text:
Why did Community ♦ review my suggested edit?
I suggested an edit to the cycles tag on the main site. It was approved by two human reviewers, but also by the Community ♦ bot:

Why is it that Community accepted the edit?
I also see that it has rejected 4 and approved 38 – how does it decide how and when to judge edits?

See this post on meta stackoverflow - http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/127375/why-does-the-community-user-reject-approve-edits

When an edit is suggested, a reviewer can choose to improve the edit. If the reviewer checks the box "the suggested edit was helpful", Community approves the suggested edit and the reviewer's edit is also made. If the "the suggested edit was helpful" box is is unchecked, the edit is rejected by Community and the reviewer's edit is made.


text:
Micro Editing, does everything need to be perfect?
How do we decide if we should really go ahead with editing that nagging mistake in someone else's post? Is it OK to edit subtle grammatical mistakes, or typos?
Stack Exchange has this built in rule that the edit needs to be above a certain character count to be allowed. In practice this might mean that someone will edit more than they intended to, to be able to push their minimal edit through that first automated check -- that doesn't mean it will be accepted.
Once you have a certain level of reputation you don't get points for approved edits. Below this threshold you do, but your edits will be vetted by several members with sufficient reputation and we might consider your edit too minimal to constitute a valid edit.
If you think about it, there is a big difference between these two things:

correcting grammar, typos, punctuation  (you become the mechanical Turk version of a spell-checker)
correcting or adding structure, terminology, images, links, and fixing typos

The combination of items in the second bullet point is what benefits the community most, fixing typos and minor grammatical mistakes is fine, but if the edit doesn't help further elucidate a question it will likely be rejected -- not because it was a bad edit.
What other things should we consider before editing a question?

Oh dear... *hides*

@WChargin I agree with many of your edits, even style changes and redacting the fluff. Say more with less. But not everyone feels this way -- nor do they have to, I get it, the sense of ownership is a contentious  point.

gandalf3 is here too.. editing. :)

edits that fall into the second category (I hope), mind you ;)

i'm OK with it!

Editing is a good thing. Stack Exchange themselves say:

We welcome all constructive edits, but please make them substantial. Avoid trivial, tiny one-letter edits unless absolutely necessary.

They also suggest:

How to edit

fix grammatical or spelling errors
clarify meaning without changing it
correct minor mistakes
add related resources or links
always respect the original author

Sometimes questions have such bad grammar, because the asker is not a native speaker of English.
In those cases, the questions are really hard to follow. If you can understand it, fix it up. If you don't, it would be best to leave it as it is, as you could change the meaning of a sentence or paragraph.

what reference is that from? maybe you could link to it?

It's when you click edit on a question/answer.

I see, it is good to be reminded of this -- perhaps I have been harsh on recent proposed edits.

Well, personally I'd like to fix spelling, just as I'd appreciate someone else correcting a typo in my posts. Writing your instead of you're or then instead of than are off putting and don't need to stay in a post. I don't really understand the 6 character threshold yet

@Haunt_House, neither do I. fixing minor typos should be an entirely painless under-the-radar activity.

@zeffi very true.

This already seems to be covered by Why can people edit my posts? How does editing work?

When should I edit posts?
Any time you see a post that needs improvement and are inclined to suggest an edit, you are welcome to do so. The original author of a question or answer may always edit their own post, regardless of reputation level.
Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it. Common reasons for edits include:

To fix grammar and spelling mistakes
To clarify the meaning of the post (without changing that meaning)
To include additional information only found in comments, so all of the information relevant to the post is contained in one place
To correct minor mistakes or add updates as the post ages
To add related resources or hyperlinks

We don't need small obsessive edits but we do want to maintain a high quality of content here.
We need to remember that this site uses English, which is not the native language of many users and these questions and answers will be archived here for several years for others to find. It is effectively an extension of the official documentation. Maybe even a testing ground for improving the documentation.
The quality of content here will reflect on the blender community as a whole. Poor quality here will give possible new users a bad impression of the whole blender community.
So when you want to edit something, will your edit improve the perception of the blender community? Will it improve the ability of someone to find a relevant answer when searching? Do the official docs also need clarification on this point?

I think even small edits are valid often, take for instance the situation where you suddenly notice a typo in a book or on-line article -- how often do we wish we could correct it and move on? I don't think this has anything to do with pedantry, and I agree that the content here will (increasingly) be perceived as the reference for new users -- we better make sure it's not only accurate but also free from the most obvious typos.

So maybe typo corrections shouldn't be perceived as 'not significant enough'

Just for good timing Matt Gemmell posted this yesterday about bad grammar in posts

that's a great post to reference - thanks for this share!

Great link @sambler! I wish more people understood the principles in that article . . .

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Is it all right to copy our tag wikis from the Blender wiki?
Consider the tag wiki for modifiers:

Modifiers are used to modify objects non-destructively until Applied.
There are four groups of Modifiers:

Modify
  Modifiers in the Modify group act simpler than those in the
  Deform group without directly affecting the objects shape, rather than
  affecting some data.

etc…

Now, from the Blender wiki entry on Modifiers (excerpted):

Modifiers are automatic operations that affect an object in a
  non-destructive way … you can Apply a modifier if you wish to
  make its changes permanent.
There are four types of modifiers:
Modify
  The Modify group of modifiers are tools a bit similar to the Deform Modifiers (see below), but which do not directly affect the
  shape of the object; rather they affect some other data, like vertex
  groups…
etc…

Sure, there are minor changes (sentence collapses, "types" to "groups"). But these are trivial, and some of these changes that appear to be for the sake of making changes actually obfuscate the meaning (e.g., "rather" to "rather than" completely inverts the meaning of the sentence). With that in mind,
Are these kinds of tag wikis really helpful?
Judging by this answer, the answer would seem to be that it's discouraged:

Often times people ask these questions, they have an idea of what it
  does and are not entirely sure or they have read the manual but don't
  quite understand it (which is one of the reasons why simply linking to
  something is frowned upon.)

Personally, when I write tag wikis, I tend to explain the concept on my own as best as I can, and dot it with links to the Blender wiki and/or Wikipedia (e.g. animation, cycles). This offers a new point of view/method of explanation, while still containing references to authoritative sources for more in-depth explanation of a particular subconcept. I find that simply copy-pasting from an obvious source of information will not help the user to "learn more" about the subject, as the link implies that they will.
What should be our policy on this?

The only times these won't be accepted is if they are directly copied from the wiki. There is a reject reason for these type of edits that says:

This edit plagiarizes content from an external source without proper attribution.

So, it is perfectly fine to copy and or modify these provided that you link to the original source and cite as you think necessary. If you see one that obfuscates the meaning too much, feel free to suggest an edit or edit it if you are a trusted user.
More importantly, as you note, these are often not very helpful at times so it is generally a good idea to try and reword them to be more compact and informative.

How directly is "directly"? Is correcting a typo or substituting a word still plagiarism?

Directly.. as in you go there, highlight text and slap it here and as I said, as long as you link to your source, modifications are ok. As Aldrik also notes, if you are going to be changing a good portion of it, consider rolling your own definition and still linking for more info. Wherever possible, we try to include tutorial links and resources in the tag body.

If you can produce higher quality content that's great. If not quoting is fine as long as you remember to include a link to the source. Forking is stongly discouraged. Improvements should be made to the Blender wiki before quoting.

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


text:
Guidelines on the usage of StackExchange Markup and style
The basics are explained in formatting help, but perhaps for sake of homogeneity we can adopt a style guide concerning conventions with examples of how to and not to mark-up content.
Well established Exchanges rigorously enforce their style-guide, this doesn't mean people lose their identity but it does mean that people combing through the site can quickly understand the content, without having to parse through various personal styles.
We may not all agree with some of the conventions, so I will reference appropriate examples in these cases. The following is a work in progress, feel free to add your suggestions and objections in the comments or as answers.
Style Guide

Avoid using bold to emphasize key words mid sentence, using bold rarely has the effect you think it does.
Use back-ticks for short code references only.
Use the kbd tag only when referencing keys or mouse buttons. Menu / submenu items should perhaps get their own tag type if possible (with own styling).
If you inline an image, make sure to crop when possible or otherwise edit it before uploading. Edit it in a way that most of it's pixels contribute to passing information.

Please discuss the following.
Menus
we should pick one and stick with it, encourage new users to conform.

Add > Mesh > Cube
Add → Mesh → Cube
Add > Mesh > Cube
Add > Mesh > Cube
Add > Mesh > Cube
Add > Mesh > Cube
Add | Mesh | Cube
Add > Mesh > Cube
Add|Mesh|Cube
Add | Mesh | Cube
Add → Mesh → Cube
Add→Mesh→Cube
Add | Mesh | Cube
Add > Mesh > Cube

I will argue for the first option,  it is undeniably easier to type while still serving the author and the reader well. edit: This has generated some interesting discussion and style proposal
keyboard shortcuts (and mouse events)
This one is not be up for debate, it seems we all accept the convention to use the kbd tag. One might find slight variance in the following.

