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2019 Community Moderator Election
The 2019 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://blender.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.


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2019 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire
In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers.
Due to the submission count, we have selected all provided questions as well as our back up questions for a total of 8 questions.
As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes.Please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written, and also including a link to your answer on your nomination post.
Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.
Good luck to all of the candidates!
Oh, and when you've completed your answer, please provide a link to it after this blurb here, before that set of three dashes. Please leave the list of links in the order of submission.
To save scrolling here are links to the submissions from each candidate (in order of submission):

Duarte Ramos

Pierre Schiller

A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

If elected moderator, how much of a priority would you make it to regularly do reviews, to help solve the problem we currently have where there are several dozen posts in the close vote review queue at any given time?

How much time can you dedicate to moderation tasks?

Rep, badges, flags, candidate score and the like are all measures of your familiarity with BSE. How familiar do you consider yourself with the SE system?

How familiar are you with blender (2.8 and prior)?

Which Blender Open Movie is/was your favorite, and why?

Could you add either iKlsR's question or the #2 question from the alternate list? See the discussion from our chat. That question is one that we really did want included (just not both).

Fixed it, @David. I just didn't include iKlsR's question 'cause it's deleted! :)

Duarte Ramos

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

A moderator's work is to help run a site smoothly by dealing with any exceptional issues not dealt by the network's "self regulating" system. It should cover general housekeeping like dealing with review queues and guiding new users, but also dealing with misconduct and improper use of the site.
Intervention should be minimal, and ideally invisible to most users, but whenever required further actions should be firm and fair.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Users who provide answers are invaluable and an essential asset for the network where the needy far outweigh those knowledgeable and willing help. If those answers are of high quality even more so.
The point being that I believe despite the trouble caused, users providing good answers are probably still worth the minor trouble they may stir up.
This of course does not mean inciting or rebellious behavior should be condoned. Bringing it up in private would probably be the advised course of action; I'd try to talk him into improve his behavior in a tone that would avoid driving the user away.
If the bad behavior persists; the moment the trouble caused outweighs the benefit of his answers, more severe actions should probably be taken. Discussing it with other moderators about possible course of action would be the next logical step.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I wouldn't generally question another moderator decision, or try to create any disagreement. If I felt very strongly against it I'd probably bring it up in private conversation at the chat and try to find out the reasoning for actions.
If different solution was found, actions would be taken to guarantee a fair outcome to the original posters.

If elected moderator, how much of a priority would you make it to regularly do reviews, to help solve the problem we currently have where there are several dozen posts in the close vote review queue at any given time?

I generally manage to find time in my day to clear my review queue at least once or twice a day, often more.
Most of my current time in the site is already spent on reviewing anyway, so I plan to at least keep my current rate, whenever time allows.

How much time can you dedicate to moderation tasks?

Hard to say in absolute terms, BSE tends to represent a resting time from work for me.
While I rarely spend extended periods visiting the site, I do like to make an occasional break, or sporadically give it a peek while waiting for a render.
I already spend a considerable time here, and the urge to come back spikes whenever I am away for to long, I don't see that changing any time soon.

Rep, badges, flags, candidate score and the like are all measures of your familiarity with BSE. How familiar do you consider yourself with the SE system?

Definitely not as familiar as the veteran users that have been around for far longer than I have, but familiar enough to know my way around in most day to day tasks.
I plan to keep improving my knowledge for the foreseeable future.

How familiar are you with Blender (2.8 and prior)?

I have first started learning Blender in the 2.48 days, mostly as a hobby/side interest, and have been using it on and off since then. I started using it professionally about the time 2.5 came out for sporadic side jobs. As it currently stands it quickly became my main work tool for the past four years, using it daily both as freelancer and at my current day job.
While I know Blender fairly well I don't usually work with animation or characters creation, so certain areas like sculpting, dope sheet, painting among others, are generally out of my deeper knowledge.
Other than that I generally take interest in areas I don't necessarily use professionally out of curiosity, and browsing BSE questions and answers has vastly expanded my horizons.
I also follow development closely, so I'm well aware of most planning, known roadmaps and upcoming features; and have occasionally lectured beginner workshops introducing new users to Blender.

