running them. However, someone not familiar with scripting could easily enable Auto Execution and open a malicious script or run something inadvertently. The Auto Run does include Excluded Paths options and I ensure my defaults are set to exclude anything in /tmp and /home/..../Downloads/ - on the assumption that this would protect me when opening files. It is a worry though.

@RichSedman those vulnerabilities (most of them) are related to Integer Overflow Code Execution by images and videos. So any packed and prepared beforehand texture could be dangerous and we cannot block them before opening file.

Eeek! That is a concern then. I didn’t realise that and thought the big risk was scripting.

@RichSedman adding to that, other found issues are about older .blend files (that new blender versions convert at opening, triggering buffer overflows) and also some common transform/modifier operations, even on new .blend files, trigger buffer overflows... no media and no script needed. also thumbnail preview feature can trigger those errors with "crafted" media.

Are we talking about the risks associated with running unknown scripts, or something else? Because with the out-of-the-box settings Blender doesn't allow you to run scripts. A user has to intentionally change the settings to enable this feature. So unless this is about some other non-script related vulnerability, this is all old news, and nothing I'd be concerned about. You might as well say "don't run suspicious Python scripts you find on the internet (including from within Blender)".

@Mentalist this is about issues from first two links from my question and you can also read comments here which also describing those issues. TL;DR this is about non-script related.

Thanks for clarifying. So, I suppose we should all be a bit more cautious about what we download. It seems Blender is not the only CG software vulnerable to exploits, just more likely to be a target because of the size of its user base. From reading the developer.blender.org link it looks like developers are addressing the vulnerabilities they realistically can, but the task requires more people. Anyone care to launch a crowdfunding campaign to hire 4 more full time developers for several years to come? ;-)

I think the disclaimer on the blend-exchange site when downloading files should be more prominent and more strongly worded since this is a real threat. This does risk scaring people off from downloading and opening blend files but perhaps that’s no bad thing if it stops an attack.
For blend files submitted as part of a solution it’s up to the person downloading to judge whether they trust the person providing the file, judging their trustworthiness based on their answer.
For blend files submitted along with questions it’s more tricky as there’s very little effort needed for someone to post a convincing question along with a malicious blend so in that case it should be generally encouraged to post screenshots and additional info instead of just a blend - if they want people to take it seriously.

Link only answer.
Brecht and others have done work on fixing things.
https://www.blendernation.com/2018/01/23/blender-vulnerabilities-fixes/
but Ton's statement is worth noting:

Please note it doesn't mean Blender is anything like "safe" now. It remains important to only open Blender files from trusted sources. We still think that real and sensible security (if you want .blend files safe to be spread anonymously) is a project with a magnitude that's outside of the scope of what we can handle. For that we welcome contributions from the industry!

Ok, I'm going to give my opinion, simple as that. This has no weight because I'm a mod nor am I speaking for SE, BSE or blender (you get the idea).
You use blender, thus you have a computer. You are reading this, thus you have internet access.  Because you have those two things we can not protect you.
End of story. (you can keep reading)
We all have known about the script dangers for years now. This "new" threat is just fresh jolt. Which should remind us all that we are downloading something from the internet, we really have no idea if it is safe.
I am of the opinion that there is no disclaimer that will help. (I mean really, look how many people download those shoddy youtube intro templates.)
Blend-exchange already has a warning, I've read it, its short and to the point:

Download this file at your own risk. It could contain viruses or other harmful material.

Yet that has not once stopped me from dowloading a file. Truthfully I don't even read it anymore. I just look at the name, size, stats and download it.
In the end here nothing has changed. You are as safe downloading a blend from one of my answers today as you were before the security advisory. (PS I will not put any malicious blends in my .)
Aside from all that, BSE has no built in blend hosing. So you have to go to a separate site to download a malicious file. You are 100%* safe on BSE, for that reason alone I think there is no reason to put a disclaimer on BSE.
* as safe as you can be online

Imho it's not the BlenderSE's job to inform about this. Answer a question about it yes, but it's a job for:

issuer of the software to inform (blender.org)
places where the files are hosted
Blender forums
news sites related to CG and Blender

There is no defense against this other than running Blender in virtual machine. I suspect only few individuals have VM's ready with Blender installs to do this, so in the end the warning does not even help fix the problem - the solution is not to avoid any .blend downloads.
The solution is to have an internet police (a bot or real people) that will scan files online and verify that they are OK (similar to verified torrent downloads). Anything else is lost effort for now.


text:
How do I send a message to a specific User
How do I send a message to a particular user for clarification of a specific post?

The short answer is You can't.  But:
If you whant to add attention on the specific post, write comment with @username text inside, and  user will get a notification about your comment.
If user place links to Twitter, Github, and their personal website, you can check out these links, and often can see email addresses. Also, many users place their emails and Linked In profile links in their publicly available "About Me" section, especially if they are interested in networking
This question opened many times in meta stackexchange.com:
Any way to send a personal message to another user?
How do I contact other users?

Hello @zeffii, forgive me if I steal some attention from you.
I'm a chess enthusiast, I modeled a chessboard and (not knowing Python) I embarked on writing a program that reads a game from a PGN file and, controlled by a Tkinter interface via the Forward, Back buttons etc., should make moves on the chessboard. The program is only sketched out, and I found out only now that the moves are executed, but the 3D view updates only when the script ends.
I have looked for solutions on the web and none seem to work.

Hello @zeffii, I tried to implement the brilliant solution you proposed in the script of the page "https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28673/update-viewport-while-running-script" but given my poor python knowledge I could not get any results!
If I sent you the Blender file and the script, would you have the chance to give it a look?
Thank you and excuse me for the length of the message.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

@Ave you have to do it on the question or answer that you want to reach the author.

@Ave I suggest you ask a new question about the problem you ran into (there are plenty of python people around who may be able to help, even if you don't reach zeffii). Plus, by asking that question, you may get enough upvotes to have the required reputation to post comments on the main site (and therefore be able to comment on zeffii's answer directly).

