text:
We're turning 10 this year. Happy birthday to all!
Posted a few days too late but, Blender Stack Exchange just turned 10 years old seven days ago.
May 22 2013, the date of the earliest question ever posted on Blender stack exchange.
A question about soft body baloons on the now aging Blender 2.66, the post that started it all.
Is there a way to prevent soft body balloons from crumpling when they hit walls?
two years later we graduated on September 10 2015. Who would have guessed that ten years and 107,377+ questions later we'd all be were we stand?
Time does fly, it has been a long road, full of ups and downs, but here we are after all these years. I wont pretend I remembered the date, if it wasn't for the community managers I'd probably have missed this mark.

Image shamelessly stolen from original(see image #6) by Wawawiwa Comics
Blender has evolved tremendously in the meantime, from the now distant 2.6# days, through the great jump of Blender 2.8, which brought a huge influx of new people, all the way through the latest geometry-nodes novelties, and hopefully far beyond the upcoming Blender 4.0 series.
To mark the moment we're posting this question to celebrate the occasion, and request that all members of the community, recently arrived or that have accompanied us through these years to reply with their best moments spent here with the community.
Share any fun interactions, interesting chat conversations, link to great answers, shameless self promotion of your best posts, or any entertaining moments you spent here, or perhaps tell us your origin story. How did you first join Blender Stack Exchange? How did you start using Blender?

Since I've only been here for 12 months, I'm afraid I don't have much interesting to report, and can only tell my own little story...
But first of all, this is the opportunity for me to express my heartfelt thanks to this wonderful community!

In March 2022 I started learning Geometry Nodes, and was looking for an answer to a problem. That's how I came across this platform. Since the answer was unfortunately not to be found here, but I found a solution in the meantime, I wanted to share it.
However, my question/answer was so clumsily worded that it was immediately closed by Duarte...
This motivated me to write a more serious post.
In the process, other solutions to open questions came to my mind, and I started answering those questions.
And from that point on, I couldn't stop doing it, and I've fallen into this "addiction" of engaging here to this day.
However, the most incredible event for me personally was after I became the first user to achieve the Gold Badge in geometry-nodes, after only 172 days. ...That made me very happy, because it gave me confirmation from the community that my answers here can actually be helpful, and it motivated me to keep going.
For some reason I don't know, you elected me as a moderator and I'm trying to fill the big shoes that others have left before me.
I have no idea why all this, but probably it has to do with the fact that I now consider this wonderful community as a kind of Blender family, from which I can permanently learn something interesting, and I'm happy to contribute a small part.
Even if I could answer one or the other geometry-nodes question, in the end I could learn the most from all of you. Thanks to your constant fascinating and head-scratching questions (and answers!)!
And for that I am infinitely grateful.
I have already written it in the chat:
The past 12 months have been the most exciting and beautiful time of my life so far regarding 3D and Blender!
Thank you!
...now its time to learn shader-nodes I think ;-)

"For some reason I don't know, you elected me as a moderator" From my part at least, quoting Ton Roosendaal himself, "I decided to go for the nicest people, not the best technology. (Choosing for people you never regret.)" ;)

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Haha, are you saying I'm one of the nicest people here, or one of the most unqualified!!!? :D

XD One of the nicest; your rep totally excludes the unqualified option ;)

In a sadder note we also saw the departure of some of our oldest moderators, who were here from the very start and really shaped the foundations where we stand today.
Respect and nostalgia for our missed members David and iKlsR which despite currently no longer being active within our community, still remain some of the highest reputation users off all time, thanks to the long list of lasting high quality contributions whose content still remains relevant to this day.
David♦ Moderator resignation
A goodbye to the community - iKlsR Moderator Resignation

the golden days surely were with gandalf, david, and iklsr. the three of them probably answered more than 75% of the question asked for a 3 year period :/

@ruckus Still among the highest rep users to this day, despite recent years of inactivity. I see you are one of the "old guard". Care to share a story from back then? Maybe how you first joined BSE, or how you started using Blender

Thanks for the recognition. Although there were other even before I was a mod. I still venture into the realms of Stackexchangia every once in a while.

Always nice to see you pop in every once in a while ;)

Congratulations BSE. 10 years its crazy to think back, and realize its been a decade. I remember first finding this site from the post on blendernation, then six months later I started here.
It was a great time when I was daily active here. I got to know many of you as internet friends.
I have to mention a few users, not active anymore but each in their own way really built this site into the resource it is today.
cegaton Super knolagable blender user who was dedicated to this site. When he left (deleted his account because of SE corporate) he had the second most reputation, and by far the most questions and answers.
batFINGER another powerhouse of knowledge, if you had a python problem batFINGER probably helped you.
moonboots An amazing answering machine. To this day has written over 4.5k answers! It is hard to comprehend that kind of number. This one user has written 6% of all the answers on BSE.
I have to mention that there have ben many power users over the years (if I miss one, or some I did not mean to, but I may not have been around.) Just scrolling through the user list I got nostalgic.
One such example is Shady Puck, only around for a year or so, but in that time broke near every record. He was one of the users that did it all.
troy_s a master of digital color. So much so he was the one that originally got color management into blender. Troy you taught me a lot, thanks.
GiantCowFilms Aside from everything done on BSE, this is the one user behind blend-exchange the site that to this day we all still use to host our files for questions and answers.
J Sargent (or better remembered by "NID" or "VRM"), JakeD, TARDIS Maker, Thom Blair III, CharlesL, p2or, someonewithpc, X-27, pink vertex, PGmath. All from the same era, and all played a part in this site.
Going back farther we have users like CodeManX, Ray Mairlot, sambler, or the former mods A Wild RolandiXor, Gwen, ideasman42 (yes the ideasman42 who was the main blender dev for so many years), Daniel Node.js (better remembered as "Dan the man"). Thank you all for making this site the huge resource it is in the blender community.
Milestones were crossed, swag was given out, Hats were collected, and possibly one blender broken (deleted question image link).
Blender has grown so, SO much. It has been amazing to see this shunned "open source" 3D creation software become mainstream, and used everywhere.
The time on this site, the knowledge I gained and shared, the people I worked along side, the interactions with others, will always remain with me. It was truly a life experience.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Long live blender, and long live BSE.

Nice post. Thanks for reminding me of all those users I still crossed paths with in my first times here.

I'll start to get the ball rolling:
This has got to be one of my favorite posts of all time here on meta:
Life On The Surface where our sorely missed member batFINGER posted one of the most entertaining posts of our site that sparked some of the most creative and best formatted answers meta has ever witness.
Likewise this remains my all time favorite answer on main
Paul Gonet answer to How do I make a 3 dimensional character out of flat picture?
Out of the ashes of a poor question that is too broad for its own good, was born an answer that started out with a joke and evolved in a very comprehensive "tutorial" few would have the passion and dedication to type and illustrate as well as Paul did.
Lastly an amusing, if a bit cryptic moment that happened over on The Renderfarm chat room a few years ago, where an unintentional chain of deleted replies sparked cascading "removed" posts for for comedic effect.

