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Additional Reputation for Upvoted Questions
It just occurred to me that questions that are upvoted more than others are often harder to answer. Therefore, perhaps, a user who provides an accepted answer should get +1, +2, or some other small amount of reputation as bonus per upvote on the question for answering a more "difficult/liked" (upvoted) question.
Anybody agree?

It is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure of your premise that questions with more UVs are harder to answer.
The odd tide of votes come and goes, I sure don't know why some things get UVed so much and not others.
I can for sure say that UVs on a question have no correlation to the difficulty of the question.
Also UVs on questions should not indicate the popularity of a question; views do that. Now it is true that when a question is popular, it gets a lot of views and thus more UVs. But UVs are a measure of how many people found that post useful, not "liked" as in facebook popular.
Take this question as an example; it is about a little known feature, and has only gotten 650 views in 2 years (not a lot). Surely you can't say that it accumulated many UVs because of its popularity, and it sure is not a difficult thing to fix.
In fact some of my most UVed answers are answering simple questions.
How to convert a single vertex into a plane within a mesh?
How to Model a Keyboard key?
Is there a way to make comments in the node editor?
See Why is voting important? and What is voting up?; they make it clear that when you vote it represents much more then just, for example "you liked the picture," but rather you are playing a part in the whole site wide sorting of content best to worst.

However, after saying all that, if you could find a metric to find the truly difficult questions and award good answers a bonus I would be for that.
It might be something like unanswered for more then 3 weeks with more then 4 UVs on the question and less then 100 views, then the bonus kicks in.

I do have quite a bit to say, so bear with me if it takes a while to type (using the mobile app). The first several things all blend into one: What you suggest in your last paragraph is not at all what I meant, but also, in my opinion, a much better idea (sorry for being unclear). What I was suggesting was a normal accepted answer grants the answerer +15 rep. What I was suggesting was a 0 or <0 upvote question would give an accepted answer +15 rep. A 1 upvote question would give an accepted answer +17 rep. 2 upvotes --> +19 and so on, and so forth.

Second, you are very correct in saying that upvotes are not a particularly accurate way of measuring a question's difficulty; it was simply what came to mind first. A better metric might be something like what you suggested or something like the following. A DP (Difficulty Point [theoretical]) would add +1 rep to the usual +15 for each of the following. 1.) Asker's rep / 1,000 rounded to nearest 1 (roughly +1 for each 1,000 rep that the asker possesses [makes sense because people w/ more rep/more experience often ask better questions]).

2.) +1 for each 5 comments (more comments probably means more difficult things that need to be explained). 3.) +2 for every other answer (if there is only one answer, it's the best, the worst, and everything else. If there are five answers and it's accepted, it's probably the best for that particular case). I'm done now (yay).

@ShadyPuck you have an interesting and intriguing idea, yet I kinda doubt that we will ever see this on an SE site.Just because I dont know if there is a good way to create the definition for what a difficult question is. Propose it on the main meta, but just a warning you probably will be met with DVs.

I think I will. I'm not sure I should care about DVs, though, because I don't have an account on it yet. Why should people DV it, out of curiosity?

@ShadyPuck That is just the norm on other large SE sites, SE and the main meta definitely have a tenancy to down vote posts a lot.

Ah, okay. Noted.


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How can reputation points be used?
Except for Bounties, is there any other "functional" use of reputation points? I'm not asking about privilege, my question is about the direct benefit that a user can get by having more reputation points, that allows him/her to get better answers to his/her own or other users questions (as in bounties) or helps her/him directly achieve a better educational level of Blender.

Does rep "directly achieve a better educational level of Blender," nope.
It is possible that when you have more rep your questions will be looked at more, but still unlikely and about the most benefit you could get.
So no rep has, and isn't meant to have any bearing on the educational value of the site.
Reputation is a measure of trust (as one way to put it) or knowledge, not only in blender, but also the SE system; and nothing more. It was never built to help or hinder, you or anyone else from learning from the site.
So if you don't care about the higher privileges, and are happily learning and using BSE now, then there is no reason for you to try to get more rep.
(An interesting side note though, SE has become so big and influential that having an account with useful activity and high rep actually is a bonus when looking for a programing job. Who knows, maybe BSE will play a role like that for blender in the future.)
< joke> In the mean time, you could always go to the prize page and spend some of your rep. < /joke>

"then there is no reason for you to try to get more rep." Generally most helpful actions on this site reward you with rep, technically, saying that means don't do anything helpful. :P

@Lukaash That certainly isn't the way it was meant to be taken! :) More for the people that actively try to get rep (because they need a bigger number).

@Lukaash "Don't try to get more rep" != "Don't get more rep". Just because you aren't using the site for the rep doesn't mean you won't end up with some :)

@David Don't worry, I know, was more just saying for sarcastic purposes. :)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Is it possible to mark a question in order to be notified of the answers?
Is it possible to mark a question in order to be notified of the answers? The aim here is only to have a quick way to be informed of the answers, without taking any kind of action on the question.

@David thanks. But I am more or less happy with the edit : the words "any kind of appreciation" was about "I dont want to say I like (or not) the question", just about "I want to follow the answer". So favorite feature is not exactly what I expected. But it is convenient enough. So this comment was just FYI.

I think the favorite feature does what you are looking for, or as close as SE offers.
After clicking the little star under the vote buttons on any question, it will get added to your favorite list. Any time anything changes, or a new answer gets added a little blue box with how many changes will show up there.

Then just sort your favorite list by "activity", and the most recent changed question will be at the top.

If you are into RSS, then you can click the
link at the bottom of the page on any question. That feed will include, and update for any answers.

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


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Is it acceptable to recommend other software in answers?
Blender is a very versatile tool that excels in many diverse areas, and does remarkably well even for uses beyond it's main scope, but as much as we all love it, we have to admit that it is not some sort of glorified universal jack-of-all-trades.
There are just some tasks that it is not very good at, or can't outright do, and there may be more adequate tools for certain jobs.
Some times users are struggling with tasks that would be a lot easier to accomplish with some other software package, alternatively or in parallel with Blender. So in the process of answering some workflow related questions is it OK to recommend said software to the user within the scope of the question or should all answers refrain from mentioning other applications and focus exclusively in Blender based solutions only?

Is it acceptable to recommend software to totally replace Blender
Is it acceptable to recommend software to work in parallel with Blender? (As part of a more complex workflow with import/export interactions, or as is often the case with texturing with image editing software, or illustration/logo design/bezier-curve-related type of work and Inkscape)
Is it still OK to recommend commercial software, even if it is or not free/open source?

I ask this because I have often done it before, but I have recently been called out on it, and it actually got me thinking if it was the right course of action.

As a frequent blender user, but not limited to it, I'm quite aware of its shortcomings and strengths. In my opinion It would be a disservice not to point in a different direction or a tool that does a better job if you know of one.

A very good question.
Seeing as how this is blender.stackexchange.com answers should primarily be about blender. We have closed question asking how to do X in maya or 3Ds max, like wise answers using maya or 3Ds max would be very odd (and probably down voted heavily).
That is not to stay that you can never suggest other software to do a particular task. There are lot of examples where blender is simply not the best, and we do have recommendations there for other software.
To your first point, I would say no. We certainly don't want people coming to BSE and just getting an answer "use X, blender sucks." However if "totally replace blender" is referring to just a specific part of a workflow that is probably ok.
Point two: absolutely! 3D, video, graphic design, etc are big jobs, using diverse workflows including many different software packages. There is no reason people here should think they are limited to just blender (in instances like this), especially if the question is using different software.
Point three: sure. I for one much prefer free (as in freeware) and even more so free and open source software (FLOSS), but there is no reason we should not let it be known about some good proprietary software, just because we have to pay for it. (There are paid blender addons that get mentioned in answers.) There is such a HUGE offering of software related to and used with blender that it is very likely that someone may not know about piece X.
Saying all that, I want to caution you when writing answer recommending other software.

First off, you have to still have a good answer. Just writing "blender can't do that, use [link to other software]" will not be considered a good answer, and will be converted to a comment. (It is fine to leave a link as a comment.)
If it can be done in blender explain so, if not then just say that blender can't do X add the link(s) to the other software and say a bit about it. I understand that you don't need to say much about each software, but BSE answers should not just be a collection of links.
Use restraint when jumping to recommending other software. If someone is having trouble with the sculpting tools, we should not send him to Zbrush. Any modeling question should be answered in blender not maya, 3ds max, ryhno, sketch up, cinema 4d, lightwave, and others. While mocha pro may be is better then blender's tracker our questions asking about tracking should use blender.

In short, answers should focus on blender, but in context external software recommendations are ok.

Yes, that's mostly what I figured, just wanted to be sure. I generally strive to answer exclusively using Blender; when it is considerably advantageous, I recommend other software always as a side note. If Blender is totally incapable of said task I try explaining why with links to references and point to other software, commenting commercial ones. Thanks for the thorough answer

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos sounds like you are doing great! keep it up.


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How subjective may be an answer?
This situation may happen. The context : ok I see your question but also I see where you are going and the question is not the point... the point is : take another approach (many beginer questions).
But surely, it is subjective to "know" or "understand" that the OP needs this kind of answer.
How to behave in this kind of situation ? Giving a "two level answer" (answering directly and also give another direction) ?
Example : boolean modifier usage and its consequences concerning ngons, edges loops, subsurf modifier, ...
Related : When should an opinion based question be flagged?