Ctrl M
Ctrl + M
CtrlM
Ctrl + M

Cases for all three can be argued, I will stick up for the last as it seems to be most visually straightforward.
Links
This may be somewhat tricky, but here we find less variety than the menu items. Also the meta has slightly different styling than the main site so this may fail to serve the point I wanted to make.

this is some link
this is some link (code tags inside square brackets)
this is some link (italic)
this is some link (bold)

Again with the first example being easiest to type, but I will agree the styling fails to significantly distinguish short links, the dark blue and black are not easy to tell apart on the main site -- I suspect this is the main reason people feel they should decorate their links with other methods.
to be continued
more to come (sorry had to cut short)

is "Menu / submenu items should perhaps get their own tag type if possible (with own styling)." an existing feature of stack exchange? if not maybe make a feature request on the meta

I posted a question on meta for the menu item formatting What is the markdown for menu options

good man! feel free to help flesh out this post too.

Aldrik won't like the third one :(

I would say menu options should be **Menu** → **Submenu** → **Menu item**, whereas non-menu UI elements are *Render Engine* or *Remove Doubles*.

whatever we settle on, it's something all of us should be doing else there's too much disparate styles

@WChargin Fear not, I am rather amused. ;)
@zeffii The available markup already has documented semantics that apply, e.g if someone wants to emphasize something they should use the ,  or the markdown equivalents.
There's also the issue of enforcement. Looking about it seem that users shouldn't be badgered about markup.

hey, if it's just me being fussy about this nothing's going to change,

@Aldrik, actually, if you read the accepted answer, you would see that these are seen as being odd. It would be best if our site adopted a conventional style of markdown instead of everyone doing what they felt like or what external sources say they should be used for. Sometimes it looks messy and I agree with the answer on that question that these should often be edited when possible. Menu options should be something like Object > etc. This isn't a large site (yet) like SO so these things get noticed and aren't as minor as some might think.

Indeed, in that case it's odd because of the incorrect usage. The web standards aren't just some other site, what they decide upon is how it implemented in all web browser, robots/search-engines and user accessibility tools, etc. If you don't like the styling, that's a different issue. It's my understanding that will be changeable once we're out of beta.

Looks good. For menus I would recommend going with Menu Item > Submenu Item or Menu Item > Submenu Item. I prefer using italics, but it depends on what the rest of you guys think.

Also, when formatting shortcuts, is it necessary to use a '+' in between? The styling already separates the two.

perhaps what we could do is pick issues, write about them as answers and people can discuss them seperately -- else this comment section gets long and it doesn't allow much formatting anyway.

@Aldrik the main issue we have is that SE renders these badly, line consistency is lost and pipes with  is ugly.. some more issues are brought up on the meta.so post I think.

@CharlesL okay, but why no right arrow →? it looks much cleaner from my point of view.

@WChargin, ah, I guess that works as well. It's a little more difficult for users to write that in every time they want to put in a menu. Beginner users will have a hard time finding out how to do that.

@WChargin not everyone knows that, but everyone can type braces, it's simple and gets the point across.

Regarding the last revision, I don't think the space(d) ones should count as separate options.

Excellent post, I think there needs to be a consistent style-guide. These should be as clear as possible so here are my suggestions:
Menu Items

Add > Mesh > Cube is very easy to type, it gets the point across and provides a logical flow of operations as the brackets hint that each item flows into the other as opposed to listing and separating items with pipes. Italicizing these also separates it from the rest of the content and that is enough.
For menu items that have entries in the manual, these can be linked in if you deem it necessary.
Example: Add > Mesh > Cube.

Shortcuts

There should only be one word on each button so either of these can be used interchangeably.
Example: CtrlShiftM and Ctrl + Shift + M are perfectly fine as long as they are chained together in the correct order.

Links

The default and normal use of links is fine so this is ok.
For links to the api, it is ok to use backticks (as these are code).
Example: bpy.context.region_data

Images

There is already an entire post dedicated to ways images can be optimized. See How can I optimize images and screenshots that I embed in my post? For gifs see How to post gifs on this site?.

Other

I agree that we should use back-ticks sparingly and only for code, filenames, extensions, parameters/arguments and links to the api for functions. Don't use this for mere highlighting purposes.
Using  for menu items not only makes the line height inconsistent for the post but it also makes the words smaller than they need to be. Here is another good reason why this shouldn't be practiced and another meta discussion on this.

I will further update this answer as you update your question.

What about using something similar to the wiki, especially for mouse actions? (I've had to explain what 'MMB' or 'RMB' etc. stand for occasionally).
For example:
Shift +  (Shift + ![MMB][MMB])
AltRMB  (AltRMB ![RMB][RMB])
Alt RMB (Alt![RMB][RMB] RMB)
CtrlShift (CtrlShift![MW][MW])
Ctrl  (Ctrl ![LMB][LMB])
⌘ Cmd⌥ OptQ (⌘ Cmd⌥ OptQ)
⎈ Ctrl⎇ Alt↹ Tab (⎈ Ctrl⎇ Alt↹ Tab)
⇧ ShiftD (⇧ ShiftD)
Since this is kind of a pain to type out, I'm thinking of modifying the kbd script to do this automatically. I have modified the kbd script to do this automatically now.

@David does this work: ⎈ ⎇ ?

I think the short-name of the mousebutton should always be added, otherwise it is hard to distinguish between MMB and MW. I know that the tooltips show the full name of the MB, but relying on tooltips is IMHO a PITA.

@OcasoProtal Good point. Do you think the order matters? e.g. MMB ![icon], or ![icon] MMB? I originally was thinking the first way, but now that I think about it, the second way would be more consistent with the modifier key formatting.

Looking at the modifers I would also prefer the second way.

The Unicode characters you have for "Ctrl" and "Alt" are not displaying in Firefox 31 on vista

@David Works fine for me here, FF 31 Archlinux. Maybe a font issue?

@David Does it work if I use an html decimal entity instead of pasting the character itself? See edit (It seems they don't work in comments).


text:
Usage of "baking" tag
The baking tag reads:

Baking is the act of pre-computing something in order to speed up some other process later down the line. Use this tag for Blender's bake feature under the Render panel.

Is it also okay to use this tag in reference to issues in baking physics systems? This seems to fall under the description of "pre-computing something … to speed up some other process later."

I wrote the original excerpt for this tag, so the limitation you are asking about is my fault. I neglected the fact that it could be explicitly open to all types of baking such as fluid sims, smoke etc so yes, it can be used. Feel free to edit it accordingly and if anything else comes to mind, it will be added as well.

All right, thanks.


text:
Styling for GUI instructions
With a graphical application like Blender, answers often require instructions that include navigating the interface. The standards recommend using  for this, but the current styling looks like a keyboard key and which is inappropriate (and not something we want to lose).
Proposed solution:
Append the following to the blender.SE stylesheet:
em kbd {
    font-size: 12px;
    font-style: normal;
    color: white;
    text-shadow: none;
    background-color: rgba(25, 25, 25, 0.9);
    border: 1px solid black;
    border-radius: 4px;
    padding: 0 4px;
    box-shadow: 0 2px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, .6);
    vertical-align: middle;
}

em kbd + kbd {
    margin-left: -0.5em;
}

em kbd:after {
    content: url("https://i.stack.imgur.com/naX0c.png");
    display: inline-block;
    margin: -3px 0 0 6px;
    line-height: 0;
    vertical-align: inherit;
}

em kbd:last-child:after {
    content: none;
}

So we can use the following to markup interface interactions:
_Add Mesh Cube_

This'll result in it rendering similarly to Blender's own menus:

This looks lovely. Let's hope it is possible.

much much better to look at, but still looks like a pain to mark-up.

@zeffii Quite.. Though it's not that much more than the current way. (I always put + in the clipboard when I have to type long or multiple shortcuts :P) I do have a question though, is there a way with this to have separate looks for keyboard shortcuts and interface directions? Is such a  separation of keyboard and interface considered necessary?

It would seem <samp> isn't allowed..

@iKlsR Was sure it was… Oh well, have updated the proposal. ;)

@gandalf3 Yes, this'll leave current shortcut styling unchanged.

@Aldrik +1 looks good to me :) though I'm not sure I understand "and not something we want to loose".. typo?

Question: what's the semantic reason for em?

@WChargin Mainly just trying to work within the Stackexchange limitations (lesser of the other evils). But I think it's acceptable to emphasis literal instructions.

Okay, I understand that. Then, another question: I would propose em kbd { background-color: #5680C2;} and em kbd:last-child { background-color: #3F3F3F;} to match Blender's menu colors, the implication being that all but the last are selected (or including the last, if you want to remove the last-child if it makes more sense). For example: rendering in Chrome.

@WChargin I decided against it as I felt it lost the menu recognisability. Note if the community does want to go blue, Blender uses a subtle gradient and black text.

my only slight issue with this is that despite the colours it actually reminds me of pre 2.5 interface, but I guess that's just because it's subjective. Would love to see several variations, extra spacing, padding, corner rounding etc.

@RayMairlot Here is a variant of WChargin's proposal with original colors and increased corner rounding, spacing, and padding.

@WChargin I would say that if we want the last one to be different, my personal preference would be to have the last one look like it is selected, rather than the other way around.

Is there any update on whether this will be possible? In the meantime, should we use  for forward compatibility?

@WChargin I'm not sure, but I guess this would be implemented once the site graduates.

The standards link returns a 404.