Which Blender Open Movie is/was your favorite, and why?

I really enjoyed Agent 327 and Daily Dweebs, but Cosmos Laundromat remains my favorite so far.
I enjoyed the enigmatic story, the expressive characters and overall graphic quality. On the more technical side, hair simulations and particle system simulations caught my eye for the particularly high quality.

Pierre Schiller

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Guide new users through the site, it´s functions. Also to calibrate the quality of the case (questions) presented in such manner that everyone will understand the question in term correctly. A moderator should build (emphasize) team collaboration, team reviews and collective talents to present solutions in a consistent basis.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I will first direct him/her to the StackExchange general guides about the issues, and how convenient it is to make "brief answers with solid points". If the user repeats this behavior, I´ll try to see what is it that he/she is really trying to communicate. On a third (and last) opportunity I´ll strickly signal him to follow a specific order in arranging his answer/thoughts that will conform to the site´s guidelines.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Experienced mods are qualified to do that because they know the community. I´d simply ask if there´s a new opportunity to open the question on another (similar) thread. Or to keep it simple: I´d try to open it to offer the answer (to the best of my experience) and then wait for a period of 24 hours to see the reaction to the answer given. If there´s no interest from the community: I´d close it again.

If elected moderator, how much of a priority would you make it to regularly do reviews, to help solve the problem we currently have where there are several dozen posts in the close vote review queue at any given time?

I generally organize my time into a space of 1 or 2 hours at the end of my day (when all general inquiries are done commenting/voting) to help review them every day. At most: skipping one day.

How much time can you dedicate to moderation tasks?

1 or 2 hours

Rep, badges, flags, candidate score and the like are all measures of your familiarity with BSE. How familiar do you consider yourself with the SE system?

I will study it deeper in case I result elected. In general, yes: I'd say I know them.

How familiar are you with blender (2.8 and prior)?

I´m am a Blender Foundation Certified Trainer. I applied because I come from a large experience background in the 3D industry producing commercial advertisement, vfx for movies, interactive applications and videogames. I started on Blender 2.78 which is the version of Blender NextGen movie was created in. I also created a training course to change Blender's UI with code to customize Blender 2.79 (python). I am familiarized with all areas in Blender (sculpting, nla, uv, shading, compositing...etc) that I often receive a lot of questions from other 3D artists using other application to make the switch to Blender 2.8 - I´m also subscribed on the most influential sites from the developers to keep up the news.

Which Blender Open Movie is/was your favorite, and why?

Yeah, has to be open movie: SPRING. Otherwise NextGen all the way.
Spring is my favorite because of the animation (tools presented on 2.8, finally getting some love and attention specially the NLA), because of the VDB volumetrics (lovely clouds), and I guess the characters: Who doesn´t love a dog like that? Spring as a character was well designed. Mark my words, that movie is going to earn a LOT of festival awards. Spring also represents a lot of integration on industry standards (i.e: materials and workflows). Story-wise: it´s the most solid and compelling one.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Tag creation suggestion
I'd like to ask a question about teaching Blender but can't find a suitable tag. Could we have something like learning, training, or any other that would seem relevant to the tag creator (I don't have that privilege).
[Edit]
So if answers must absolutely be objective, I see how this could be a problem. I'm seeking help on how to teach Blender (namely I have a one-day course to prepare and I'd like to seek the community's help on what's the most important part to teach) and there may not be one right answer to that question. I figured tutorial makers would be interested in asking advice on methods, content, etc.
In any case thank you for considering my request.

What's an example question you would ask? Also what kind of response would you expect? Be as specific and thorough as possible and feel free to edit your original post.