In this situation I usually ask in the comments what the user is really trying to achieve. Are you actually doing X or are you really trying to do more common task Y.

This is known as the XY problem.
While the true nature of the OP's question may be a matter of opinion, that's certainly not what the OP is asking about. In other words, a question asking about solving a broken solution is not inherently an opinion-based question.
If you suspect the OP is trying to solve something other than what they're asking, I'd suggest leaving a comment asking for clarification. Perhaps even include a link to the meta.se question linked above.

thanks. So an answer formulated like this can be ok ? "here is the answer of your question <... the direct answer...> but if I was you I dont do that because <... the arguments...>

@lemon Absolutely, I don't see anything wrong with that


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Unanswered and abandoned questions
I had the same question as Nolan about rendering in blender, Why won't objects appear in motion tracking?
But there is no answer to the question and it is a few months old with no signs of attention. Is there any other way to spark interest in an old question, other than bounties? I have very little rep, and don't want to waste it all. Should I ask a similar question, or will that just get marked as a duplicate? If nobody has seen the orignal question will they bother marking the new one? Perhaps we should push to close them, or put them higher on the unanswered list.

In this case, I'd say it's okay to post your own question with a link to the old question. This is a rare exception to the rule, based off some assumptions:

The other question has no answers (or only low-scoring answers which don't help solve the problem)
The other question is at least a month or two old, and/or it seems unlikely that the old question's OP is readily available.
The other question was not posted by you

If all these are true, then IMO the best course of action is to start afresh. Keep in mind that to answer a "trouble-shooting" question like this, information about the details is of the utmost importance.
A .blend is invaluable. If you don't want to upload your project to the world, take the time to try and make a simple example of the problem in a new file (or go backwards by starting with your project file and deleting unrelated objects).
See Including a .blend file for instructions on actually uploading the file.
Chances are, a lack of info is likely what resulted in the lack of answers to the other question.
With a little luck, you'll get some answers which successfully answer your question. If you do, we can close the old question as a duplicate of your new question, redirecting future visitors.

Sorry if I was unclear but, I did not make the question, I simply had the same question with no answer and I don't have enough rep to edit a question.

@SammySwanson Ah, my mistake. In that case, I'd say it's fine to post a "duplicate" question of your own, perhaps with a link to the abandoned question. (IIRC closing as a duplicate of a question with 0 answers isn't even possible)

Just a side note: When the user doesn't want to or can't upload the original file, one very interesting benefit that may rise from the user trying to recreate the problem is that he often finds the solution to the problem himself.


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How to set spell checker in English?
I am french an my Windows system and web browser are set in french language. So when I am typing here (here = typing a question or an answer in BSE) nearly all the words are underlined and that does not help... How to set it in english ?

AFAIK the spell checker is part of your browser and not something that can be controlled by SE. I suggest searching around for docs relevant to your browser (in FF it's RMB on text field > languages), or even asking a question on an SE site ;)

@gandalf3 Thanks ! RMB and languages works perfectly !

OK, off topic... but @gandalf3 gave me the answer. In my opinion "off topic" is very subjective here as I understood the meta was to help in practical aspects in BSE... but ok... the subject is solved for me. Maybe you should simply give an answer gandalf3 and the "debate" is closed.

Related: How do we enhance the SE spell check dictionary?

As gandlaf said in the comments, SE does not have any spell checker built in to the question or answer fields. All spell checking is handled by your browser. (Or if you are using a browser such as, say IE before version 10, you will get no spell checking.)
Here are the instruction to add spellchecking for other languages in Firefox and Chrome (yes the best instructions I could find for chrome was from their forum...)

Thanks David, it works... hope I will type a better English now !


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Why are "simple" questions so often answered in comments?
all is in the title... but also related to Unanswered and abandoned questions
So : is it good to give "clues" in comments as this will lead (probably) to unanswered questions ?

Well, speaking for myself at least, some times am not sure of the answer I am providing (like right now my stance is not at all "official") so I comment instead, either expecting further info from the user, or to encourage others to give full answers as well. Most often though I just do it because the solution is either so obviously simple or common that either I fear I am missing something fundamental or it doesn't even warrant a full featured answer. Maybe someone else cares to take the time to elaborate a full answer bellow. I'd also like to hear more opinions from other users.

I cant speak for why everybody does it, but this is what I've seen, and done myself.
I leave an "answer" as a comment when I don't want to write a full answer, simple as that. There can be many reasons why I don't want to write a full answer: I don't have time, or don't feel like writing a full answer; I may not be 100% sure that what I'm saying is correct; I may not be sure of what the OP is asking and on and on.
Now "simple" questions may get answered in the comments because (people like me) don't want to take the time to write a proper answer when we can just say in one line what the OP needs to do. Yes I know we would be forfeiting the easy rep. (That may sound crazy to you now, but after you have used SE for a few years you'll see what I mean.)
Along those same lines, people may answer in the comments because it is so simple, they can't think of what more to write to make it a full answer.

It is completely up to you whether you leave "clues" in the comments.
Do bear in mind even if you "answered" in the comments and are coming back later to write a full answer your comment does not "reserve your spot." It is perfectly ok to write an answer off of somebody else's comment. (there is a lot on the SE metas on that topic)
The super short of it:

A comment is different then an answer, as such it is a courtesy to wait for the other user to come back and answer. When you answer it would be nice to mention the comment.

I would highly recommend that you do mention the comment if you wrote your answer based off of that comment. (but that is a different issue, count all that last part a bonus.)

Considering the main interest of all these Q/A is to provide a way to find an answer in the future, maybe my question is not so important if the future user notices the comments. But there is the "avoid to answer a question in the comments". Of course I understand nobody will keep interested or will have time to do that for years... A solution could be to have the ability to tag a comment as "short answer" (or to tag an answer as short answer) ?


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Making Mouse Icons
How do you make the icons like in David's bio?

Like this:
 RMB
 <kbd>![RMB][RMB] RMB</kbd>

  [RMB]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LPwD4.png (Right Mouse Button)

The mouse icon is simply an image, embedded via markdown syntax just like any other image.
I and some other users have written a userscript which allows these and other <kbd> buttons to be inserted with a single keyboard shortcut.

The links for each icon are as follows:
 RMB https://i.stack.imgur.com/LPwD4.png
 LMB https://i.stack.imgur.com/FwrAW.png
 MMB https://i.stack.imgur.com/OASpJ.png
 MW https://i.stack.imgur.com/v1vyT.png
The icons originate from the wiki, but it was decided during the development of the userscript to host them on imgur in case the wiki versions changed.

Perfect. Thanks!

Hey! wouldn't I of been better to answer this one... :)

@David heh.. :P


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Contacting Moderators
I have now been on BSE for a month seriously and haven't seen hide nor hair of any sort of direct message system, a la the one on Instagram or other types of social media. I am aware of the chat feature, but it does not seem tailored to two-person interactions. I think it would be useful to have a way to contact the moderators. That's the end of my question.
However, it did occur to me that both gandalf3 and David are quite active on Meta, so I will just say what I wanted to say to one of them here. There is a question I was answering recently: Add different textures to front and back of plane with solidify? At first glance, it seemed to bear a great resemblance to the well-known How can I make a material only apply to a side of a plane? Infact, the former was marked as a duplicate of the latter. However, as I looked into it more deeply, I realized that it did not talk about the Geometry > Backfacing feature, but how that feature is rendered inert when a Solidify modifier is used. I posted my answer, which was accepted, and edited the question to bring to light the actual problem.
My point is, would one of you consider voting to reopen it? I don't yet have 3,000 rep...

Drop by chat, our avid users are usually there if you want to reach someone quickly, you can nearly always find at least one of us.

Also, FWIW thanks to my timezone if it's urgent, spammer or something, you can summon me in minutes with a ping as David said below. I'm pretty much always here.

First you can't privately contact a SE user.
To get in touch with a mod you could:

ping them in chat (both gandalf and I are always "pingable," did I just create a new word?, in there). It is ok if you don't want to say it in public, there are ways of creating a private chat room for serious issues.
Write up some question on the meta explaining how you have been using the site for a month, but still cant find a messaging system, then explain the problem. < /jk> Really, the meta is a good place to bring up concerns with the site. We have had this kind of thing here before.
Flag the question "in need of moderator intervention" and write a custom reason explaining what's up (kind of like you did in your question).

It sounds like for this case, casting a reopen vote should of been your first step, well after you get another 106 rep. That would bring the question to the Reopen Votes review queue, where other users can vote whether or not is should be reopened.
In any event I reopened the question, so you know at least option #2 works. :)

+1 for the infinite recursion :D

@David https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pingable

@David Thanks! Exactly what I needed.

@cegaton bummer. but as the saying goes, your never first on the internet.