Here's a jsFiddle with my proposal.
Changes are all to reflect the Blender menus better:

linear gradient for selected color
decreased border-radius: it's really only aesthetic; the Blender menus are square
changed border color to the actual color (#282828, not #000000)

I put the example in context with a paragraph (to show line height), a kbd tag (to contrast the two), and the full Blender.SE stylesheet, to make sure nothing interferes.
Regarding the text color: I know that Blender uses a black color, but white just seems a bit nicer on the eyes to me. What do you guys think?
(If you want to see the difference, open the link, in the CSS at top right, change color: white; to color: black; and press Run or CtrlEnter.)

I guess the color will be a matter of personal preference.. I personally prefer the black.

@gandalf3 I could go with either one.

So instead of asking others for iterations of designs I thought I would share my own, this is just an extension on the designs that others have done so far.
I haven't the skill to create these with css so I have just mocked this up in photoshop.
Firstly I have increased the spacing, or padding, between the text and the border of the box, I felt other designs were too squashed together. I also increased the gaps inbetween the boxes themselves, I don't think it's necessary that they touch, the arrow is enough to indicate they follow on from each other. I think this also helps to identify them as separate elements.

Actual size (drop shadows could probably be bigger at this size):

From the designs above my personal preference is number 8. While it doesn't use the traditional black of the blender menus I do feel it's slightly more readable (for me).
Number 9 is probably unnecessary, it has a slight bevel to try and imitate the blender menus more, but it's faint even at a larger size so it's largely pointless.
I don't know if the drop shadows are entirely necessary they are just another way of separating these 'menu paths' from the rest of the text. I think it's good to have the last element highlighted as blue just to clearly signify that that is the menu item/option you should be looking for. It uses a vertical gradient from light blue to dark blue using roughly the correct blender colours.
The font is the 'blender font' DejaVu Sans, I wasn't sure if other examples used this or not or whether it's even usable on the web. Certainly it's very clean to read.
Feel free to disagree with these points I know it's all very subjective. I also realise I haven't shown any iteration on padding or rounded edges, it can be very hard to judge very small details like that, but I look forward to your feedback/thoughts.

Don't worry about CSS, we can handle that for you. These are rather large, please scale to the expected usage size for comparison.

"roughly the correct blender colours" the exact ones, if you'd like them, are #7aa3ef (top) and #5680c1 (bottom).

I love this idea, but I also think it should be use in addition to the  tags. Reason being, sometimes we need to use kbd separately from menus for example.


text:
Review notification appears after suggesting an edit to a tag wiki
After editing a tag wiki, the notification that indicates there is an un-reviewed item is visible:

But you cannot review it, as you suggested the edit.
It will stay there until the item is reviewed by someone else.
This is different than what happens with normal edits, where you do not seem to be notified of a review when you edit an answer or question. (as it should be)

After editing a tag wiki, the notification that indicates there is an un-reviewed item is visible… but you cannot review it, as you suggested the edit.

This is normal. You have the access to moderator tools privilege (unlocked at 2k rep on beta sites and at 10k on graduated sites) so you will get notifications for normal suggested edits excluding yours and you should also get notifications for suggested tag wiki edits that are yours. There are no exceptions as these are shown to everyone with the privilege.
You can also get this notification in the edge case where you gain the edit privilege while one of your suggested edits is still pending.
When you suggest a tag wiki edit, you won't be able to review it, that wouldn't make any sense.

This is different than what happens with normal edits, where you do not seem to be notified of a review when you edit an answer or question. (as it should be)

You also have the privilege to edit questions and answers without needing approval so neither you nor anyone else will get notifications for these edits since they are applied at once.

Just to make sure, I assume by "you will get notifications for normal suggested edits excluding yours and you should also get notifications for suggested tag wiki edits that are yours." you mean "you will get notifications for normal suggested edits including yours and you should also get notifications for suggested tag wiki edits that are yours.", the only reason you don't, is that in order to get the moderator tools privilege, you will also have the edit without review privilege

@gandalf3 the only time you get notifications for your edits is when it is a tag wiki as these are shown to everyone with the privilege.

Right, I think I understand now. I would get notified for my other normal edits, except no one gets notified, because I have the edit questions and answers without review privilege. So if I had the edit tag wiki without review privilege, I would not get notifications for my own tag wiki edits.

@gandalf3 you don't get notifications for your normal edits ever. The only time you get notifications is for other people's normal edits and tag wiki edits including your own.

I think were saying the same thing different ways..?


text:
How can I delete a tag?
I accidentally created a tag (ve), How do I delete it?

You can't directly delete a tag. The process to remove one (not having it appear as a suggestion) is that you untag it from any question(s) that it was attached to and the system will remove it after a while.
IIRC.. the tag script runs daily so any orphaned tags (those not attached to a question) will automatically be removed provided no one uses it in that space of time.
Also see How can we get rid of misspelled and unused (or "zombie") tags?


text:
Let's get critical: Aug 2013 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Blender Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

What is the order of transformations when exporting to Collada?
Net Score: 9 (Excellent: 9, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

How can I control the viewport without a mouse?
Net Score: 9 (Excellent: 10, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 1)

How to make lamp visible to camera in cycles?
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)

Baking AO and Shadows into one image?
Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 1)

Can I confirm knife action with mouse, or other key than Enter?
Net Score: 10 (Excellent: 10, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is there a post-finish operator hook in the python API
Net Score: 9 (Excellent: 9, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

is it possible to make a setting enabled by default?
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 1)

Visual programming with Blender Python
Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 2)

Console vs scripting python constants
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 1)

Can I use an image sequence with offset frames as a texture on array items
Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 3)


text:
How should we handle questions about addons?
I've seen a few questions showing up recently that are relating specifically to addons. Should they be considered off-topic? I think questions about addons that are in trunk are fine, but 3rd party plugin questions could get messy.

In this case I see nothing wrong with handling these questions, dealing with each on its own merit.
If the addon is unmaintained and/or has no documentation, then we should really not handle questions related to it. Only addons which are actively maintained, and especially those that are documented, should be supported by us (as part of the community).
Keep in mind, this is just my opinion, others, and even Stack Exchange, may disagree.

I agree with this.

For Contrib and Trunk addons, isn't there a requirement that their documentation be sufficient before inclusion? If someone needs support for those, perhaps the docs aren't sufficient -- usually they have support threads on BA linked in the addon info.
We can easily refer to those threads, and they will generally have good content, it seems gauche to duplicate their efforts here for the sake of keeping everything on B.SE.
I say; close as off-topic but link to external support threads in the comments as a courtesy when possible.


text:
How serious is the 'self -evaluation'
it doesn't seem to have attracted much attention in the meta, where does kind of post come from and does it have any effect on B.SE.
I feel a bit of a chump being the only person who added to the discussion in Let's get critical

You don't normally answer these... Insight is good but not a must, it is an automated process that we get to do as a community every (n) days or so (90 IIRC, not sure). Example on meta.fitness.se and example on meta.anime.se. After the eval ends, the results will be posted by Community.

hey, I won't bother in future.


text:
Is it possible to use tabs in posts?
Is it possible to use tabs in posts?
When I paste a tab (the browser catches the input of pressing Tab and changes the selected field, so I have to paste it in) into a post, it works in the editing box, but does not appear in the rendered markdown version.
Is this possible? If not, is there some way to get equivalent functionality?

You can't use an actual tab for the same reason you said above. StackExchange sites function like most other sites as opposed to a code editor so Tab behaves like it should. You have to use spaces but not the normal ones as SE will ignore whitespace for the most part and 4+ spaces triggers a block of code in markdown.
I actually have two spaces here. (click edit on this answer to check)
# and the four spaces before this have made it into code..

So, one way you can achieve this is by using html, as obviously, SE supports a subset.
Use   to get a space. Join more together for more space(s).

  is the entity used to represent a non-breaking space. It is essentially a standard space, the primary difference being that a browser should not break (or wrap) a line of text at the point that this occupies. (src)

Eg.
  Two space indentation
    Four space indentation
        Eight space indentation
Also, there is a user script on stackapps that might be of some interest if you really need this to work.

This user script changes the behavior of a few keys (most notably the Tab key) within the post editor to behave more like it does in IDEs or text editors:

What about the way tabs automatically adjust their length to match other tabs above and below? (for an example of this, click edit on this post)

@gandalf3 I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing here. Those aren't tabs, those are 4 spaces and as I said, SE strips or doesn't render whitespace for more than one space in a line.

Did you look between the tags and the arrows when editing? (not in the rendered version, but the versions in the edit box)

@gandalf3 SE will preserve the spaces while editing but it won't render them. It's a good way to organize long posts and space content but it won't be rendered when saved.


text:
Command line arguments (short/long), preference?
When answering questions about command line arguments, should we prefer long/short command line arguments?
Short example:
blender -b file_name.blend -x 1 -o //file -F AVI_JPEG

Long example:
blender --background file_name.blend --use-extension 1 --render-output //file --render-format AVI_JPEG

Long example wrapped:
blender --background file_name.blend \
        --use-extension 1 \
        --render-output //file \
        --render-format AVI_JPEG

Reference questions:

Is there a way to batch render multiple scenes?
Can Cycles renders be done from the command line?