@Ave you might want to read How do comment @ replies work?. The only person that got pinged from your two comments there, was Crantisz.


text:
Community Promotion Ads - 2018
It's almost February in 2018, which isn't supposed to be the proper time to cycle these, but for this year it'll be once again, so we'll be refreshing the Community Promotion Ads for this year now!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

the site's twitter account
interesting Blender addons, tutorials, and other resources
relevant events, conferences, or meetups
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

copy/paste from 2017

copy/paste from 2017

Aside from being a promotion for Animation Nodes. I also wanted to inform the community about the "animation-nodes" tag as users seems to confuse it with the "animation" tag thinking it has something to do with the animation workflow of blender.

I like the idea of an ad to promote Animation nodes. The title font feels a bit boring to me, though. Also, could we get a picture that updates automatically, like the Blend Exchange ad?

@ScottMilner What font do you suggest we use? I am currently using Roboto Slab. I was not aware that the Blend Exchange ad can do that, I am not sure if we can do that, a requirement is that it "Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)" and it should be an image, so we can't really dynamically update the image without manually editing the post.

I think you should use the same font as you use below, only bold face. That way, it looks like a title, but is more coherent with the rest of the image. Alternatively, another sans-serif font would work. It's the difference in serifs vs no-serifs that's making it look off.

As far as the dynamic image goes, the Blend Exchange ad is hosted here, not on Imgur. There is some PHP code that updates it automatically. I don't know what the best place to host this would be, though.

@ScottMilner Like this: New Image? As for the dynamic image, my point is, the rules in the post states that images should be hosted on only imgur, so we can't use external domains, I am not sure if the Blend Exchange one will be a valid ad because of this.

That looks better, yeah. Since the new font is taller, I'd move it down a little bit. The Blend Exchange image has been hosted externally since 2015, and hasn't been a problem thus far.

SE has that only internal images rule, but they let that slide for any dynamically generated images. (there are lots of examples across the network.) Do note though you will need a host with https support.

@GiantCowFilms The font is a light and bold "Roboto Condensed". The design was created in Gravit Designer. Here is the SVG and gvdesign files.

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting

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


text:
Challenge tag: create a simple shape in as few clicks as possible
Haunt_House recently posted a very interesting question. It is set up similair to a code golf question, except for 3D models, as you might've guessed. He posted the desired outcome (a simple arrow), had some guidelines and looked for a solution that requires the least amount of clicks to achieve the goal.
I think this would be a pretty nice idea for a competitive style Q&A site like code golf, with a focus on any 3D modelling software, not just Blender. I actually already created a proposal on Area 51 in case anyone is interested.
If the new site doesn't come to fruition, having a "Challenge" tag for these kinds of questions would be a nice alternative, even if it would be focused on Blender only.
Thoughts?
Side note: If the new site actually does become a reality, we could use this new challenge tag to migrate the questions over to the new site, if that's possible and wanted by the community.

Well, seeing as the proposal has been closed, it looks like if we want to do this, we'll need to keep it here on this site.

Yeah... it's a shame they don't take these kinds of sites anymore. :(

Some people are so negative, they have to say no seven times before they say yes.

And to be fair, the guy closing it said 'broaden the scope?'. In a way he's right. Blender already has it's stack exchange site, so if you want to get an entire stack exchange site off the ground, you might want to braoden the challenge to all 3D suites or even just call it 'faster' and dedicate it to the best way of doing anything. Depends.

I for one like the idea, so much in fact that I proposed this type of thing over three years ago.
The fun hating iKlsR came out then and said "this isn't going to happen." He went on to say that he would not mind contest on the meta, and we have had a few them. My favorite is X-27's Funny Questions, we really should do more of those Hint, hint.
Anyway, after looking through the contests we have had on the meta, you will see they are all different then this type of thing. (Make an image, and "Funny Questions" were the two categorizes.)
This "blender golf" type of idea is arguably a good fit for the main, further more it really does not fit on the meta - at all.
Take the arrow question as our example. If that was asked without all the consist lingo, it would still be a perfectly good question. (Not unlike this one.)
I like this type of thing, where you are looking for the shortest/most unusual workflows in blender.
My point is this, if we are ok with "fastest workflow" questions, then why not write up some rules (in a meta post) and make a contest?
As the tagmaster, I would much prefer contest instead of challenge.
We would need to have some well defined rules, and "banned" loopholes and such but I think this could work.
PS someone once said something about prizes.

Now, I need to go write an answer to that arrow question before we ban any loopholes. :)

Well said. IMO these kind of things inspire a lot of creativity and, often, really unexpected solutions to problems - which get people thinking in new ways (such as @batFINGER’s unicode solution https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/100298/29586). Provided it didn’t take over the whole site (which I really don’t see happening) then I don’t see any problem at all. Even professionals like to have a bit of fun sometimes.

Actually, this was when we were still early and I still shouldered a lot of the moderation. We've had lots of these questions tho not quite themed specifically as a challenge but moreso to find creative ways of seeing how to tackle a specific task. I still don't like the idea of having contests on the main site as these can be used to game the system and accumulate a lot of rep fast for one but nevertheless could be a fun addition if structured properly.

Well, it's true that my question now has 42 votes and 20 answers. No idea why it soared to 8k in a few days and now it's back to trickle. But the answers are amazing. I use Blender since 2.12, I have become a little rusty of late and these answers make incredibly creative use of modifiers and other techniques. Given the view count of most questions, a bit of new attractiveness might not be a bad idea. I mean, for some reason it soared to 8k in a few days.

@Haunt_House I believe it became a 'Hot Network Question' meaning it was featured on the sidebar across all stackexchange sites.

@RayMairlot I told him that yesterday, but I did it in chat as not to clutter the comments.

@David what is recommended practice re comment clutter?

Yes, lets!
We've attempted something like this a few times before, but we haven't had the kind of participation as Haunt_House's question has received. Clearly this is now, more than ever, something people are interested in (and being on the main site helps too).
I agree with a contest tag, and perhaps more contest-type-specific tags will be in order if different kinds of contests become popular (e.g. model-golf, shaders-only, default-cubism).
That said, I do think we should come up with some guidelines for contest questions. Perhaps codegolf can serve us as a kind of template in this regard. Here's a start based on some of the guidelines found there:

There should be a complete, unambiguous specification of the challenge.
  It must include at least:

A clear description of the goal
An example of the result
Clear rules on what is allowed at what isn't

I'm glad I bothered to check here, it seems the fact that many people have had the same thought at least suggests that it could be formalised  into at least a tag. I imagine that these kinds of challenges would uncover some very ricky workflows that some users would not be aware of. So their value as a searchable group would be quite high. Condensed knowledge etc.