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Is it possible to get notifications about comments?
Short version: Is there a way to get notifications about any comments or edits to a random question question?
Long Version
I know you can get notifications about answers on a random question by marking it as favorite.
I've also read that there's a bit of an involved process in getting notifications about certain comments, like mentions (pings) or being the sole commenter to a question.
Some times I take particular interest in a certain question and would like try to answer it in the future, but often happens questions are incomplete or lack the proper information for a full answer in the first round
The natural course of action is of course asking the user for more info, screenshots, often post a blend file etc. So is there a sure way to get notified about any further edits or subsequent comments the user may make to his question, should the user add more information to it, so one may eventually revisit it or provide a proper answer?
They often get buried in the new questions stream and finding them in the Active pane is not always easy. Asking the user to mention us in a comment may work but not very reliable especially for newcomers.
EDIT
Just for the sake of completeness here is an instance where it actually happened. The question remained unanswered for quite some time, the user responded and commented on it but no one actually noticed until he luckily pinged one user and got some due attention.

It sounds like you already read up on this, so there is not much more I can tell you.
Nope, you can not get notifications about activity on a question that is not yours.
You know about the favorite system (the best option SE offers now, still not great for this kind of thing, but I have used it for exactly this.)
You seem to know about how SE decides who to ping in the comments. In regard to your question comment pings are useless, unless the OP replies to your comment saying "see my edit" or something like that.
This has been discussed on the main meta before, and the same few answers come up: favorite list, RSS, your own list.
If you are hoping that an edit will notify commenters, that is very unlikely. As stated on the main meta, there are too many cases where those pings would just be noise.
I for one would vote for sortable favorite lists, where there are folders. That woulds sove a few issues that come up across SE.

Ah i see, this would make a fine feature request for SE then. RSS might be a nice workaround for me since I do use a reader daily, but your suggestion of organized favorites would sure be great. This would allow for powerful categorization like a folder for 'true' favorite questions, one for saving frequent answers or references for duplicates that pop up often, and one for 'temporary' favorites that you just want to get back to.

Curiously an occurrence of this situation happened just yesterday. Added a reference link just for completeness sake.

good example case!


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Are questions regarding making modifiers allowed?
I was wondering if questions about making modifiers are allowed. I did a couple of searches here and there and many questions similar to what I was going to ask were closed. I did read a question about types of questions that should be off topic and closed (as quickly as possible) and it seems they are too.
But modifiers are specific to blender and only blender. They are not a programming language feature where you can just ask about them on a C++ forum. I understand python questions are allowed here since it's used in blender, so can't we allow a little bit of C++ code once in a while? It's really frustrating for me since I have tried for many months and asked practically everywhere about something as simple as a hello world modifier;  to this day I'm still as clueless as I was a year ago. I am really about to give up :(

that is easy to say, actually everytime i get that answer and i'm almost certain that person they never tried.. because it's very very difficult ,even changing one line of code of a modifier breaks blender and i have to undo changes.. i can swear the code is obfuscated for some reason.. any help is appreciated, if you could that is

many thanks for your time,i was able to get the same result as your example,had a little issue but managed to get it working after a few headaches,i now have enough to continue on my journey, thanks againt and sorry.u can delete,  i saved your post for future reference! cheers man , have a good night/day.

i also don't mind if this question get closed, sorry for being selfish this place was my last hope and i wasn't disappointed :D

If you're asking about a modifier, it seems to me that this is part of the source code, which would make this substantially a duplicate of this question. I don't know what your level of sophistication is with C++, or how much you know about the internals of the source code, but perhaps this page is a good place to start. Developing an add-on would be something  a  bit different, but  that, too, would seem to be out of scope

ohh my comments look like i'm talking to myself ,heh. brasshat yes i did know my question is similar i was wondering why they can't be allowed here , they aren't that vague and only deal with a small portion of blender's code. btw someone else helped me here the other day,and i did get some links to an actual example. who do i contact to mark this question as solved? or should i just delete it ?

While the Blenderartists forum uses the "[solved]" designator, BSE has typically not, though I suppose it could edited in in front of the question. I would suggest, though, that you not delete the question..

@brasshat there is never a good reason to add "solved" to a question. That is something from and for forums, not a Q&A site like SE where we have other tools (like accepted answers).


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Is the edit-mode tag needed?
Recently several questions were tagged edit-mode. It has no description and has very few answers associated with it (probably because the tag itself appeared not so long ago).
With this logic, there would be needed tags 'object-mode', 'weight-mode' etc. but wouldn't that be overtagging ? I don't see what becomes clearer with this tag; it could be better to tag some of the adjacent questions as 'editing' and add several others fitting the situation.
Or probably it should be used only for troubleshooting questions with scripting solutions where mentioning interaction mode is important.
So is this tag really needed ? Does it make a post in any way better understandable / searchable ?

I don't think so, generally these should fall under the broader editing or mesh sometimes which is more meta. I've made it a synonym to editing. As we also have tags such as weight-painting and texture-painting we really don't need tags for the specific interaction modes.

Feel free to start a discussion on this here.

Thanks for the answer! And another question..I wanted to make sure there aren't cases when mentioning interaction mode could be important. E.g. this question, where this is what is discussed; this fits under python and editing though.

That shifts more to python and is tagged properly IMO. Maybe a tag for interaction-mode specifically could come in handy. We do tag cleanups every now and then so will keep and eye on it, but we have the big useful general ones now that work.

I feel as if it would be good for questions about the way Edit mode works or perhaps a bug inside it. Although I can't see new people or even some others using it at the right times. (My opinion, not a solution)


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Is it allowed to ask if a behavior is a bug?
As indicated here, reporting a bug is not allowed or not the aim of BSE.
But is asking about a behavior in order identify if a point could be a bug is allowed ?
What I mean is the question could be a way to avoid misunderstanding of the OP or validate (or enhance) the way the (maybe) bug can be reported to the tracker.

Well yes, but you have to be careful...
I don't think there is a good defined line here, so there is a tendency for questions asking whether or not something is a bug to get closed as a bug report regardless.
(I have seen way too many questions closed as "bug" when there is no bug anywhere.
Partially because I have seen so many bad bug CV uses, I'm predisposed to not close something as a bug until it is very clear that it is really a bug. sadly many other users, will vote as a bug as soon as it sounds like blender is not doing something like expected.)
However, this type of question is something that could be very useful. For example when asking about how a tool should function, or is ______ normal, yes I would say ask.
Here is an example:

Why does the grab tool (G) have lines and only move on edges? Is this some kind of bug? It only happens sometimes.

Tell me in the comments below what you would do with a question like that. (wow that sounds like something from a youtube video)
Ok, for one the question is unclear (like many that are insta-closed as bug) but it sounds like blender is messing up. We all know that pressing G should let you move anything anywhere.
Yet this is not a bug, but rather a (possibly a) new user not knowing what double pressing G will do. That OP entered edge slide
 without realizing it. Thats all (in my fictional example) no bug, everything is working as it is meant to, just a new user not knowing what is really going on.
Is that type of question allowed? definitely. (Just please ask a better question and make it as clear as possible.)
Would that type of question get closed? probably. If not as a bug (incorrect reason) then as unclear, at least until somebody edits and makes it better.

I would prefer if the title said "Is it allowed to ask if a behavior is normal?" Then it would be a 100% yes, but for some reason you stick "bug" in a question and that changes how people see it.

Yes, i could have asked "Is it allowed to ask if a behavior is normal?" or "... as we should expect?", but telling about bug seems much more clear about the point here. This question in the Meta was inspired by this one in BSE http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57520/mirrored-object-stays-in-the-same-place as a concrete example ('bug' here is not so simple as lamps have a specific geometry). We can talk about an expected behavior (?), or a regress (if we could find an earlier version which does not behave the same). ... (see below as too long here)

(following of the previous comment) ... If we think about a better accuracy for reporting (or not) such a thing, and avoid to pollute the tracker with unneeded reports, which is the best place to do it (BSE, Meta, others) ? Thanks @David for this answer, I prefer to have some other opinions before accepting it. Please feel free to tell if the question needs an edit for a complement about the idea behind.

I couldn't agree more with that 3rd paragraph!

@lemon meta works a bit differently then the main site. You don't ever have to accept an answer here. For some questions (say discussions on how the site should look) there is no answer that should be accepted.


text:
How can I delete my account?
I looked into the profile settings and couldn't any button or option for account deletion.
I searched on meta and it seems no one asked this question before, can anyone help me?
should I contact a moderator for this ? thanks:)

First I will ask why do you want to delete your account? Even if you no longer want to use the site you can still keep your account.
There is no way for a user (who has contributions) to delete their account on their own. You have to contact either SE, or a mod.
Ok, so if you really want to delete your account any mod (read me) can delete your account for you.
However it does not delete any of your posts, for good reason. You have helped a lot of people, SE does not want all that good stuff to just vanish.
This is what the message for "delete account" says:

Deletes this user account, denormalizes identity on any posts they own, and deletes any negatively voted posts they own. Does not delete any content scored 0 or higher.

Which means any answer or question you have posted will no longer have your name on it (it will say user2816). Your profile page will be gone and if someone still has the url will return a 404.
Comment on my answer, and we can talk about your account deletion, or come by the chat  and ping me.

i won't be using blender anymore , and lately BSE has become a distraction for me,I have a lot of work to do and I have to use other SE sites, but without realizing it I find myself here reading the BSE questions queue and trying to answer questions...
I thought about keeping it but that won't help since i'm still pingable and I still get notifications from here.
i'm okay with my posts not having my username,that's better inmyopinion. besides i can still answer as a guest if i change my mind.
and thanks for all your help:)!