Such a tag would be too general since in a sense every post and answer combination is basically teaching Blender. I know that's not exactly the same but we do have a scope and try to stick to that. Also any such question would probably be deemed open ended and subject to opinion. https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask.
I would instead recommend breaking down your question into an actual subject matter then take what you will from that and apply it in whatever way you want after. For example if you want to say teach about modifiers, form a question around that.
Don't treat this answer as law however. I don't quite know the nature of your intentions so leaving a catch-all as to what it reads like and if you disagree a discussion can ensue.

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


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Could we brush up the Help Center, please?
As I said before, some (many) points in the Help Center are quite vague and were probably written for Stack Exchange in general.
With all the new users pouring in due to Blender 2.80 Beta and the imminent release of the first RC, it's getting quite tedious to repeat the same comments over and over and over again, so I'd like to propose a little brush-up of the Help Center's most important points.

How do I ask a good question?
(in addition to the already existing points)
Give us something to work with. One sentence makes rarely a good question.
Blender is a complex software with many different options and it can be used for many different tasks. In order to give a good answer, we need to have as much information as possible.

Tell us about the purpose of your model. Creating a Model for render purpose is quite different from creating a model for rendering, animation, 3D printing or creating assets for a 3D game.
Show, and tell. Add meaningful images to your question, so we can see what you see. Think about which mode (Edit, Object, Render,...) could be possibly useful to underline the main points of your question. Please host your images only on imgur by using the provided tools and not anywhere else. Your questions and our answers might become useless, once the link to the image breaks.
Sometimes screenshots don't tell the full story. If you want to upload files for us to check, please use blend-exchange (30 MB max.) and not dropbox or other random file sharing sites. Your questions and our answers might become useless, once the link to the file breaks.
  If your file exceeds the file size limit, please try to reduce the size.
If you have problems running Blender on your computer, we need to know as much as possible about your system.

Computer or Laptop?
How much RAM do you have?
Exact model of your graphics card?
Your GPU driver version?
Which operating system do you use?
Which Blender version do you use?

Leave out unnecessary text (especially any form of internet slang like lol, idk, jk and so on, but also "Please help", "Thanks in advance", "sorry for my English"...) or other unnecessary information. We don't see Memes, Pokémon, Minecraft, FNAF, Roblox or Anime characters, we see scene setups, models, materials and topology.
Try to ask coherently without repeating yourself. Also, "I tried everything" is not specific enough. Instead, write down exactly what you have tried so far.
Please try to write your question as if you would write an essay and not a post on social media or any random forum. Blender StackExchange is neither the first nor is it the second. It's a Q&A site. If you put effort into your question, people are more likely putting effort into their answers.
Making use of the built-in tools creates structure. Paragraphs and punctuation create basic structure, headlines, numbered or bulleted lists help drastically to improve step-by-step guides.
Don't use the comments to expand your question. Instead, use the edit link below your question and add the information right where it belongs.
Don't write link-only questions. Leaving Blender StackExchange and reading an extensive document or watching a video for 10 minutes is time-consuming. If you need further explanation to a specific video, please use timestamps. Besides, links can go down, web pages, documents and videos might vanish over time. In all cases, your question and possible answers might be useless, if this happens. Instead, try to explain to your best effort, what you want to do.

How do I write a good answer?
(in addition to the already existing points)
Answer well-asked questions...

...are already flagged as duplicate or off-topic.
Show, and tell. Add meaningful images to your answer, so people can see what you see. Please host your images only on imgur by using the provided tools and not anywhere else. Your answers might become useless, once the link to the image breaks.
A single sentence rarely makes a good answer. Even if the immediate problem would be solved by just a single sentence, try to explain what exactly went wrong and how to avoid the problem in the future.
Making use of the built-in tools creates structure. Paragraphs and punctuation create basic structure, headlines, numbered or bulleted lists help drastically to improve step-by-step guides.
Don't write link-only answers. Links can go down, web pages, documents and videos might vanish over time. In all cases, your answers might be useless, if this happens. Instead, try to explain to your best effort, what you found in those external resources. (Good read: Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer? )

Of course this proposal is far from being complete. I am probably missing some points. But it would be a start.

