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Let's get critical: Feb 2014 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!

The site is coming along really nicely, our community is dedicated and growing. There are some well written questions and answers here and I think we are well on our way to becoming the official goto Blender resource for definitive answers.

is there a purpose in communicating with this bot?

@Vader I'm not sure what you are asking. This post is automated, but the actions it drives are for your benefit and Community Team looking on; a bit of self-reflection and a way to take stock in how you are progressing and where you can improve.

@Vader No, but it's ok to leave your thoughts here.

Final Results

Applying numeric input attribute changes on multiple objects at the same time

Net Score: 7 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

How to make a circular array using offset object as center?

Net Score: 7 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is there a way to have one material for cycles and the BI

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

unexpected reactions in a quiet simple rigidbody physics simulation

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 0)

Walk Mode in 2.69?

Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 0)

Blender Object keeps moving back to 0,0,0

Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 0)

How do I clear the render border?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 2)

Use Python to add multiple colors to a NURBS curve

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 1)

Exporting tiled texture?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 1)

custom color property in panel draw layout

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 1)

what does Net Score mean? which is best: high or low?


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Snapping Tag and general tag organization
There was a tag discussion held in chat a while back to discuss which tags were too specific or too general and should be removed.
The decision was to remove the following tags:
clipping
snapping
charset
parametric-modeling
projection
modules
deformation
license
data-vis
cell-fracture
.stl
dimensioning
And synonimize the following tags:
coordinate-system → coordinates (still not synonimized)
library → blendfile
unwrapping → uv
manual → wiki
bsurfaces → addon (removed)

Since then there has been some discussion on whether or not snapping should recreated as there are now roughly 24 questions which could use this tag.
The original reason for dropping the snapping tag was because it fit inside the scope of modeling, however since the site has since grown and there are more questions specifically about snapping it has been argued that perhaps a snapping tag would be in order.
So now the questions about snapping are

Should it be revived
If the answer to the above question is "yes", then the next question is whether or not old questions should be (re)tagged with snapping.

I think tags should be created based on the popularity. Although some tags fall in the category of other tags, e.g. snapping → modeling, array → modifiers, there should still be a separate tag for them if these tags are popular. These kind of tags are likely to have a lot of associated questions. Having a specific separate tag would be good practice because if there are too few tags and too many questions which fall into the same general tag it would be harder for people to find the questions in the future.

I think snapping should be revived. Although it is part of modeling is has a lot of questions that could be associated with it.
And if we revive snapping we should also add the tag to the questions that fall into that category.

What about the second question?

@gandalf3 added

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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When should a question be closed as a bug report?
When should a question be closed as a bug report?

Should we only close questions which would actually make valid report on the bug tracker? (and if so, how do we determine if a report would be valid?)
Should we close any questions which are definitely bugs, but may have been fixed or archived as TODO (not a valid report for the bug tracker)?
Or should we close questions which appear to be written as bug reports, but without enough detail to tell if it's a bug in blender or another issue?

We have had a wide variety of questions closed as bug reports, but may not actually be valid bugs that should be reported on the tracker. Such as:

Refresh an F-curve with Python after changing Extrapolation Mode
Boolean modifier messes up material assignment
https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/7415/599
https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/7092/599
https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/7288/599

There's also a few cases where questions which were about issues caused by a bug were closed even though the bug was fixed in a later version (and therefore would not be valid on the tracker), such as this one:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/7075/599
And some cases where it's not obvious whether or not the behavior is a bug, for instance in this question:
Black edges artifacts in renders on edges of geometry?
When should a question be closed as a bug report?

I think we should only close question as a bug report when there is a high chance that the problem is actually a bug. The users that close it as a bug report should confirm that it is indeed a bug and not a feature or that way it normally would work.
I am not sure how we could close a question for bug report if the bug has been fixed, this would require the person asking the question to use an outdated version of blender. If the question was indeed a bug and is now fixed I think we it does not really matter because now one is going to have the same problem again, hence it will most likely not be accessed again.
Even if a question is written like a bug report it should not just be reported just because it  was written in the same format. Only potential bugs should be reported.
A lot of the questions that are referenced could be closed with the reason that they are Hardware questions. This is a more appropriate close reason for questions that are about some sort of technical difficulties.

It depends on how you define "outdated". Most people probably don't use the development versions, so you could end up with a bug which is "fixed", yet still in the current stable version until the next release (up to three months).

I don't think that bug-reporting is inside the scope of this site.

No doubt about that :) The issue is how to handle these without spamming the bug tracker..

There are a few different issues here.
Software behaves in a way the user doesn't expect. so they ask why this is.
In some cases its a known/accepted limitation - but sometimes its an error in the code, for many users its hard to know which is which.
Propose:

Errors in Blender - Request the user posts to blenders bug tracker (close question).
User error (explain what they are doing wrong, or close question - depending on the case).
Known limitations - answer AND/OR - point to documentation.

Any bugs in Blender which have been fixed are still bugs and still don't belong in stackexchange, so they should be closed (with a note the bug is fixed).

In case of user error, wouldn't it be better to answer and explain what the user is doing wrong?

@gandalf3, good point. yes - It depends... if they completely misunderstand whats going on... its unlikely to be helpful to others. but if its a common misunderstanding - it could be worth keeping. Updated answer.

Some bugs will inevitably be posted when people don't understand why blender is doing something.  The questions that are clearly bug reports could be pointed to the bug tracker if it's been narrowed down to the point it's reportable, or blender artists if it's more vague.  In either case a link in the comments would be helpful to anyone with the same issue who finds the question in the future.  This would also fix the problem with users using older versions; close it, then add a link to the bug report or release notes showing it was fixed.

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


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Canonical posts for hardware questions?
As stated in Answering vague support questions (once)?, we should consider having some "canonical posts" for some hardware posts.
Some examples of topics which might benefit from a canonical post:
Problems enabling GPU for cycles:
We get a large number of questions asking about enabling cycles GPU rendering.
We could have a canonical answer which covers installing cuda and system drivers (for linux, mac, and windows)
For example, these questions could be answered in a single canonical answer covering common GPU render issues:

Cannot change to GPU Rendering
Installing CUDA for Blender Cycles on Ubuntu 12.04
macbook pro rendering issue

Update: A canonical post has been added here.

I think we should have one answer for all of the cuda problems for all supported OS (windows, linux (Debian based, Arch Linux) and Mac). We should have a guide for all of these even though it does not fit the question format for the site. Than we could just mark every future question as a duplicate and be done with it.

Should this be done with an existing Q, or should a new Q be created specially?

I agree with this, this is not in our scope so a giant cw post should quell this. I think a new post factoring  in what all the previous posts asked and contained should be fine.


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Duplicate chains: good or bad?
By a duplicate chain, I mean a question which has been closed as a duplicate of a duplicate.
For instance, Transforming a vertex moves other vertices has been closed as a dupe of Nearby objects won't move independently?, which has in turn been closed as a dupe of Duplicate objects transformation applies to both objects.
Is closing a question as a duplicate of another duplicate good or bad?
Possible pros and cons which I can imagine:
Pros

Users will see more related posts (and answers)

Cons

Potentially requires a lot of clicking to get the final destination
Separates content instead of putting it all in one post and directing everything straight to it

Maybe there should be a "Duplicate of:linkToPost. Related posts:linkToOtherDupPosts"

@Qwertieϟ This is effectively what happens, there is a "linked" section on the right which lists all posts which are linked to the current post (this will include all the duplicates).

This was probably a minor blunder on the part of the person who closed it (me). It was the closest one related to that question when I searched using the close as duplicate dialog so I opted to close it as a duplicate of that specific one rather than the first question (Duplicate objects transformation applies to both objects) which I did not notice at the time.
Duplicate chains aren't necessarily a bad thing except that it may be confusing to have multiple posts all being closed as duplicates of the same topic so these small inconsistencies should be flagged and addressed. In a case such as this however, posts such as these are better off being merged since they are exactly identical and the newer answers could add more info to the older question(s).
So yes, it is best to have one post that is used to stamp duplicate questions.

As we now have quite a few duplicate chains can you clarify the action I should take to notify a moderator? Is 'flag'> 'In need of moderator attention'> "This is part of a duplicate chain" good enough or do the individual cases need discussion on Meta?

Had a glance at those linked, I think moderator intervention would be the better route seeing we can detangle these quickly. Thanks!

It wouldn't be a bad idea to open a new meta post either for this topic, lots of these answers are from when I was the primary mod. Much has changed since then and I wouldn't be against new possibly better solutions.

I think the problem lies in what question is chosen when a question is closed voted as a duplicate. We should not close vote a question and link to a another close voted question. Instead we should link the the parent question, the one that all the duplicates should link to.
We should avoid the Duplicate chains when close voting a question.


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Should each method be its own answer?
There are a good number of questions on this site that have answers which include multiple methods to solve the problem. Should these individual method be each in their own answer? The benefits of this system are:

When a new users comes along in the future and sees an answer with multiple method he might not know which one is better, why he should chose one over the other.
Individual method have their own votes, it becomes very clear which is best
More answers for the sake of having more answers

Here are some example questions:

How to align an object by one or two edges to xyz axes?
Abstract Wave with Particle System
How to stretch a mesh object over another?
Cleanly Combine Two Landscapes
How can I animate the camera in a perfect circular rotation around a fixed position?

Yes, each answer should contain one solution.  As a user, if I see several answers to a question I'm more inclined to think there's some interesting discussion going on that might be worth my time.  A question with a single right answer probably is very specific, and not generally applicable. A question with lots of answers will be more interesting.
It will also encourage better answers.  There's no reason for a single user to make more than one answer to a question, and if there's only one solution in that post they will choose what they feel is the best solution, rather than spewing off all possible solutions.