Here's what was really said

I technically joined in July '18, but wrote my 1st post on 30th April '19, asked a question, answered it myself and left. I had an impression this is more like a stub SE site, very niche. Then B2.8 was released, I couldn't find "Remove doubles" so I searched, Google has led me again to BSE, the answers (t)here didn't work, but after I found an answer elsewhere, figured I can go back to the BSE thread and write about my findings¹. Every now and then, using other websites in SE network, I would see $+10p$ reputation notification, which would remind me about the existence of BSE.
Throughout next 1,5 years (!) I wrote nothing here, but that answer accumulated many upvotes: not only those are nice tokens of appreciations motivating to write more, but it also made me realize BSE is not that small. So on 27th January '21 I wrote my 3rd answer and continued from there.
It seems like subtle things have led me to spend years learning Blender; if there's a multiverse, I imagine in many universes I remained a Blender noob.

reply with their best moments spent here with the community […] Share any fun interactions

This is the best joke I've read on BSE, by already mentioned batFINGER - I don't know if I would be able to learn bpy without him:
Using force field to move clamped objects (difficult task)
There are more jokes to be found on BSE, though sometimes it's hard to tell if the pun was intended.
Also great questions by Jachym Michal [another person, who had a great impact on my activity here, rewarding me with a generous 500 bounty when I was just starting]:

What's the most fun way to make a Snowman in Blender? ❄❄❄
What's the fastest / most fun way to create a fork in Blender?

Which inspired at least one user:

What's the fastest/most fun/craziest way to make a flowerpot in Blender?

¹ - I remember a situation where I would wait together with a stranger at a tram stop at night and no tram would arrive for a long time, so I decided to walk to a parallel street to see if maybe the pathing changed - it did, but I never went back to inform the other person the tram won't arrive there, haunts me to this day…

I miss Batfinger around here. Jachym as been another remarkable member of the community. Those "most fun" challenges always make the community liven up. I actually meant to mention those, thanks for reminding us.

Personally, I'm still in favor of introducing a separate tag for challenges! There should at least be the possibility to give these questions a place, because, as you rightly say, these help to liven up the content a bit and attract people.

@quellenform that is an interesting idea, never though about that. Tags for challenges pose a few questions I'm worried about, like on-topic-ness and frequency, but maybe we could make it work. Perhaps this warrants a meta post of its own for more in-depth discussion

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Well, I think the idea is not entirely new, but so far it has always come to nothing: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=challenge

A mod once said that in the absence of a more definitive decision, the most voted answer for a meta post is to be considered a binding decision. The main opponent of these challenges idea was iKlsR which is no longer active here. I'd say new moderation new rules. I can understand his concerns, and I have a few of my own as well, but I think we can discuss them and establish some ground rules to make challenges happen within the scope of our site

My has it been a long time. Look at how you've grown :D
I know I'm not around much these days, life has been taking me for a ride in a different direction for a while now. But I had a dream iKlsR told me off for not leaving a comment here.. anyway,
Happy birthday BSE <3
Thank you for being an amazing resource for so many people, as well as a foundational part of my life. I will always look back on the hours I spent and the friends I made here with fondness. Thank you all.
And thank you to all the people who have kept this site thriving, especially Duarte Farrajota Ramos (who must surely be our longest active mod!?) your dedication and kind leadership has done so much for this place; quellenform, whos immaculate geometry-nodes answers and persistent enthusiasm really lights the place up; Moonboots, who will no doubt surpass my #1 reputation spot soon enough, and so many more who deserve just as much praise.
Here's to many years to come!

Moonboots is indeed catching up, we'll have to celebrate the occasion, but your reputation still reigns supreme, even after all these years. Thanks for the kind words and the custom cake. Looks yummy

Thank you so much for your appreciation! I honestly tried for a long time to outdo moonboot's performance, but finally had to realize that he must indeed be a bot. I can't explain this number of wonderful answers any other way ;-) ...and thanks for the great cake!

Damn, now curiosity is killing me, now I have to ask. Is this cake real or a render? I thought it was a photo, but now I noticed what I though was a cherry is actually a Susanne. Are your render skills that good, or are you a prolific baker as well?

ahaha its a render, alas! I could really go for some cake to be honest

Great job, the little imperfections on the icing and the handwriting really fooled me

I didn't realize BSE was "only" 10 years old
Happy Aluminum birthday!
BSE has a weird place in my life. I arrived here running away from other sites, trying to find a new old-school forum in French. It shouldn't have worked, and yet here we are.
I am not 100% sure when I started using Blender. I have faint visual memories of the old UI and the old website:

I think my first contact was seeing the first minute of the Durian Project. Judging by the date, I guess I had to  open the page in the evening and come back the following morning to hade it all loaded.
For what it's worth... If I trust the splashscreens, I'd think I might have seen Blender for the first time with 2.54:

It seems to have landed somewhere in early 2011, so I guess I was not even 15 years old. I was learning Blender from an old french tutorial on the then-famous Site Du Zéro (SDZ), which back then was in the process of updating itself out of v2.4 to 2.5. This tut alone was probably responsible for most of the French-speaking community of the late 2000s early 2010s. We had lots of community help, projects, challenges, events and whatnot. The old days. Still a moderator there somehow.
BSE would emerge into existence only a few years after I started using Blender. But probably due to my poor English and having all my needs fulfilled by Frenchy sites at this time, I didn't leave the nest yet. Well, kind of.
But good things have an end. SDZ changed, a lot, replaced its "tutorials by the community for the community with a cool forum" formula by online state-recognized online courses, I tried many other communities without ever settling, and the people I knew got older, moved on, or went to the English world and never came back. And eventually, so did I...
I was on blenderartists first, but it never really engaged me much. I do not know when or how I discovered BSE.
It seems my first participation here was an answer back in March 2018. I remember at first I didn't really get the Q&A formula, and found it lacked the very social side of classic forums.
A year later I asked my first question on Meta, TL;DR is "I'm frustrated someone edited my answer". Guess it took me a year to get the difference from a 2000s forum. I'm a slow learner sometimes
I would have never thought I'd stick around, it wasn't what I was looking for at that time. I also realize I have posted only 6 questions in all that time.
Yet, here we are five years later, still going and loving it.

My event memory isn't that great, but thanks to you all, I got reminded of a lot of things I've seen here. Between the funniest ways to make things topics (which sometimes did made some sparkles) to usernames whose avatars I used to see in my sleep (I mean, look at this!). Sadly, viewing all of these names and avatars only makes me realize I haven't seen them for... A while.
Sometimes at least I think about saving stuff to keep some memories. Unfortunately, most of it is somewhere on a laptop, itself lost somewhere in my room...
But to make it up for the lack of crispy old fun memories, here's a fresh arrival from today on the renderfarm:
hostage-taking Duarte's rep.
Anyway, thanks a lot for all you people's presence, past and hopefully future!

Thanks for the post, and reminding me of the old 2.49 website. Glad you moved on into the English side of the web and stuck around BSE, it grows on you after a while. So you were a moderator there, huh? I know who I'll fish for during he next election now

Now I wouldn't necessarily say the situation you mentioned was one of my fun moments either, but it was definitely an interesting moment. Anyway, I'm happy that it was made clear that I'm not Duarte, and that there is a difference between those users who create answers and those who edit answers. ;-)


text:
How to warn users about AI generated content?
While it seems still undetermined if AI-generated posts on BSE are outright banned, should be marked as such or no action is needed:
Should posts generated with the help of AI be marked as AI-generated content?
I find it reasonable to discuss possible design of such warnings, even for the purpose of proposing a template for post authors to use willingly if no such requirement is in power at the time of writing the post.
First, I propose some general principles:

should be concise - might not be very important, as GPT answers are lengthy anyway,
if not concise it should be structured to encourage reading the parts of the warning related to the reader,
it should be visible (pop out), as not always do we read from the beginning,
it should be accessible:

can it use emojis, or can they display incorrectly on some devices?
likewise can it use other formatting enhancing like mathjax?

it should explain or link to the explanations of the problems associated, the links probably should point to pages within SE framework,
while a warning is useful to everyone, the explanation should target less informed part of the potential readers, who are unaware of AI-related problems.