Alright, sad to see you go. Thanks for all you have done on BSE: 97 answers, 5 questions, 157 votes, and 25 flags! I'll wait to delete your account till I hear back from you.

i enjoyed my 2 years here, u can delete:)

@root "This account is scheduled to be deleted in 23 hours," done.

thank u,sorry for the trouble.

No trouble at all. This is what we mod are here for, you the users.

Sad to see you go, but I understand your concerns now, I had no idea but BSE can be addictive in a very disturbing kind of way. Farewell and may we once day see you here again or at least using Blender


text:
Is there a way or a convention to know or indicate the first frames of a GIF?
Sometimes gif animations are hard to understand because we don't know where the sequence begin.
Is there a convention to indicate the beginning (something special to add at the beginning of the sequence) ?
Or is there a way to see it by itself with some option in the browser ?

It depends on the software you use to create the gifs. In Gifcam there is an option to have certain frames play for a longer time.

In my opinion long gifs illusrating complex actions are not very useful for that very reason.
I think it's better to create short pieces in which the beginning and end of the process are evident. Video shoud be a supporting element of what has been explained on the answer, so that users are aware of what to look for. I like short explanations, a gif, more explanation and another gif and so on. Breaking complicated processes into smaller ones.
I'd rather err on the side of oversimplifying/clarifying than making a show out of an anwser.

FYI, I have finally found that the screencast keys addon has a time option which does the job.

If you refresh a page they should start from scratch again, or perhaps open them in a new tab (Right click > View Image.)
Anyway unless you manually add a frame counter or a progress bar to your GIFs (which some software allows) there really isn't a direct way to know.
I some times bother to edit my GIFs to have  have a pause or a longer frame at the beginning or end to make it clearer where it stops, but I don't always do it, and not every user bothers to do so.


text:
Deleted Account takes my rep?
I saw that someone recently deleted there account and I didn't think much of it, until the next day when I noticed I was missing some rep. It wasn't a lot, only 15, but as just a beginner here at B.S.E. every point counts. So I read into it a little more and came across this:

This removal occurs whenever a user is deleted, unless that user had a very high reputation score.

If I remember correctly the person who there account removed HAD a very high rep, so I'm sure other people were affected or am I just crazy?

the staff use a special deletion that preserves the votes, resulting in no reputation change for those who had been voted on by that user.

Ok I'm not trying to blame "the staff" here but I'm just curious is there ever a reason to not preserve the votes? It seems a little unfair to me.
But like some dead guy said

Life isn't fair

The "dead guy" got me for 15 too.  If only he was a downvoter.

I don't think the dead guy uses blender stack exchange... or does he?

PS just checked and I lost 20.

I have lost 30... but points are not the point !... just curiosity for me... how to know on which questions or answers ?

ok... I have read that now http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1139/how-can-i-delete-my-account

@lemon you can't. All up and down votes are completely private. Only the guys who play around in SE's database could find that.

I also lost about 60 points or so, but not really very concerned about it, just sad to see a good user go.

(First off, I really like it when users research their own questions first. Nice going.)
This "unvoting" may seam unfair but when an account gets removed all votes cast (except in special cases) get removed too, both up and down.
So there actually are cases where you gain rep when a user gets removed.
Believe it or not, I'm actually not part of "the staff" and I don't have access to that special way of deleting a user and keeping the votes. It really is reversed for special cases. (Think something like gandalf3 permanently lost internet in Mordor and wanted his account gone, then the CMs would keep his votes.)
Removing votes cast, is just part of the normal part of when a user gets removed.
Thankfully it does not happen often.
PS if you are curious the user was root see How can I delete my account? for more info.

One more thing, root had very high rep, right? What is considered a "very high reputation" Or am I just remembering wrong?

very high reputation is relative to each site, and I don't even think there is a fixed about that the CMs will say "ok you have 10,001" rep we keep your votes." No, root did not have high rep, more then you but still not high.

I'll remember to bring Galadriel's phial of wifi next time I head that way.. thanks ;)


text:
Can I block users from my chat room?
I currently do not have a chat room, but I was wondering, could I block annoying users from my chat room?

To elaborate on what gandalf3 said, no you can not just block a user from your chat room.
Chat room are set up to be public, and in normal rooms there is no mechanism to banish a user from just that room.
The "kick-mute" feature will last (depending on how frequently the user has been kicked) 1, 5, or 30 minutes. So it is not permanent.

Now you can create a restricted room where only people that you let in can talk. That type of room is called a "gallery," only the people you have on the room's access list (and mods) will be able to talk; however anyone can view it.
Those are the only two ways a room owner can control who talks in their room. But there is no way to just block a user from talking.

Yes, as a room owner you'll have the ability to kick/mute users from your room.
For a full list of chat-related abilities and privileges, refer to this answer on meta.


text:
Excess Moderators
As far as I know, we have three elected moderators: gandalf3, iKlsR, and David. This begs the question, who are Gabe, Oded, Robert Cartaino, and however many others that I've missed? How are they moderators?
It did occur to me that since some of them seem to be big personalities on Meta and Stack Overflow, maybe they are moderators on every site? But then shouldn't they have the  badge?

There are 490 moderator across all the SE sites. (so you are bound to see a diamond or two.)
Yet only the three BSE mods (gandalf3, iKlsR, and me) and SE employees will have diamonds attached to our name on this site.
The three users you linked to are employees of SE (and have mod+ abilities on every site.)
Oded is a dev at SE.
Robert Cartaino is a community manager (CM). CMs have more power then mods, they over see all the sites and come by when help is needed.
While I personally don't know Gabe, his profile says that he too is a Community Manager.

About the badge, no they should not have it. From the description of the badge.

Served as a pro-tempore moderator for a year or through site graduation.

Which means you were appointed by SE and served as a mod on a beta site.
None of those guys asked about fulfill criteria one. (None of them show up in our mods list.) While they have mod abilities, they were not appointed as BSE mods. (Now if SE had appointed one of there own employees as a pro temp mod on BSE, then they would have the badge here.)

Also, kudos to mod -1

@iKlsR Francesca doesn't count as she is a bot. (no offense Francesca)

When was this Francesca coined?

links in my question here (to answer your question August 2009)

How come they are called mods when they could easily implement another title such as "Employee" or something similar?

@Lukaash Good question! There are lots of discussions about this on the main meta, including many feature requests to have them differentiated. I think this answer sums up quite well why SE wont have a different category for employees.


text:
Where should we draw the line between an answer and a full-blown tutorial?
when I came to Blender Stackexchange three months ago I realized quite fast that I could provide more answers than I had questions and providing those answers developed into a new hobby quite fast.
I realized that there was already a discussion about the topic "tutorial" in general (Should we expand our scope to allow simple howtos?) but I feel that we should still draw a line between "tutorial" and "Could you do a whole scene like this for me?"
I'm referring to this specific question How to Model Low Poly Nature Terrain in which I also participated.
My point is that this might become a trend in the future, where Blender beginners are expecting us to do full-blown tutorials for complete scenes or game models with rigging and animations that contain 35 screencasts and screenshots.
It feels a little pointless to me, part due to StackExchange's limitations regarding the layout, part due to the fact that we would create redundant information here that has been provided a couple of dozen times on other Blender-related pages.
Should we draw a line? Should we link to other tutorials? Youtube, vimeo and also blenderartists.org might not be the best choice, since video channels can vanish for whatever reason and links might change.

'How to Model Low Poly Nature Terrain' is, in my opinion, more than an ask for a tutorial. This is much more 'I want to see if someone can enhance what I already know'. But this is a particular case... look at the comments of the very very complete answer of Shady...

@lemon, I disagree. "I can't seem to figure out how to model low poly nature terrain." aims directly at modeling. That's great. One topic. I honestly find Shady's tutorial quite useful, but difficult to follow. That's definitely not his fault, it's because stackexchange is not the best medium to do extensive tutorials.

Metaphor understand me well. Shady's work is great and awesome. But I am wondering about the OP here

If readers come to expect full-blown tutorials here, then I guess they'll just have to be disappointed. As for whether answer authors should post extensive answers - it's at their discretion. The answer will be rated by the community, so if it's too hard to follow it probably won't be well received. Conversely, if it goes into detail in an appropriate and on-topic way, then it could be a helpful answer.

As you allude to, this is a topic that is some what open for interpretation (hence why this is now the third question about it and no definitive answer).
As I once said:

It seams to me, that there is still no clear different between a good but long answer, and a full tutorial.

When you read Regarding questions and answers as tutorials and Should we expand our scope to allow simple howtos? they are contradictory; but note the dates, BSE has somewhat changed its stance on tutorial type of answers.
Obviously there are some very good, long answers, some are "tutorial" type other are just very detailed.