The /how-to-ask help article is generic and can't be changed. Mods can change /on-topic though.

Good proposal, mostly agree. A few suggestions: "Show, don't tell" should be "Show, and tell", so we don't get the typical "How do I fix this" questions with a vague screenshot and no text. Those can't be searched for or indexed. To the extraneous text I'd also add the way too common "Please Help" and "Thanks in advance"

@Duarte - good point, needs to be changed. Thanks for the input

YES! the "help" pages have been sorely lacking for far too long.

So what should be the course of action for this? This seems like a really comprehensive and well written post, would be a shame if it went to waste. I didn't find a way to add new pages to help, did I miss something? Help Main page does have an edit button though, where you seem to be able to write some introductory text. Would you deem this "canonical enough" to be written in such prime space?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos - according to AndrewT. many of these pages cannot be changed, which is really quite an oversight, because not every site has the same requirements. I for my part have nothing against the Help Main page. Most new members won't read it anyway until we redirect them there. It would be great if a native speaker could take a look at it, though...

Yes, shame help center can't be more customized once size doesn't always fit all. Probably to avoid loss of main points or editing beyond recognition. It has my vote for going into the main page, lets see what others think. A proof read from a native speaker would be welcome indeed.

the "If you have problems running Blender on your computer" section shouldn't be there. Whenever someone posts a question where they dump their computer specs and say Blender isn't working, it is either too localized, or off topic because it is about hardware, or a bug. Extremely rarely are hardware-dependent questions good. (The whole point of a good question is to not only be useful to the person asking it, but to anyone who might have the same problem in the future. In a case where the OP dumps their hardware specs, It is unlikely that multiple people will have that identical setup.)

@X-27thefluffyunicorn - I agree on "hardware is OT", when it comes to recommendations and very specific topics like "Why won't my random graphics tablet work?". The initial question is "Why won't Blender start?" and that's not entirely a hardware question. What if it turns out that Windows 10's UAC is responsible for the problem? Combine that with the fact that many people try to use the Steam version of Blender, which tends to break easily. Where would you draw the line?

@X-27thefluffyunicorn - Besides - hardware configurations aren't really that unique (I have 25 years of experience in the IT industry, 10 of which I spent in hardware design), when it comes to Blender. It's almost always a problem with either the GPU (wrong OpenGL version), the driver (too old) or a dual GPU setup in a Laptop.

We have a couple "how to ask a good question" guides written here on meta. It'd be nice if they were better known and linked more often (instead of the un-editable help center page)

@metaphor_set Related: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2621/599

@gandalf3 - I agree with you on the point that there are already (partially) useful guides on meta, the only point is that many new people tend to ignore them even if we link them. Why? Because they are not "official". Recently I had two "discussions" with new users within two weeks and they all ended with "That's your opinion how things should run here". It's not only a trend on the internet, I experienced those things in the past IRL especially with young people and thankfully that part of my working life is over.

@metaphor_set Sorry, the notification slipped past me somehow.. Anyway, partly that's on us moderators to use "the diamond" to lend some official weight to our opinions as a site, but also I think presentation can help. I don't know what your discussions looked like, but I suspect more people are likely to heed the guides on meta when it's "Welcome to the site, here's a guide on the best ways to attract good answers" than something akin to "Please follow the rules". Don't get me wrong, I wish we could edit the "how to ask" page, but that's currently impossible.


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Compatibility Tag
I added the compatibility tag for "Blender's computer requirements".
There is a comment to close vote this question which states:

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about hardware.

But the tag states:

Questions about software, hardware and operating system compatibility with Blender.