I'd encourage all interested members of the community to post their proposals so the most voted one is elected as "official".

I, for one, welcome our new AI overlo-

Agreeing on a unified warning design for AI generated content and making it standard and available to all users seems like the right way forward.
Markus makes great points, I agree it should be descriptive, succinct, and briefly explain to less informed the dangers of AI generated content, linking to in-network posts for more in-depth explanations.
The point to use an image or icon "so that who has already read it in the past can easily recognize and skip it" as Markus points out seems like an excellent idea I'll also plagiarize.
I'll make one important distinction to Markus's post though. As already well justified by other members in the linked meta post I don't personally think AI generated content has any place in our network. As such, I'd take a stricter approach and vote for entirely removing content that is clearly AI generated.
But one could then ask: "If AI generated content is entirely removed, then why do we need these warnings?". I'd say we reserve them for posts where it isn't immediately clear the content was AI generated or not, or there is reasonable doubt about its origin, like cases where the content was heavily edited, or there isn't enough content to ascertain the origin.
With that in mind I'd go for something along the lines of

 Warning, Potential AI generated content⚠
This post is suspected to have been generated with the help of an artificial intelligence, chat bot, or other language model tools without proper attribution.
There is reason to believe this post was not written by a human due to its structure, and grammatical construction, and has been marked by our community.
Current AI chat bots are a language models, that means they are like a parrot, they can mimic human language well, but they are built to write seemingly logical, seemingly factual grammatically valid text, rather than actually be correct, like a human would.
The veracity of the following content cannot be ascertained.
See the Concerns regarding AI generated content.

Copy-pastable snippet:
> ### ![AI Icon](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zNrQD.png) Warning, Potential AI generated content⚠
> **This post is suspected to have been generated with the help of an artificial intelligence, chat bot, or other language model tools without proper attribution.**
>
> There is reason to believe this post was not written by a human due to its structure, and grammatical construction, and has been marked by our community.

> Current AI chat bots are a language models, that means they are like a parrot, they can mimic human language well, but they are built to write **seemingly** logical, **seemingly** factual grammatically valid text, rather than actually **be correct**, like a human would.

> The veracity of the following content cannot be ascertained.
> See the [Concerns regarding AI generated content](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/384396).

Since I have yet to see AI-generated content that is useful, I'm inclined to agree with this, the pictogram is also a nice upgrade.

Here's my most recent iteration of such a warning.
It uses the blockquote to wrap the entire warning, starting with a robot emoji, so that who has already read it in the past can easily recognize and skip it, then it tries to explain in simple terms how AI-generated content is misleading in how it seems much better than it actually is, and points to a thread that can elaborate on it…

 The below content is AI-generated❗
GPT outputs text with similar statistical relations to training data; in practice this means text that seems valid, seems confident, seems logically consistent etc. While humans write text to be correct → and therefore it seems correct, AI writes text to seem correct → but it doesn't necessarily make it correct. Consider this analogy: an engineer puts wheels on a car in order to achieve the goal of the car moving. An AI will put wheels on a car, because it's trained on cars with wheels. But the wheels won't necessarily be connected to the engine, and so the car, while seemingly functional, is worthless. More reading: Should posts generated with the help of AI be marked as AI-generated content?

First of all thanks for caring this topic, expanding over the internet. I just read your links for a few hours and this seems to be endless hole of thoughts and opinions.
My post here is a reaction as contributor, that his post was marked as AI generated warning (seen in Duarte's post).
I agree - notification is needed, but current paragraph is really scary for me and it occupies a lot of space. One negative icon, word "warning" and warning sign at the end seems to me too much.
Wouldn't be enough just a single warning icon and short sentence with a link to a page with explanation of such warning? Link also gives you a more freedom for later adjustment of the explanation and synchronicity with older posts marked by this warning.

⚠ This post is created with the help of an artificial intelligence.

Thanks for your opinion :)

I agree with you exactly! My wish would have been to do without even a short text hint of this kind and use a colored marker or tag instead, but unfortunately that's not technically possible here. I think your suggestion is currently the most useful in this respect. Thanks for your contribution!

Hmmm... I don't agree and I don't disagree. Maybe the warning should be scary and explicit... The size otherwise doesn't matter - it's not really a problem that you need to scroll a few lines more, right? The text is designed so that you can easily skip reading it entirely if you want. So a question to be answered here is: how much do we care to alarm a reader, who wouldn't necessarily click the link? Also the point about normalization is sound and in spirit of other SE conventions...

Also keep in mind the "suspected" part. You can't be sure if the post author doesn't attribute the AI.

@MarkusvonBroady ... sure it should state as "there was a possibility (potentional) of AI use" ... I'm not saying I found the best ... but current version is such toxic, that I wanted abandoned  the post immediately, but I don't thing that is the purpose (especially if answer is correct), I think we want to warn users (not scare) ... no problem to scroll? For me it is ... I became fun of BSE for tendencies to create straight forward Q with clean and clear structured explanation in A ... such intense warning message works in opposite way.

From the position of graphic designer, the warning title is repeating the same thing, the same info. It takes you longer to identify and recognise all parts, than one simple triangle that is saying all the story at once...

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
List of posts containing AI-generated text
In the recent discussions about AI:
Should posts generated with the help of AI be marked as AI-generated content?
How to warn users about AI generated content?
I use an argument, that I have yet to see actually helpful AI-generated content on this site.
Instead of such anecdotal argumentation, it seems wiser to gather evidence. Putting the links to such posts in one place, especially if we decide to indiscriminately delete AI-generated content (and so remove it from search results), will make it easier for people to make their mind about the issue.
Using the below symbols can be helpful too:
Q / A - Question / Answer
 - for a lack of a better idea and perhaps to be replaced by something better in future, Moon emojis with the lit part marking percentage of human input (bright is human)
❌ - post was deleted
✏ - AI content was edited away (ideally the link will be updated to the revision which had the AI content)
Currently new links are added to the bottom of the existing list, they aren't otherwise sorted.
For convenience we'll add it here as well, we advise copy-pasting the following snippet into any culprit posts.
> ### ![AI Icon](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zNrQD.png) Warning, Potential AI generated content⚠
> **This post is suspected to have been generated with the help of an artificial intelligence, chat bot, or other language model tools without proper attribution.**
>
> There is reason to believe this post was not written by a human due to its structure, and grammatical construction, and has been marked by our community.

> Current AI chat bots are a language models, that means they are like a parrot, they can mimic human language well, but they are built to write **seemingly** logical, **seemingly** factual grammatically valid text, rather than actually **be correct**, like a human would.

> The veracity of the following content cannot be ascertained.
> See the [Concerns regarding AI generated content](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/384396).

Nice, Ill try to keep this up to date

Good Idea. Me too.

Questions
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Answers
 Script not hiding/unhiding objects in render correctly
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 Delete all measurements with python
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 How can I "stretch" the time for timeline markers

I added a new link, clicked the previously added link to see what it is and copy-paste the warning from there, and to my surprise the post was written by the same user :D

Thanks for the update. Indeed from the same user, some things don't change. That is a good point. I setup a macro for pasting the snippet, but for convenience of whoever comes across this might add it to your post so users can easily copy paste it

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


text:
Why do people edit, but not leave comments?
I have seen some people edit posts but not leave a comment where necessary. For example; a newcomer on this site might have asked a question which contains a lot of grammatical error. But this question could have been improved if the person had provided images (in other cases files, videos, etc.). Now the grammatical part can be solved by editing the question. But the other part is something that can be asked for in the comments. Like, "Please provide images of your problem"
Now the thing is that people do edit these posts but don't leave these comments. At first I thought that this was just score-hunting. But some of the people who do these edits don't earn any repuation out of it as they are well above 2000 points. I know that everyone's time is valueable. But if they have the time to edit the question, then a small comment should not be too much of a trouble right?