Creating a Black Hole in Blender
How could I place objects on a flat surface in the BGE?
Render with a wider dynamic range
How to Model Low Poly Nature Terrain
How can I create space ship click based controls in BGE?
How do I “parent” objects? self plug :)

They can be broken down in to two categories, info (like my parenting answer, and troy_s' answer) and step by step. I think everybody will agree that the first category is not a tutorial, and there is no debate about those answers.
The grey area comes from the step by step answers.
First off, I think the question has more to do with the answer being a tutorial then the answer. While you could (I guess) write a tutorial for something like this, it is much more likely that a tutorial will result from a open ended question (like you linked to), then a pointed topical question.
I'm not saying that "larger" questions do not have a place here, but that we need to decide, and make it clear what is too broad and what is on topic.
Step by step answers are an important part of the answers on our site.
Now to answer your question - what is a tutorial, and what is a step by step answer - I have no idea. :)
More seriously, if you feel it would be easier to record a youtube video, then to write your answer, it is probably a tutorial and you should rethink your answer, and the question should be revised.
A bunch of steps does not make it a tutorial, say you are answering about drivers, there are a lot of steps before you even get to write the driver expression.
That example is a case for omitting non essential parts of the answer. I have done this when talking about addons, I do not want to explain how to install a addon every time.
Out of the list of answers I linked to I would say that Shady Puck's is the most tutorial. (I bet you did not know that "tutorial" could be an adjective) In that answer (sure it is a very good answer) he covers everything: loading in images, modeling, materials, lighting, camera settings, rendering, even composting. That is a tutorial.
Now gandalf's famous black hole, or X-27's bge answers are hugely long and have countless steps, but only cover one specific topic. (In each case the question asked a was pointed.) I do not consider them tutorials but that is up for debate.
If I even try to sum up the difference between a long step by step answer and a tutorial I would say, how much does it cover? Is it just about how to model something, or is it how to make that same something and then render it to a video so I can use it on my youtube channel?

So I would say, keep writing good answers, don't worry too much about the length (concise is always better), and if you find a youtube video, or you wrote a expanded post on your blog, of course add a link (just don't let the link be the only thing in your answer).
Until the day comes when BSE has a clearly defined too broad rule set, we will keep having this type of "hmm, I wonder if I should write a tutorial for this question."
PS this long answer is not a tutorial on how to write answers. :)

David, thanks for the answer - again, I guess... ;-)  The difference between Shady_Puck's and gandalf's tutorials is exactly the line that I would draw. One topic makes not only questions but also answers easier. And on top of that, additional information could be used in different answers. One link instead of one link and an explanation like "go down to where the guy starts writing about how to rotate the sun...".

David, have a close look to the comments following Shady's answer for http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/58507/how-to-model-low-poly-nature-terrain . This question is a particular case... have a look to https://www.google.fr/?gws_rd=ssl#q=timothy+j+reynolds and to https://guillaumekurkdjian.com/ then to https://dribbble.com/alexsafayan... I dislike this approach...

@lemon I don't really follow what you are trying to say. What approach do you dislike?

As someone who has been very strict about tutorial type answers from day one I see what you mean. Our scope has changed quite a bit on the past 3 years. I'm not a fan of hand holding and would ultimately prefer if said posts were condensed to the bare essentials as opposed to 30 images and step for step details. It's a gray line and as David says, we're not sure exactly how to enforce this. By all means we don't want to limit or discourage people and often times some stuff cannot be summarized if you want to get the know-how across. It's not a trivial problem but it isn't bad per se.

It is clear to me that the referred post was not a real question, but a request for a tutorial:
No real information on what part of the process or what concept the OP needs help with.
In my opinion it is really up to whoever wants to answer the question to make it as detailed as he/she wants.

@metaphor_set I feel that the short answer to your question will be "nowhere". If the answer is useful then, as it appears to be, it can be as long as the answerer decided. It isn't desirable to discourage people from answering with any limits except for clear ones, of course, so there isn't any norm.

@Mr Zak: Again, this is not about long and detailed answers to specific questions. Those should be as long and as detailed as it requires to answer the question. It's about tutorials that span many different topics.

@metaphor_set the question you refer to (about low poly terrain) is request for tutorial (yes, it's specific. Too much). The answer is as detailed as it could be and looks very much like toturial as well, including not only one topic, but several, from importing background image, setting up lighting and up to optimizing render times, including tiny details like HEX colors and so on. That's why I say - it's practically impossible to draw that line and provided that it's not good to avoid any useful answers probably that line no longer exists.

First sorry for my bad english. This kind of answers is much more difficult to write for me than technical one.
Also, I may be sometimes out of scope of the question here. If you find I am, please forgive it, but I think we are more around a 'subject' here than only in the 'scope of a question'.
I am still quite new here in BSE. But as you said, metaphor_set, all this became a "hobby quite fast".
To me, there are two aspects here: the general one and the specific question which have motivated this question.

About the referred bounty question (maybe out of scope and opinion based chapter)

We don't have so much here the usual comments like 'this is a bit broad, what do you want to know exactly ?" or "what have you tried so far ?". Except from Cegaton, who in my opinion was right.
But the question about this question (or many others) is "what is the question exactly ?". What the OP means here ?
To enlighten a bit (in this particular case), google about the OP. And so you'll discover that the question is surely not about creating trees or even about how to give the good lighting to the scene (or am I totally wrong here ?).
So, what is the question, and why the OP did not react to the comments saying "here is what I exactly want to know : ...".
In fact, he commented once, in response to Shady's (really great) answer. And to tell the truth, I dislike a lot this comment, because I interpreted as "look I can do the job without your answer". Subjective interpretation ?
Here is the comment from the OP :

This was the image I put together without your tutorial:
  s32.postimg.org/6lli8dzet/edited.png

Well... To summarize, I still don't know what is the expected answer for this particular question. And in my opinion, the given (again really good) answers will be much more useful to people in general than to the OP in particular.

More generally

I think this kind of site needs mainly two things : enthusiastic (more or less) answerers and moderators.
But I see no mean for the moderators to say something like : "hey, enthusiastic answerer, I will remove/moderate/cut your answer which is too long. This is quite a tutorial and this site is not for that". Or the answerer will be no more enthusiastic, and maybe he/she will be no more an answerer... don't you think ?
So the subject could be addressed in another way : Blender is a so huge tool for which a lot of learning and experiments are needed to use it.
And answers (short and long) are here to enlighten the various possibilities offered by Blender.
In that way, BSE is a mine (a repository) into people can dig, find these various possibilities and choose by themselves what is the more appropriated to their need.
My opinion is "let the answerers do what they want so far they really respond to the question and write a qualitative answer".
If the answerer wants to spend time for a long explanation, let him do.

BUT, other aspects

1/ Writing an answer is sometimes painful. Making it in Blender, take some screen captures or gif, mark the pictures with indications on it with another tool, putting that on disk, going back to the answer redaction, Ctrl+G (I hate 'kbd'), back to disk to drag the pic...
Really better tools may be needed (or they exist but I don't know them ?)... but in the other hand, this is a way to shorten the answers (!).
2/ Duplicates are hard to find.
3/ We are often forced to rewrite the same things. In particular Blender's shortcuts or for basic operations (add, extrude, scale, ...).
Some kind of catalog may be useful, so that the answers could be shorten a lot.
4/ For many questions like :
"I am new to Blender, but I have uploaded a complex model, and I am following this tutorial and I WANT this result but using this complex model but now I am stuck, so help me"...
The best and shortest answer could be "if you really want to learn, start little" !

lemon, thanks, great thoughts. Regarding 4/: It's quite difficult to deal those kind of oneliners to people who show real determination by creating big models. or scenes. The least we could do is explaining to them that we have experienced these kind of setbacks ourselves - many times. People getting angry and disappointed quite fast, these days...

"Duplicates are hard to find" this is quite debatable. Use google search and restrict it to B.SE (by writing it in search field too); it's hard sometimes, although it's quite easy often.

@MrZak, I should have said 'hard to find or to identify'. But maybe this is because my english vocabulary is not good enough to catch the good keywords to identify the duplicates.

For me, it depends partly upon the reputation on the site of the person who asks the question, on the one hand, and on the other, on the skill set level of the topic. For example, my response to a question from a user with very low reputation, asking how to do something for which there are already multiple tutorials in various locations on the web, is likely to be a comment directing the user asking the question where to find such tutorials. This is an application of the aphorism, "give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime". In the case of a more advanced user, as measured by reputation on the site, I am much less likely to answer the question, as I feel the more advanced user should have some sense of how to find such information on his or her own.
On the other hand, I am going to be much more accepting if and advanced user asks a question which might result in a "how to" or tutorial if the answer seems to lead to new techniques advancing the use of Blender in an area where there are not yet good tutorials available.


text:
Documentation second opinion?
Is https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/ask a good place to get second opinions on changes being made to documentation?

Also note that part of the reason patches go through a "review" process on phabricator (developer.blender.org) is for exactly this purpose. You'll likely receive some feedback there as well.

But that is if you are new and submit patches. I have access to push the .diff files myself without external permission. Besides, I have a feeling that the developers have better stuff to worry about than grammer/ minor documentation edits.

Even with push rights, it can be a good idea to put large/potentially controversial changes through review anyway. Anyone can pitch in with the review process, and there is a special "documentation team" (with a number of non-developers) who look at submitted patches. For smaller stuff of course, a quick question in #blenderwiki on IRC or in B.SE chat can't go amiss..
There's also the bf-docboard mailing list, which is useful for calling attention to something or to get an authoritative opinion, e.g. if you have a proposal for drastically changing the structure of the docs or something.