I personally like such contests and would be very much in favor of thinking about such an idea again.
They encourage visitors to actively participate in the platform, bring new users and attention in other media.
Therefore:
Yes, let's do it!
However, there are some questions that come to my mind:

Should the upvotes and downvotes then really be treated the same as for all other questions? Strictly speaking, after all, these would counteract the hard-earned reputation of other users.
What happens to the winner? What does he receive? Reputation points? Should these then be valued the same as reputation points that are awarded by answering questions?
How is a winner determined at all? And who chooses the winner?
Should these contests be curated and time limited? From my point of view it makes little sense to start a challenge without a time frame and clear rules.
How can something like this be technically integrated into this platform? Is there a way to set certain conditions and make these questions clearly distinguishable from others? Because I don't think that a simple tag is enough.
Should additional guest moderators be assigned to take care of these contests? Is such a thing even possible?

So there are some (technical) questions here, so finally the answer is again:
No, this will not be implemented
...because there is obviously no one with enough rights and know-how who can answer these questions and create the prerequisites.
Or am I mistaken?
However, the benefit would be given under certain conditions, and it is therefore more of a technical question ...from my point of view.


text:
New tag for fun challenges
This question What's the fastest and / or craziest way to model an arrow in Blender? made me wonder if we need a new tag - eg, ‘Challenge’ - to flag such questions to make them easier to follow and spot for anyone interested in this kind of thing, so i wondered what everyone else thought... or is there already a preferred method of handling such things? Or are these kind of questions not appropriate for BSE and should be migrated elsewhere? Any thoughts, comments, objections, suggestions?

I just realised noClue beat me to it to ask this question https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2445/29586


text:
What is the problem with posting an image (or link) and asking “How do I do this?”
What is the problem with asking

“How do I fix this?”
"How do I do this in blender?"
"why is this happening"

or

"Go to this link and tell me how to do it" ?

But...but... how do I do this?!?!

@Mentalist just like any simple tutorial out there

@MrZak That's awesome. Thank you for the best tutorial ever.

@MrZak: I wish I had this known before - so i could draw perfectly!

In addition to posting a sample image or a link to one, it is very helpful if you describe in the title what you are trying to do, and then add more detail in as part of the text in the question.
"How do I do is this?" questions have many problems.

Other users may not see exactly what you mean. It's best to be clear about what you're wondering about. Otherwise, you might get answers talking about a completely different issue, or asking you more questions instead of answering.
No one looking for the exact same issue is likely to ever find this in a search, because there's nothing specific in the tilte, or the contents of the question. There's no way in Google or other search engines to distinguish one "How do I do this" from another. If you describe the issue, the tools used, or any other specific word, those looking for the same answer have a better chance of finding your post useful.
People who are looking for a completely different thing may stumble across your question, which doesn't help anyone. A clear description will let them skip over it (or know right away that they should ask a separate question).

As for the "look at this link and help me" questions (or those where the images are not visible as part of the post):

Asking others to look at files, videos and pictures in other sites just to figure out what it is that you are asking, will only lessen your chances of getting a decent answer. If someone who would want to help has to make extra effort, on top of the one that means writing an answer, then that person might just skip your question and move on to a different post. The site has many questions per day, as unanswered questions move down of the main page, the chances of getting your question answered go down as well.
If the link changes or gets deleted, then questions that rely on it become incomprehensible and are useless. No one learns from it any more.

Sometimes it's hard to put pictures into words, or even know what to say, but please make it easier for those who might help you: Use images as supporting information to the text in your question. If you expect others to put some effort in helping you, the least you could do is make an effort yourself too.

Most of this applies also to questions with vague titles like: "Problem with textures", "Issue with physics", " Render question", etc...


text:
I am unable to suggest edits
I suggested some edits which were rejected yesterday. Since then, I am not able to suggest anymore edits. I wonder, how can I lift this ban?

Scott Milner did an excellent job of explaining the ban. I will speak to why your edits were rejected. In short you were adding tags that were irrelevant. Take this one as an example. That question is asking about naming objects, it has nothing to do with selection-tools, python, or scripting. That is why your edits were rejected, and thus auto blocking you from suggesting any more.

I lifted the ban since it was a first time offense and your intentions were well intended if a little misconstrued as to how we approach tagging here. We love edits but prefer those that make the question better in terms of readability and or visibility. It's a tentative topic and oft lies with one's best judgement for vague posts hence why we confirm these for low rep users. So picking seemingly related keywords to tag a question isn't how it's done. Try to deduce what tags a question merits by what the asker wants, not what you think it will entail or possible ways to do it.

@iKlsR Thank you so much! Will be more careful next times

From this post on Meta.SE:

You [can be] banned from suggesting edits, either automatically because a large number of recent suggested edits by you were rejected, a moderator manually banned you, or you triggered the anonymous insta-ban filter.

It appears that you fall under the first of these categories, "a large number of recent suggested edits by you were rejected." This ban will last for seven days, after which you will be able to suggest edits again like normal.

The formula used to mete out edit bans can be found here:

When deciding on whether we should ban or not, we now look at your last 7 days of activity.
If (rejects - (approvals / 3)) >= 5, you will be auto-banned.

Looking at your recent suggestions, it appears that you have 2 approved suggestions and 5 rejections. Interestingly, this doesn't fit the formula: 5-(2/3) == 4.333. Perhaps the formula has changed since 2011, when that post was made.


text:
Blender won't let me ask questions.
One day, when I was horrendously frustrated, I wrote a bad word on here because someone called me retarded. Then, I got blocked, and blender won't let me ask any questions for another 24 hours. This is urgent; I'm having an issue on blender that I have to solve or else I won't be able to do what I need done.

Maybe related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/question-limited . While you wait for your ban to be over please read What kind of behavior is expected of users? and also read through the [help] section to learn how to use this site.