We could go through all posts looking for pages that meet the criteria of this topic and build each them into something that matches the expectations of people who search for this.
In essence, these pages could be the prototypes for tutorials and documentation that capture the the big picture by showing many uses from several different perspectives.  Often people find something useful that is unintended by the original software designers.  In this case the original tool turns out to have many more uses than originally expected because an artist made a mistake or was thinking outside the box.
To look at this another way, a page that fits this criteria would be complete and accurate supplementary material for the official docs on the BF site.
They could actually replace the official docs or be appended to them.
Out of all the conversations that I've had with BF devs and from all the times I've seen various BF devs interact with artists, I've gotten the impression that they are very moderate and reasonable people as a whole.  I think they would love it if this site became a refinement to the official documentation.  I'm sure if they felt otherwise they would never bother to show up here at all.

How to align an object by one or two edges to xyz axes?<-very ambiguous.  He uses several keywords that bridge many diverse topics.  He sounds like he is looking for a way to correct a key-stoke.  Or maybe he wants to adjust a keystroke with another and then he is asking about the physics engine.

To me, at first it seemed that he wants to constrain the transformation to one axis, well that's simple.
Then he mentions far-reaching possible solutions and now I would have no idea what to write.  He made a mistake that caused confusion. This happens to everyone from time to time but can muddy the discussion.
The info on that page is valuable but needs to be made coherent.    This page could instead be replaced with a new page that fits the specifications for official BF docs which can now have an editing and rating system that is primarily based of the opinions of the BF Dev team.

Sometimes questions have answers that include dealing with aspects that the OP might not be aware of. In an attempt to be thorough why limit yourself to giving just one solution -- if someone has time to answer, let them do so in several ways. It will benefit someone somewhere down the line.
Precise questions tend to get few solutions, maybe because the OP restricts the elements that play in the scenario.

Individual method have their own votes, it becomes very clear which is best

"best" may be subjective


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Overuse of images in answers
Some answers are including images just to show a menu-item.
eg:

original post
I'm concerned that doing this too much makes posts harder to update (if blender changes), where: 3D View Header -> Mesh -> Clean up -> Fill Holes
... would do just as well.

My question is, should we discourage use of screen-shots for menu-items and other references which are easily described as text?

I prefer looking at images in posts, because instead of sifting through the text, sometimes you can get your answer immediately just by glancing at the different images.  But, like you say, making it difficult to update the answers in the future could be a serious problem.

I suppose one argument against would be that in the future, you could just delete the picture and replace it with the text...

Another factor to consider is that pictures are easier for beginners to look at.  In your example, it's possible someone new to Blender might not know what the 3D View Header is.

If the community ends up agreeing there's too many images being used, we could start a separate community wiki When should I use images in my questions/answers?.  And then have list out when you should and shouldn't:  Node Editor setups, pictures of meshes, menu items, pictures of a panel showing multiple settings, render results, etc.

@Garrett - if the question is obviously from a beginner, then I think this is a case where using an image might be preferable, but beginners really need to go over some beginner tutorials first too, so they can understand basic terms in blender like the header or the viewport, otherwise answer's end up having to explain too much background info.

@Garrett, regarding a separate community wiki, of course anyone can start a wiki or host tutorials where they like. But I think this should be kept seperate from stackexchange

I'm not sure I understand your second point.  I was suggesting that we have a page on Blender meta where there are general guidelines on when to use images in answers.  Although, perhaps that's overkill if the problem is limited to images that show where menu items are.

Ok. setting general guidelines is good, and perhaps this issue can be included there, understand your point now & agree.

@Garrett - regarding comment #1, I disagree that sifting through the text is really a problem here, if there are 4 steps to perform a task, having each step in a dot-point really isn't a problem for the reader to follow (at least for common cases when its just accessing menu items).

In the end it's a personal choice at most, it neither adds nor detracts from the post but is really not that necessary and can be obtrusive especially if the image is a large one (See How can I optimize images and screenshots that I embed in my post?). While Blender is a visual program and images help to convey the answer better. I don't think relatively simple menu operations such as this merit a full image that could just as easily be visualized with a string of text and the same goes for shortcuts entries that can be done with the <kbd> tag.
So, while not a bad thing per se, really not necessary. It's better to keep simple posts or points concise and straight to the point.

Menu items are moved from time to time, so issue I have is if I edit and update an answer for the latest blender. is it reasonable to remove the image and replace with text?

@ideasman42 Another good point, yes, I agree it would be perfectly fine to do so.

I think the main issue is that of the OPs skill level. If they are an intermediate/advanced user, the screenshot won't help at all. However, I think there should be screenshots for beginners, as finding menus can be rather difficult if you don't know where everything is located in Blender.
Text is easier to edit later on, but if the goal is to help beginners, I think we should use images.

Should we only use images where the question is obviously asked by a beginner, or everywhere (which would help any beginners which find the question later)?

Only add images to posts when simple text explaining where a menu or a panel is inadequate.
Considerations:

This is not a tutorial site, users who don't understand terms like The header or The 3D view-port should be pointed to beginner documentation on the interface. Trying to help users without this means including too much background info.
There are many more people asking questions then answering them, if images are expected for even simple menu access, then it makes answering questions more work... or anyone who answers questions without so many images will have lower votes because users are expecting images even for basic info.
Reading text takes a little effort in some cases, but text can be searched, edited and updated significantly more easily.

As someone who answers questions on this site, I don't think its reasonable to expect image heavy answers unless its really needed (to show mesh topology for example).
I've noticed users voting up image-heavy answers, which weren't necessarily the best.

Contrary to Charles's answer i think that the OP is the least relevant factor. Just because the OP is advanced and doesn't need a visual reference, does not mean that the next beginner to view the article would have the same insight... SE is a place for learning and to punish those that don't understand what you mean by "Properties > Render" is counter intuitive to the idea of education...
However i do believe that to save on server memory only the REQUIRED images should be included. perhaps even in a minimal resolution

Is there a problem with storage space on Imgur?  Images are pretty small files typically.  The images seem to never be more than 500kB.  It seems like we don't need low-res images.


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any way to view a deleted answer?
I made a question yesterday, and someone did answer something,
I remember i asked for more information in the comments, but today I checked again and the user deleted the answer.
Wich makes me feel like i'm crazy or something, but no, i'm sure he (or she) actually did answer my question.
There should be something like a record for the questions you ask. Something like a history, or a log where you can check if this kind of things actually happened.
of course, it should be visible only for the author of the question, not for everyone.
I think in most of cases it would turn out to be useful
I don't know if this feature already exists, but i couldn't find it.
Thanks for your help, despite this may be more of a suggestion for the site

I think only mods with a link can see deleted things

Users with over 2000 rep can also see deleted answers (here is a screenshot of the answer in question, I hope the OP doesn't mind..) Note that there is a history of both the question and answer(s), however deleting is not included in this (unless the post is later undeleted).

I didn't know about that, thank you!. AND thank you for the screenshot, it was actually a very useful answer and it is the approach i'm using right now!

Users with over 2000 rep can also see deleted posts.
Here is a screenshot of the answer in question, I hope the OP who deleted it doesn't mind..

Note that there is a history of both the question and answer(s), however deleting is not included in this (unless the post is later undeleted).
To view the history of a post, click the date/time below it.


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Should the RenderFarm chat room be promoted more prominently?
Should the RenderFarm chat room be promoted more prominently on https://blender.stackexchange.com/ so that more people will know it exists?
Currently, we have lots of notices about rooms not blender related, but none about the Renderfarm:

I only found out about Renderfarm by accident somehow.
If we want more participation, I think we need to promote it more prominently.

I don't think we need to promote the chat feature of the Blender Stack Exchange site for the following reasons:

I think it is safe to assume that most user come here to ask and answers questions, not to chat

The chat feature is not even that hard to find

An active user will discover this on their own

The chat is not the main goal of the site


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Should all "Ask A Question" pages encourage the poster to upload their blend?
Should the "Ask A Question" page encourage the poster to upload their blend and also provide a means to do so? So often we have to ask OP to post their blend somewhere, but I think it'd save OP & us a lot of time & energy if we made it obvious that seeing the blend is often essential in solving the issue. If we need a file host, developer.blender.org has one so maybe we could use theirs.

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/297/can-we-have-a-service-for-uploading-blendfiles?rq=1

Are you asking for comments and feedback about an idea, or making a feature-request? ...because the context in how the 'answers' and voting go (and how it is handled internally) are very different. I removed the [feature-request] tag for now, but feel free to edit your question or tags to pose your question as intended.

I just didn't know how to tag it...first discussion about what others think, then if people like it, it could be a new feature.

Not all questions require a .blend, however for most trouble shooting questions (e.g. "Why is X happening?") a .blend is the easiest way to go.
I don't actually have any demographics (I couldn't find a good way to search for trouble shooting questions), but I think that less than half of our questions are trouble shooting questions worthy of a .blend.
I think that if we do add a notice to the ask question page, then we should say that it's probably only important if they have a trouble shooting question.

My only other concern is that it might deter users who can't or don't want to share their .blends.

Yes, I think that was what I was thinking: suggest the poster upload the blend if they think it necessary and suggest troubleshooting as a typical scenario when it is usually necessary.