The obvious advantage of long args is they are more self-documenting (you don't have to explain what -F does in every answer for eg). The disadvantage is they don't fit so neatly on a single line.
Wrapping command line args is an option but also makes it tricky to copy & paste out of the answer.

I think it would be nice to include both

I think any variation is fine provided that it answers the question and explains what each argument is doing rather than just slapping a cryptic string for the user to copy and paste.
For example, in this answer, the short argument names were used but each argument was explained in a separate block.
Also, in both answers you linked, the answers link back to the Command Line wiki where the parameters that were used could easily be looked up but I think we should try to keep users on this site as much as possible (this also correlates with our policy of entertaining self contained answers) so the long self documented arguments should be the preferred choice here. For readability purposes, these can always be wrapped as you demonstrated.
Regardless of how it is presented, this shouldn't be a problem as long as it answers the question but an ideal combination might be having it on one line for easy copy and paste and another wrapped copy (if it is rather long).

re: provided that it answers the question and explains what each argument is doing, Perhaps we should encourage just linking to docs explaining arg meanings seems a bit redundant.

It's a really trivial decision at most since as I said any variation works provided it does both so either is fine IMO.

I would say both are acceptable, anyway I would prefer the long command line arguments:
blender --background file_name.blend --use-extension 1 --render-output //file --render-format AVI_JPEG

The one who asked the question should be eager enough to lookup details. In case someone else searchs the site for an answer he could quickly decide whether or not the answer puts him on the right track, because the long variant is self-explanatory.
In case the short version is used at least a link to the manual page should be added.


text:
Image Description Tooltips
Could the image description text be made into a tooltip?
Currently the description you put before specifying the image url (![description][image_url]) only appears while the image is loading.
It would be nice if that text also appeared as a tooltip when hovering over the image, this would give more incentive to fill in those descriptions too.

This has actually already been asked on math.SE:

Just add hover text in parentheses:
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/..... (hover text)

or in quotation marks:
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/..... "hover text"

There's a good reason to have alt-text and hover-text as separate
  attributes: one is intended for users who don't see the image, the
  other for those who do.

So
![][1]

[1]: http://download.blender.org/institute/BlenderSocketLogo.png (That's a nice picture..)

or
![][1]

[1]: http://download.blender.org/institute/BlenderSocketLogo.png "That's a nice picture.."

gives:
http://download.blender.org/institute/BlenderSocketLogo.png

This works nicely, but I'm still wondering if perhaps having the tooltip default to the alternate text (unless of course if the description text is entirely white space, null, or equal to enter image description here) is something worth doing anyway.
Most of the time when you do fill out the image description it's something that would make at least some sense as both a tooltip and alternate text.
If you still want them to be separate, you could specify a separate tooltip with the method mentioned above, which would override the image description tooltip. (yet keep the image description as the alternate text)
If you really don't want the tooltip for some reason you could override it by adding a tooltip consisting of whitespace (these don't get rendered it seems)
It might be nice to have tooltips more accessible, since in most cases (definitely not all) the alternate text only appears for a tiny amount of time then is invisible, replaced by the image. This gives very little incentive to fill out those descriptions because hardly anyone will even read them.
If the descriptions were made into tooltips by default (with the options above, to disable to separate them) then more users would fill it in with a quick description of what the image is which would be displayed as alternate text and a tooltip without any further fuss. (for filling with more detailed information, one should probably limit that to the tooltip only and put a short description of the image as alternate text)


text:
Suggestion: Merge `python` and `python-api` tags
I would recommend that the python and python-api tags be merged.
Rationale:

⇒ The only part of Python that should be discussed on Blender.SE is the Blender Python (bpy) API. Anything else is not in the scope of Blender.SE and should be asked on StackOverflow.
⇐ Clearly anything related to the Python API is related to Python.

I have already submitted a synonym request at the python-api tag but I don't have enough rep to suggest it on the python tag. If possible it should probably be that python is kept while python-api is removed, because the latter is unnecessarily verbose.

Related Should 'scripting' and 'Python' be made tag synonyms?.

I'm starting to think this should be so after all. Will discuss it a bit and make a decision. A small subset of python will still be allowed but we don't need both tags, I think [python-api] should go.

Update
The python-api tag was removed since people ignore the subtle differences, it's now just python.

I am tempted to merge these ever so often but since we support a strict subset of Python related questions, it is ok to have both of these in my opinion.
There are currently questions here that use python but aren't directly related to python-api. I agree that tagging every scripting and python-api related question with python is kinda redundant and the last two seem to be used interchangeably but at the moment, the tag is general enough to also apply to these.
Here are some tagged Python questions that have little or nothing to do with the api.

Interactive Python workflow for Blender beginner
How to make Blender use Python2.x?
How to interface with blender using IPython from terminal?
Environment for implementing/testing Computer Graphics algorithms
Can I run a Python script step by step in Blender?
Is there a way to acces external .blend file's data with python script?
How to make Blender use Python2.x?
Console vs scripting python constants
Using blender as a python module
Which modules are guaranteed to be present in Blender's Python?

What we could do however is revisit the scope of this tag.
Related:

Should 'scripting' and 'Python' be made tag synonyms?
Python tags and versions


text:
Bug? Indented code block not interpreted after list
See here:

Item one
Item Two
this is supposed to be a code comment
import bpy
print(bpy.context.scene.name)

this should not be indented I guess

Item one
Item Two

(add something here to fix code block interpretation)
import bpy
print(bpy.context.scene.name)

Am I overlooking something obvious in post formatting?

This is an ambiguity in the Markdown specification. See Code block is not properly formatted when placed immediately after a list item.
A quick and simple fix is to do as you've done and put a string of text there. A comment <!-- --> should do the job if you need to keep the post clean.

Item one
Item Two

# this is supposed to be a code comment
import bpy
print(bpy.context.scene.name)

this should not be indented I guess

Thanks for clarification! It's not allowed to edit non-wiki posts on meta sites, so can't check the markdown of your post, but not really needed. Will use a comment if needed!


text:
Is it possible to format specific characters inside words?
Is it possible to format letters inside words?
For example, making the first letter in a word bold. When I try this with **b**old, I get
*b*old
As you can see, it's italicized, but not bold. ***b***old gives
*b*old
Is it possible to format letters inside words without extra asterisks?

This was an issue that was fixed some time around April 2014. See balpha's answer (he is an SE dev) for more information.
Now you can make only the first letter bold (**b**old), using just asterisks. (Fun fact if you just click the edit button on your question you will see the live markdown now displays correctly.)
However the triple asterisks (***b***old) wont work. you have to use **_b_**old which will render bold and italics. However if you want an entire word bold and italics you can use the three asterisks.
Another thing that has changed is underscores in a word are completely ignored. Here_is_an_example_
Yet the same thing with asterisks will display like this: Hereisanexample

I wonder why it only appears in my question when editing.. Did they preserve the old behavior for posts written before a certain date?

well kind of. The html is actually stored in the database, so if the post is not updated (edited) then the old markdown rendering will stay.

Remember SE supports a strict subset of html. If markdown fails or is  behaving awry, you can always fall back to this.
bold gives bold.


text:
How should we deal with tags about other software?
There are a few tags floating around such as unity, makehuman and yafaray. How should we deal with tags like these that are valid but about other packages?

I agree with both previous answers in a 50/50 ratio. There are some applications which will (or should) always been fringe-on-topic cases. Maya is one of these, and as such, should be synonymized with external-applications.
Some others, such as Make-Human, should have their own tags, because they are likely to be used along with Blender quite regularly (and in the case of Make-Human especially, it was once a Blender plugin).

I agree with this, Unity is a good tag but Makehuman is a bad example to justify this as I said above. In relation to Blender, all it really does is export models. Currently, all the tagged questions don't even ask anything about any correlations with Blender or any specific issues.

I could also agree with this this, but I really had an issue related to a mhx rig. Given that our site is still growing, tags to refine the structure could be added later.

This site is about Blender and as such, all questions and tags should be about Blender or anything related (general CG topics etc). Questions about other 3D software or applications are on-topic however, provided that they follow the guidelines outlined here - Should questions that compare Blender and <insert competing 3D modeling software> be allowed?.
If we encourage these unique tags, there is no limit to this and as such, anyone asking a question can easily create an accompanying tag such as zbrush, sketchup and maya etc. These questions are already borderline and one will also notice that they are usually very localized. Therefore, I don't think other packages need specific tags on this site.
I propose that we synonimize every existing tag (and future ones) that relates to another application under external-applications.

I disagree. There's a big difference between competing software and complimenting software. OP's example of the unity tag is, in my opinion, a very valid usage because it involves Blender working with other software that does a different job.

So, based on all the discussion here. I think a good mix is that we keep those that closely correlate to Blender ([unity][yafaray]) but group those that compete and or are less relevant ([make-human]) etc.