Your auto question ban has nothing to do with you writing a "bad word" in a comment. (Although you really shouldn't do that.) It is because your questions have all been what SE calls "not well received." Which is a polite way of saying that you need to write better questions. (I sent you a message about this a week ago.) These auto bans us mods can not change, so you are stuck till tomorrow.
If this really is so pressing you could try on blender artists, or blender's discord, or on the blender sub reddit.
Please do read through the info I sent you. If you continue to write unclear, low effort posts you will find yourself bumping into the auto ban again.
As a bonus good clear questions are vastly more likely to get answered.
(PS writing "urgent" and "need it done fast" are good ways to ensure you get an answer slower.)


text:
Adding Tags Related to Answer
Is it appropriate to edit in tags to a question that relate exculsively to an answer (or the answer of the question?
For example, I answered this question. It is properly tagged with cycles, volumetrics, and texture-coordinates. My answer utilized Animation Nodes, which also has its own tag.
Since the answer (and thus the page) now contain information about Animation Nodes, would it be appropriate to edit in the animation-nodes tag?
I have seen this type of answer occur more often recently, where the solution uses a totally different method than the question was tagged, specifically with animation-nodes, though I'm sure it also applies elsewhere.

No. Tags describe the question. Just because you use X in your answer does not mean the question is about X, nor should it be tagged X.
Should we retag questions with topics proposed in the answers?
Take your example question for instance. Say you added the animation-nodes tag, now I come along (knowing almost nothing about AN) thus I skip over that question entirely.
Or another instance, Its a modeling question. You write an answer using the knife tool, so you add the knife-tool tag. I find it, and now I'm not sure if the OP really wanted to use the knife tool, maybe my boolean answer is not what he is looking for.
We all know there are lots of ways to do things. We should not be retagging questions, essentially limiting the scope of the answers, just because you used tool X.

Thanks for the response! The main Meta link is very helpful.

While I agree with this answer. I still think there is some wiggle room available tho I'm not sure how to best express it or even do this with existing functionality. See my post here some 5 years ago. Hmm. Maybe it's best to just be explicit and say no after all...


text:
Why is this answer considered a proper answer without solving the question, even partially?
I wonder, why is the answer given to my question here from dr. Sybren a valid answer? I flagged the answer but it has not been removed. I argue that this is not proper way of answering a question. I believe that a person who wants to answer a question needs to make sure that his/her answer really works, at least to some extend. However, the answer to my question not only does not work but the author of the answer argues with me on why I did not appreciate him. I just told him he needs to make sure his answer work and that's it! I was thinking that compiling Blender and using it as a module might be causing some weird issues on my side. That is exactly why I asked him to make sure his code works and I provided one obj file for him to do that (he could have done it via copying the obj file many times. dr. Sybren's answer might work in another context or question where someone might have asked a question like how to remove blocks more efficiently or properly? but definitely not for my question. He could have instead posted a comment about what he posted in length, as an answer.
Although I appreciated him answering my question but I just got a bit upset cause he was literally sure that his answer is the answer to my question, without testing his code. He says I wrote things using my mobile phone but again, this is his fault not my fault. He needs to make sure his answer works (again, at least given the information provided) what does writing an answer on a mobile phone has do to with me? (how come he was write such a long answer on a mobile phone anyways, that I don't know)
Anyways, I thought I should bring my case to the judges here :) I already flagged the answer and my request has been rejected I think. Of course, I totally agree that people have different biases and opinions (including admins) but I'm not sure if one of the admins up-voted dr. Sybren's answer after I flagged it and not mine; my answer clearly solves the issue and his does not in any way and even partially. If that has been the case, then I believe that this also undermines the quality of the way admins review things and they should pay more attention. This does not help improve the quality of the website in the long run :)
Thanks for consideration and sorry for my frank tone; I absolutely do not have any bad intentions of writing these things here.

Well, let's look at what it means when you flag an answer as Not an Answer. The flagging dialogue reads:

not an answer
This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.

It appears to me that this answer does attempt to answer the question. Even if it didn't provide a solution for you, it is still a valid attempt to answer. This is why this answer should remain up.
From Meta.SE:

Do not use this flag when:

The answer makes an attempt to answer the question, even if it is wrong or inaccurate or you disagree with it

Basically, it comes down to the fact that Stack Exchange answers are on the internet forever. The questions and answers on a Stack Exchange site aren't just for the asker, they are for anybody else needing help who might find it in the future. In general, even if an answer didn't work for you, as long as it is good-quality, it may help someone else with a problem that has similar symptoms, and should remain up.

I think I was wrong about what an answer means then. Thank you so much for clarification and I apologize if I made anyone feel bad in any way. Although I'm pretty new to Blender but my intention was only and only to help the community and as noiseless as possible

For the record I did not vote on any of the posts in question - your question, or dr. Sybren's answer. (I did however UV your meta question here).
An admin did not handle your flag, because we are mods. :)
Really though, none of the three mods touched your flag. When you flag something as "not an answer" it goes through the review queue, and if handled there a mod will never see it. Look for yourself. Neither of the users who rightly said it "looks ok" are mods.
Now on to what would of happened if a mod got to your flag - we would have declined it.
Flags are not for "wrong" answers. You down vote answers that do not answer the question, or are unhelpful.

Any post that attempts to answer the question—however badly—is still an answer! Do not use the "not an answer" flag for wrong answers. Moderators do not judge the technical correctness of answers.
You can downvote such answers as a signal that they are bad answers and not useful, but they are still answers, so you should not flag them.

meta and SO.meta

Yes things are clear for me now. I had the wrong assumption about how an answer should be. This might be because of the bad impression I have got in the past from StackOverflow. I got punished a couple of times for posting an answer which was not solving the issue, at least to some extent .

I did not mean that moderators reviewed my flag. I actually did not know that Mr Zak and batFINGER reviewed my flag either. I apologize them if I conveyed anything bad.

@Amir SO can seem ruthless to new users. As much as I wish every answer were 100% helpful, that is just not the case, and that is why we have the UV and DV buttons.


text:
Why is saying THANKS forbidden here?
Simple as that, WHY?
I always put a 'Thanks in advance.' at the end of my question and after a while it always gets edited, some stuff get added and some removed, probably from a moderator, including the  'Thanks in advance.' at the end.
Also feedback is not recommended in the comments, like I can't say a god damn 'thanks' to someone for helping me out...
Thanks in advance. :3

To show that moderators are not the cruel power stomping internet dictators that some imagine we are, I am not going to edit the "Thanks in advance. :3" out of your question. Even though after reading my answer you can see why there's no time for that kind of thing.