That is why I think a HELP!!!! tag would be useful, you could easily determine when a user is asking "Why is this happening??-Can-Not-Fix"

Well, on a per-question basis it's already pretty easy to tell (in most cases :P)

In my opinion, yes. If for no other reason than to cut back on all the images that get uploaded in the process of troubleshooting a problem.
I personally wouldn't make it a requirement, but i would make it an obvious and highly encouraged possibility (perhaps even a pop-up prompt)
EDIT: the only major drawback would be that blend files can get large if they include alot of textures / sounds / videos

I think this would be a great addition to Blender.SE. But as Gandalf pointed out, it's not always relevant to the question. But maybe we can make it very obvious that uploading is optional. (Maybe only give the option for certain tags. Or have the uploading-field grayed out/opacity reduced)
Or maybe take a different approach. What if we can have a "vote for/ask for .blend"? So the people that are answering can request a .blend. Then the OP will be notified and given instructions on how to upload (or encouraged to upload more info/screenshots, if he can't upload blend).
That way, we can automate the process. It'll be easier for us to give a solution when we need a .blend file. Also, it'll be easier for OP to upload(especially if the uploading process is similar to uploading images. Just choose blend from computer, but you don't need to redirect to pasteall.org. Blend-file is automatically added to post, at the bottom.)


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Gooseberry banner
Could we not have a banner (on the right side) which promote the support for Gooseberry project, as there are 4000 visitors/day here on Blender.SE? It could be a good lever for the project, or at least a nice visibility. No?
http://gooseberry.blender.org/press-banners-promotion/

Good idea. I would like to see this as well.

Unfortunately not, beta sites don't get community ads.

It would be great!! But who can do it? How to do it?

@Polosson I believe the SE employees have to set it up (I don't remember all of the details off hand; been a while).

Owkay, so... How to contact them? We should hurry...

I will contact them either tonight or tomorrow. If I don't reply by tomorrow night ping me (by commenting) to remind me.

These community-chosen ads only appear when a site graduates from beta. @Polosson

My understanding is that beta sites don't have Community Ads. That is a graduated site only thing. Dunno what would happen if you brought that up with SE.

@RolandiXor Ping, hurry up the campaign will be over soon ;-)

Unfortunately, I have bad news :(
Beta sites don't get community ads :(

That's unfortunate. Any other way we could try to advertize it on here?

@Keavon The chat rooms.


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Asking redundant questions
When a user asks a question that could easily be googled, or for that matter, a question they already know the answer to, is it acceptable?
I ask because i believe that whether or not the information is readily available should be irrelevant. Stack exchange websites provide an active 2nd opinion on a subject and encourage elaboration on specific issues where confusion might arise. So is it acceptable to ask questions that are more or less obvious?

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/121/599

Here are two discussions about this topic from mso: How should we deal with Google questions? and Should I ask a question that is easily Google-able?
IMHO: As long as the question is no duplicate you should answer it. Easily earned reputation ;)

I believe all kinds of questions should be covered, because that lets visitors from different levels of expertise to dive into the site and engage with it.
If novice visitors come for the first time and they are unable to find relevant content, they won't come back later...

The number one goal of an unsuccessful sale is to secure one for the future. I know that with StackOverflow, for instance, some of the first results in Google for basic questions is still StackOverflow. There shouldn't be any reason that isn't the case for Blender.SE.

When I see this happen I try to educate the person on how to use a search engine properly.  Searching may seem like an obvious thing but for someone who has not yet learned how to formulate keywords properly it can be a complete mystery.  When doing this I prefer to focus on the keywords that I would use to find the relevant information instead of focusing entirely on the task at hand.  It's sort of like that old adage, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime".
Now for people who are just being lazy and expect others to do their work for them; I think this is a non-issue.  They won't be around for long because they will quit this like they quit everything.  You'd get really stressed trying to deal with this on a daily basis.  Maybe it's best to just deal with this like it's noise and ignore it.  A system that can deal with this 'noise' will bury the page quickly so it disappears silently into the background based on some usefullness rating.
In any case it's best to be as helpful and courteous as possible since many of the people which this topic deals with are very young and have had no proper guidance in these matters.
Also, when it comes to redundant questions it helps to realize that most websites have very poor internal search engines, it can take a while for people to realize that StackExchange actually does work well in this area.
Perhaps the redundant question notices could have a short tutorial on how to use this feature.  The way it's formatted now seems more like a "Go away, you did something wrong" notice.  Because it's not instructive it does little to prevent this from happening again.
Maybe some programmer can find a way to easily merge the pages which are redundant.


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Perhaps using 'code' format for displaying UpperCase I as a keyboard key should be standard protocol?
I recently noticed that when showing the uppercase 'I' in keyboard format, unless the letter is enclosed in `` to display it in 'code' format, the result may be easily confused with the lowercase L or a vertical line:
I vs I
Just in case anyone, like me, is new to this, the ` key is not the apostrophe, but the "Grave Accent" found here:

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/250/599


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"Community" (the moderator) deleted a question that I linked as base question on an other post!
If this question is deleted, the base of my question will disappear!
What should I do?
Furthermore, it is NOT an already asked question, because it talks about OPTIMUS on Linux, case in which many users of Blender could be. And an answer is given in the other post. So I think that the post is useful.
That's it ;)
What do you think?

The fate of the original question aside… the best way to handle this is edit the original question to add (back) enough of the original context so your question can stand on its own. That sort of inter-post dependency works better in a threaded discussion forum, but as the content of this site is always expected to be updated and changed, it is best if each question/answer thread is able to stand on its own.

What should I do? I can't copy paste the whole post in the other (way too long and makes post n°2 unreadable) and I can't change anything because its closed! thanks for your help :)

@tuxtoriel I wouldn't copy the original post verbatim, but you could edit your new question in a way to read as if the original question was never asked. It just has to make sense to anybody who didn't see (or cannot view) the original question.

ok! Thanks, I'll do it! :)


text:
Add prompt to mark as answer
I was just on movies.stackexchange.com and I discovered they have an automated prompt that comes up if you, as the person who wrote the question, upvote an answer:

I think this is a must-have for Blender's site, because when someone comes to the site, questions with clearly identified answers are more valuable to answer-seekers.

I'm not certain, but I think this is on every SE site, however only shown to low-rep users.

This feature reminder is already active across the network. It is a bit of just-in-time learning geared towards newer users. Once you have (I believe) 1000 rep, the prompt is no longer displayed.


text:
Button to insert  for users
I come across a lot of posts which lack proper hotkey formatting: any key
And I change it to: AnyKey
It would save me 11 keystrokes per  if there was a button in the post editor toolbar.
Is there a way to add it? Or is it solely managed by SE?
UX has a unique wireframe-editor button, so there seem to be differences...

Any reason to not have this for users without moderator rights too?

I worry it could be abused by new users to highlight anything but shortcuts.

We already have that issue to some extent with the existing formatting options (mainly with backtics). We'll just have to edit these when needed. Users that stay around will eventually catch on (if not, we can just leave a comment pointing the the style guide meta).

I have made a variant of the script posted by CoDEmanX with:

Multi-char support
A keyboard shortcut (CtrlY, if you think of a better available key, please comment)
Optional key/mousebutton icons
Support for reviewing/improving edits, answering own questions, etc.
Undo support
An icon
Automatic extra space removal

Example of usage:

Tested on Firefox 59.0.2 and Chromium 65.0.3325.181.
Recommended to install with Tampermonkey for chrome users.
Greasyfork
Gist

Please forgive my less-than-polished js skills..

Nice additions gandalf! The problem with Chrome might be the sandboxing, since we inject the user script from another source (file:/// or localhost respectively)... The shortcut is not going to work for edits, 'cause it uses an ID: $("#wmd-input").keydown(...). You might want to bind it to the class .wmd-input instead. There's a } too much at the end it seems.

Hm ok, that } is needed, the Firefox code highlighter just can't find the matching one of main() {? Very strange. The button works like a charm, but the shortcut doesn't. Ctrl+E places the cursor in the quick search field in Firefox, Y does nothing and Z is for undo (Z and Y are swapped on German keyboards, so I checked that too...). There's a feature missing from my script: the cursor placing after button use. With no text selected, it should insert a kbd-tag and place cursor inbetween, otherwise add tags and place cursor behind the last. Also focus() the textarea in both cases.

Ok, I fixed some problems and optimized the embedded icon, works for me in Firefox. Hotkey is a bit problematic it seems, doesn't work in some cases. Back-ported my cursor placement. http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/486617

Mystery solved: the deprecated .live() worked for the hotkey, but .on() didn't - 'cause it needs to be used on document and the elements we are interested in are given as second parameter as filter! Works like charm!

Brilliant :) I didn't do anything, but the hotkey didn't give me any trouble.. On my FF Ctrl E does nothing, however chrome puts it in the url bar, so I guess that's a no go either way. It would be nice to have a key a bit closer to left Ctrl, but it doesn't look like there is one free. Is it worth breaking the theme of using Ctrl to use Alt+nearby-sensible-letter or something instead?

I added extra space removal, so now extra spaces are removed automatically. I also scaled down the icon to 20px so it fits better, but as a result un-optimized it again :/ (idk how to optimize it). I tried to get the button li to go after the image  button (it seems like the right category to me) by replacing appendTo with insertAfter("#wmd-image-button"), but it still goes at the end??

Wow, this is really nice. Great job guys. Can we agree on one final version. @gandalf3 Would recommend uploading to userscripts.org so it can be 1 click installation.

@iKlsR Okay. Still not quite done yet, still some kinks imo (plus it's currently not working on chrome, looking at that now). Working again, jquery was used before it was loaded..

Really didn't see the need for a dependency tho.

For me, Ctrl+Y is fine, 'cause it's the closest key to Left Ctrl on my German keyboard ;) Ctrl+E is used by both browsers, so better not overwrite default behavior. You can optimize PNGs using https://tinypng.com/, which uses http://pngquant.org/. insertAfter doesn't work, 'cause every button has an offset (left: 25px * n, where n is the index). To insert another button, you would have to get the previous offset and add 25px to your and all subsequent buttons. @iKlsR: It did not work on Chrome apparantly, might be caused by its sandboxing / same-origin-policy. It does in Firefox however.