Either doesn't make sense, can a mod please edit/remove the tag. Otherwise we should stop closing specifications question or make it clear in the help center.

The thing we are trying to avoid with hardware questions is "questions" which typically turn into long-winded discussions and don't end up with any real answer. The close reason at What should our custom off-topic close reasons be? elaborates a little bit:

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

I'd say it's okay for questions to pertain to hardware; our "hardware = off topic" policy originated more from a desire to have a more concrete definition for a class of questions which typically fell under either "too broad" or "opinion based" (e.g. most hardware recommendation questions) or "too localized" (e.g. extremely specific hardware problems). Somewhere in there there is a middle ground, and those questions do get asked and answered from time to time.
Since we've graduated and we don't have to care quite as much about closing everything that we can't answer right away, I'd say we don't need a hard and fast rule to close everything hardware or compatibility related as a matter of course anymore. Using "too broad"/"too localized", while more general and fuzzy, serves effectively the same purpose.

As for this question in particular, I'd guess it's in "too broad"/"opinion based" territory, but it's really unclear, so I took the liberty of closing it as such.

I didn't say that the intentions and reasoning aren't clear to me. I just meant that the restriction "off-topic because it is about the operating system, hardware, performance, or compatibility" and having a compatibility tag are counter-intuitive.

@Leander I didn't state it very clearly (will edit), but I'm proposing that we ditch the "no hardware/compatibility" thing (it never actually made it to an official close reason in the first place) and simply close based on too broad or too localized.

Sorry for the stupid question, but how do I close as too localized ? I get the too broad option in the closing dialog, but not too localized. Is an 'other' commented reason?

@Leander Close> Off-topic because...> This question is too localized because...

"Too-localized" close reason was replaced by other more specific close reasons since 2013, unless you're suggesting to use a custom close reason... //cc: @Leander


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2019 Moderator Election results (unofficial)
The official 2019 Community Moderator Election Results

Here is the result of running the ballot file in openSVT using the Meek SVT method:

Loading ballots from file blender-stackexchange-com-2019-election-results.blt.
  Ballot file contains 2 candidates and 185 ballots.
  No candidates have withdrawn.
  Ballot file contains 185 non-empty ballots.
Counting votes for Blender Stack Exchange Moderator Election 2019 using Meek STV.
  2 candidates running for 1 seat.
 R|Duarte Farrajo|Pierre Schille|Exhausted     |Surplus       |Threshold
  |ta Ramos      |r             |              |              |
=============================================================================
 1|    150.000000|     35.000000|      0.000000|     57.499999|     92.500001
  |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  | Count of first choices. Candidate Duarte Farrajota Ramos has reached the
  | threshold and is elected.

Winner is Duarte Farrajota Ramos.

Congratulations to Duarte Farrajota Ramos

And thanks to everyone who participated!

My apologies everyone. I've finally got back to my computer to post the official results. Thankfully, there's not much risk of a discrepancy. Your new moderator will be getting a diamond in a moment.

Possible duplicate of 2019 Community Moderator Election Results

Thanks to anyone who voted, I'll be around if you have any questions.


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2019 Community Moderator Election Results
Blender's second moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied and the new moderator is:

They'll be joining the existing crew shortly—please thank them for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes!
For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here, or view a summary report online.

Thanks to anyone who voted, I'll be around if you have any questions.

Congrats @DuarteFarajotaRamos

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Congratulations mate! It was just natural choice for the community ;)

Thanks for the support :)

Congrats and good luck @DuarteFarajotaRamos.

Congratulations and good luck!


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Change BSE's site description and intro section
BSE is the featured site today (yay!) That got me thinking about our site description. Why do we have the "Who use blender to create X"? Why do we care what people are creating? As long as there is a question about blender this is the site for you.
This is our current intro section (from the tour page):

Blender Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about blender.