It's not that saying thanks is forbidden, it's that we say it differently (with upvotes and accepts)

"Thanks in advance" in particular might be taken as passive agressive by some people; the ones that complain about "thank you for not smoking" sign, since it feels a little implying-that-i-will-help when read.

"Thanks" salutations, greetings, "please help" and any extraneous text in the question, is (no offense) but a wast of time to everybody that comes along and reads it.
All extraneous text should be edited out of posts.
If you have a line at the end of your question that says:

I would really appreciate any help with this.
Thanks in advance.

Sure is it "harmless" it only take what 2 seconds to read. But it is useless to the question. I can answer your question just as well if that was not there. Now what if your question was viewed by 200 people? You've now wasted nearly 7 minutes of peoples' lives just because you wanted to be polite.
Save the thanks for when you really do get that answer. The green check mark to the left of an answer is a great way to show the answer helped you.
There is a plethora of info on this all over SE.
This guy here has a good answer on concisely conveying the relevant information, with quite a few relevant links.
He even asked a question about it Editing questions to remove “thank you” etc.

Comments are another matter entirely (well for me).
I too have the same frustration about "thanks" in the comments.
I mean what is the big deal? It a comment. I often express thanks for a particularity good answer.
Comments by design are not meant for long term information, they get deleted and cleaned up often. I for one have no problem with a thanks comment. However SE thinks otherwise, and we have people that go around flagging "thanks" comments from data queries.
So your thanks comment probably will get deleted at some point. Don't sweat it. The post author will get notified of your comment, and he is really the only person that needs to see it. (As a mod I often leave comments on posts I'm about to delete. My comment get deleted, but the OP will still see it.)

TLDR (yes I put it at the bottom so you had to read the posts first)
Keep any and all extraneous text out of posts.
I'm ok with a thanks comment, but don't tell SE I said that.

Does the same apply for "Hope this helps" at the end of answers?

Courtesy in interpersonal communication is an integral part of society. That's a shame to remove this aspect off of BSE specially when it allows to distinguish between nice people bullies who just want answers immediately. That said, courtesy can be quick and concise. There is definitely place for a middle ground here without wasting anyone's time rather than stripping it off completely.

This reasoning seems absurd to me. The stuff doesn't feel right for the format, but basically implying that you should feel bad for wasting people's time with with nonsense just feels wrong. Much of the rest of the world isn't getting enough of it as it is.

Hello and thanks you are very important communication techniques that date back the entire history of communication. Even modern electronic protocols have hello goodbye handshakes. StackExchange is trying to re-write the rules. The website is moral swiss cheese and illogical. They'll ban this comment and the whole question soon.


text:
How can I earn the privilege to ask more than 8 questions per day?
I just started a major blender project. I was wondering if I can earn the privilege to ask 8+ questions (whatever the current maximum is). My questions will not be like my previous ones, as I'm doing slightly more complex tasks and am taking the time to make the questions clearer.

Have in mind that Stack Exchange in general is more of a learning tool to improve your skills, not a solve-my-problems-on-demand to have your work done for you.

There is no daily question limit here. (SO, SU, SF, and Math have a six questions per day limit.)
There is however a 50 questions in the last 30 day limit. (If someone hits that, they probably are not using google.)
Yet you are still going to bump in to the rate limit because of your history [1] [2] of low quality posts. Your current rate limit (auto question ban) will expire on the 28th.
You can read about all the rate limits here:
The Complete Rate-Limiting Guide

But no there is no privilege to unlock extra question asking abilities.  Only thing like that is users over 10k rep only see the captcha if asking more then one question in 30 seconds.


text:
How do I log out of my stack exchange account?
I want to create a new profile, so how do I log out of BSE?

Before I answer, I should let you know that creating another account to circumvent a ban is really not a good idea. It will get you in more trouble then just writing lousy questions (and the account will be deleted.)
However I suspect you will anyway (you haven't seemed to listen to the advice anyone has given you so far) so: How to log out of a Stack Exchange site?

Who could guess that you actually have 932k rep on BSE..

you got to have some fun with these screen shots. :) PS that is not the only fun change.

Is it a bug????


text:
Why are some names light blue in code markdown syntax highlighting?
What is the light blue syntax highlighting?
On BSE in this answer, IntProperty, FloatProperty, EnumProperty, MyInt, MyFloat and MyEnum are syntax highlighting in light blue.

And as a supplementary, why isn't the same syntax highlighting used on meta?

looks like SE has no syntax highlighting on the meta. I guess its its that talking about the site we don't need syntax highlighting that often.

PEP8 style criteria.
Quoting from the Best Practice Style Conventions

For Blender/Python development we have chosen to follow python
  suggested style guide to avoid mixing styles amongst our own scripts
  and make it easier to use python scripts from other projects.
Using our style guide for your own scripts makes it easier if you
  eventually want to contribute them to blender.
This style guide is known as pep8 and can be found here
A brief listing of pep8 criteria.

camel caps for class names: MyClass
all lower case underscore separated module names: my_module
indentation of 4 spaces (no tabs)
spaces around operators. 1 + 1, not 1+1
only use explicit imports, (no importing *)
don’t use single line: if val: body, separate onto 2 lines instead.

The syntax highlighter is using the style, and expects a camel-case name  (CamelCase), for instance, MyInt to be a class.  Suggest naming it my_int or myint instead.

I'd like to build on @batFINGER's answer.
StackExchange syntax highlighting is handled by Google Code Prettify. Looking at the source code, it appears that Code Prettify has a general set of rules that it enables/disables for languages with C-like syntax, making slight tweaks for individual languages. Python's configuration function is as follows:
registerLangHandler(sourceDecorator({
      'keywords': PYTHON_KEYWORDS,
      'hashComments': true,
      'multiLineStrings': true,
      'tripleQuotedStrings': true
    }), ['cv', 'py', 'python']);

This tells us that there is no special consideration given for CamelCase, or snake_case, etc. in prettifying Python. So, Code Prettify is not specifically following PEP8 criterion, but rather a more general naming convention. This convention of CamelCase for class names is found in many C style guides, which I would assume Code Prettify is based off of.


text:
How do I subscribe to, follow or save questions?
I'd like to do something like "+1" or just "subscribe" to certain questions. Can't find a button for it.
By the way the next obstacle is posting itself: System says I have to wait for 40 minutes. Looks like some idiots have spammed here a lot and ruined it for noobs like me who just want to learn Blender.