Blender is frequently used as part of a process e.g. to create models for game engines.
When the question is related on modelling, import, export or restrictions of available features on the target platform it would be easier to find (or filter) questions by a tag of the related software.
On stackoverflow there are currently aprroximatly 37000 tags. Why so many?
Because there are several programming languages for each is a huge number of frameworks/libaries in different versions available. As a long time SO user I often use the tags to drill down to find  answers. Even a very basic control structure for-loop has already almost 10K questions.
Mostly the language java c++ is used as a primary tag, then the library spring stl serves as secondary classification followed a list of tertiary tags which give rough information on the issue conversion exeption errormessages etc.
How could this work on blender.SE?

rendering cycles artifacts
export three.js
export unity

Example of actual redundant use of tags:

scripting python python-api

Blender comes with the bundled addon for mhx import (Makehuman file format) the tags (mhx and makehuman) wouldn't harm as long the question is Blender related and not on the 3rd party product.
Same for game-engines like unity and external render as yafaray.
Tags help to structure content, if someone tries to add interseting questions to the favorites he will probably not find them again if the number exceeds a few hundred. Organizing the question by bookmarking in the browser could help, but the structure information wouldn't be shared.
Therefore please let us have more (non-redundant) tags.

You make several good points but remember that StackOverflow is a huge site. There are dozens of languages, hundreds of technologies and computer/programming terms etc. I think it is unfair to compare us to them, we are a niche site. We are small and growing, I think we should keep our content as organized as possible and not water it down with borderline questions/tags. Take a look at the makehuman tag, absolutely none of the questions asked have anything to do with makehuman really, just that they exported models from it.

Unity is a slightly stronger case but it is still borderline and localized and as I said above, it makes no sense to exempt a few and ban others so it's ultimately better to just unify them under one tag. As it relates to the redundancy you pointed out, see this question. Tags do allow us to structure content, yes, but there are already other more relevant tags that can do a better job. Rigging a makehuman model? - tags, (rigging).

@iKlsR I didn't mention SO to introduce unfair arguments, it was rather supposed to the show the analogy: A single language on SO is comparable to the implied (Blender) scope of blender.SE, a library or framework could be compared to 3rd party products because it implies best practices, scope, abilities etc.

I think that it makes sense to keep non-redundant tags for external software if that software is being used to compliment Blender in questions that use it. As stacker wrote, tags can be used to organize things in different degrees of hierarchy. For example, the tag external-applications could be used as proposed, but adding the tag unity could further refine a person's search. If somebody is interested in all external applications, they could search by that tag. However, organizing by specifics, like unity, can be very useful if the user is only looking for that.
However, when not used to compliment Blender, redundant/unnecessary tags for external applications should not be kept, for example an application which exported a model to a standard format where the question is not regarding the opening of the model. Also, questions should not tag external applications in a way in which they are competing, for example "I want to do _________________ like in Maya" and tagging maya.

Good point. Reading back, grouping everything under one giant tag would have gotten out of hand sooner or later. I think we could work with something like this for a while. It's pretty easy to determine what correlates more with Blender so we will know how to deal with those that don't.


text:
Could hidden text be made to allow code formatting?
Could hidden parts of posts be made to support code highlighting/indentation and quote formatting?
Currently when you hide some text with >! code indents and quotes are not recognized:
E.g.
>! > supposed to be some quote

results in:

 > supposed to be some quote

And
>!    if {2-3} `=` -1:
>!        cd /random/dir

results in:

    if {2-3} = -1:
        cd /random/dir

I can't think of much of a use for quotes, but code formatting could provide an option for users to try and figure out stuff on their own, and only read example code if they get stuck.

Spoiler markup strips out alignment so I doubt this is possible without some hacking.. <br /> and   etc. It works to an extent but the code appears dark. This also seems to be a bit trivial IMO. Isn't the point of asking for code to view it?


text:
What does exactly means "User was removed" with -5 reputation loss?
I discovered this change this morning, and was surprised. I'm just curious about the meaning of this reputation loss :
-5 User was removed
Thanks for your enlightenment.

Also see http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/125740/238438

It simply means that a user is no longer on the site (their account was removed by request or by violating site rules). When an account is removed, so are the votes the user has cast, be it upvotes or downvotes.
Read more on meta.so, What does "user was removed" mean and why did my reputation change because of it?.


text:
Placing a colon after a link with title formatting hides it?
If I type
[Blender][1]
==

 [1]: http://www.blender.org/

Every thing works as expected:

Blender

However, typing
[Blender][1]:
==

 [1]: http://www.blender.org/

Results in

Until this is fixed you can use the inline link syntax:
 [Blender](http://www.blender.org):
 ==

Which renders as:

Blender:

Update
The problem was that due to a bug in the markdown code, the Blender][1 part [Blender][1]: was considered a link hash (a normal link hash has the format of [{id}]:) and was stripped out.
Fix will be rolling out shortly. Watch for rev 2013.11.13.1150


text:
What should our custom off-topic close reasons be?
Custom close reasons have been live for a while now. We currently have 2 of the (3) given in use but a recent surge in questions being closed has prompted the need for a few more that are more tailored to address specific questions/close reasons instead of writing up why it is off-topic everytime.
Here are some guidelines to work with:

Keep it simple - so new users reading these will understand, especially if they are not familiar with StackExhange.
Give solid reasoning - try to have something that's not too open-ended as to open things up to a debate or retort.
Keep it brief - there's no need to write a book about it so lets aim for under 500 characters, including links and other Markdown tags.
Give your reasoning behind each reason - it helps to reference previous meta posts so we don't confuse users that haven't gotten the chance (or time) to peruse our meta site.

We are currently looking for close reasons pertaining to:

Not even remotely about Blender

This question does not appear to be about Blender within the scope defined in the help center.

Too localized

This question is too localized in its current form and is unlikely to be applicable outside of a very narrow context. Consider broadening the scope of this question in order to make it more useful for future users of the site.

Bug reports

This question appears to be off-topic because it is a bug report and not an actual question. These should be reported to Blender's tracker instead.

Feature requests

Hardware questions

Unrelated programming questions (C/C++) etc

See What questions should be definitely off-topic? for more ideas on what is off-topic here.

We should also have a close reason to handle tutorial requests. This might normally be covered by the standard "no effort" StackExchange reason, but I think the nature of this site deserves a reason that's more clear and less frustrating to people who might not understand how their question "shows no effort."

@Matt I agree, hence the point of this post. Feel free to suggest some below.

The bug report one needs to be updated, that link goes to a 404 now that blender.org has been updated.

We should use all top three. Feature requests off-topic reason doesn't seem that necessary.

@DantheMan We want specific close reasons. Doesn't make sense to close then have to further explain why.

@iKlsR I thought there was a limit to how many off-topic reasons of 3.

@DantheMan We can ask for more. SO has like a dozen or so.

Tutorial Requests
This question appears to be off-topic because it requires step-by-step instructions for a process that is specific to a particular project, and/or demonstrates too little effort on the part of the asker. These kinds of problems have been well solved elsewhere and are beyond the scope of this StackExchange.

Nice, I like this one.

I agree that we need a "Tutorial Request" on-hold reason, but I think there is a big gray area on what is a tutorial. Without doubt questions like "How do I model an animate a character?" is clearly such a tut request (or maybe "Too broad"?). But what about questions like How to make a displacement map from existing 3d geometry or Creating a curved rectangle on outside of a sphere??

This has been discussed to some extent here:
http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/29/what-would-be-wrong-with-tutorials-as-long-as-they-describe-a-reusable-workflow
and here:
http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/62/regarding-questions-and-answers-as-tutorials
These are my main points of reference for this response.
Also, keep in mind that a question does not necessarily have to be placed on hold, closed, or even flagged at first. In many cases, it would probably be appropriate to start by adding a comment recommending improvements to the question, before flagging it.

Feature Requests
This question appears to be off-topic because it asks about adding features not yet in Blender. These should instead be posted on the requests section of the blender wiki or in the bf-functionality mailing list.

Would this apply to people asking if such a feature exists in Blender or only if they asking for the developers to implement it?

@DantheMan See http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/177/599 "Someone can ask if a feature exists to perform a certain task, but unless its in a blender release, or already implemented to be included in the next release - I think the answer has to be NO."

Source code questions
This question appears to be off-topic because it is about Blender C/C++ source code.
These questions are considered outside the scope of this StackExchange as defined in the help center. Development questions should be asked of the developers directly instead, see the contacting developers page of the blender wiki.

Hardware/OS questions
This questions appears to be off-topic because it is about the operating system, hardware, performance, or compatibility. These questions are considered off-topic because there is often no definitive answer, so they tend to require too much discussion to be suitable for Q&A format.  Try asking on BlenderArtists for support instead.

I think we can...

Should this close reason be generalized to include platform/driver related questions?

Yes, it's out of the scope of this site.

Bug Reports for Code by Independent Authors
I think there should be two different Bug report close reasons:

One for bugs in Blender itself: that one should say "report to Blender's Bug tracker"
One for bugs in code from other coders: that one should say "report to code author"

I think this is a very important distinction that OP needs to be aware of, because if we refer bug reports about non-Blender code to the Blender devs, they're going to get upset with us if it keeps happening.