I made an adaptation of it for Blender Community, just the keyboard shortcut part.

Thanks iKlsR, I created a Greasemonkey script based on your code, which inserts a new button automatically:
// ==UserScript==
// @name        Add  Button to StackExchange Toolbar
// @namespace   http://blender.org
// @include     *.stackexchange.com/*
// @version     1
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==

var toolbar;
function toolbar_wait() {
    toolbar = document.getElementById('wmd-button-row');
    if (toolbar == null) {
        window.setTimeout(toolbar_wait, 500);
    } else {
        toolbar_add();
    }
}
toolbar_wait();

function insert_kbd()
{
    var txta = document.getElementById('wmd-input');
    if (txta.selectionStart == null) return;
    var chars = txta.value.split("");
    chars.splice(txta.selectionStart, 0, '');
    chars.splice(txta.selectionEnd + 1, 0, '');
    txta.value = chars.join("");
    toolbar_update();
}

function toolbar_add() {

    var style = document.createElement('style');
    style.setAttribute('type', 'text/css');
    style.innerHTML = '#wmd-kbd-button:hover {background-color: #deedff;}';
    document.body.appendChild(style);

    var li = document.createElement('li');
    li.onclick = insert_kbd;
    li.setAttribute('style', 'font-size: 9pt; left: 400px;');
    li.setAttribute('title', 'Keyboard Shortcut ')
    li.setAttribute('id', 'wmd-kbd-button')
    toolbar.appendChild(li);
    li.className = 'wmd-button';

    var span = document.createElement('span');
    span.innerHTML = 'kbd';
    span.setAttribute('style', 'background-image:none;');
    li.appendChild(span);
}

function toolbar_update() {

    var element = document.getElementById('wmd-input');

    var keyboardEvent = document.createEvent("KeyboardEvent");
    var initMethod = typeof keyboardEvent.initKeyboardEvent !== 'undefined' ? "initKeyboardEvent" : "initKeyEvent";

    keyboardEvent[initMethod](
                   "keydown", // event type : keydown, keyup, keypress
                    true, // bubbles
                    true, // cancelable
                    window, // viewArg: should be window
                    false, // ctrlKeyArg
                    false, // altKeyArg
                    false, // shiftKeyArg
                    false, // metaKeyArg
                    17, // keyCodeArg : unsigned long the virtual key code, else 0
                    0 // charCodeArgs : unsigned long the Unicode character associated with the depressed key, else 0
    );
    element.dispatchEvent(keyboardEvent);

}

Install: https://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/show/486617
I added a hack to simulate a keydown event (ctrl) to make the live markdown preview update. Tested and working in Firefox 28.

Installed via Tampermonkey and working on latest version of chrome as well. Really nice. Thanks. I couldn't figure how to get the live update so I just opted to have it trigger with other user input after. ;)

I initially had it binded to wmd-input too but changed it as I thought since I was using a bookmarklet it could be useful elsewhere as well.

 isn't supported in comment anyway, I use backticks instead. Thanks for testing! Now, should I accept my own answer or yours?

Tested on Chrome OS X & it works GREAT if I'm creating an answer, but the kbd button is not there if I try to edit an existing answer.

@CoDEmanX Yours will do. I mean't elsewhere, not comments, we all use backticks ;). I need some sleep.

Alright! I updated the script to use jQuery and made it work that it also injects the button if you edit posts. Hope it still works for everyone. I couldn't find a jQuery-way of updating the markdown preview, so left that untouched for now and created a question on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23460904/jquery-replacement-for-dispatchevent-keydown-how-to-get-trigger-working

Such a feature is not available in the formatting toolbar, you have to do it manually. I've often wanted the same feature as it is encouraged that posts be formatted correctly, especially input.
My javascript is really, really rusty but I managed to throw something together that should save a bit of time (a few seconds at least ;) when doing this.
Install

Drag this line of code to your bookmarks bar, raw. (only tested on chrome and firefox).
javascript:(function(){var txta = document.activeElement; if (txta.selectionStart == undefined) return; var chars = txta.value.split(""); chars.splice(txta.selectionStart, 0, ''); chars.splice(txta.selectionEnd + 1, 0, ''); txta.value = chars.join("");})()

You can then rename the newly created bookmark to something useful.

Usage
Select the text to be wrapped in the textarea and click the bookmark.

Someone who has a few minutes to spare could convert this into a userscript and have it fit nicely in the formatting toolbar methinks.

Never made user scripts before, but I'll give it a go :)

Super awesome! One question: on my OS X with Chrome, for some reason the formatting does not display in the formatting preview until I press some other key in the editing window. I'm not complaining, just wondering if this is a known issue?

Can we have a favicon for it too?

@ThomBlairIII Not really an issue per se, the input field needs some sort of trigger to update the kbd preview. CoDEmanX's script below has a little hack for getting around this and is much better.

Autohotkey
Since I'm using Autohotkey, I wrote myself a script. Still not tested thoroughly... I'm just using the Unicode symbols, rather than specifying them by Unicode codepoints, so you need to save the script as UTF-8 with BOM, and use Authotokey version supporting UTF-8. As AHK works only on Windows, I didn't include any Mac specific keys. Also I chose glyphs by prioritizing readability rather than being rigorous on their meaning...
There are 3 complex glyphs for Lock keys produced with MathJax - not sure if everyone will see them properly:
$\fbox{A}$ CAPS LOCK $\fbox{1}$ Num Lock $\rlap{\fbox{ ⬇ }} \_\;$ Scroll Lock
Desired result:

Also I don't put mouse hints inside , as those aren't keys, but that might be pedantic reasoning; and I don't use images because it would be harder to do and I have mixed feelings about embedding images so aggressively. The script will also add a 3-word description to a mouse indicator:

lmb;; $\color{green}{█}\color{#888}{0█}$ left mouse button
mmb;; $\color{#888}{█}\color{green}0\color{#888}{█}$ middle mouse button
mwu;; $\color{#888}{█}\color{green}⬆\color{#888}{█}$ mouse wheel up
mwd;; $\color{#888}{█}\color{green}⬇\color{#888}{█}$ mouse wheel down
rmb;; $\color{#888}{█0}\color{green}{█}$ right mouse button

Usage:

for mouse indicators type the strings visible above
for keys that produce a visible glyph, type kb then the key (with no modifiers), then two semicolons ;; e.g. kb;;; for ; or kbe;; for E
for numpad keys type numpad, then as above, e.g. numpad4;; for Numpad 4
kbf1;; to kbf12;; for F1 to F12 keys
the rest of special keys by name without kb prefix:

ctrl;;✲ Ctrl
;
alt;;⎇ Alt
;
shift;;⬆ Shift
;
win;;❖ Win
;
menu;;☰ Menu
;
enter;;↩ Enter
;
numpadenter;;Numpad Enter
;
tab;;⭾ Tab
;
del;;⌦ Del
;
ins;;⎀ Ins
;
home;;|⬅ Home
;
end;;➡| End
;
backsp;;⟵ Backspace
;
space;;␣ Spacebar
;
pgup;;⬆ Page Up
;
pgdn;;⬇ Page Down
;
prtscr;;⎙ Prt Scr
;
capslock;;$\fbox{A}$ CAPS LOCK
;
scrolllock;;$\rlap{\fbox{ ⬇ }} \_\;$ Scroll Lock
;
numlock;;$\fbox{1}$ Num Lock
;
up;;⬆ Up
;
left;;⬅ Left
;
right;;➡ Right
;
down;;⬇ Down
AHK script
Consider adding #if WinActive("ahk_class MozillaWindowClass ahk_exe firefox.exe") as first line so it works only in Firefox.
#Hotstring EndChars . `n `t
#Hotstring NoMouse
#Hotstring c r *
; c - case sensitive
; r - send raw
; * - ending character not required

::lmb;;::$\color{green}{█}\color{#888}{0█}$ *left mouse button*
::mmb;;::$\color{#888}{█}\color{green}0\color{#888}{█}$ *middle mouse button*
::mwu;;::$\color{#888}{█}\color{green}⬆\color{#888}{█}$ *mouse wheel up*
::mwd;;::$\color{#888}{█}\color{green}⬇\color{#888}{█}$ *mouse wheel down*
::rmb;;::$\color{#888}{█0}\color{green}{█}$ *right mouse button*

::ctrl;;::✲ Ctrl
::alt;;::⎇ Alt
::shift;;::⬆ Shift
::win;;::❖ Win
::menu;;::☰ Menu
::enter;;::↩ Enter
::tab;;::⭾ Tab
::del;;::⌦ Del
::ins;;::⎀ Ins
::home;;::|⬅ Home
::end;;::➡| End
::backsp;;::⟵ Backspace
::space;;::␣ Spacebar
::pgup;;::⬆ Page Up
::pgdn;;::⬇ Page Down
::prtscr;;::⎙ Prt Scr
::capslock;;::$\fbox{A}$ CAPS LOCK
::scrolllock;;::$\rlap{\fbox{ ⬇ }} \_\;$ Scroll Lock ; $\fbox{↕}$ Scroll Lock
::numlock;;::$\fbox{1}$ Num Lock

::numpad0;;::Numpad 0
::numpad1;;::Numpad 1
::numpad2;;::Numpad 2
::numpad3;;::Numpad 3
::numpad4;;::Numpad 4
::numpad5;;::Numpad 5
::numpad6;;::Numpad 6
::numpad7;;::Numpad 7
::numpad8;;::Numpad 8
::numpad9;;::Numpad 9
::numpad/;;::Numpad /
::numpad*;;::Numpad *
::numpad-;;::Numpad -
::numpad+;;::Numpad +
::numpadenter;;::Numpad Enter
::numpad.;;::Numpad .