No.
BSE and our meta has no connection (aside from whatever users contribute to both) to blender's official docs. Posting a change to blender's doc on the meta here will never make it into a change.
Instead if you found something that needs fixing, just edit it yourself.
Gandalf wrote up a great post on how to get started
Improving the Blender manual.
Even if you don't want to go through the whole process to edit the manual yourself you still should not post your changes on the meta here. You can report problems here: https://developer.blender.org/project/board/53/

If you just want a quick second opinion to a change (not too large) I would recommend you head over to our site's main chat room or more appropriately the Manual Project room (the reason I say the renderfarm first is because there is always somebody there); and post your change in there.

im looking for a place to get feedback for things im changing in the manual. I know how to make the changes, but im not always sure that they are good changes.

@eromod take a look at my edit

just what I was looking for, ty

I would say one of the main places to contact those in charge of documentation is via the bf-docboard mailing list


text:
Why does no one vote?
Has anyone else noticed that seeing a question with 0 votes is becoming common?
Seriously, we need to get our act together. If you like a question, or in particular, feel a question asks a good question that could be beneficial to other users, vote up! If a question is completely irrelevant, or formatting/spelling is so bad it is completely unintelligible, vote down!
It drives my crazy how many questions get absolutely no attention! And this includes answers too.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZDD7oDkcyOU/hqdefault.jpg you vote on my question i vote on urs? http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1158/documentation-second-opinion

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/812/5705

I've noticed this trend over the last few months... which I suppose leads to  "If you like this question...Vote" nag screen.  Haven't seen it here yet.

Tangent, but it feels related:  Why do people downvote without useful comments. (Old gripe) See my recent: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1159/why-does-no-one-vote?cb=1

I certainly have, and in the past have said that more people should vote.
I 100% agree that as a whole our site should be voting more.
However, I can not agree with your reasons for UVing or DVing.
After reading the voting pages:
Why is voting important?
vote up
vote down
It is abundantly clear the voting should not be based on some whim, or whether or not you liked the picture, or if the guy is famous on this site.
Vote up:

Whenever you encounter a question, answer or comment that you feel is especially useful, vote it up!

Vote Down:

Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.

(quotes form the respective SE help pages linked above.)

Bottom line, yes vote more (don't be afraid to max out your daily limit.)

Thank you! That's exactly what I was trying to say, I just didn't get there.

Speaking for myself I don't upvote question very often. It's not because I'm bitter, or in some personal vendetta to withhold points from other users; nor because I don't read them or don't care.  I just think upvoting a question should be reserved for actually good questions.
Most questions that show up here show absolutely no effort from the user, no research, incomplete information, poor language (I know many users first language is not English but the worst offenders often seem to be native speakers), walls of text, duplicate questions asked over and over again; or the large majority very simple or very basic beginner questions.
Not sure if this is correct from my part but, the most frequent reason I do not find a question upvote worthy though is because most just seem too localized or specific to the users project or work, and with very narrow applicability outside that very question.
Not that the question is bad in and of itself, doesn't justify downvoting either, but it feems like using SE as a personal helpdesk, rather than a long term knowledge database, making them unlikely to be useful to anyone else.
I would consider the best questions to use the most 'generic terms', like 'how do I solve general problem X' or 'how to achieve certain effect Y'; instead of 'how do I do specific thingy from my project' or 'how do I fix my problem in this screenshot'.
Now I rarely see a question getting closed for being Too Localized, and since this is very large majority of questions here, if we don't answer those BSE would quickly become a pretty empty desolate place, failing the basic mission of helping users; but I just don't find those questions upvote worthy either.

Surely if a question leads to a great answer (like so many of yours ... probably all ... all 8^)) it's worthy of at least one UV? My policy: there's a distinction between a 0 to 1 upvote, eg "this q is worthy of an answer" and UVing above 1.  Voting IMO fuels the site.

My guess is the numbe of up votes ends up reflecting the question quality after all. I also think we have such talented and knowledgeable senior users here that even mediocre no effort questions some times get fantastic well constructed answers after all.  I will try to upvote more often then.

Especially if the question has passed the "Spanish Inquisition" (aka review)... hmmm someone said not to mention that.

in the some cases what you described I would DV. Now I'm using my own questions as examples, just because I'm familiar with it them. How do I rig a BB-8 robot? is a very specific and rather localized question (how many others are going to make a BB-8?), but I think it is a well formatted, clear and answerable question. All three are reasons to UV. Now What is the warp modifier for? is a still specific, but is more general. So you would UV this one, but not the first?

Would never go as far as downvoting, as I said I do not consider them as a bad questions at all, but I do tend to regard more general or 'generically asked' questions as well formed and more useful as future reference. It's probably just even a simple matter of wording. For example  'How do I rig a BB-8 robot?' could probably be worded as 'How do I rig a fixed object on top of a rolling one' or something along those lines, so it still poses a great and useful question. Then again thinking about it now one is more likely to search for "bb8" than what I wrote... I may be wrong, I dunno :)

Upvoting questions helps new users to feel welcome and appreciated and might come back. Having more points will help those new users access comments and other moderator tools. We all started from zero. If a question is clear and answerable I will upvote it.

@cegaton would like to edit that to:   Upvoting questions helps all ...

The Blender Stackexchange might have a lot of users (18k) but I strongly believe that most of them are

one-timers
people who have never used stackexchange/overflow before,
and of course people who don't vote on answers where they aren't sure if
they are actually good, because they haven't yet entered that area of
Blender's big exciting world.

One-timers don't bother to choose a user name, some even don't bother about learning how to ask questions. They drop in, ask (well... more or less) whatever they want to know maybe receiving an answer after endless comments about improving their question and then they are gone (that also becomes a trend irl). Certainly they don't bother with things like "how does StackExchange work", "what are the customs here" or "maybe I can participate as well".
People who have never used SE/SO might accustom to things like voting or even accepting answers. If they visit more frequently one might drop them a line and they actually might have enough interest in that little red box with the number, that pops up under "recent inbox messages".
The people who aren't sure if the given answer is actually a good one might vote, if they stumble over the same task somewhere in the future and find the answer then helpful.
I for myself have no problems with votes (I don't even have a facebook account). What troubles me, are the many many questions that actually received a good answer but that answer was never accepted. Those questions will get pushed up by the Community bot every now and then until they get "flagged" as unanswered and because of that they might disappear.

I agree with you! (neither do I have a fb account) To correct your last point, a question with a good answer, even though it is not accepted, is not an unanswered question. Any question with just 1 positive vote will never be removed by the community bot.

David, thanks for clarification. I recently found an older question that really helped me with one of my tasks but had 0 votes on it. Of course I upvoted but then I feel that there are more of those in the drain...
I also was referring more about the upvotes of my answers...

@metaphor_set you're right, according to BSE 18,471 of our users only have between 1-199 rep. Only 1,095 have more than 200

I'm here because I'm a Blender Bumbler who staggers through Blender's amazing array of settings, and quite frankly don't feel qualified to "Judge/vote" another's question or reply.

So while staggering, you never found a useful question with a useful answer then? I doubt that. It's not about your current level of qualification, it's about how qualified you are after reading an answer that was actually helpful to you and your task.

I didn't even suggest that I'd not found posts or replies useful.

@Edgel3D (replying to your comment)  you kind of did suggest that you did not find any posts useful. To quote the reason for up voting  "Whenever you encounter a question, answer or comment that you feel is especially useful, vote it up!" So whenever a post helped you, vote it up.

Thanks to these comments David I have been up-voting since, in order to signal to the poster that his/her effort was helpful to me at least.  As for your interpretation, what I said there is plain enough.

I'd love to vote but my reputation is below 15. I assume a portion of others might be not voting because of the same problem.

Only a small portion of active users are below the up vote privilege. There are about 8465 users with 15 or more rep. PS don't worry you will gain rep quickly.

People give many votes, but often (too often?) to comments. And I think it's Q's and A's that should be voted up or down. That's the goal of this site, isn't it? I suggest voting for comments should be abandoned. If it can't be done, downvoting should be enabled to discourage folks from going too much into commenting. And comments could be highlighted as the font used is small. The other day I answered a question and then I saw it was "answered" in the comments.

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


text:
Can 'asking for duplicate confirm' be a better approach?
Looking at this, for instance, I am wondering if we could proceed a bit differently :

Ask the OP if it is a duplicate (that needs to be mentioned clearly as a question in the comments, for example "Can you confirm this is the same subject as this ?")
Let him/her 24 hours to give a reply (considering the timezones)
Mark it as duplicate after this delay and explaining/commenting how to reopen it if he/she consider this is not a duplicate (if possible)

In my opinion, new BSE users can difficultly understand what is happening when their questions are closed.
I had recently a previous example where the OP indicated clearly that the link indicating a duplicate question was not an answer for him. But despite of that, his question has been closed... and so he deleted his question (this was about the pokeball if some remind it).
I don't know if the process indicated above is possible considering the vote mechanism. But I am quite sure that closing a question involves some kind of frustration (sometimes) that should be avoid. Ok, these kind of situations are obviously rare...