Bug Reports
This can also count for technical support for things like crashes.


text:
Can we have a service for uploading blendfiles?
Can we have a service for uploading .blend files on the Ask Question page?
This would be useful for many cases, in particular for new users.
Many questions simply need a .blend to describe the problem/question (see Policy for linking to blend files), so we are constantly sending people to external sites such as Pasteall.org.
For example:

blender 2.69: Texture is not shown correctly
Cycles viewport render different than f12 render?
How is this blendfile hiding textures?
What is the invisible unselectable entity on a supposedly empty layer?

is an unofficial solution

Built just for this site
Stores files on google drive
Files don't get deleted
Open source

see more

Accepted to put on top :) But in case an SE people happen to read this, an integrated system would be nice imo ;)

An average image posted in a question or answer has roughly 500kb. Sometimes a few images are required to explain an issue or answer to illustrate the steps of a solution. The size of a single .blend file can be easily exceeded by posting multiple images.
Having that said,
I think we should ask on SO-meta or the community manager whether another different file type (.blend) could be accepted for upload. On the sites mathematics or physics the special needs for rendering math expressions were introduced quite early,
The major problem is that the our sites quality will be diminished when the randomly hosted files to which we link will timeout.

This would be a very nice addition to the site. Particularly if we could set it on the Ask Questions page so users can attach a small sample file if their problem is too wordy/hard to explain.
There are many pros to this. The main ones being that we get centralized location for users of the site to upload their test files and we reduce the cases of link-rot.
This site is supposed to be a collection of self-contained answers. Having users come to a question weeks or months later and finding dead links would be rather bad/inconvenient at the very least. It would also be nice to not keep asking users to attach files to their posts or recommending file sharing services.
Obviously, there will be many wrinkles to iron out, such as accepting arbitrary files, attribution etc. We already have a strict policy in place for blend files and our moderators and avid users will no doubt watch these very closely.

A good (partial) solution to this would be to write a userscript (For Greasemonkey, Chrome/ium, Safari, etc).
However, we would still need to get the word out (and users would need to install it) otherwise it would be useless.

I think part of the idea behind this is to make it obvious for new users. IMHO this would probably end up only being used by long term users, because for single use uploading to pasteall will probably be easier than downloading some addon that will probably only be used once or twice by the average user.

Perhaps we could just integrate pasteall.org somewhere?

This could be a solution (indeed, that was my original question) However a drawback to this is that pasteall only keeps files for a limited period of time, potentially breaking older posts. (See this)

Ah, true. That does kinda rule pasteall out.

@gandalf3 hmm.. an idea would be that maybe something could be worked out between pasteall and SE. That's what they did with imgur for images.

There are multiple problems with this kind of service:

The Blend files must have appropriate attribution, and could be used to base work of by someone else.
Some Blend files are huge, and there's the issue with baked caches that are also massive in size (a simple smoke cache can take around 600 MB).
Those Blends must be available forever, taking that space away from the hosting server for its lifetime.
The server infrastructure must be reliable enough that a catastrophic failure won't erase old Blends.

These points stated, there are multiple ways to implement this service:

Use Blendswap.com, not exactly a simple exchange service, but this could help ease out the burden. However, taxing their servers could degrade their service seriously.
Use a hosting infrastructure like Google App Engine. Cheap, reliable and has nice availability. Problem is, the solution must be implemented from scratch.
Torrenting. Seriously, this is a nice way to share these kind of files. A seedbox is unexpensive, and has almost every need for this kind of service.

So there are the alternatives i've found until now.

The same rules that imgur has in place can be applied as it relates to attribution and file sizes would of course be limited. I hardly doubt anyone would want to download a > 10MB file anyways. BlendSwap requires an account to download and I also highly doubt anyone would want to torrent blend files. Currently, the best solution atm is to use pasteall. A built in solution would be nice.

@iKlsR Perhaps we can have a link to pasteall for the time being, then look deeper into getting a dedicated service when we graduate?

https://bitbucket.org allows public and private repositories.  This also is great for distributed team blender work.  It only stores the diff of blend files and you can have a ignore file for the files that you don't want to put up. Here is a great video on this subject http://cgcookie.com/blender/2013/08/20/using-mercurial-version-control-with-blender-projects/

Interesting, however the diff features probably won't be much use in this application, since most files will only be uploaded once.


text:
Do you want hats?
Update (29/11/13):
We will have hats. For those who don't want to participate, there will be an option  in the site footer to disable these.

For a while now StackExchange has had a little winter themed event in December for sites to participate in called Winter Bash.

Basically, users earned "hats" for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (similar to badges).
Certain actions would trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar could then "wear". For example, editing a post would yield an editor-themed hat (fedora with pen) to the editor.
From previous years:

Users had their entire hat collection on http://winterbash2013.stackexchange.com.
Individual users who didn’t want to participate, didn’t want to see hats, and/or are generally anti-hat had an "I hate hats" option available..
The only visual change to the site itself was the presence of the hats and the "I hate hats" button in the footer.

This is totally optional. Should we take part in this? Instead of mass responses, just vote on either of the answers below. We have until Dec 1st to reply, so in a week or so, the answer with the most votes will be the one we go with.

Sounds like fun! xD

What is this, TF2? Count me in!

Oh trust me, they are tons of fun :)

Wait, are we supposed to downvote answers too or just upvote?

@WChargin Either goes, it's the one with the most votes that will be chosen.

@WChargin Do you want to vote once or twice? ;)

I just signed up the site.

@DantheMan I submitted a reply days ago. See the update. ;)

@iKlsR Hah. Ok. I just got the email yesterday.

Yes, give us all the glorious hats.

No, keep the site hat free please.


text:
Should we allow soft-questions?
Recently, a few questions have been popping up around the site, such as people wanting to try Blender, looking to fit it into their workflow etc. In short, these type of questions don't carry definitive answers so people are free to interpret these as they wish. The most recent being Is Blender the right program for me.
A soft-question is basically:

Questions that don't admit a definitive answer.

Should we allow these in our scope?

It depends on the scope of the question. If the question includes specifics (Eg: Can I integrate Blender into a workflow that includes GIMP and Inkscape?), then it's fine. If however, the question is broad (Eg: "Is Blender right for me?: Is it as easy to use as Fancy3D 10.30"), we would be better off closing it as NARQ.

Said question "Is Blender right for me". is specific somehwat, OP is asking if it suitable enough an animation package for what he intends to do. Off-topic as it doesn't have a definitive answer but borderline acceptable since he is asking about Blender's features.

I think we will have to see how the community reacts to these first but I can definitely see more of these questions coming in the future.

I like the idea of distinguishing between soft specific questions, and soft open questions. I think it's entirely appropriate to answer questions like "How does development time compare between Cycles and BI?" This helps the community learn something specific. But we should be careful to avoid questions like "Is Cycles better than BI," which is non-specific and qualitative.

One older question along these lines. Also IMO "Can I integrate Blender into a workflow that includes GIMP and Inkscape?" is not so much a soft question as an  external applications question.

@gandalf3 I'll clarify what I mean.

I see no problem in allowing these provided that they are made Community Wiki and ask for something specific.
Many other sites on the network have some policy for these types of questions and it could work well for us as well.


text:
Let's get critical: Nov 2013 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Blender Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

How to iterate over material index using Python
Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 0)

How can I make a camera the active one?
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 1)

How to select even/odd keyframes with python?
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

How can I render an edge only mesh as solid lines?
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is it possible to generate an image based on edges and corners?
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 0)

Capture a partial screenshot in the BGE
Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

Digits of precision of vertices coordinates
Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is there a way to overlay two similar UV islands with identical vertex count?
Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

Stream of mist between objects?
Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 3)

How to set up custom controls - Pan using Mouse 4 + MMB
Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)


text:
Should we allow general workflow questions that don't directly relate to blender?
Should questions about general 3D workflow that don't specifically relate to blender be allowed?
For example questions where the OP does not use blender:
e.g. How to fix a 6 point vertex

Related, General 3D Graphics.

I don't see any problem with accepting these questions as long as they don't ask about features specific to other softwares.

General CG questions are allowed as long as they aren't overly broad.

...or comparing different programs.

I don't have a problem with workflow questions either, but how do we distinguish them from tutorial requests?

@Matt I would think the same way we normally do. E.g. there is a difference between "How to make an airplane", and "How to add lowpoly windows to an airplane"

Ah, I hadn't seen that post. Thanks.


text:
How should the site look?
What kind of color scheme and style should the site have?
Should it be similar to blender's UI and default theme?
Should it look like other blender related sites?
E.g.

Blender.org
BlenderNation.com
BlenderArtists.org

What are some opinions on this?

Nice initiative. I think we should go for something flat and clean like http://photo.stackexchange.com/ where we could have render of the week in the header etc. More ideas to come!

Is there any chance we could get the same header as Blender.org, similar to how AskUbuntu has the same header as Ubuntu.org? It would also be good if Blender.org's header could be updated to include a link to here.

@Keavon We already are linked in the support section

I know. I didn't mean this as a way of publicity, but more of a way to create continuity between the sites if the menu bar were used like on AskUbuntu.

What happened to this project? I am a web developer, and I would like to know if I can make a custom version that only runs when it loads for me. Is this possible?

This guy should be the site mascot!

@NoviceInDisguise like a userstyle?

@gandalf3 Exactly what I wanted, although your version seems to be pretty good too.