Stack Exchange doesn't have this functionality well handled yet (notifications of other people's stuff), so here is what you can do (and what I do):

Mark questions favorite (little star below up/down count). This adds them into list under your profile > activity > favorites. The list is public.
Bookmark questions (or answers copying their share url) into your browser bookmarks (if you don't want others to see).
Get an RSS reader to see new questions. The feed is: http://blender.stackexchange.com//feeds. This is like subscribing to the whole blender.stackexchange site. You can do this for certain tags only.
To subscribe to just one question, use the question's RSS feed:

Gosh, how could I not see that star below up/downvote? Maybe the adblocker stole it? :) Thank you very much!

Yes being brand new to SE comes with quite a few limitations. That is what the privileges system takes care of.
The 40 min wait you experienced is just for posting on the meta (it is really quite rare to get a brand new user asking a question here).
You will see there you need 15 rep to Up Vote anything. That takes care of the "+1" part of your question.
As Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny pointed out there is really no good way of subscribing to a post. All we get is the favorite button (sounds very much like what you want) and the RSS feed for each post. (Personally I have never used the RSS)
When you click on the star, below the vote buttons on a question, that question gets added to your favorites. When sorted by activity anything new (say an answer or an edit) will bring that post to the top of your favorites list.

Thanks. I really know why these limitations exist, I used to be a web developer / administrator in the first place.
Also -- to my defence -- I'm above 30 so learning something new takes a bit longer than it used to ;)
Anyway, just by asking 3 or 4 questions alltogether I got a reputation of 16 now. Yeeha.


text:
Front page changes from "answered" to "modified"
I answered a question last night, then the OP accepted a different answer which was edited by Ray Mairlot 12 hours ago at the time of this question.
After I answered, I looked at the main page again and noticed answered by JakeD... next to the question as usual. However, this morning I looked at the main feed and saw modified 11 hours ago JakeD for this question, but I never edited any answer or the question.

did you edit your answer in the 5 min grace period?

@David No, I did not...I didn't know that existed for answers and questions, but I didn't make any edits.

This error has been reported on the main meta already.


text:
Question put long or short preferred?
Would people rather read a question put in the simplest terms and ask for any more essential information in the comments, or am I more likely to get an answer if I add as many relevant details as possible? Thanks.

Even the most mundane detail or seemingly non-related action can help you get a concrete reply (installed program X yesterday etc) as opposed to commented suggestions and followup questions so I'd recommend to provide as much detail as possible when asking. Not saying you should always try to avoid the latter but being preemptive can save everyone time.
Some people can be put off by a wall of text so why not both? Ask a quick summation up front or after (a slight expansion on the title) while still going into detail in the body of your question. See my post here for some tips, How do I ask a question that is hard to describe?. If in doubt, go the detail route.
From my personal experience over the years on StackExchange, I find that writing a "well worded" question from what I suggested above can in some instances give you the answer* before even submitting it because it makes you think about your issue in full, a type of Rubber duck debugging if you may. Not always applicable to 3d and Blender especially if new but you get the point I hope.
*One of the reasons I have no questions on my profile ;)

Alright, cool! So in the future, I will write a short snippet/summary of the problem and then expand in the following paragraphs. Thanks. :)

Short is good.
But clear is better.

Really long answer:
It is not the length of the text, but clarity what matters.
A few potinters:

Think hard of a clear title.
Vague titles help no one. Avoid "how do I fix this?", "Issue with textures", "Problem with render please help!"
A clearly stated question is the first and most important step to reach someone that knows the answer.
Strip the question from anecdotal and subjective information
" I'm so frustrated" , "I followed all of the tutorials online to no avail", "I clicked on some stuff and now it doesn't work as expected" and such phrases say nothing about the issue you are having and might confuse or put readers off.
Instead, write something like: I'm trying to do (...explain clearly), I did X, and got Y, I tried to fix it by doing Z and I got this result: (image or a concise description), but I was expecting this: (image or description).
Use clear language and proper punctuation.
"OMG I hit the thingy yo that like makes some vertices smashed and now it all weird LOL can u hlp plz?", will only leave some reader perplexed. Specially those that do not live in english speaking countries.
While this site is not about correct grammar and syntax of the english language, a clearly written sentence does wonders in terms of conveying ideas. Avoid confusing and terms or idioms.
Don't rely on external links and try to make the answer self contained.
Make it easier for others to help you, don't expect them to watch 50 minutes of a video just to figure out what step you missed.

Having a clear and concise question will yield better answers.
But don't hold out on details and illustrations.

Do not presume that others will immediately understand what you are doing.
Ask your self the following: will someone that knows absolutely nothing about my project understand what I'm describing?

Oftentimes by trying to verbalize the issue you will find the solution yourself.

Don't wait for others to ask you for more information, be forthcoming and volunteer as much information as you see fit.
If people have to ask you a lot of questions on the comments, your chances of getting a proper answer go down.
You might get a comment asking you a question when you are away from your computer, and maybe the person that asked you will not log in until next week (or ever again) to read the response to a comment, or it might happen that the person has lost interest in helping you...
If your question gets pushed down and disappears from the first page of the site your chances of getting an answers go down as well.

A lot of the questions that remain unanswered in this site do not contain enough information for anyone to find a proper answer.

Yeah, coming up with a title is hard, but it's probably more important than I thought. :)

I just would like to add "proper tags" to your list. Some users only follow certain tags and subsequently nearly only answer questions with that tag. So adding a proper tag to your question will make sure those users get notified of it.


text:
Way to accept multiple answers, or designate answer as valuable and distinct alternative to accepted answer
Sometimes I notice that there are multiple ways to address a problem or model a complex shape that have their own advantages and disadvantages. For instance, when modeling a corkscrew, there might be one user who manages to find a very modifier-centric method, which can be easily modified and adjusted, versus a very quick yet less malleable solution, such as teaching the asker how to save the object as a primitive.
Both solutions are valuable, and, while we don't want people to answer questions purely for upvotes, this system may encourage a knowledgeable user to add a second, distinct answer that could be just as useful as an already accepted answer.
We're denying our community of valuable answers, and we should either allow multiple accepted answers, or find some other way to honor second answers.