If a question doesn't have all the votes needed to close it as a duplicate, it will ask you if the proposed orginal question solved your problem. I think people won't see that very often because usually everyone agrees if a question is a duplicate or not. http://imgur.com/a/14nB6

@SammySwanson, ok thanks. I did not know that. But do I understand you well : this message can be seen only if the vote is not closed ?

I believe this is a bit about sensitivity. In the given example, I found it a bit too early to close the question as well, because the OP never mentioned 'Freestyle'. He was just looking for an idea on how to get outlines via DAE format to another software. I remember a tutorial where someone achieved this effect for the Blender Game Engine by creating an instance of his character, fiddling with shaders and normals, and displacing it out. A bit complicated, but it worked well. Maybe the moderators just need to give a question a little bit of time in such a case, and comment on the duplicate?

@lemon yes, the message can only be seen by the OP if the question has anywhere between 1-4 close votes (maybe 2-4). A question needs five to be closed as a duplicate.


text:
Downvoting is one of the reasons I often very much dislike StackExchange
Triggered by:
shrinkwrap ("decal") around entire object?
After noticing my question (link above) was downvoted, I commented downstream. Yes, I have used SE for years, off and on. So I am very familiar with the way things work. I also understand gripping about downvotes just for being downvoted is pointless. That's why I'm here now on meta: I see no problem at all with the question (link above), its format, content, or intent. After trying, for several hours, to do what the question asks about without success, I researched for several hours more, until finally giving up and coming here ... This just irks the you know what out of me. And yes, I understand some users just downvote like Trolls.
I am one of those who firmly believe downvoting without comment should not be allowed. (Please don't tell us it would be too expensive for SE to hold such a volume of data. Drivespace is cheaper than dirt. And there are other algorithms which could facilitate this.)
Here's my comment (excerpted from my question's comments):

OK why the downvote? --- this is one of the reasons I hate
  stackexchange many times.  Post a legitimate question ... in detail
  ... (It took me > 15 minutes to think out the question and step by
  step details, then I reviewed it, posted and then edited it several
  times, followed by an image added by request of a commentor.) So you
  downvote, but don't say WHY. How the heck is this supposed to help
  ANYONE? Off to Meta to whine ...

... And from the SE Horse's Mouth:

When should I vote down?
Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort->expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.

from https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down

My question met none of the downvoting criteria, IMO.
So please DO go downvote my question if it needs improvement or is off-base (which would baffle me if you think so). BUT tell me (US!) what is wrong with it, or how it could be improved.
To be fair and balanced (LOL) you could also support the cause and go UPVOTE the question :))
thank you for your time and consideration.

I did what you asked and downvoted it. I read your question, all the comments to it, and the answer, and still can't figure out what your trying to do.

OK I'm baffled by this. Perhaps you all know TOO much and can't think like a noob when approaching a question? (Nothing personal)... However, seeing that you are one of the people who put it on hold, I can say that doing such a thing is a very bad idea for a multitude of discouraging reasons. It makes me just want to delete the question and blow off stackexchange sites AGAIN.  Do I sound temperamental? No. It's just that doing things this way is so counterproductive for noobs. AS I commented, if I understood how to do what I needed to do, I not need to ask the question. ... continued ...

...  So I (we) get penalized or the question is frozen just because we don't know the proper jargon?  Did it occur to you (all) that maybe someone like me has never even heard of UV mapping before? (I do know well what it is ... and said specifically asked if a simpler method exists.)  I rerereRead my post ... I just don't get what is so hard to understand about the idea of "wrapping a picture around an object". Take a jpg, gif, whatever, print it on a piece of paper and glue the damn thing around a cardboard box.  Would it help if I edited that into the OP? If so, this just confirms  ...

... a feeling of sadness about stacksites in general --- most seasoned users tend too frequently toward being obsessive compulsive about "getting it right," instead of truly trying to understand the intention of the question. (Sorry, you can look at my profile and see that I've been around awhile ... in fact, under a company ID I don't use since I'm not there anymore, I started on StackOverflow in 2009 ... so I'm not a noob to SE, but I am to Blender.)  Now, I feel like Blender.SE is going to be the same, time waster ... and you all wonder why the insufficient voting. And thank you ...

... and I mean it sincerely, that you downvoted AND explained why you did so.  Perhaps my question was so simple it isn't obvious ... that's all I can figure at this point ... - H

You could have done something as simple of showing an example of what your were trying to do. That example could have been of anything. Presenting a unclear description of what you have tried to do, to fix a problem you never clearly explain, does not help anyone. We can't answer your question, and help you solve your problem if we don't know what your trying to do.

@x-27 --- "show a simple example of what you are trying to do" ... OK, you got me. I give up. How can I show an example of what I am trying to do if I can't do it in the first place ???  That is precisely why I wrote an explanation.  I tried both to photoshop it and do it in After Effects, but it was too complex (for me at least) to do 3D w/ those tools ... so I turned Blender.  I really don't understand why you don't understand. I'd delete my question out of frustration, but the variations of the answers might prove useful to others. thanks anyway.

@X-27 please see also my final comment to the answer I accepted for the OP.

This is how I read your question, and why I DVed it.
"I'm trying to acheve an end result, but I'm not going to say what that end result is. This is the approach I've taken, which isn't working how I imagined it should. How can I make my approach work?"
You could simply have said:
"I'm trying to make ______. I have tried this already, but it didn't work.  What should I be doing?"

I don't see the point of this any longer. I did what you said. I specifically said exactly what I wanted to do in the very first sentence. Then, in the instructions, I said "take any arbitrary image" ... it doesn't matter what ... I picked "brain" at random. It could have been a picture of strawberries, or a dead horse.  Put picture on a plane, or empty, then wrap that picture around an arbitrary object. What is so hard to understand about that?...

@X-27 - as more than a few folks said my question was unclear, I've edited the o.post to try to clarify it, now that I understand the terminology. Thanks again for taking the time to assist on this!

@x-27 PS thanks for releasing / reopening the question... if you all had not done so, I would not have gotten the answer from today 24Aug16. That answer was precisely what I was looking for.  (Also, for the sake of blender.se. meta, please see my comments below to David.)

Your question in its current state is surely not that bad (in terms of lacking information) that I would DV it (I've seen worse). But then there is cegaton's answer - and the wonderful first paragraph seems to be a hint, right? ;-)
The problem is that most of the people with a reputation above 1000 will post the same comment over and over and over again; "Welcome to BlenderSE, your posting lacks structure and vital information, please add some informative images, also consider uploading your file to blend-exchange....yaddayaddy"
So some of us then even try to answer the question to our best knowledge and with the little information we get, but then it's almost always a very long answer since we want to cover all the possible solutions that unclear questions bear.
So here's the thing: Writing good answers is time-consuming and all we get is this nice warm and fuzzy feeling that maybe we helped that person with our effort. Oh, and street cred, of course. The least thing we could expect for our effort is that people ask their questions after they did research and - if they didn't find a good answer - describe their problem in the most comprehensible way possible.
The easiest way to describe a problem is starting with the expected result, like "I want to create a cube that has brain-like patterns allover its surface." Maybe then you could inform us also about the purpose, like "I want to use that model as a still rendering/in an animation/as a game asset." Because... things like these matter sometimes, you know...?
Good questions deliver good answers. Bad questions won't get any answers, only comments and in some cases they get DV'd. The world keeps turning. It's a learning process (hopefully).

Great answer, couldn't have said it better.

Thx metaphor_set; I've accepted your answer although this Q&A round format really doesn't fit for meta-level discussions (another sore spot with me an SE) - and especially for the DV'ing.  Re my question: since at least five people said they didn't understand what I was asking, I accept that my question was unclear. However, cegaton's shotgun approach hit it - and a few hours ago, Duane Dibbley nailed it spot on, or "interpreted" it correctly. So at least one other person understood it. I am glad it was openned again or else Duane's answer would have never happened ... (cont.) ...

... I still think across all SE sites, those with expertise would better serve the sites by refraining from blasting away with the generic "your post lacks ..." and halting it, rather put that as a comment (as, yes, is often done too).  You see, I understood exactly what I needed to do, but being a real blender noob, I had no way of knowing the correct terminology to use. Also I didn't want to just "create a cube with brain like patterns allover it's surface" ... I needed the method of putting any picture on any object (not a material, not a texture, not a UV wrap, not a pattern - and not ....

... specifically a cube.) That's why I said what I said at the get go. The brain on a cube was just an example. Now - after - all the answers, I could ask my question again more precisely. But I'd not need to ask, would I ? TRying to "explain" in detail from a noob's perspective would have been far worse than the XY problem. Do you see? How does a blind man model an elephant, much less ask what tools to use? thanks much for your attention!

Well, not much I can say to cheer you up (and this next bit wont help.)
We will probably never see mandatory comments for DVing. This type of thing and many variants have come up on the main meta for years.
One of the biggest reasons for not having a mandatory comment after a DV, is anonymous voting. If every user that DVs your post has to leave a comment at the same time, it would become rather clear who DVed your post, and that is not something we ever want to let lose.
(You think the DVs are unfair now, you can't even imagine how bad it would get when people can target users and revenge vote.)
Now for any user under 2000 rep, they are asked to leave a comment. A box pops up under the vote buttons that says "Please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved."