::up;;::⬆ Up
::left;;::⬅ Left
::right;;::➡ Right
::down;;::⬇ Down

::kbf1;;::F1
::kbf2;;::F2
::kbf3;;::F3
::kbf4;;::F4
::kbf5;;::F5
::kbf6;;::F6
::kbf7;;::F7
::kbf8;;::F8
::kbf9;;::F9
::kbf10;;::F10
::kbf11;;::F11
::kbf12;;::F12
::kb``;;::`
::kb1;;::1
::kb2;;::2
::kb3;;::3
::kb4;;::4
::kb5;;::5
::kb6;;::6
::kb7;;::7
::kb8;;::8
::kb9;;::9
::kb0;;::0
::kb-;;::-
::kb=;;::=
::kb[;;::[
::kb];;::]
::kb;;;::;
::kb';;::'
::kb\;;::\
::kb,;;::,
::kb.;;::.
::kb/;;::/

::kbq;;::Q
::kbw;;::W
::kbe;;::E
::kbr;;::R
::kbt;;::T
::kby;;::Y
::kbu;;::U
::kbi;;::``I``
::kbo;;::O
::kbp;;::P
::kba;;::A
::kbs;;::S
::kbd;;::D
::kbf;;::F
::kbg;;::G
::kbh;;::H
::kbj;;::J
::kbk;;::K
::kbl;;::L
::kbz;;::Z
::kbx;;::X
::kbc;;::C
::kbv;;::V
::kbb;;::B
::kbn;;::N
::kbm;;::M

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


text:
Should we migrate questions from GD?
There are lots of questions being asked on Graphic Design which would fit perfectly on this site.
For example:

Blender - how are points and paths imported from svg different from points and paths created in Blender?

How to create wireframes in Blender 3D

Rendering only the edges in Blender 2.6x - wireframe with thicker lines

. . . and many more.
Should these kinds of questions be migrated over here in the future? It seems to me that while they might not be off-topic on GD, it would be better to keep blender questions on blender.stackexchange. Otherwise, what is the point of having a site specifically for blender questions?

I have seen Migrating Blender related questions from other SE sites?, but it seems to be targeted at migrating existing questions.

Update:
As mentioned by Ryan in the comments, there is now this post on GD meta.
So far it seems like the GD community is okay with migrating new blender questions over here. Are we okay with this too?
I don't see anything wrong with this (plus I imagine it's good for getting the word out about us, to say nothing of having some extra questions), but I have some questions of my own.
For example, if a question is asked on GD which already has an answer here, should it still be migrated (and then closed as a duplicate)?
Will this confuse users who have there questions shuffled around and then closed?
Or am I just making mountains out of molehills?

Some of your arguments are invalid, with that logic, we should remove our python tag and ask python questions on SO only. There are multiple flavours of language SE sites, religion etc. To each specific user group their own, Blender questions fit here but it's a multi-purpose tool, it can be used elsewhere. We shouldn't be selfish.

Well, we do to an extent. Python questions which are not related to blender are migrated (or closed as off-topic).

I just posted this on the Graphic Design Meta, we welcome input from you all: http://meta.graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/1122/blender-questions

If it's already answered on that site, it makes no sense. GD and many of these sites have a tag for Blender so it is allowed to an extent and these sites might not want their content removed.
Also, if a question is older than a week or two, it's not worth migrating as we don't want to clutter our site with old unwanted garbage for the most part and the user might not come over as well. I constantly poke around other SE sites where Blender is tag and one thing I notice is that the question quality is significantly lower than those that get asked here and in those examples above, most of those are a query away on the front page of google or even the relevant wiki page.
As Robert says:

But beyond that technical limitation, building this community from the old, pre-answered questions of another site would do this site a terrible disservice. That's not how you want to build this site.

So I don't think we should actively go around looking for things to migrate, if it's not on-topic on another SE site, they will probably send it here and we can take it from there.
It is also well worth noting that we are doing extremely well in terms of questions, we have had a 12+ average per day for nearly 2 months now. Questions are not our problem at the moment, we should focus on consistency and quality and improving our answer ratio. If you want more questions to answer, browse the Unanswered tab. ;)

Okay. I was mostly talking about migrating new, unanswered questions (as yet unasked), and just used those existing, answered posts of examples of the kinds of questions they are likely to be.

@gandalf3 Yes, I figured but as I said, other sites want their content as well. If it's not ontopic there, they know we exist. I've seen multiple comments on SO directing people here. Also, sites such as gamedev and graphicdesign seem to get only 1 - 3 questions every month.

Also relevant to this discussion — Respect the community — your own and others'.


text:
Why is there still a python-api tag suggestion?
python-api was merged into python a while ago. Why does it still appear in the prompt as a separate tag?

python-api appears because it is a tag synonym for python, if you chose either, it would give you the same tag. Originally, there was python-api and the less used scripting then there was a trial period when we were deciding whether or not to just make one giant python tag or keep separate variants.
However, since the python is shorter and the one being used, the other is no longer needed and has now been removed. python is now the sole tag.

I thought synonyms were only displayed underneath the suggestion for the parent tag (where it says "also:"). E.g. if you type in scr in the tag input field, you will get a suggestion for [tag:scripting] with a little "also:" for [tag:script], but no separate suggestion for [tag:script]. Am I missing something? Or . . .?

@gandalf3 That is one aspect, try it. For eg modeling has 2 synonyms, model and modelling, enter either on a question and it will change to modeling when you save.

I noticed that with python-api. However, both of those tags (model and modelling) don't seem to have their own separate prompt (like python-api does). Why does python-api seem to be the only synonym to have a prompt?

@gandalf3 This is because the python-api tag was still around. It has been removed now so it shouldn't appear.


text:
Tag Synonyms with no users
What are the reasons for making some of the tag synonyms?
These tags have no users and are not needed but are still in the tag list because they are synonyms.
glossy
material-nodes
bezier
As any mod on blender exchange knows, I do I lot of re-tagging and clean up.  Is it not better to (when a tag is still small) re-tag the question or questions in stead of making a tag synonym?
A example is collision is a pending synonym for rigid-body-simulation why make it a synonym?
I ask for the synonyms glossymaterial-nodesbezier to be deleted.

Synonyms exist so that commonly used words which are incorrect can be remapped to the correct tag that should be used. Generally, our agreed upon policy is if the tag falls under a broader one, merge/synonimize it.
The tags you mentioned have been been in the waiting list for sometime now. They have been removed.

when you say removed, you mean added to the list of synonyms. Why do you not just delete the synonym and then have SE cull the tag, because it is empty?

@David Gone now, apparently, the merge/delete didn't complete for some reason.

Thanks, those unused and unnecessary tags were bothering me. I like to keep the tags clean.


text:
Suggested edit notification wrong
The suggested edit notification has been consistently wrong (in an inconsistent way) for a few weeks now. No amount of refreshing and cache-deletion seems to fix it.

It's always off, but the amount by which it's wrong varies.
Is it just me?

This stopped happening for a while, then started again..

This is by design. See this post at Meta.SE: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/233535/224428.

Copy paste from meta.se for closure.

It won't, at least not always. The review indicator in the top-bar is not calculated on a per-user basis, but on a per-site basis. The counts in the review queue itself are calculated on a per-user basis. The top-bar indicator also won't always be accurate (and it's cached), which is why the tooltip has a ~ to indicate it's an approximate value.
There are several things that could cause an item to not show up for you in review, but still show up in the total per-site count. It could be that you've already reviewed the item and it's still waiting to be completed, you could have skipped it, or you could have previously taken action on the post in question that prevents you from being able to review it.


text:
Can we please reconsider allowing Q&A regarding Blender build problems?
I posted this question on building Blender and was kindly informed that it's off-topic and I should direct my question to either blenderartists.org or #blendercoders.
Quote:

Reason being, there is often not a definitive answer, issues like this
  also require a bit of discussion to resolve and then there is also the
  possibility that the problem is entirely on your end.

As I find this problematic on a systemic level (that is: detrimental to the Blender developer community's productivity at large, aka huge missed opportunity), I want to make an effort to protest this decision.
Concerning #blendercoders: IRC is an ephemeral media - any knowledge it produces is (technically speaking) instantly forgotten. It is also strongly driven by coincidence and does not scale - The bigger the circle gets, the smaller the chances will be that you meet a person on irc that might have recently produced the knowledge you depend on now. (If that person sees your question through all the clutter and lives in your timezone and is not currently having lunch or at the cinema anyway) Should we really promote this? A platform that gets worse as it grows? A platform that produces duplicate questions by design? That enables access of already produced knowledge only through coincidence? Where the reproduction of knowledge means actual manual labor for persons other than the one searching the knowledge? Really? :)
If anything is to come out of this protest of mine here, I would like it to be that we stop actively promoting IRC as a medium for our knowledge production. It's 2014 and I think we can really do better!
So then ... blenderartists.org! This is already more agreeable, but as far as I am concerned still the wrong place to promote for this. Forums are a 90ies thing, and it shows - I just tried to conjure up the search I would have done on BA to find the solution to my above-mentioned build problem: It leads to a bulky form called "Advanced Search", that is so advanced it does not even feature searching for tags, which is not suprising at all, because this forum does not even support tags in the first place. Falling back to a keyword search "build fedora" brings up a staggering amount of threads that have exactly nothing to do with my problem. Later I notice a faultily rendered select box of sorts (overlapping with another), that would let me limit the search to the appropriate subforum somewhat effectively, were it not unusable in that it only shows 2 subforum titles at a time, while being only navigatable with my mousewheel which unfortunately scrolls over more than 2 entries at a time.
And then there's this problem with policy; for all I know a forum is a place to discuss, and that's absolutely fine with me, but why then am I sent to a forum with my dry technical build problems? I don't want to discuss, I don't want a layout that promotes lengthy pieces of literature without any form of rating or discrimination. What I want is harsh moderation, sticking to the point, a concise layout that labels content in terms of its quality and an environment that enforces people to write as much as is needed to solve a problem, but not a single word more than that. And there's a place for that and it's called Stack Exchange!
And now addressing the reasoning to ban build problems from Blender SE quoted above:
Yes, there is often not a definitive answer - which is why SE allows moderators to close and delete questions!
Yes, a build problem often requires discussion to be solved - but to elaborate is not to argument, and as such I don't see the problem with it.
And yes, the problem might well be entirely on someone's end - but how does that justify neglecting the chance to document the solution for a build problem that might affect eg. 1000s of users building on operating system XY under perfectly repeatable circumstances?