Accepting one answer, doesn't mean that others are not useful. In many pages the accepted answer is not up-voted. There are plenty of answers proposing alternative or unsual paths.  At the end of the day is up to the user to decide what works for her/him. The more options, the better. Also remember that accepted answers are not permanent: they can be changed: If the OP decides that an answer is better than the accepted one, it can accept other at any time. It is an imperfect system, but as long as there are users who want to contribute and share their experience it seems to work OK.

Related https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2272/add-feature-for-high-reputation-users-to-manually-mark-as-answer

From the Blender.SE Help Center (emphasis added):

Accepting an answer is not meant to be a definitive and final statement indicating that the question has now been answered perfectly. It simply means that the author received an answer that worked for him or her personally. Not every user comes back to accept an answer, and of those who do, they might not change the accepted answer even if a newer, better answer comes along later.

The purpose of accepting an answer is for the asker to reward the answer that worked for them personally. While StackExchange encourages askers to accept answers, since accepting encourages participation, gives rep benefits, and (usually) pins the most helpful answer to the top, accepting an answer does not mean that the other answers are bad, or incorrect.
The usefulness of an answer to the community is signified by voting, not by whether or not it has been accepted.
In some cases where there are multiple, well-received answers, and each answer was similarly useful to the asker, it may be appropriate to not accept an answer.
You said:

We're denying our community of valuable answers, and we should either allow multiple accepted answers, or find some other way to honor second answers.

StackExchange has already provided a way to "honor second answers." Regardless of whether an answer is accepted, you should always upvote answers that are useful. This is the best and primary way to show appreciation on StackExchange.

I doubt this has any chance of being implemented any time soon. It has been asked before on Meta.SE and answered by the StackExchange community managers with a definite "No":

I think it's a terrible idea. Good, useful answers will be rewarded, by the voters who find them good and useful.


text:
Should OP comments be added to question by non-OP?
I just reviewed a suggested edit and rejected it because it was essentially just pasting a comment into the question. It seemed to me that the person who suggested the edit is farming for easy rep points rather than trying to improve the question. A new user could obviously flood the review queues if he decided to just go through questions and add information from the comments section into the question. I tried in vain to find anything about this as far as Stack Exchange policy or precedent.
Should I have accepted this suggested edit?
This is the review in question:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/55721

The question is: does the edit improve the question? At a glance, it seems so: it is clarifying the goal of OP.  This information was originally placed by the OP in a comment, which is not the right place for it. Readers should not have to look through the comments to see what the question really is. So, moving it to the proper place is an improvement.

A new user could obviously flood the review queues

Does this happen in practice, or are we solving a hypothetical problem? There is a limit on how many edits one can suggest at a time: at most 5 on graduated sites such as Blender.

I tried in vain to find anything about this as far as Stack Exchange policy

Here it is: Warn new users to edit important information into the question upon their first attempt to comment on a question of theirs

When you see this happening you should: Edit the information into the question yourself. If you do it as a suggested edit, make sure your "Edit comment" makes it clear that you are incorporating information from the comments.

To summarize: yes, when OP places information in a comment that should be in their post, moving it to the post is appropriate.

That's fair...didn't know about the 5 max reviews. I'm perhaps a bit too wary about rep farming with suggested edits. By only knowing English one can get a reasonable number of reputation points (I believe 2000) without actually knowing anything about a given topic.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we get any reputation from edits here at BSE, so no farming could occur anyway.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos The question is about suggested edits. Suggested edits earn 2 rep upon approval. Users with sufficient reputation to edit posts directly, like yourself, do not earn reputation from edits.

Hum, I see. I don't recall I ever getting any rep from edits here, so either I never suggested one while my rep was lower here or they never got approved. Thanks for the clarification

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos You never suggested an edit


text:
Any way to see all moderator nominations?
The current 2015 Moderator Election page just shows 4 candidates ran for moderator; however, I know there were seven nominations. Is there any way to see withdrawn nominations?

Although this does not seem to be available on the election site, it can be found with the Data Explorer. Since a PostTypeId of 6 means ModeratorNomination, the users that entered nominations for moderator election can be found with this query.
SELECT OwnerUserId AS [User Link],
       CONCAT('https://blender.stackexchange.com/posts/', Id, '/revisions') AS 'Post Link'
FROM Posts
WHERE PostTypeId=6 --PostTypeId of 6 is ModeratorNomination
  AND YEAR(CreationDate) = 2015

Thus, the following users made nominations:

X-27
zeffii
David
iKlsR
gandalf3
VRM
ideasman42

(The links for X-27, zeffii, and ideasman42 are to post revisions because there does not appear to be a way to link directly to withdrawn nominations. There were also Comments on 2015 Moderator Election Nominations.)

Awwww, that was a fun nomination XD


text:
Game-engine question on hold because bug?
I've come across a question.
It asks about a bug in the game-engine and was therefore put on hold, since it

should be reported to the official bug tracker.

Considering that the game engine won't be in 2.8 anymore, I guess nobody at the Blender Foundation cares anymore about solving these bugs.
My question:
Shall bug-concerning game-engine questions still be flagged and put on hold? In my opinion this will make it even more unlikely for those who ask, to find an answer.

"In my opinion this will make it even more unlikely for those who ask, to find an answer". I'll just add that regardless of the application component or its impending removal, the solution to all bugs (Blender or otherwise) is to fix them. Since most of us aren't developers and can't really fix them, having posts here make little sense, unless you are looking for workarounds.

We (blender.stackexchange.com) do not take any bug questions. Does not matter if about the now removed BGE, or any other part of blender. Bug related questions have always been off topic.
Yes absolutely still close them with he bug reason. (top choice in the off-topic category)

This question appears to be about an issue caused by a bug in Blender. These should be reported to the official bug tracker.