Update
Following Dan the Man's suggestion of doing something similar to blender.org, I've created a proof of concept stylish theme:

Install it from userstyles.org to use it live (it covers the entire site) :)
Tested on Firefox and Chromium. There is a strange issue in chromium where it doesn't render properly when refreshing the page, but clicking on links (even a link to the current page) makes it render correctly. Other than that it seems to work fine.
Icons
For the icons, some ideas which I liked most:
Badges
With a gradient:

Flat

Both are rendered in cycles ;)
Voting
Unselected var 1

Unselected var 2

Selected var 1

Multi-colored version, as suggested by A Wild RolandiXor:

Thanks to @catlover2 for early testing and feedback :)

I think the tabs/question links need more padding, and the logo needs to be smaller. It feels a little squished in the top fourth of the screen.

Also, is StackExchange needed in the logo? I've looked at other graduated sites and none of them have that. I like the icons a lot. The only thing I think worth changing about them, is the check itself. I like the first one, but the other two are too skinny.

@CharlesL I think we will get a logo and a new name once we graduate, I just put it like that because this site is known as "Blender StackExchange".

ah, ok. Anyway, nice job :D

I like the icons.

@CharlesL I agree, I made the skinny ones with the check boxes in blender's UI in mind, but it doesn't look very nice..

I like your up and down icons, but I really dislike the rest of the icons and design.

@Keavon Looking at them now I kind of agree with you :P

The voting buttons look similar to a google place mark for a map. https://developers.google.com/maps/articles/toomanymarkers/markerclustererfullnocluster.png  What is the circle there for anyway?

@David I took the blender logo, removed the arms and made it more like an arrow instead.

I love the Suzanne badges! +1

Me too! It looks awesome!

Me gusta mucho.

The up and downvote buttons could have different circle colours. One could be orange and the other blue. That would be a good visual distinction that other sites don't have (to my knowledge).

@AWildRolandiXor Interesting idea! But which should be blue and which should be orange..?

Since blue tends to be associated with positive things, maybe upvotes should be blue and down votes orange. When a vote has been applied, then the colour of the chosen button could change to the colour of the circle, and the colour of the circle could be white. That way, the user would see things they upvoted as having a blue upvote button with a white circle, and below it, a white button with an orange circle (basically what you had for selected var 1).

I really like how the new blender.org site looks. Flat and slick (yet slightly vibrant). We could do something similar. The main colors are pure white, F8F8F8, #444444, #109df0, #ddd, #f84, and #5f5f5f. It heavily uses the 'Open Sans' font.
+1 if you like the idea.

The Blender colors are welcome of course but think we should go for the old dark look if we were to emulate that site in any way. http://photo.stackexchange.com/ is a nice clean site, I think we should go for something similar to that, large header etc. The tall font on the new site kinda throws me off.

I like the idea of using those colors, but I agree with @iKlsR about the font. It's too tall, and doesn't match the rest of the fonts.

I think that the blender UI should be represented through the site, yet without compromising the user experience (the gray background is just too radically different from what people are used to). We can still use a few buttons/icons here and there.

Accept Answer

Upvote / Downvote

Various (by gandalf3, you can view these icons with the bundled icons addon)

Blue Polygon Background
This is a specific idea for the background (I also changed the font to Open Sans) that helps start the look of the site. I used the http://chemistry.stackexchange.com theme (modified) for the proof of concept. Naturally it would need some tweaking, but I think it has potential.
Polygons make up all 3D art in blender (with a very very few exceptions) They are an intrinsic aspect of 3D, and are also a powerful design element.

Some have suggested limiting the background to the header:

Also, I used this answer on the site to create the background :D. That is the beauty of SE!

Some sort of polygonal background would fit well with the theme of the site

I personally find the blue too distracting in the first example, the second is better imo. Maybe a little too detailed, what if you make the polygons bigger in the second example?

@gandalf3 I ment to, however it is quite a pain to adjust

Here's my variation on this idea, I like your colors better though.

I wanted to jump in here. I do not yet have a full blown site mock up, but some ideas.
First, I really like the way the top of the https://ux.stackexchange.com/ looks. Picture that blue stripe in blender orange.
Second, I thought gandalf3's idea to use the monkey as the badge was neat, but the silhouette was too unconventional. So here is my proposal for the badges.

Smaller (12px) and with more contrast.
For the voting buttons the first two are in the voted state, the grey is default unvoted.

I will add more to this in the coming days.

Nice! I like the badges, but I feel like there could be a tiny bit more contrast around the Suzanne (but maybe that's just me). Also, I'm not sure we can have badges that large (I believe the default badge icons are 12px). How do they look at a smaller size and with varying backgrounds?. The vote icons and the banner idea seem a little bit plain to me, but again that's just my personal opinion. +1

After looking at some other sites, it seems that we do have some freedom as far as size/dimensions after all. AskUbuntu has big badges in places where the name of the badge is displayed (with the exception of tag badges). Tag badges and badges in other places have smaller versions of the icons. GraphicDesign has smaller badges, which are not all circular. AndroidEnthusiasts is an example of a mascot used as a badge icon.

@gandalf3 12px huh? well I was hopping we could work with at least 16px. See updated post for the badges. About the others being too plain, well I kind of agree with you. I will post something better later.

How about something like this?

I'm still working on the spacing of everything as well as adding a little more texture, but you can still get the general idea.

Update 2:

This is too plain IMO. I would recommend looking at other graduated sites and seeing how they do things. Usually there are unique icons, custom accepted answer marks etc.

@iKlsR What about now?

Way too plain. Something more like the main Blender site would be better.

Yeah no offence... lets not use grey anywhere. ever.

@DigitalArchitect On the other hand, the default blender theme is all gray.

@gandalf3 Thanks I'm aware of that, and boy is it a complete blunder of modern UX/UI/Graphic design. There's major calls from the community right now to refactor the entire image and UI and this has already started to come through with the new site design.

Yeah, we should take ideas from other graduated sites. Christianity.SE, for example, it's anything but plain.

Hey, I love that site you made CharlesL . Personally I think that there should be the option to choose what style you want maybe there could be a settings page.

I like the white background for a clean look, my first impression was it looks like SO but I was wrong it were only the colors I associated with SO. I don't like the bulky gray banner.

@stacker very good point. You could fit more info if the banner was smaller.

No just no O_o...

I agree with Dan's answer that we would need colors (or symbols) to make our site recognizable at first sight. After quickly reading up on graphics design (not in English so I didn't learn any technical terms), I thought that a simple mesh could represent an abstraction of blender.
According to Usage in artwork and community websites the Blender logo should only be used to point to blender.org
Under the following conditions, third parties may use the Blender logo as well:

The logo can only be used to point to the product Blender. When used with a link on a
web page, it should point to the url blender.org.

You will visualize and promote your > own branding more prominent than you use the Blender logo. The Blender logo only can
be used as a secondary brand, which means it has to be clear for an average viewer
that this is not an official Blender or Blender Foundation website, publication or
product.

You can use the Blender logo on promotion products, such as T-shirts or caps
or trade show booths, provided it is a secondary brand as described in point

The logo is used unaltered, without fancy enhancements, in original colors,
original typography, and always complete (logo + text blender).

In case you use the
logo on products you sell commercially, you always have to contact us with a picture
of  how it will be used, and ask for explicit permission

This means we couldn't borrow the offical blender logo, and would need to have our own.
The design goals were that the banner shouldn't take too much room to leave more space for content, it should be recognizable. The mesh abstraction shouldn't be too dominant, it should have a fresh look. The font should be somewhat 'futuristic'

Some variations I think the mesh-thing could be easily over-used :

It would love to discuss any critics and suggestions.
This was created with inkscape if anybody would like start with improvements rather than from scratch I could upload the file.
Credits:

Fabric shader in the banner from: http://blenderthings.blogspot.de/2012/12/a-fabric-osl-shader-for-blender-cycles.html
Cycles wireframe in the banner from http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/41864
Blender logo: http://www.blender.org/about/logo/

I didn't vote, but in my honest opinion, this doesn't look very modern. It looks like something born in the 90s.

A gloomy variant (Edit: improved readability and increased dpi)

Downvoted due to bad readability?

That blue is hard to read

Just after posting the following, I saw there is a more recent question asking for site design input and thought it better to post there. Not sure which is more relevant, so leaving this double-post up for now.

I think aesthetics and a good sense of design and composition should take priority over looking "themey". Sure, having the Blender colors in a couple of places - used tastefully - could be good. But if the icons are all literal elements taken from Blender's UI it could start to look gimmicky and cheap. And while we love Suzanne, she's one of the more overused and definitely less sexy symbols associated with Blender. Could we maybe think outside the box a little more?
It should be sexy. It should be chic. It should be smart. It should demonstrate that this is a place for artists who understand design, not just people with a purely technical understanding of Blender. This may be a place to find out "how" but let's not forget the "why", which is the creative element. Blender is a powerful pro graphics application being used by many brilliant artists and we owe it to the community to deliver something that impresses and inspires.
What might such a design look like? I invite discussion along this train of thought.

The new one is the official one and the newer one. So new discussions would be better placed there, to keep the old and new ideas organized


text:
Should hat farming be allowed?
We have already had some instances of hat farming, such as:

This deleted post
This conversation in chat

So far it's pretty harmless, sometimes even constructive (many suggested edits), but how far should this be allowed to go?

What is hat farming?