I hope this manages to point out why both IRC and Forums are clearly inferior places of knowledge production and conservation for the subject at hand (build problems), and why - although all the reasons against its inclusion do apply - Blender SE would still be the best place for the community to solve these questions in a contemporary and efficient fashion.
Cheers and thanks for taking the time to read and consider this, regardless of the outcome it is much appreciated!

You might get more useful answers on stack overflow anyway.

I would say no, to this.

Issues building Blender often end up being specific to a platform, compiler and the version of Blender you're trying to build.
Build environments are a moving target, on all platforms.
Build errors are very hard to debug remotely, and there is the chance something is broken on the system, its hard for anyone to tell.
There is the bf-committers mailing list for developer topics.
This is scope creep on blender.stackexchange, building software is unrelated to using Blender (which adds noise and unrelated content for Blender users).

Having had to help others build Blender before, the reasons it can fail are so varied, that I don't think its useful to have here.
Also there is a fairly high instance of very weird/specific problems, sometimes new developers make modifications to their systems which make error messages very strange (while attempting to build).
Eg:

A libraries missing so symlink an older library to the new name.
Some change is made to Blender in an attempt to make it build, but that fails (further confusing the error message output).
The build fails before of a local change to the code.

Considering the time it takes to figure all of this out, and the value of the question to anyone else, I think its not worth to have build questions.

If there's a clear-cut conceptual intention to keep the Blender SE free from actual Blender development, this is all the reason I need as an answer for this - thanks! With all this being told how convoluted build questions can be, I want to point out that just by taking them elsewhere they won't get less complex, and encouraging people to make a habit out of ephemeral problem solving on irc is still detrimental to our development (pun intended), and eventually should be adressed with better approaches than a forum or a mailinglist (thanks for mentioning it though, currently the best bet imo)

I realize this may seem harsh, but as a developer you really need to learn how to troubleshoot your own build environment - link errors, header versions, missing includes, compiler compatibility, modifying the build-system,  etc... while its highly frustrating at times. I think learning how to do this is not specific to Blender, which is part of the reason I rather not attempt to address this with blender.stackexchange

If you want to further elaborate on this, I'd be interested in how you'd rather address building problems then, because the part about why not on blender.stackexchange has actually been sufficiently and satisfactorily covered for me! :) That anyone may have to figure out his build problems on his own is just how it is, but I disagree that this means it's pointless to document specific solutions for the whole community to see. Even if a specific solution does not apply to me I can still learn a great deal from the general approach. Denying people, denying us this knowledge - that is harsh.


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Are questions about finding specific addons/other resources on topic?
There was a question asked recently, asking for help finding a certain addon.
Imo these types of questions might be more on the forum/discussion side of things to fit cleanly in a Q&A format, but it's arguable.
Are these "help me find this" questions on-topic?

Related: Are questions about external tutorial/resources on topic?

Maybe chat would be useful for that.

I would say yes, it seems like blender.stackexchange.com is here to answer questions relating to Blender. Is wondering about a certain addon or looking for a tutorial about something in Blender not related to Blender? I don't think so, I think that the forum should be here to help spur Blender users on, by answering any questions that they have. As long as they do relate to Blender.

I use several StackExchange communities, coming back to them when the rest of the infosphere lets me down, due to two recurring attributes: 1) tagged searching and 2) permanence.   The free-form nature of forums is a valuable tool, sometimes, but in the Blender world I find a couple of problems crop up repeatedly that I don't see nearly as often in the StackExchange approach: First, Blender advances rapidly and the appropriateness of the answers discussed in forums ages rapidly. So having a question about how to do something in Blender 2.70 that uses terminology carried over from 2.4 may or may not be helpful.  Second, and this touches on your mention of external tutorials, I have found so many tutorial links that are dead links that I almost never follow such links anymore unless the URL starts with youtube ;-)
I enjoy reading related question/answers as pointed to by the StackExchange engine because learning can be unexpected and sometimes I find a question I can help answer.  But, I suspect, most people are trying to get to the answer as directly as potential answerers want a question to be specific.  Tagged searching has really helped with that.  I was surprised when I first posed a question on blender.stackexchange and tried to tag it with the version number I was using, only to be told such a tag didn't exist and I couldn't create it.  Arguments exist both ways, to be sure.  Having used the search feature at a very popular Blender forum site, I've been frustrated that a search term would match in a long-developed discussion, but with no clue as to where in the discussion the topic came up.  I learn a lot in reading 27 pages of a discussion but after a while the frustration at not having found the search term rises above the serendipitous rewards.
I wonder if there isn't a middle ground, somewhere between targeted questions and rambling forums?
(I do notice that your title is the same as your last sentence (question).  I'm probably not answering that very well!  I'm just trying to provide a perspective as a discussion point.)


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How to post gifs on this site?
Most replies to my comments have "gif" images. How do I put them in my posts? Adding a new image doesn't work.
Also, this will help with asking questions because I always need to show examples.

This belongs to meta  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75491/how-to-upload-an-image-to-a-post

Depending on your browser pasting an image from clipboard doesn't work (Ctrl-V) In this case you need to store the image as a file and upload it.

I got an error: 'For security reasons, framing is not allowed; click OK to remove the frames.'

LICEcap does not have this issue

If your gif is under 2MB (IIRC), you can upload it the normal way when asking or answering a question, by clicking on the image icon, drag and drop, or by pressing CtrlG.
Due to link rot hosting images on external sites is no longer recommended on Blender Stack exchange.
See the section about reducing Gif sizes on tips to get your captures under 2Mb so they can be hosted on i.stack.imgur.

If it's larger, then you will need to use another hosting service, e.g. [gfycat][1] (it's free, no registration required, and the images stay around "forever").
Once you have uploaded your image to gfycat (or the host of your choosing), get the link to it. If you are using gfycat, press the link icon and copy the url for "gif":

Then add it to your post with the following markdown:
![image description](http://giant.gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth.gif)

where http://giant.gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth.gif is the link to your gif, and image description is a description (alt text) of your gif.
Since gfycat encodes your gif as a video as well, I also like to include a link to the html 5 version. You can make it so the gif is in the link, so that clicking on the image will go to the gfycat page with the html5 video of your gif.
To do this, simply wrap the image link in another link:
[![a bunch of bouncing spheres](http://giant.gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth.gif)](http://gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth)

When rendered, it looks like this:
a bunch of bouncing spheres http://giant.gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth.gif

For more information, see the markdown formatting guides.

Doesn't work anymore

@Dr.jacky It seems gfycat doesn't give out links to actual gif files anymore, but you can still get a gif by appending .gif to the url manually. It does seem to watermark it, however.

For me, this worked: [<img src="https://i.imgur.com/qNuuNEP.gif" title="Click to enlarge.">](https://i.imgur.com/qNuuNEP.gif). I uploaded directly to imgur.com.


text:
Are we now stuck with the gif, post, and thread tags?
Recently this question was migrated from the main site.
The OP created the gif, post, and thread tags when originally posting the question, which were then removed by the migration process.
The tags still exist, and are in the prompt:

Since there is no way to edit the original post on the main site and remove the tags, are we now stuck with the gif, post, and thread tags?

I've deleted the original question from the main site (something that the community and moderators could also have done).
The post would have gotten deleted automatically anyway, but this just speeds things along.
Since there are no existing posts with these tags on the site (as can be seen on their respective tag pages), the daily automated cleanup job will remove these tags.

Thanks! I tried to find the original post, but always ended up on meta.. How does one go about finding originals of migrated posts (to cast delete votes etc.)?

The migration target will have a notification box with a link to the original - "migrated from <site> <date time>". Where <site> is a link to the original. See this screenshot.

@gandalf3 I was thinking about this same thing, read about it and was prepared to wait the 30 days for the system to delete the question. Thank you both.

Another option is simply to retag the original with some tags that you do want to keep on the sites... @gandalf3


text:
Should we have a few questions on resources for use with Blender?
I suggest that we allow one question on each of the following resource types (list is incomplete) to create a list of resources:
As in this post Blender resources for architects?
The questions should be marked as community wiki.

Addons
Background Images
Blueprints
External Tools
HDR environment maps
Materials Any good free materials libraries online?
Models
Sounds
Special Interest (Blender resources for architects?)
Themes
Textures

If these questions would be tagged as resource they could be easily found. I'm aware that we already have this post Beginner's Reference where we collect some resources but it isn't available in the main site and unlikely to be found by many users.
If we decide that this types of borderline post are useful, how could we avoid that users close the question as off-topic?

Once we decide how this will work, iKlsR or some other mod can probably keep the post open (and we can direct close voters to the discussion).

Related: Are questions about external tutorial/resources on topic?