If I were to venture a guess as to why somebody DVed your post, I would say that it is because it was unclear, maybe a bit long winded (you only get to the question at the end, and it only becomes clearer what you are trying to do with the sentence you edited in later), and it seams to be kind of a XY problem question.

Thanks David. You said, " ... reasons for not having a mandatory comment after a DV, is anonymous voting. If every user that DVs your post has to leave a comment at the same time, it would become rather clear who DVed your post, and that is not something we ever want to let lose." That's an example of what I said about algorithmic fixes. When you downvote, it forces a comment, but the user ID could be left off. One bit set.  Sure, they could leave it blank, but at least they'd be tempted to say at least "it sux" or somesuch.  It's not remotely similar to the XY problem. Why? ...

... because the first thing I said was the question.  Then to clarify, I gave you, the reader the step by step process to get to the same point I was, thus showing you how the result differed from what I was asking about. I've been told I'm very good a teaching other people technical things, and being able to think like someone learning that thing new. So please read my comments above to @x-27 's comment above. BTW, I do appreciate you both taking the time to assist on this. I'd like to hang out here on Blender more, but, honestly, it seems like the same, old worn-out SE shoe ...

@HowardPautz The reason it seems the same, is this is an SE site, so all the same rules and procedures apply. It being old an worn out is a valid opinion, but there isn't really anything we here can do about it, you would need to talk to SE employees up and down the food chain if you want anything to change. Most of us have come to appreciate how it works, and think it does so very effectively.

@NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ - understood. Indeed, I too think SE is effective overall, but the effect on downvoting noob posts on the noobs themselves is difficult for experienced users to experience, IMO. In general, the more seasoned an SE user, the less tolerant they might be towards malformed noob questions ... understandably ... it's taxing and tiring to see the same junk over and over again. It's not the noobs themselves, it's their noob-way of asking. There should be some way of getting them to clean up their act without discouraging them.  It feels horrible to see downvotes on your very ...

... first post.  Noobs do not understand this. It's only after you've gained some experience (say > 5 to 10 posts) that you then see what downvoting does.  I'd wager a box of doughnuts that there are thousands of people who legitimately post once or twice, get their posts down to -1, -2, even -3, then never come back.  OK, I supposed we could be Darwinian about this and say if they're not tough enough to survive that initial hurdle, then maybe they shouldn't post at all - but doesn't that just seem wrong?


text:
What to do with questions based on links once the links have expired?
Some questions are based on links to files and images hosted in external sites. Once those links disappear the question no longer makes sense.
Here's an example: Setting parent to armature with automatic weights deforms the mesh
Are those to be marked as "unclear on what you are asking?"

Super short tldr
Don't CV. Either edit, flag or leave a comment for the OP.

Before I answer your question, let me rant a bit :)
Here is the problem with link only questions (LOQ), link only answers (LOA), and like in this case "Here's my blend" questions; inevitably they all go bad.
Indeed this is a problem, which is why this is so heavily discouraged in the first place.
Here are some ideas I have to proactively combat this problem.
Images
I think we should have an outright ban on any images coming from anything other then i.stack.imgur.com (stack exchange's special image host). 1
I recently when back to a forum that I'm no longer part of, and found all the images are gone. Those were hosted on a site (postimage.org) that at the time said lifetime image hosting. They still say:

You can upload unlimited images per post and you will never have to worry about your images being removed due to inactivity.

Well they are all gone, I don't want our questions (like the linked question) left without important context (and in some cases) the whole question.
Even i.imgur.com should be considered an outside source and get changed. Yes this would include gifs over 2mb.
Blend files
I understand that there are many things that simply can not be answered without a blend. So in cases like that we need to be 100% sure that the blend file will stay around. We have Blend-exchange, a site created and maintained by a member of our community. All blends need to be hosted on that site. Pastall is the worst, they guarantee your link will be no good in 5 months, dropbox, google drive, onedrive, any all others should be banned.
There should not be such an emphasize on "the blend." Granted, blends are immensely useful, and help get questions answered quickly. Yet there is a balance, not everything needs a blend. Questions should use text as the number one tool through which information is conveyed.
I believe that in the right hands any question* can be answered without a blend.
As an example from the linked question (dead links underlined in red):

There use to be two images hosted on dropbox; and a blend file on one of those random file sharing sites. As the question is now, it is completely useless.

Now how to deal with posts after the links have gone bad (and to answer your current question). There are a plethora (1, 2, 3, 4) of discussions on this over on the main meta, here I will summarize them and add my own thoughts, specific for BSE.
There are four different cases, and you should take different actions for each.

Dead link only answer.
There should never be a link only answer, and now that the link is dead the answer is worthless.
Flag for for moderator attention, use a custom message and explain that the link is dead. If you have enough rep to vote to delete, then do that too.

Dead link in answer.
When it is a good free standing answer, but has a dead link: Edit the answer and replace the link with a working version. In the case of the old wiki links use the new manual links. (archive.org is always an option.) If you can not find a working link, add a comment for the OP, let them know that their link is dead, and edit out the link - simply remove it completely.

Questions dependent on the dead link(s).
This is the case for the linked question. Add a comment and ask the OP to fix their dead links, also explain where images and blend files should go. Completely edit out the dead links.
If there are no useful answers, flag for moderator attention. Let us know why this should be deleted (dead links). There is hardly ever any reason to close these type of questions, either the answers are still useful or the whole thing can be deleted.

Free standing questions with a dead blend.
Assuming that the link is non essential to understanding the question, which could often be a blend file, as we can not get the original file back, a comment to the OP is the only option. Then completely remove the dead link.

* "Any question" does not include questions that are so unclear, or of poor quality that their meaning can not be deciphered.

So, if we stumble over a posting with external links to images and files, should we edit it and move the images to imgur then? It's most common for new users to post links to images due to their rep status. On the other hand, if someone posts a link to an image he doesn't own and asks how he can achieve that sort of mesh/shader? Some people are quite restrictive when it comes to that...

@metaphor_set yes, if there is still a working link to an image hosted outside of i.stack.imgur.com then do edit and upload it to i.stack.imgur.com. For images where the OP does not own the rights, something as simple as "Image from " will do.

For Free standing questions with a dead blend., perhaps one should also contact the user who answered the question (if there is an answer) because they might have a copy of the dead .blend in their Downloads folder or somewhere else deep in their hard drive? Would have edited, but wanted to present my idea in the comments first.

@ShadyPuck possible, but I would say unlikely. I know I delete all the blends I download when I'm done with my answer.

@David I just thought I'd point it out because I haven't deleted the .blends. I don't know if what your doing or what I'm doing is the norm. P.S. Maybe in the case of these pasteall .blends, people should download them, upload them to Blend Exchange, and edit the question w/ the new .blend link?

Whenever you upload an image, from file or URL, it is automatically transferred to the SE imgur.

@JoshSilveous yes, but only if you use the image button in the editor. Like in the examples in my answer, the OPs here just inserted the code for the image from another host.

I'd say yes, but only if the question is un-answered.
If the question has an answer (as does the question you linked), then IMO it doesn't benefit anything.
One of the goals of closing a question is to provide an incentive for the OP to improve it, making it possible to provide a useful answer.
If the OP has already got their answer, closing their question will do nothing.
Plus, people arriving from search engines are likely far more interested in the answers. Chances are, they have independently discovered same problem as the OP. If they read the question, they'll probably only be doing so for the purpose of confirming that they are really reading about the same issue.


text:
What leads our reaction regarding a question?
I am wondering...
Regarding this question, our reaction is first, to ask about more precision, etc., then to close it (and for now maintain it closed despite the edit by the OP).
Regarding this other one, let's say, we have a neutral reaction.
Objectively, I don't see why. For both :

Question about a method or how to
No real proof of an attempt to have done or tried anything
Based on a simple internet image

Surely the second one needs much more technics (or addon or work...) than the first one. But is that the reason ?
My own reaction was for the first to think "... again more or less a 'simple' modeling task" and for the second one "... interesting, I am curious to see an answer for that".
But I really think, my reaction is very subjective and not so good indeed.
Finally, one can still be answered and not the other one... fair / unfair, justified / not justified ?
What is your opinion ?

3 months later, 1st question has 9 UVs and 2 answers with 10/8 UVs. The 2nd question has 24 UVs and 2 answers with 23/16 UVs... That's why a community is amazing, what you (or me) think is bad or useless, someone else has something to say about it, and other people are interested in the details...

@Bithur  Very well put, Bithur. +1 comment. The COMMUNITY has spoken and has upvoted the questions. 'Nuff said.

When I look at the second (Techniques for modeling a network of blood vessels) I think it should be closed. It does seam way too broad. I expect now that you have brought more attention to it is will get closed. (I would close it now, except that I want you to get more responses here first.)
The first question is definitely answerable, it just needed to be cleaned up a bit (see my edit). I went ahead and reopened it.
In this case, I think it is more about who has seen the question(s) rather then some difference in quality.

I think both may stay open. But I still feel it subjective. A question like "how can I extrude?" can lead to model a "network of blood vessels"... so...

As originally written, the first question was a "can someone do this for me?" kind of question, hence the bad reaction. On the second one I'm waiting (hoping it stays open) to give a nice bounty.... But it is all subjective....

And as subjective as the question are the reactions to the answers. http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/61261/techniques-for-modeling-a-network-of-blood-vessels