I can only speak for myself, but I've encountered a few "newcomers" here who were kindly asked to supplement their question with more details and/or images, but ignored the request. That's why I sometimes edit questions/answers without comment, if this can increase the quality of the post.

Editing questions takes considerable time and effort, leaving an additional comment  on top of that adds up. Comments are often not fully addressed or outright ignored by users. If the editor already did the work himself, the reasons should be self explanatory in the edit itself, there less incentive to leave an additional comment

This. And personally, I honestly stopped caring because I know well that virtually nobody reads them. Most of them would be any of the following "fixed tags/punctuation/grammar/images/formatting" and a short glance at the side-by-side comparison is often self-explanatory. And when it's not, I already spent a lot of time editing anyway, I want to move on before becoming a grinch x)

well it's not like we are editing code, that may involve complex edits to several files where it's definitely crucial to leave comments for every commit within a version-controlled code base :)

Most of the time when I edit something, it is about grammar or fixing terminology to make questions/answers easier to find for people who search for the correct (Blender-used) terms, so I think this does not require a comment... And as quellenform already said, comments asking for clarification or details, images etc. are often ignored so I've often given up on that. And apart from that, very often commenters immediately demand files when I think, I already understood what the problem is, so I write no comment for it although others might ask for details.


text:
Concerning third-party addons and question closing
I myself and other people have voted to close topics (such as this one or that one) for being about how to use a third-party addon for Blender. Yet sometimes we still do answer such questions to our best (like here or there).
Regardless of our current stance: it isn't clearly stated in the closing option we use for these topics (nor in the mentionned help center):

This question is either not about Blender or is asking for hardware recommendations.
When the question doesn't seem to be strictly about using Blender or in any way related to the software as defined in the help center, like game development, hardware recommendations or other third party software.

It's not the first time the subject is brought up on BSE Meta:

Are questions about third party paid addons on topic? - Blender Meta Stack Exchange

How should we handle questions about addons? - Blender Meta Stack Exchange

Both seemed to agree that we can answer these, with mentions of preferring free over paid addons, and documented and active over undocumented and dead addons. Though, both are quite a few years old, so maybe the de facto practice have changed since?
So, where do we draw the line ? Can we define a clear one once for all?
And if we do not want to answer some of these third-party addon questions, could we update the closing options to either add an option for that specific case, or update the current "This question is either not about Blender [...]" option we use for that purpose? Because right now, any user who wants to see that rule will not find it, and instead will find that we close topics with no apparent ground to do so.
I have the gut feeling that, we tend to close such questions when they are purely about using specific features of a third-party addon whereas we let it pass when the answer is about using Blender regardless of an addon. I.E. with rigging systems addons like Rigacar: if the question is how to use the addon's tools: we tend to close. But when it's a common rigging issue that any kind of rig gets: we answer.

I pinged @JohnEason over at chat, since he also seems to share the opinion that those should be off topic. If you have different opinion please do post it as an answer so the community can vote

Thanks for bringing this up, it has been on the back of my mind for a while, since I've seen some users propose closing questions for being about third party addons.
My personal view on this stands by the answers made in those linked posts. That is to say I think we should accept questions about addons for Blender, even commercial or payed ones here, as long as they are within the scope of our site.
That means they are not "bug reports", rants, or otherwise off topic matters. I have been refraining from voting to close those questions more on a gut feeling than actual rules, but the posts linked in this question confirm my suspicions.
Why? Well Blender is a software that supports addons, they are a central part of the native functionality, and a lot of common, even popular, features rely on them, including lots of official ones. Say Cycles is technically implemented as an addon you can turn on or off; like a lot of the official importers and exporters, and many other community addons shipped by default.
Like mentioned in other posts we would prefer free and open source addons over commercial products, for those we can always point users to official documentation (if any) or official support channels. As a commercial product professional support should be expected. That is not to say that questions about them should automatically be considered off topic here, if someone does know the answer, then having them around will only expand our platform.
It is also possible that some third party authors (of free or payed addons or forks) intentionally divert support requests for their products to our site, with honest intentions of leveraging our platform for answering them themselves or with the help of the community. Here they may remain freely available under a permissive license, easily accessible to all without the burden of hosting and curation. Good examples of this are animation-nodes and upbge.
Where should we draw the line then? What's to be considered on topic or off topic?
I would draw the line at:

Bug reports, error messages, Python exceptions, or any other behavior that is obviously unintended, malfunctioning or may otherwise be considered erroneous. This should also be reported to authors for fixing, there is nothing we can do here.
Trouble shooting network connections like web service availability, server timeouts, firewall configurations, or other network related diagnostics; for online or service based addons (like render farms, online asset libraries, cloud services, SAS (Software as Service), or other "connected" addons that rely on some web infrastructure). This is the job of the maintainers.
Issues that are strictly "behind a paywall", that is investigating the issue requires some unreasonable purchase, buying specific non-free asset, or signing up or subscribing some free or payed service or network. We can't expect volunteers here to go through the trouble or sign away their privacy for the sake of an answer.

That is not to say we are somehow obliged to answer any of these questions either. One can easily imagine the success rate for questions about obscure, third party, or payed addons may be significantly smaller, but that is just a natural consequence that I see as acceptable.
This is my personal take on it, if you have a different view please voice it as another answer so the community can vote. May the answer votes be the deciding factor.

I fully agree with this view.

I think I mostly agree with this. Especially for commercial addons, it should really be part of the service to provide help for that.

I'm not a very visible user here, but I frequently lurk. A lot of what know I about Blender comes from Blender.SE, and a notable amount of the answers that have taught me something useful, have been about third party addons. In short, I find such questions and answers useful. I agree that there should be rules about when to allow those questions, and when to close them, and I completely agree with this answer about what those rules should be.


text:
Is there data available on the amount of questions posted over time?
I've noticed that the amount of questions posted on BSE has sky rocketed. That's implying a sudden rise in the interest in Blender? If I'm not mistaken, the first ever question on BSE was posted 10 years ago or more than 100,000 questions ago. I remember 2 or 3 months ago we reached 100,000 questions and now are suddenly up 10% to almost 110,000 in such a short period of time. We will be at 200,000 questions in no time. I was wondering if there was data on this available, like a chart we could view of the amount of questions posted over time?

Data Stack Exchange API will let you build SQL Queries to get whatever stats you want about a stack exchange site.
I don't know enough about SQL to build one, but Bill the Lizard already did the ground work for us, so I adapted to get the number of questions per month per year.
SELECT count(Id), MONTH(CreationDate), YEAR(CreationDate)
  FROM Posts
  WHERE PostTypeId = 1
  GROUP BY YEAR(CreationDate), MONTH(CreationDate)
  ORDER BY YEAR(CreationDate), MONTH(CreationDate)

You can test it at https://data.stackexchange.com/blender/query/1774167/total-questions-per-month-year
After extracting the output CSV file into a spreadsheet editor we can compute a partial sum column.