@gandalf3 You also marked this as accepted but voted to close http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/13494/are-there-some-free-sound-resources-for-use-in-blender . btw I wasn't able to find http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5593/any-good-free-materials-libraries-online therefore an extra tag wold be nice.

I close voted because it wasn't CW.

I think you'd be much better off having a single question on resources, and using an answer per type. You could even use the list you made in your question as an index in the question itself, such as what I did for the Mandarin Chinese Resources question.

I am one for this method as well.

This sounds good to me, as long as we decide what these should be beforehand.
We've already had a good number of these kinds of questions:

Resource for Blender addons?
non-video blender resources?
Blender resources for architects?
Any good free materials libraries online?
Where are some places to get reference images for modeling?

I'm not quite sure about how to pick the topics though. Your list seems fine to me, but IMO we should have some defined way to decide when a topic deserves a canonical post.
For the GPU post, we decided it deserved one because we were getting lots of questions asking about enabling GPU rendering.
However we don't seem to get many users asking about resources (which is good, because they wouldn't be considered good, on-topic questions), but it makes it hard to say which topics would be the most useful.

what do you think about the extra 'resources' tag?

@stacker It sounds useful to me, but I'm hoping some other users will see this and weigh in before we do anything. (only 10 views so far :/)

@gandalf3 I would add it now and see if anyone uses/misuses it, and based on that, I would keep it or remove it.

For lack of ability to comment (needs 50 rep), I'll leave my reply here. I hope I can comment on my own reply as I guess even on meta, somebody may think I'm abusing the reply field.
In short, I think the answer is yes, it's okay to have such questions, although I think it goes against a rule that seems common to SO style Q&As, where basically they seem to disagree about having open ended questions that promote debate.
(I personally disagree with this notion - I think that trying to channel such questions would be a lot better than censoring for fear of 'endless debate').
I have concerns...
"If these questions would be tagged as resource they could be easily found"
Really? Is it what people would search for when looking for "resources"? The word "resources"? Wouldn't they just google "blender materials", "blender addons" (and so forth?)
"as long as we decide what these should be beforehand".
Why? I think people increasingly preempt how Q&As should work, where (asymptotically) moderators are trying to turn user question sites back into glorified Q&A sections.
Not meaning to be annoying (I do hope my feedback can be constructive), what I mean by this is that, preempting what questions should be allowed may help avoiding duplicates, but I think there is an organic element to this: duplicates appear because different people address the same question from a different angle.
So I'm wondering, exactly how is it helpful to control what questions are being asked? As I'm not a moderator, I guess there is something I'm missing. Can somebody shed light on this point?

As a 14 year long blender user, I find it ridiculous to be unable to comment for lack of rep. I guess it's just a matter of time but... I actually purchased Blender once upon a time, never mind giving back to the community by blogging helpful advice in several places. All that to bump into Q&A rules all the time. Am I being sour? I guess. Anyway in the meantime I hope somebody will find the above reply constructive.

Wow, 14 years is a long time. congratulations on your accomplishment :) And thanks for your reply. By "decide what these should be before hand", I was suggesting that we should decide on a list of topics based on some criteria (what people are asking, a community vote, etc.), and not just post "resource questions" all over the place. As for the 50 rep limit, see http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53647/50-reputation-for-making-comments-is-too-high. Not that your answer would fit in a comment anyway, imo it's fine as a meta answer..

I submit for consideration two proposals for the list of Blender resources. First, besides being tagged as resource, they should also have a difficulty tag, new to blender, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Second, include published tutorial works, including Blenderart magazine, and the printed on using Blender by Ben Simonds, John Blain, Tony Mullen, Roland Hess, and any others.


text:
Why do you need less rep to review an edit then to bypass the review for your edit?
Here is an example: Why do you need 4000 rep to bypass the review for a tag wiki edit, but only 1500 rep to review other edits?


text:
Add: No hardware questions to help center
Hardware question are generally not well received here on blender stack exchange despite that, I see a lot of people asking them. Almost all of those people are new users, that discovery has lead my to believe that these new users don't know that they are forbidden.
Now if they were to read the help center carefully, and consider whether their question fits they would see it breaks the rules, but sadly most don't. Is it possible then for someone add more information pertaining to this issue to the help center article on asking questions?

Good idea! I agree, the sooner can we update our FAQ/how to ask pages, the better. Are they mostly still at the defaults? I didn't see much content specific to blender.se last time I read through them..

@gandalf3 So how do we go about doing that...?

@GiantCowFilms Post it on meta and wait for a mod to get around to it if there is no objection or if the community is in favour ;). Consider it added to my todo list. The help center is in need of an update.

@iKlsR Wouldn't it be possible to use the flag tool, so a mod sees it?

@someonewithpc These come to our inbox automagically.

It has been added at https://blender.stackexchange.com/tour and there are links to what the community deems off-topic at https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic.


text:
Is the question answered?
In one of my questions ( Get list of operators in a menu layout ) the answer offered is "so far, you can't, here is a workaround" which is not a very safe option... Should I mark the question as answered or wait for a better (in a future version?) answer, and leave the question open ?
What is the rule in this kind of cases ?

Now you have decide whether or not to mark this question as answered.

From the Help Center :

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


text:
Are licensing questions off-topic?
There have been a couple questions asked about licensing, with mixed responses (some were  closed, others were answered).
Examples:

Blender use as world editor, level editor..etc, License problem?
Must I add a license block to all files in a multi file addon?
Can I use images rendered with blender for commercial use?

Are these off-topic or not?
If not, should we resurrect the license tag?

This meta post details why having people give legal advice online is a really really bad idea.http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25363/is-there-a-stack-exchange-site-for-law-questions-if-not-why-not

Yes, they are, due to the legal risk they can pose to both the Stack Exchange Network,and the community members. There is a reason why legal consultants get paid as much as they do, they cant afford to make errors.

There's now a law.stackexchange and an opensource.stackexchange which appear to deal with these kinds of questions. Perhaps we can send them there


text:
Would I be allowed to give Bitcoin tips for answers?
Often times I'm really impressed by the quality and detail of answers given. I'd love to show my appreciation in the form of a tip, either directly to someone's Bitcoin address or via something like changetip: https://www.changetip.com/how-to-send-tips/
Changetip already works on quite a few sites including Github, Reddit, Twitter, and Youtube.

You could ask them in the chat for an address

Many people don't hang around or are even aware of chat. Does stackexchange even have a private message system? Can't seem to find it on profile pages.

there is no PM system but if you use @ username in the chat the user will get the message in there notifications bar

This is just a bit different than
Is it okay to ask for money donations in an answer?
but not by much. There are a lot of intrinsic motivations for why people contribute their time and their knowledge to this site, but receiving payment or "tips" isn't one of them. While I appreciate the gesture, it really is not warranted or even particularly helpful to this site.
There's also the issue of user solicitations in general (which are not allowed). Asking people for contact information can get ugly fast. There's this whole realm of "I'll send you free stuff for your contact info" spam that would not be allowed on this site. So we just don't allow these types of solicitations at all.
So while I cannot control how you interact with user off this site, I do not think it's a good idea to encourage or allow users to solicit contact information for the purposes of payment or anything else.
Interesting question. Thank you for bringing up the issue.

Thanks for the detailed and clear reply. Still a bit surprised that GitHub, which I thought had a similar philosophy, does accept tips.

Would it be acceptable to provide links like these on our profiles?

@DantheMan Yes, we provide a lot of latitude for what people can put in the 'about me' section of their profiles (i.e. not patently offensive, abusive, hate speech, illegal, etc). So a bit of self promotion or contact information is perfectly acceptable in a profile; it's not part of the main Q&A. But that doesn't mean posts ending with "Go read my profile to tip me" are any less a solicitation.

The idea with ChangeTip is that you pay what you want if you like something or appreciate the answer.
It is not a way to ask for compensation. (or at-least should not be used as such)
If ChangeTip where supported, and anyone asks for a tip - then that would/should be grounds for a ban or similar action. But if I really like a answer, question or even a comment, it would be nice to express that with a small tip.


text:
What do we do with questions which don't have enough info?
Sometimes there are questions which don't quite have enough information to be certain what the full situation is.
For example:

Dynamic Paint Brush Erase doesn't work in Render Output
Cycles: No transparency in 3D View in material viewport shading mode

In these questions, it's pretty clear what the OP is asking, but the full story needed to precisely solve the issue is not as obvious (to me, at least..). By "full story", I mean knowing if specific settings are enabled/disabled, the state of various caches, what kind of hardware is used, etc. All the variables likely to affect the features the OP is using.
When the OP doesn't respond to requests for clarification, what do we do with these?
Should we close them? If so, what should the close reason say?

Put it on hold as "unclear what you're asking" and leave a comment requesting more information. If no information is added after 5 days, the question is closed.


text:
Duplicate answers
What is the etiquette on blender.stackexchange for answers on the same question saying essentially the same thing?
From meta.stackexchange:

We don't see that getting several answers to a question as a problem.
  Even if the answers are saying essentially the same thing, using
  different words - this means that there is a better chance of people
  understanding at least one of the answers.

The way I see it, this is lame reputation stealing.

How so? People can upvote as many answers on a question as they want -
  you are not limited to upvoting on one answer.

This suggests that duplicate answers are okay. But.
What if the second answer explains it differently, but in a less clear/detailed way? Should it still be kept around?
There have been cases where multiple users write almost the exact same answer within a couple of seconds of each other. If the answers are really similar, should the second be deleted?
I've noticed that for the most part users have deleted their duplicate answers, or they were deleted by the community. However, on SO this kind of duplication seems more commonplace.
Could this be why our answer ratio is doing so poorly?
On the other hand, if duplicate answers are a bad thing, is it good to have redundant and potentially lower quality answers lying around for the sake of a statistic?
Here are some examples (you'll need to have enough rep to view deleted posts):

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/14271/599
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/14159/599
https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/14243/599

It's a bit hard to find example answers, as most are deleted..