@ideasman42 Creating questions, starring chats, etc. entirely for the purpose of getting hats.

this is some of the saddest stuff I have seen in a while.

Obviously not. I see nothing wrong with obtaining the simpler ones or those available through chat as stars can easily be cancelled and trivial stuff is always starred anyways but I would strongly discourage anyone from hat farming on the main site and disrupting the normal flow of things. We've seen one such instance already so let this be a warning to anyone thinking of doing this.
As such the normal site rules still apply, so anyone caught abusing their site privileges to close/delete questions, push trivial edits or farm reputation will be in violation of this.

How about going back and finding posts in need of legitimate editing to fix more substantial things (formatting, really bad grammar, adding relevant tags, etc.)? Would this be called "disrupting the flow of the site", or would this be constructive?

@Keavon Of course not, definitely constructive. I mean mostly people who have the privilege to edit and use this to make one line changes etc. These edited questions are pushed back to the front page and can hide newer posts that need the attention.

In the FAQ it says

All normal site rules still apply. If you get suspended, you're disqualified from hats for the duration of your suspension. If you're caught sockpuppeting for hats, you will be suspended, just as you would be normally.

So questions like "Dont look at this" that are just for getting hats should not be
ok but hat collecting like that link to the chat are fine as they don't greatly affect anyone.
And as you said increased edits are a good thing.

Oh, oops. Sorry. Didn't know that was a rule. I agree that my creating then deletion of that post wasn't constructive, but I share the opinion that many of the hat activities is beneficial to the community such as improving questions through edits. I'll make sure my future hat farming is purely beneficial to the site.


text:
Is this off topic?
Declare a global variable in a Blender session
I'm still not quite sure what the scope of our site is. Would this be considered off-topic? It seems like it's mostly just Python. If not, why? I'm interested in understanding the principles/reasons so that I can apply them better.

Pure python questions are off-topic but as long as it is related to use in Blender in any way. It's fine.

In this case, the question is about Python scripts sharing data within Blender, how scripts interact within Blender is a little confusing to many new devs so, I think this is fine.

Have you taken a look here: What questions should be definitely off-topic??
We have a clear list of what is allowed and what is isn't. You can ask Python related questions here so long as they are about Blender + Python.

Ah, must have overlooked this one somehow.


text:
Are contests appropriate for meta?
I have a odd question, would it be ok to run contests in meta? something like "Who can make the best looking house" I think this would be a fun thing to do and wouldn't negatively affect the site. This SE site does something similar. What do you think about this?

Well, strictly speaking, not really, that's not the purpose of meta but several SE sites hold small events like these. We were planning some community building activities for the site but real world stuff takes up quite a bit of our time so not much left for us to organize and oversee things like these. It's not as simple as just making a post asking for submissions under a theme etc. Maybe in the coming holidays we could hold a small competition of sorts. Let's see what happens.

@iKlsR I agree that meta shouldn't be used for contest stuff, after I saw your look of disapproval (http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13346875#13346875) I wonder whether you're against the chat-room, wasn't the Showroom intented for things like that? Could you please add a post on the plans? ">> We were planning some community building activities".

@stacker Heh, ignore that ;). It's perfectly fine to use chat as long as it's related to what the site is about for the most part. We once had scheduled chats but not enough participants so we put that on hold. I can't say exactly what yet as this would have to be discussed some more.

While this may be fun, its really not the purpose of stackexchange or meta, such competitions can be run on forums and other community channels.
While not especially harmful its a distraction.

Would it be ok if I made a chat room for this?

@Qwertie That should be ok.


text:
Tags - Singular or plural term?
Jonathan created a new tag tab (as in vertical tabs):
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tab
Now I wonder if both, singular and plural forms are acceptable, or if either of them is prefered? Existing tags seem to use plural over singular. And I would actually like tabs more.
Or should it even be vertical-tabs, to explicitly refer to this new UI feature?

As a general rule of thumb, it's often best to go for the pluralized form when creating new tags.

Even though this is a new feature and it might help to filter these accordingly, I think this tag is too localized to one specific aspect of the UI, it's as useful as having a buttons and and menu tag.
I propose synonymizing it into interface.

Good point, I'd like to follow your suggestion and synonymize it - but... is it correct to suggest a synonym on [tag:tab], or do I suggest one for [tag:interface], in order to merge tab into interface?

@CoDEmanX The latter but no need to, I have already done so.


text:
Search in favor of tags?
I retagged a question to make it easier to find, but turned out, tags show in the result set but aren't more important than the text (free text search in question title, body, answers...).
Went to the Help Center and found out that one can search in certain tags only using:
[python] [curves] [import]
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/python+curves+import
This is the result I wanted, but it's awkward to type and no regular user will know the [tag] syntax.
Is there any trick, like a hidden search form to search in favor of tags somewhere? Or a way to select multiple tags and get all matching answers which contain at least these tags? (Tags page shows related tags only, and one can't remove tags once combined)

I would think that this is the feature. I would also say that you and I are average users, if one wants to utilize the site efficiently, poke around the help pages for a few minutes.

Yeah I guess, but I wonder why there is no neat interactive way to create these queries without brackets (or even keyboard)... Anyway, probably more appropriate to report this as feature request to the SE staff. Thanks iKlsR!

When you are on any tag page (example modeling) you will see that the search box has already been populated with the correct syntax to search in just that tag.
This makes it much easier for a "regular user" to learn about the powers of the search box.
PS if you are on the search page and you click the "Advanced Search Tips" you will see many of the most common features, but for a full list refer to this page.


text:
When should a question or answer marked as community wiki?
What is the purpose of the community wiki flag, and is the criteria on marking a question as CW different to an answer?
Searching all Wiki answers shows that some have one edited answer others have multiple answers.
Is both OK or should we define a rule?

Community wiki questions don't accrue rep and have a lower full editing reputation threshold. Questions should be manually converted to community wiki when they are marginal fits or 'list of X' questions that contain enough value to avoid deletion. This affects the question and all answers.

The main reason for CW is that these questions/answers can be contributed to by anyone, posts should be made community wiki when there aren't any definitive answers and people are just sharing opinions and not hard facts or where someone sees that more information can be added.
CW can also be triggered by the system if a user makes several edits to their post in a short period.


text:
Are questions about external tutorial/resources on topic?
Are questions asking for other resources on topic?
For instance:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/6950/599
non-video blender resources?
Resource for Blender addons?
Any good free materials libraries online?

I would vote for having one community wiki question on each topic, and close duplicates.
Like:

Beginner's Reference (on meta)
Any good free materials libraries online?.

This is even on SO stil on-topic see e.g. the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list

How specific should each topic be? Would "non-video tutorials" be to specific?

@gandalf3 I think the topics shouldn't overlap. I'm not sure about "non-video", could we add a column to each of the links in beginner's reference to indicate that it covers only video tutorials?

I think if the question has potential benefit a majority of blender users. It should be allowed to ask even though it might not fit the format. An example of such a question would be https://stackoverflow.com/questions/81584/what-ide-to-use-for-python this question has many userfull answers and is beneficial to a large group of users even though it is it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site
I think the question needs to be general so that many people can contribute.

Any good free materials libraries online? there are really only a few - bad for the main site
Useful resource for blender tutorials? there are plenty of sites, youtube channels, blogs, etc. - good


text:
How much code can I post in a question/answer?
I am wondering how much code is appropriate to post into a question/answer. By how much I mean how many lines. Is there a limit? Should I just post what I consider long code in pastebin/co and than just have a link?

Related: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/55986/238438 and http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/25624/238438

related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1008/how-to-ask-scripting-questions-efficiently?rq=1

If an answer comes up with a full module in one file I think up to 200 lines of code should be OK (not as a hard limit).
If the code is distributed to more than two files or exceeds a few hundred lines I would suggest to upload it to a service like:

github gists
pasteall
bpaste

In a question it should be enough to point out the parts that cause trouble or about the correct usage of the API (roughly max 50 LoC), a supplementary .blend file (or addon .zip) could be added.

@iKlsR Thanks for the edit, since we have this expiring problem with .blend files I didn't suggest pasteall and really hoped that code could be placed on a more persistent location. Do you think that the process of registering would be to much an additional obstacle?

Shouldn't be a problem and Pasteall snippets are persistent I think.


text:
Where to upload .blend files - non-expiring links
People can upload their blend files to various site such as pasteall, google drive, and dropbox. The problem with these file hosts is that:

pasteall: links expire after 5 months
dropbox/drive: upload can delete the file

All of these file suffer from the fact that the file could quite easily be gone. This would be bad because some answer include demo scenes that are helpful and add value to the answer/question. Should we use other filehosts such as sendspace which also host illegal content but do not expire and also have to be uploaded by someone with a premium account?

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/297/can-we-have-a-service-for-uploading-blendfiles?rq=1 and http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/166/policy-for-linking-to-blend-files?rq=1

I spoke to members of our community team several times regarding this. Once we are out of beta this will more than likely be added as a normal upload service similar to that for images with permanently available files.

@iKlsR thats great to hear. I hope we can migrate them once we are out of beta.

We now have

an unofficial solution... built to solve exactly this problem!

Built just for this site
Stores files on google drive
Files don't get deleted
Open source

see more

I think the only real solution to this is to have our own hosting service. See this post for more info.