Year
Month
Questions
Total

2013
May
138
138

2013
Jun
262
400

2013
Jul
164
564

2013
Aug
188
752

2013
Sep
174
926

2013
Oct
179
1105

2013
Nov
213
1318

2013
Dec
265
1583

2014
Jan
285
1868

2014
Feb
294
2162

2014
Mar
306
2468

2014
Apr
333
2801

2014
May
325
3126

2014
Jun
312
3438

2014
Jul
344
3782

2014
Aug
329
4111

2014
Sep
324
4435

2014
Oct
445
4880

2014
Nov
393
5273

2014
Dec
479
5752

2015
Jan
600
6352

2015
Feb
562
6914

2015
Mar
618
7532

2015
Apr
547
8079

2015
May
676
8755

2015
Jun
586
9341

2015
Jul
685
10026

2015
Aug
817
10843

2015
Sep
656
11499

2015
Oct
658
12157

2015
Nov
643
12800

2015
Dec
705
13505

2016
Jan
805
14310

2016
Feb
753
15063

2016
Mar
771
15834

2016
Apr
712
16546

2016
May
823
17369

2016
Jun
827
18196

2016
Jul
848
19044

2016
Aug
804
19848

2016
Sep
827
20675

2016
Oct
896
21571

2016
Nov
801
22372

2016
Dec
757
23129

2017
Jan
907
24036

2017
Feb
815
24851

2017
Mar
862
25713

2017
Apr
769
26482

2017
May
664
27146

2017
Jun
769
27915

2017
Jul
967
28882

2017
Aug
934
29816

2017
Sep
827
30643

2017
Oct
856
31499

2017
Nov
831
32330

2017
Dec
771
33101

2018
Jan
848
33949

2018
Feb
856
34805

2018
Mar
942
35747

2018
Apr
810
36557

2018
May
921
37478

2018
Jun
832
38310

2018
Jul
874
39184

2018
Aug
838
40022

2018
Sep
823
40845

2018
Oct
760
41605

2018
Nov
827
42432

2018
Dec
925
43357

2019
Jan
1137
44494

2019
Feb
1061
45555

2019
Mar
1100
46655

2019
Apr
1052
47707

2019
May
916
48623

2019
Jun
904
49527

2019
Jul
1098
50625

2019
Aug
1413
52038

2019
Sep
1146
53184

2019
Oct
1047
54231

2019
Nov
1070
55301

2019
Dec
1117
56418

2020
Jan
1228
57646

2020
Feb
1182
58828

2020
Mar
1296
60124

2020
Apr
1423
61547

2020
May
1556
63103

2020
Jun
1638
64741

2020
Jul
1505
66246

2020
Aug
1386
67632

2020
Sep
1313
68945

2020
Oct
1283
70228

2020
Nov
1245
71473

2020
Dec
1231
72704

2021
Jan
1381
74085

2021
Feb
1390
75475

2021
Mar
1398
76873

2021
Apr
1249
78122

2021
May
1197
79319

2021
Jun
1161
80480

2021
Jul
1196
81676

2021
Aug
1085
82761

2021
Sep
1082
83843

2021
Oct
985
84828

2021
Nov
983
85811

2021
Dec
1161
86972

2022
Jan
1470
88442

2022
Feb
1069
89511

2022
Mar
1255
90766

2022
Apr
1244
92010

2022
May
1145
93155

2022
Jun
1126
94281

2022
Jul
1165
95446

2022
Aug
1306
96752

2022
Sep
1139
97891

2022
Oct
1167
99058

2022
Nov
1130
100188

2022
Dec
1159
101347

2023
Jan
1192
102539

2023
Feb
1147
103686

2023
Mar
1130
104816

2023
Apr
1009
105825

2023
May
1065
106890

2023
Jun
946
107836

2023
Jul
1109
108945

2023
Aug
194
109139

Using your favorite office suite you can then build a beautiful line chart.

Nice! thanks for your answer! very cool that we can query different types of data.

Very interesting. We can say in hindsight that the Blender team and community had a great impact on the hearsay for the 2.8 version (around 2020). Of course we can also suppose that the number has been inflated due to worldwide events at the time but the trend makes sense. FWIW here's the query (I think) for number of answers per month/year https://data.stackexchange.com/blender/revision/1791006/2175136/total-answers-per-month-year

It was indeed a turning point, 2.8 made Blender become more "mainstream", and brought a huge influx of new people. It was released in 2019, though, but you can see the effects of its beta ramping up as early as 2018 already. 2020 consolidated the growth with the pandemics and a lot of people locked up at home with extra time on their hands to dedicate to new hobbies. Thanks for the query, gotta sharpen my skills in SQL, seems like a useful tool


text:
Do these challenge like things still exist?
So basically I stumbled upon this post: What's the fastest and / or craziest way to model an arrow in Blender?
Also this one: What's the fastest / most fun way to create a fork in Blender?
Now I am not completely sure whether this was some fun official challenge, or whether it was just a few members who came together an decided to have some fun.
Exactly what was this thing? Do you guys do this even today? Was this a popular thing? Or was it just a small period fad or something?

They are not official, any user is free to create them and they have been quite popular.
Strictly speaking they are off topic, but since they work well to improve community engagement we tend to turn a blind eye.
There are no official rules in place as long as they are not too frequent. I'd say at least:

Keep them infrequent enough to not lose appeal
Keep them on-topic and specifically about using Blender.
Word them in such way that if you remove the fact they are a "challenge" they are still valid, answerable and on topic
Try to make them as objective as possible.
Avoid overly broad topics. Make them interesting but relatively limited in scope that they can be answered in a short post


text:
How to Convert a point Cloud to a Mesh

This is a Duplicate How can I convert a complex point cloud to mesh? by  Harry McKenzie
This is a showcase of a Point Cloud turned into a Mesh.
This is not the Solution, which i'm not willing to provide 4 free after my experience here.
This is a reflection of how one does not get what he wants.
This is nothing but that or whatever u want it to be in your Head^^
I did try to engage in this community and since i did not obtain the Privilige to communicate (50 reputation LOL) i tried to communicate by Answering. Answering was not appreciated. Mods could actually turn my Answer to a comment & edit it to their likes, which equals dictating what i say. One can argue that i didn't follow the rules and that the system is in place to ensure quality. I'd argue if the rules & those in Power make it harder for Beginners to contribute at all, i'd rather not be an active Member of this "community", which imho (LuL) is more of a circle-jerk of those corrupted by power.
"High value Members" of this Community aka 24/7 reputation lurkers make it hard for beginners to answer Questions in order to get the reputation to communicate in a way they appreciate - which is commenting or Answering with a full & free solution to their problem -
I acknowledge that ppl here are actually helping others for free, but also like to point out that some do it as a necessity in order to achieve their goal of attaining powers over others by being granted with Mod-Tools or access to Databases of this platform.
I want to point out that cynical posting's of advice on how to use a spell-checker or how to conduct on the internet by User Martynas Žiemys are a perfect showcase of the bigotry and a big.ego^^
I know you won't change due to this post and i'm not mad at anybody, but deeply hurt that my Pizza burned while i invested couple of hours to solve this & tried to engage R.I.P Tonno e Cipolla q.q
At this point in time nobody was able to answer original-OP's question and i got restricted from answering it or the reputation lvl was increased, idgaf^^ but next time some "noob" comes around just bare in mind that it doesn't need reputation to actually solve a problem^^
this acc will be deleted in a couple of hours anyways, so get out your downvotes, reports, advices & assumptions out asap, but be conscious about that i already closed this window. I solved the problem with no reputation in mind. I disengage

"This is not the Solution" Yes it isn't. Because it's a question. You can answer it if you want. Next,read this: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/214173/1391712 You cannot comment without 50 rep. but you can answer right from the begining. Commenting does help if enough details aren't present in the quesn. You can ask for more details in that case. But if you dont have the priviledge of comenting, you can provide a few different variations in the answer. Next, "High Value Menbers". Yes there are some D-heads on this site. But if you really want to help others, just ignore them. And not all bad

Next, a question like this is more suited either for meta. Or Idk, maybe the chat. Although there are some people who simply want to answer for the reputation and therefore just cause trouble sometimes for other users, most people are completely normal. And if you do have an answer just post it. If you genuinely want to just help people, then just post the answer. Now, do make sure that your answer is of good quality and follows the guidelines of the site. Coz else, people will just flag it.