Somewhat offtopic - "Duplicate answers" Could also refer to two different questions with the same answer. For example, "What is this view? Screenshot of wireframe mode" and "How do I delete all selected vertices in a model" would have the same answer, but be completely different questions.

@Joehot200 Well, I'm not sure about that particular example, but these are covered in this post.

Whether or not you find an already existing answer for a question on stackexchange strongly depends on which keywords (or tags) you use to search.
More answers on a questions improve the visibility of a solutions due to different wording. This is also encouraged by the Answer Ratio 'performance indicator' which is currently 1.5 and should be at least 2.5
The best answer is usually voted to the top. IMHO we shouldn't delete dups this would worsen the answer ratio and searchability. Once the answer ratio is above 3 we could consider this again

A note on this: if someone else has already posted a correct/good enough answer, instead of posting your own better one, Improve theirs.

I would say only do this if your ideas are very much aligned with their answer and relatively little improvement is needed. They may not take kindly to having their answer hijacked.

@gandalf3 A note on the note on this: Ask them if they'd like the improvement in the comments. Be-aware that posting a nearly duplicate but slightly better answer after the effect is equally if not more annoying then someone improving your answer. Besides, someone can always roll back edits.


text:
Are negative answers acceptable?
There are many, many unanswered questions asking if features exist or if certain behaviors are possible.
For cases where features don't (yet) exist, but have plans to add them or such promising information, I'll add a comment. If there is a working patch or some way to get the desired behavior/result, I'll add an answer.
However, if there are no plans (that I know about) to add such features, I just leave it.
It seems to me that most other users are doing pretty much the same things.
Since having a lot of unanswered questions is not good for our stats, should we start answering these questions with "no, xy isn't possible atm"? Or will this not really help as such answers don't seem likely to be upvoted or accepted?
How should we handle these questions?

Related, http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/177/12

Yes, negative answers are good, often users are unsure if some feature exists for their workflow. And if there is no way to accomplish the tasks its best to say so, And possibly suggest workarounds if they exist.
It's useful to know the limitation of technologies you use as well as the features.

In my own experience asking questions, I've noticed people often attempt to answer questions which solutions you wouldn't realistically use, personally I would rather a straight answer if something isn't supported.

That is it exactly. +1


text:
What are the policies for accepting meta answers?
I've been asking some meta questions lately, but I'm not sure when a meta answer should be accepted.
Since the decisions made in these posts affect the entire site, it doesn't really feel right for me, the OP, to pick which answer should be accepted.
Even if there is an answer which I personally agree with, should I wait until the question has a decent number of views? (if so, what qualifies as a "decent number"?)
Are there any existing policies around this?

There is no "policy", per se. Accepting an answer is a completely voluntary and optional activity and it may not apply to all situations.
The 'accepted answer' isn't really intended for one user to select which answer is "correct"; the purpose of the 'accepted answer' is to indicate which post you found most helpful, personally. If the original premise of your post doesn't really fit the 'accepted answer' model, I would simply ignore it. No need to force it into a use case that doesn't fit.

With that in mind, I'll now accept this answer (even though this post only has 6 views) ;)


text:
What to do with questions which have been answered in comments?
I occasionally see questions which have been answered in the comments, but the poster has not responded to requests to post an answer, or only has a partial answer.
For example:

Problem rendering a video (Cycles / Node Editor / VSE)
Indirect lighting casting "shadows" where it should not

Is it okay to post their answer (with credit and CW) as was done here?

I would try to notify the user first to give them the opportunity to answer the post and get the reputation. If they don't respond in a few days then answer it.  Hehe. What now?

@VinceScalia huh?

I was just messing around because the answer was in a comment. Joke on nature of question.

I would try to notify the user first to give them the opportunity to answer the post and get the reputation. If they don't respond in a few days then answer it.

I agree with this.

How do we notify a user? I don't know of any way to PM a user on StackExchange.

@Mentalist @ ping them in the commets. You can also look in chat

Perhaps somewhere inbetween the existing answers.

If the post is older and hasn't seen activity in a while (e.g. a day or two), then leave a comment to see if the user still wants to write their own answer before answering yourself.
If the post is new or has activity, then go ahead and answer :)

The user already had the opportunity to answer the question when he posted the comment, but decided for some reason not to do so. I don't get the point of 'locking' a question by posting a comment.
When the comment was too short or incomplete as an answer, it would motivate other users to write a better answer. This would help to improve the answer rate currently (1.4 of 2.5 required to leave beta). Therefore I would vote

I don't think those stats are strict requirements per se, more like guidelines to let us know how we are doing. It's not necessarily true that users who comment have an opportunity to answer. I sometimes don't have time to do an in-depth answer right away, and instead leave a short comment trying to point the OP in the right direction, intending to come back later and write a proper answer. Sometimes another user writes an answer more or less using the same techniques I was going to use before I come back and I feel kinda cheated, though it's not really their fault (they might not have even

read my comment). They also probably helped the OP by providing an answer sooner. Maybe this is just silly and we all ought to answer anyway, and similar answers are okay (to the point of being nearly identical in terms of techniques used)?

@gandalf3 your answers are mostly outstanding, even if someone else answers first by extending on a comment, you add more references and background information so that your answer is voted to the top. http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/19198/where-are-my-screencast-keys e.g. had no hint that you're intending to provide an answer (like: will answer later). I thought that at least a link should be provided.

I literally had 0 time when that question popped up, but I decided to hastily type out a quick comment before going. I honestly thought someone else would answer by the time I was back, and I would also feel very strange trying to "reserve" an answer.. It doesn't seem fair or polite to other users either..

I'm perhaps biased by the behaviour on stackoverflow, a well asked beginner question is likely to get up to 5 answers in a few minutes, after that it is burned and gets no more attention. Therefore I don't agree with the 'few days' in the accepted post. (IMHO one hour should be enough).

Things don't move quite so quickly here as on SO. We have fewer users and they are not around all of the time. That said, multiple days does seem a bit extreme, I have been waiting 24 hours in such cases. BTW, I think this only really applies to duplicate answers. In case you are thinking of your recent answer on the screencast keys question, I think that's perfectly fine.


text:
People "editing" post without actually changing anything
The other day, a saw a user edit 27 post, in like 30 min, and it seems (haven't checked them all, but a couple of them confirmed this); Also today, he did this to one of my posts.
It seems hes just farming reputation, which I don't think is allowed.
So, what can I do people "editing" post without actually changing anything?

Yes that was me (I think). I can assure you that I am not reputation farming, or just editing every question for no reason.
I do a lot of retags, editing questions just to keep the tags clean. So it can look like I'm not editing the question, and in some cases I'm not changing any of the text in the question, just the tags.
About getting reputation:
Any user with over 1000 reputation does not get any reputation for editing questions. If a user has less then 1000 reputation then (as gandal3 mentioned) the edits go through a review process, and if they are useless then they would not be approved.
If you see some suspicious edits, ask a question in the chat, or here on the meta.

If the user is getting reputation, the edits would go through the review process and would be rejected if they are invalid.
I think the user in question is @David, who has the privilege to edit questions and answers without going through the review queue and won't gain rep from editing.
We discussed earlier in the chat about clarifying and separating the baking and texture-baking tags, so presumably this is what that was about.

Indee, but he didn't change anything, in most posts...

@someonewithpc I don't think you can save your edits if you don't edit anything. I think if you check the history you'll find they are all tag edits

Ok. But isn't this site for this kind of things? Just wanted to make sure.

@someonewithpc Which site? The main site? or meta? This is a fine meta question if that's what your asking..

@gandal3 Yes, the meta.

@someonewithpc See http://blender.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta for an overview.

Thanks, appreciated; BTW when it says bugs, is it bugs with the website, or with Blender itself(assuming it's the former).

Bugs with the website. Blender bugs should go on the tracker.

I knew about the tracker, but should I discuss the bugs here first, to see if they are indeed bugs and if more people are getting them, or should I post them directly in the tracker?

@someonewithpc I thought of that too, see  http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/2389/599. If it's not a bug, the worst that can happen is that the report will be closed.


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Tag cleaning discussions
How should we discuss and decide the scopes, synonyms, need for, lack of need, etc. of tags?
We have been discussing this mainly on the chat with whichever frequent users happen to be around, but would this be better done on meta?
This way old discussions would be easier to find for reference purposes, and current discussions are more likely to be seen by other users who may want to put a word in.
If we do decide to keep tag discussions to meta, should we have one big post which gets continually updated? Or separate posts for each discussion/tag?

We should be very careful when making a precedent for all future tag changes.
There have been lost of questions on the meta about tag changes, that have had no real consensus, and have gone nowhere. version tags, snapping tag, baking tag (which has sense been dealt with and questioned here)
I agree that a major tag changes, are better documented on the meta. However when I or others propose a tag change in the chat, it is talked about and dealt with right away. I'm hesitant to open up future tag discussions to such indecision as the old tag discussions have had here on the meta.
If the overall consensus is to move to the meta, I would suggest separate questions for each tag's major change. One massive question being edited and updated, is no better then having the discussion in the chat.

I agree with this. The community should get a say in any significant changes that occur, so anything relevant regarding tag changes proposed or discussed in chat should have an accompanying post here.

So just to be clear, as I understand it, the general idea is to discuss tag changes in chat, and then put a post on meta if it's a largish change?

@gandalf3 what you wrote sounds good to me.