I purpose we remove the "people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games." Not only is that unnecessary, it also is excluding a large amount of what people do with blender. But that is beside the point, there is no need to list out what you can use blender for.
How about something more along the lines of:

Blender Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who use Blender an open source full suite 3D content creation package. This site is built and run by you, the users, as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about blender.

The site description is shown on every question page for non-logged in users and used  in other places across the network, like the sites list shown below.

The sites list says:

Q&A for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games

"As long as there is a question about blender this is the site for you." I'm in favor of emphasizing that, as historically that's not really been true. Questions about developing blender, for example, were originally considered off topic. I think we decided to allow them a while ago, but so far not much has been asked, perhaps because we were pretty rigid about disallowing them early on.

How about:

Blender Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for everything Blender, the open source 3D and multimedia content creation package.

To include things that might not fall under "usage", like development.

Keep in mind that there are other users who don't deal with 3d content at all, like compositing and video editing, or 2d animation with the Grease Pencil

"3d and multimedia" content creation package?

@cegaton Good point, I like it. Added it in, thanks!

Blender Stack Exchange For users of Blender

Still thinking about the usage on the sites list, how about "... For users of the open source 3D creation suite Blender" (that is if they allow link like that.)

I mean we've gotten a handful of smoothie questions in the past but seems unlikely nowadays.

... sigh. That would be for users of Blenders. My point here is to keep it short and sweet. Change to for everything blender, for lovers of blender, for q & a ... Surely a question here requires some knowledge of what blender is.  If they don't know then why not point them to blender.org and let our creator (who looks like  Jeremy Clarkson lol) ..  and the team define what blender is rather than feeling the need to spin it here.


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Question(s) about asking Questions
I just need some clarification about links when we ask questions. Here is how I understand it at the moment.
1) We need to use 3rd party image websites such as Imgur.com to host pictures we need to use in our post.
2) However we can’t link to other websites such as Goodyear tires if I had a question how to do tread of a tire.
3) What if we need an image from a third party website to help explain a problem we’re having?
I hope that I have anything correct.
Thank you,

To clarify about the images. Yes they are hosted externally, however it is not the same as a 3rd part image site, like imgur. SE has an special agreement with imgur. All the images uploaded through the image tools in the editor (see Duarte's answer) are through this domain: https://i.stack.imgur.com/. All "normal" imgur uploads simply go through https://i.imgur.com/. Aside from the license differences, images through the SE channel will stick around forever*, there is no such guarantee for imgur images.
There should be zero externally hosted images. (That goes for images where you do not own the copyright, reupload it through SE, and give attribution with a link back to the original.) Here is one of my questions as an example.
For your Goodyear tires example, do something like this:

Image from Goodyear

Use the builtin tools to upload your image like you would a local one.
Just press the Image button from the toolbar, use the Paste link option and paste the URL of the desired image.

If that fails you may also download it locally, then upload using the Browse button.
Make sure you are not infringing any copyright. As a matter of courtesy you should probably mention the source of the image and paste a link to the original as a footer note

...which might not be the best idea, when it comes to copyrighted material. It seems, StackExchange goes completely "nastyass honeybadger don't care" about that, but that might change in the future. Article 13 and so on...


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How to mark question as solved?
they told me to mark the post as solved .. so i did that in the title.. seems not to be allowed.. but i asked and don't get an answer.. maybe help beginners by answering would be a nice feature. Can't finsd info on how to mark post as solved.
Thanks!

Welcome to Blender.SE. Read My question was answered. please. Be a little bit patient as well. Even on a comment user may take a day to reply. Not everyone can dedicate that much time to help others for free.

if you want a platform you need to help people to get started. For free for sure. But as you already have.. this might get lost.. sorry

sorry.. i don't understand.. blender.se blender .meta.. i think i just leave you all with this 'forum'. I find it really users unfriendly.. chaotic.. and hard to use.