Personally I have never faced and kind of issue from the moderators. I can say, from my experience, that their actions are perfectly fine and that any mod on this site would do the same. In this case they marked the question as protected. This requires a minimum rep to answer the question. You can answer a few other questions and earn reputation from there and answer this question after that.

Hello and Welcome. For Questions about this site, the network, moderation, rules and how they work, please use Meta instead.

If you solved an issue to a question you have no reputation to answer, and really wish to share the solution with others you can always post a new question, formulate an inquiry framing the issue and answer it yourself below. Answering your own question is possible and even encouraged, even if it is a duplicate. If the answer is any good, you may even gain enough reputation to gain access to the original post, and answer it there. If you just wan't to boast, then I'm afraid this is neither the place nor the tone.

When someone posts a multi-paragraph diatribe against moderation with name callings and attempts of making it sound like it's funny, my first guess is that I'm reading a childish outburst at best. Checking the answers' history on the linked post just confirms it. But sure it's bigotry and big ego...


text:
How to upload a blend file on BSE - good practices and advice
There are multiple topics asking where, and answer giving websites such as Blend-Exchange, but not much guidance on how to do it, what to include, ...
Thing is, while for most questions it's just a matter of giving the above link, sometimes the file is too big, or messy. We occasionally have someone who have a file of several hundred of MB because it has 8k textures everywhere, while the issue is about rigging.
So this will be a guide. I post the answer with it, and I invite everyone to edit that answer to make it a good summary of what to do and not do to send files. Plus, I usually tend to spit long walls of texts, so if anyone is comfortable to make it short and concise, go for it!

Nice guide, thanks for posting. I only skimmed over the answer but it might be a good candidate for a canonical guide and linking in canned comments

I'd argue that 90-99% of uploaded files on Blend Exchange are a waste. They could either have been replaced with a couple of screenshots, a diagram, a short gif or a more accurate description. I would even be in favor of banning them from questions, I think that if your question warrants a full blend file, it's too large in scope. They have their place in answers, although it deprives the reader from having to re-create it themselves which is a great exercise.

Most questions which require a blend file are IMO low effort questions anyways, they are often 1 or 2 sentences long. The authors usually don't take the 5 minutes to read the code of conduct and philosophy of the site so I am afraid they won't take the time to read neither this question or the answer in full, as thorough and canonical as they may be... Downloading random files from random sources on the internet also poses a serious security risk, since arbitrary code can be run with the python API. There are safeguards to prevent malicious stuff but it's easy to deactivate them in the prefs.

In short:

Make a small file (remove anything not needed for the issue, then file > save as > enable Compress  in the sidebar and save a new file)
Pack external files and libraries if needed (File > External Data > Pack...)
Upload on Blend-Exchange
Copy the provided text into your question.

Why upload a file
Some questions are hard to understand with just textual descriptions and pictures, or the answer needs to be closely adapted to the situation.
Having access to the blend file makes it easier to see the issue and make a well documented answer.
However, it never replaces a good written question.
NDA, licensing and privacy concerns
If there are assets you can't show because of an NDA or license, always first try to recreate the issue in a new clean scene without the problematic assets. If you can't:
Check with the NDA/License holders if they can help with the issue. If you use a licensed asset that have an issue, the provider usually provides support for it.
If they can't help with the issue: make sure they are ok to share, propose to conceal the data if it helps.
You can always remove all data that we shouldn't see and leave only the strictly necessary. Even a mesh or an armature can be deleted down to only a few faces and bones that are problematic.
Regardless: DO NOT POST ANYTHING the NDA/License holder does not specifically agree to. It's not worth getting you or BSE in trouble.
For privacy: Blender saves paths to your .blend and external data/libraries, which can leak project names or your own legal name if you use named user accounts. If you don't want to disclose these:

Menu File > External Data > Make all paths relative
Menu File > External Data > Pack Resources/Linked Libraries
Move your file to an anonymous location (I.E. C:\tmp on Windows)
Menu File > External Data > Unpack Resources/Linked Libraries > Write Files to current Directory
Continue with the rest of the guide.

This way, all your external data that are needed in your file will have an anonymous path.
Where to upload
Our preferred choice:

Built by the community for BSE
Stores files on Google Drive (and Backblaze)
Files don't get deleted
Open source
30 MB per file

You might actually have already seen it before, as the following picture in a question:

Learn more
The only downside to this method is its file size limit: 30MB. But to be clear, it should be enough for most questions. See next chapter.
Other solutions:

Google Drive

15 GB total space
no time limit

easyupload.io

10 GB per file
50 files max
50 GB total space
30 days limit

WeTransfer

2 GB per file
7 days limit

pCloud

no file size limit
10 GB total space
50 GB traffic per month
no time limit
Hosted either in the EU or on international servers

Prepare a file for sharing
A couple of things you MUST pay attention to:

File decluttering
External data

File decluttering
Decluttering is necessary for two reasons: to keep the file size low, and have a clean file that is easy for us to work with.
We highly recommend you to make your file under 30 MB in any possible scenario: so that you can upload on Blend-Exchange, but also to make sure your file can be downloaded by people with slow network. A file over 30 MB must have a really good reason to be this heavy (for example: the problem is caused by file size directly or indirectly, e.g. by the huge number of vertices).
Please follow these three steps in order:
1. Compressing a file

Use the menu File > Save As
Add _share at the end of the name of the file
Press N to open the sidebar (or click the ⚙ gear icon), and enable the "Compress" checkbox.
Click the "Save As" button.

2. Removing Data
Remove any data that you are sure is not related to your issue. Such as:

image texture files
video files
objects

To easily select and delete data in bulk, you can set your outliner mode to "Blender File":

Once you are done deleting, there are probably some data that is now an "orphan": still there in the file but not used by anything. To clear them, set the outliner to "Orphan Data", hit the "Purge" button (ideally multiple times, as something could be used by an orphan and become an orphan itself after its user is purged), and save.

3. Names and Collections
Put objects in collections, give them meaningful names. If the first thing we see in your file is a hundred objects with the exact same name and no clue which does what, we will have to lose time just deciphering your scene. But you already know your scene, it will take less time for you to make it simple to understand. Help us helping you!
External Data
External data can be things like image and video files, but also assets linked from other .blend files.
If you have any of these, you should pack "external data" and "libraries", which you can do in this menu:

Save after you are done.
After cleanup
Make sure the issue is still visible, in case you deleted what was causing it.