This particular question was about he UPBGE, so you could suggest the OP report the bug to their tracker.

I assume that we would make some concessions if the question was clearly focused on asking about potential workarounds for the bug?

bge-community / Ketsji-Game-Engine
UPBGE / licuadora
You can ask here or report this in these two repositories, I recommend you read the basic use of github to report errors and they will always answer you, there are no delicacies like here usually there are and the answers are not quite accurate

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


text:
Markup code parsed unexpectedly
I usually present code by indenting lines with four spaces or using the respective button in the editing menu.
line_of = "code"
another = "line"

However, after a numbered or bullet list with

some item
another item
code_is_formatted = False
behaviour = "INCONSISTENT"

Just after adding some other item.
code_indentation = "works"

Is this a bug or am I using the markdown wrong?

You just need another 4 indents (so a total of 8). There is mention of this here. Seems that the markdown specification isn't clear as to what should happen in this specific case. For some reason adding another 4 spaces solves this.

@RayMairlot But then the codeblock is indented as if it were part of the list. What if I want to end the list and add the code block?

More information here. You can place an empty line after the bullet point then <!--> then another empty line and then code.

This is a well known problem which would be fixed by the addition of fenced code blocks, but there's no information on when or if those are to be implemented.


text:
Can you add files to comments?
Is it possible to add .blend files or images to comments? I'm having a bit of difficulty with somebody's answer to my question, and I'd like to give them my .blend file or a screenshot to help them help me out.

If the screenshot is related more to the question than to the answers or if the screenshot will help other users answer your question, then I think editing the question and adding the image is the best thing to do. Same goes for blend files. Otherwise, use any of the available markdown editors to upload the image to imgur, get the link and add it to the comment using [Text](Image Link).

Related: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/985/599

Instead of using comments, or links in a comment, please edit the original question with all pertinent information, updates and things that you've tried. Comments are oftentimes overlooked and you might not be able to convey the information you want.


text:
Is it appropriate to promote your question by repeatedly posting links to it in comments of other answers?
I have recently noticed that a specific user has been trying to promote their unanswered question by finding similar questions to theirs and posting a link to their question in the comments on one of the answers, asking the user that answered to have a look at their question, i.e.:
"I see you have answered a question on this topic, can you look at my own question on a similar topic and also answer it?"
Is this appropriate?
This is not the first time I have seen this user use this tactic. They have 6 near identical comments on specific answers asking the user who answered to look at their question. I was alerted to this as I was one of the people contacted. As I said, I have noticed this user employ a similar method when they had previous questions, though I am unsure if they then went back and deleted their comments if and when they got an answer.
It is my understanding that comments should be about whatever question or answer the comment box is under. To me this type of tactic almost comes across as spam and a misuse of what I thought comments were for.
I did suggest to the user that they should not use comments for this purpose and they were happy to remove their comment, but I then noticed all their other comments. I thought it best to clarify what the policy is on this and if necessary, what action I should take.

This does merit some discussion I agree, non-officially atm I can say it would be annoying and a tad bit abusive at most but not up front wrong per se but we should definitely cement a rule on this. I can understand a plea comment for help but several seems excessive so we enter the gray area.

@MrZak They are not posting a link to a related answer, they are posting a link to their own, unanswered question on an answer in the hope that the user may also be able to answer their question. E.g. "I see you have answered a question on this topic, can you look at my own question on a similar topic and also answer it?"

Ah I see. I think this case is easier to judge then - it's not appropriate, editing and clarifying question should be done instead.

This as happened to me on a couple of occasions before, possibly by the same user, and I did find it inappropriate.
Not only were the comments unrelated to the answer at hand, it could be considered kind of "spamming" to unsolicitedly ping a specific user to look at another random question.
Looking at the help center it specifically mentions:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment
When should I comment?
You should submit a comment if you want to:

Request clarification from the author;
Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the
  question has been updated).

When shouldn't I comment?
Comments are not recommended for any of the following:

Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;
Answering a question or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer; instead, post an actual answer (or edit to expand an
  existing one);
Compliments which do not add new information ("+1, great answer!"); instead, up-vote it and pay it forward;
Criticisms which do not add anything constructive ("-1, see previous comments you scallywag!"); instead, down-vote (and provide or
  up-vote a better answer if appropriate);
Secondary discussion or debating a controversial point; please use chat instead;
Discussion of community behavior or site policies; please use meta instead.

It doesn't seem to fit into any of the appropriate categories, and I suppose they could classify as "secondary discussion", which as per the rules is discouraged.
As for the course of action, I'd suggest perhaps flagging it as "no longer needed" if it is not too harsh.

no longer needed
  This comment is obsolete, chatty, or otherwise unnecessary.


text:
On topic: A question about how to design a 3D planet?
I would like to create a 3D model of a planet with rings, complete with sun, so that I can better visualize what the rings would look like at various times and locations on the planet.
I have some experience with Blender, but there's a lot I still don't know. For that reason, I was considering asking how I should go about designing such a model. It is imperative that it be scientifically accurate, both with lighting and the reflection from the ring, but I am unsure how to properly simulate those things (particularly the light from the sun in relation to the distance from the planet).
Before I asked the above question, I wanted to know if it would be on topic here on Blender SE, or if it would be better suited for the more general atmosphere of Graphic Design SE. It's not specifically tied to Blender, after all. That's just the program I'm familiar with.

I just want to say, I personally think your project sounds like a very interesting one (I have a bit of an interest in planet rendering), and I would be more than happy to help you get started. Please don't hesitate to ping me in chat if I could possibly be of help!

@gandalf3 I've decided to investigate the Universe Sandbox, as provided in a comment [here][1]. But if that doesn't pan out, I will certianly take you up on your offer. Thanks! [1]https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/112076/6620

... Seriously... how on earth do I embed links?

Comments only use the inline link syntax. [link](https://targetaddress.whatever)

Thanks asking in meta :) The question "How to model a realistic planet with rings?" sounds a little too broad as stated, but you would be more than welcome to ask around in chat.
Once you get a start and encounter specific questions (e.g. something like "How to fit real-scale planet rings in a scene without z-fighting?" or "For planet rendering, should I use a sun lamp?"), then by all means ask those.