Personally I recommend to decrease the file size below $1 MB$. I'm almost willing to bet I can take any problem and reproduce it within that size. The better you are at asking questions, the less likely you are to actually post the question - most of mine were never posted, because I do my part, and upon simplifying the problem I find the issue.


text:
Update the game-engine tag
I would like to open an... Open... Discussion... Damnit I said that twice!
We often get questions about third party engines, some based on Blender like Armory/UPBGE, some completely unrelated like Unity/UE. Yet they are frequently tagged as game-engine like this one.
In other words: we get questions related in different ways to game engines as a whole or specific game engines, that are almost all tagged as game-engine with no proper alternatives.
But as per the game-engine description:

The (BGE) Blender Game Engine (discontinued, blender 2.41 - 2.79) allows you to create interactive 3D applications, game prototypes and simulations.

Besides, I think it would be interesting to have more detailed tags, because they require different knowledge, people should be able to watch and blacklist these topics.

I think we can divide game-engine questions in 4 main topics, and therefore we could maybe have 4 tags:

Making or reverse-engineering game-ready assets for/from game engines
Questions like specifics of topology and rigging for games, channel-packing, ...
Tag: game-ready-assets
Using the BGE
I know it's dead, but we still see a few questions about it every once in a while. We could just edit the current tag into that one so to keep the assignations and then edit posts as we go.
Tag: blender-game-engine
Using Armory/UPBGE or other Blender-based game engines
I don't know other similar engines, I reckon we could regroup them as one if there's only two? But otherwise we could maybe have distinct tags. But otherwise it's self-explanatory.
Tag: armory-upbge
Exporting assets to external game engines like Unity/UE
I am not so sure either if this one deserves its own tag as it could be part of game-ready-assets and we have the export tag too, but if tags are a tool for the users to filter questions, follow/blacklist topics, then why not? Let me know.
Tag: game-engine-export

I don't have authority to edit tags (and I wouldn't do so without proper synergy regardless), so if what I spat over here makes sense, "someone else" would have to do it

That sounds like a reasonable idea to me!
I've also seen questions like this time and time again and even as a moderator I wasn't sure which category the question should fall into...
I would therefore have the following to say about your suggestions:

game-ready-assets
This tag makes perfect sense to me. It's mostly about questions concerning the export or preparation of geometries and materials, but the topic of game-ready assets usually contains very specific concerns (of course primarily concerning Unity or Unreal Engine), and is therefore certainly worth its own category.

blender-game-engine
Here I'm not entirely convinced whether an outdated topic deserves its own category. Yes, there are (equally outdated) questions, but this should be tidied up anyway. And as long as BGE is not actively developed further, I see no point in a separate tag.

armory-upbge
To be honest, I don't have enough experience to be able to judge this precisely, but as far as I know there are UPBGE and ARMORY3D that would fall into this category. I am generally in favour of using a separate tag here, but it should be more generic and read upbge, for example.

game-engine-export
The current description for the tag export is:

"Questions involving export-compatibility with other graphics software. Exporting involves converting Blender-native file into an external file type, for the purpose of editing or viewing that file in another program."

Here I see more of an overlap with the existing tag for exporting data from Blender. I think here the combination of game-ready-asset and export should be used for a search and no separate tag is needed.

So let's continue the discussion and examine the relevant tags (it should be noted, however, that new tags should save work and make it easier to find answers. Too many tags usually have the opposite effect).

To summarise here and to include the comments from Duarte's post, the following tags are up for debate:

game-asset (singular)
upbge-game-engine
blender-game-engine

Thanks for bringing this up, I'm always please to see users other than moderators interested in the meta side of our site.
I share most of the thoughts of Quellenfrom, but I'd add the following.
UPBGE runs inside Blender and may be considered a continuation or spiritual successor of the late Blender game Engine, even if one developed by a third party.
Armory is a third party game engine, that as far as I know (through addons?) provides some editing facilities directly inside Blender, though it is not really an integral part of, or an evolution of deprecated parts of Blender, unlike UPGE.
I think the distinction is important because I would not include Armory tags in our site, since I'm inclined to consider it off topic here. I have nothing against Armory, but it seems like a whole large topic on itself, and having the tag here would potentially open a can of worms. It may give the impression that we'd be able to give support here or that third party game engines would be on-topic. I'd give the thought some consideration it if some official developers or knowledgeable members would pledge to be around to provide quality answers, otherwise as far as I know we don't have enough Armory informed users to provide any meaningful support here.
That is to say I'd make an upbge-game-engine parallel to blender-game-engine but I'd be inclined to exclude any "Armory" mention.
For game asset related assets I'd probably simplify to game-assets.
I'm unsure we need a "game-export" dedicated tag, existing export seems to cover it well, as Quellenform mentions, and combined with any new game-assets would suffice to narrow down those topics, I think.
If we do find a need for it, maybe I'd prefer something like game-engine-io (input/output, but maybe we can come up with a clearer name) to cover both imports and exports.
I don't have strong feelings either way, and I'm open to find some consensus.

Thanks for your expert feedback on this! That would mean that we could consider and discuss the following new tags: [tag:game-assets], [tag:upbge-game-engine], [tag:blender-game-engine], ...if I understand you correctly. The tag [tag:game-engine-io] would rather fall into [tag:game-asset] (in combination with [tag:import]/[tag:export]) from my point of view.

Yes that is correct, good summary. I'm up for debate though, I confess I'm not very versed about Armory 3D


text:
What to do with all the links to pasteall?
I'm not a user of this site. I just happened to be doing some cross-site meta research in relation to Please add a system to allow file uploads attached to questions and answers, and noticed that a large number of posts on Blender's main site link to pasteall.org (over 1.2k (all) (questions) (answers)), and there are several posts on meta here suggesting it as a file hosting site.
But when I go to that site, I get redirected to a different, very sketchy looking site.
Has this been discussed before?

What exactly happened? Did the service move to a different domain? Or is it just gone?
If the service moved, why not fix all the links and protect readers of blender.stackexchange.com from the sketchy redirect?
If the service is just gone, what should be done about all those links?

Wow I had not noticed this., it seems the site is down. Judging by the sketchy redirect I'd wager it is permanent and not some temporary outage. I've always pushed for using blend-exchange.com as our de-facto "permanent hosting" but not everyone honored the guideline. Not sure what to do about all the dead links, I suppose the information is lost at this point though it was never "permanent". Editing all the links by hand seems like an insurmountable task to undertake by hand. I'm not aware of any moderator accessible tool to batch find and replace.

"an insurmountable task to undertake by hand" you underestimate my willpower :P I'm a machine and have done much crazier (Ex. SO's script tag burnination... except I don't have edit privs on this site). and yeah, getting the company involved in doing something about this systematically would be good.

Yeah, it seems something easily scriptable through the site API for anyone skilled. The question is what to replace the links with now. Files in questions don't worry me too much, as the appeal to download those is generally lost shortly after answering the question. Files in answers are more troubling but those seem like a minority. If my search-fu serves me right we have a total of 460 posts with pasteall.org, out of which only 39 are answers. Where did you get the 1.2k?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos whoops. forgot to link. see edit.

True better query then mine indeed, the answers are still a manageable minority though sitting at 56. The sister site domain graphicall.org also seems to have found a new owner, so it seems to excludes the possibility of some ransomware or DDoS

i remember pasteall shutting down a few years ago. It started first as warning that they would stop uploading new files and keep the already uploaded ones for a while, and then warning they would delete all data. I don't remember why exactly, and I stopped using it very quickly, so I didn't even notice what happened to the domain. I guess the owner just stopped paying for it.

While we're at it, does someone have a backup of blend-exchange files? Let's say GiantCowFilms suddenly and mysteriously disappears - it would be nice to recover from such a blow.


text:
Should we have a tag for Node Tools(Geometry Nodes in Tool mode)?
I think this is a distinct topic. The contexts are different and use cases as well. I think there will be questions specific to Node Tools and a tag is appropriate.
What do you think?

Related question:
How to select an edge loop with geometry nodes tool mode nodes?

Well, you're basically right, but ....Node Tools are Geometry Nodes. Is a separate tag really needed here? In my opinion, the topics are too close together, which is why I removed the tag again. Remember the geometry-nodes-fields tag, which was migrated to geometry-nodes. But as I said, let's hear what others think about it.

Hum not sure about it. As Quellenform mentions like Fields, [tag:geometry-nodes-tools] might be seen as an integral part of Geometry-Nodes in general, on the other hand, it does involve 3D View interaction, and a new set of constraints, which might be seen as new thing of its own, like [tag:simulation-nodes]. Its a bit fuzzy, I'd be inclined to include it but I don't have strong feelings either way. In the same vein we might soon need to discuss the upcoming [tag:geometry-nodes-gizmos]

The functionality is very different in terms of workflows they are used for. One is non-destructive, the other is destructive. I think people might be more interested in one than the other in some cases. For example it makes sense to filter only Node Tools questions if I want to see how people are making or attempting to make their destructive workflows more convenient if I am interested in learning more about that. In that sense I see this as very different than fields, because fields just are a part of all geometry nodes and tools are a separate type.

For example my original intention of the question https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/304841/how-to-select-an-edge-loop-with-geometry-nodes-tool-mode-nodes?noredirect=1#comment528584_304841 is to create a tool for everyday modelling work and I don't know, that just seems like a completely different thing than Modifier type that is about manipulating the geometry of a specific object. One is workflow improvement, the other is work to achieve a goal. Personaly I find those concepts very different.

2¢ .. As Blender gradually heads to Everything Nodes, I, too, imagine that Geometry Nodes will need splitting into categories.. GN-Modifiers, GN-Tools, GN-Simulation, .. possibly others, for very different use-cases and implementation problems, as the system develops. As the main purpose of tags  is to reduce search-space, the criteria for me are: semantic distinction, category size.. and the size has to be anticipated, unless we can tag retrospectively.

@RobinBetts Good points. Also having an unanted tag and removing it or merging is relatively easy. Not having one and retroactively trying to tag all relevant questions is near impossible


text:
Proposal for Rephrasing the Software Bug Close Reason
This has been bothering me for a while, and sitting on the back of my mind for quite some time. I'd like to discuss this with the rest of the community and my fellow moderators.
There are a few things I dislike about our current system messages regarding question closure for being a bug in Blender. I think we could rephrase them slightly to improve clarity and make it a bit more broad to increase scope.
Currently the close reason reads:

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

What I dislike about it:

Sweeps all bugs under the "Official Blender" umbrella
Seems to just push the unwary user directly towards the official bugtracker (despite not doing so)
Leaves little margin for doubt
Makes no attempt to diagnose it is actually a bug
Doesn't account well bugs in addons, or other parts of the environment

I'd like to propose retiring the current one and replacing it with a better one. I'll post a proposal below.

I'd like to rephrase it to something along the lines of

This question appears to be about issues caused by a software bug or
error. If you confirm this to be the case, consider reporting it to
the corresponding
author in the
appropriate bug tracker.

I think it transmits a bit better the concept that:

There are other places to report bugs other than the official bug tracker
It may or may not actually be a bug in Blender itself
If that is the case, then it should be reported to the corresponding author

let me know if you agree with the rephrasing, or post your own answer if you have better wording for this.

In short, I agree! (even if it technically means that the question is then closed, isn't it?)

Yes, still closed, from the user point of view, but hopefully with a bit clearer directions. I'd really like to also rephrase the post this links to, but I lack the time and energy at the moment.

Sounds like a good proposal to me.

I think it is important to keep some assertiveness and certainty in the message. Otherwise, you leave a lot of decision-making to users that don't necessarily have the confidence or knowledge to know whether they are indeed concerned by the closing message and what to do about it.

@RobertGützkow Could you look at my comments in the other answer?

@quellenform Should we link directly to the official tracker, or our own guide first?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos To have better control over the content, I would say to refer to our own guide first. ...Who knows what awaits us in the future.

Agree, I was veering more towards that option as well. That makes sense to me.

@RobertGützkow I've submitted a draft for your review at https://blender.stackexchange.com/admin/flags/site-specific-close-reasons

@quellenform Could you guys take a look when you get a chance? Feel free to edit whatever you feel needs improvements

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Thank you for editing this item! It looks good to me. Do I need to set any action or can you put this online?

Thanks Quellenform. I think you have to approve the revision at the link above. There should be an Approve  button to the right on he Actions column. Mine is greyed out because I'm the author, but yours should be clickable

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos The approve button is also greyed out for me.

Strange. @RobertGützkow Could you check now?

@quellenform It may have been cause by having reached the site limit for custom close messages

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Yes, I think you're right, and that's how I understood it: first one of the existing options must be deactivated, and then another can be activated. Could a CM possibly increase the limit?

No, I don't think they can, its a site wide imposed one if I'm not mistaken. If it is possible at all might need escalation to site admins, not sure. I removed the old one now, so I think you can vote now.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos It works now. I've approved the new one.

After these two topics, I also thought there is something wrong. Addons are mixed in, there isn't much help being done, ... Posters are kinda left alone with a door slammed at their nose.
I was thinking perhaps we should have two different messages for whether it's a Blender bug or a third party addon / software bug?
That being said, I think Blender's bug message is actually fine ; it's when we use it too broadly that it becomes clunky. Namely, when we use it for a non-blender bug or when we are not even sure it's a bug. I think that's when there is an issue.
Hence, a new message that is formulated for both Blender and non-Blender bugs, and links to the official bug report documentation instead of our current BSE link. As that official documentation really does a great job of explaining everything, what is actually a bug, how to report bugs for Blender or addons, which data to include and how, ...

This question appears to be about an issue caused by Blender, or a third-party software or addon. These should be reported to their respective bug tracker. Please look at the following page to learn how to do so:
Process/Bug Reports - Blender Developer Wiki

And ideally, we as good Blender citizens could take the time to comment the link to the actual bug reporting place if it's a third party.

While I agree with most of what you said, unfortunately Stack Exchange imposes only three custom close reasons for sites, beyond the network wide ones. We already have "Too Localized", About Hardware" and "Bug Report", so sadly we've have to do away with one of those to introduce a new one which doesn't seem reasonable. I do like the idea of linking to the official bug report guidelines, but given the broader scope of the close for both official and third party bugs, we'd have to do so carefully. Could you suggest a proposal with this in mind?

Just updated, let me know how it goes.

Structure wise seems mostly fine, I'd do some minor adjustments but that's it. I'm unsure about linking directly to the wiki, it may unintentionally encourage third party bugs to be incorrectly reported to the official bug tracker. I'd like to hear what the other mods have to say.

The documentation specifically mentions that addons bugs must be reported using the addon's own Report A Bug button, so unless a specific addon is made without it, there shouldn't be any issue here. If we think things needs to be made clearer, we can always propose a change ;)

I asked the other mods about this. So far Quellenform commented on my answer below, and also prefers linking to our guide first, which gives us more control. From there we can link to the official guide. Maybe Robert has a different say.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Either approach is fine by me. The benefit of linking our own page is that we can provide additional information not included in Blender's wiki. The benefit of Blender's wiki is that it is the official source on how to report bugs.

I've submitted an initial draft for review. Feel free to improve in any way you can