@Tuur sure we may come off as "hard to use" "super picky" and lots of other names, but that is just us trying to keep the site in some fashion of order. See blender.meta.stackexchange.com is for question about https://blender.stackexchange.com (like your question here). https://blender.stackexchange.com (BSE for short) is the Q&A site for blender.

This is not a "forum", but a simple question and answers site. please take the [tour] to understand how the site work.

@Tuur It's a common misunderstanding, no worries. I hope you'll stick around, but if not, then that's okay too. Either way, good luck on your Blender endeavors :)

Thanks!... sorry.. i was a bit 'picky' myself i guess ... i'm back  then and will have a closer look to the 'rules' of usage of this site.

This is how you mark a question as solved.
From the help center's What should I do when someone answers my question? page:

Accept it. As the asker, you have a special privilege: you may accept the answer that you believe is the best solution to your problem.

Then on the What does it mean when an answer is "accepted"? page:

Acceptance is indicated by a colored checkmark next to the answer that has been accepted by the original author of the question.
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 them personally.

You will find the accept button on the left of answers to your questions below the voting buttons.


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Was Question posted?
I tried posting a question a few minutes ago. It seemed to take a long time to post and I did not see any confirmation it posted. How can I tell if my question was posted?

You can see all of your not deleted posts by visiting your profile and looking at either questions or answers. If you're looking for something recent, you can just view your activity page and sort the columns by "Newest".
Your most recent question was over a month ago, so it seems that the question you tried to post did not go through.


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Should I delete my question?
I posted this question:
Automatic Weights not recalculating after moving Bone
While I think it's a valid question, it is kind of a duplicate. I just realized that this behavior is happening because my vertex groups were locked on my mesh, which kept them from being updated.
As such, the question I link to in the post solves my problem. However, I still think it might be valuable knowledge to provide this information regarding unlocked vertex groups, especially since I think that the nature/function of Blender may draw its fair share of newbies like myself.

Unless the question is not valid, please don't delete your posts. Duplicates are valuable, they might help other users get to the information they need. Deleting a question will only make it harder for those who might have a similar issue.
Deleting a post will also make answers inaccessible. As a sign of gratitude and respect to those users who tried to help you (given the time they spent researching, writing, creating images, projects or links), consider leaving their answers up, don't let their efforts go to waste. Keep in mind that all contributors to this site are volunteering their time and sharing what they've learnt.
Additionally, if you found a solution to your own question, even if it is a mix of the content of other posts, please write up an answer. Others might benefit from your experience.

However, I still think it might be valuable knowledge to provide this information regarding unlocked vertex groups

That's merit enough to keep it. I'd also suggest linking to any similar posts you chanced across since you feel it's a dupe of sorts. If it is an exact duplicate of an existing post it can be marked as such.


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A meta dissertation on Conduct with new users
I came across this post yesterday and it bothered me enough to bring this to meta.

First take a look at how the question looked originally. Granted it was a lousy question. There were many problems with it: useless title, unclear, and multiple questions.
moonboots pointed out that is was unclear, and suggested more pictures.
Ray Mairlot pointed out that we only want one question per post.
Then it got DVed (not too surprising).
When the actions taken on this post are listed out and looked at it seams perfectly normal, but yet this user deleted his or her account just hours after creating it and posting their first question (and they will likely never see the answer).
Why did this happen? How can we do better?
When I read that question I saw a brand new blender user who knew nearly nothing. They did not need their question answered, they needed to know enough to know why they should not even need to do that. I perceived that even though they had a numbered list, there two questions really could be answered together.
Further at this level of beginnerness, how can we expect clear questions. It always is going to take some amount to decipher what the beginner really wants to do (XY problem).
Yes we need to keeps the site standards up. Yes we need clear questions. Yes there should only be one question per post. However, from the outcome of this question, what played out obviously was not quite the right approach.
Think back to when you were just starting out with blender, you probably felt overwhelmed, and daunted. (You might of gotten a mini dose of that when you opened up 2.8 for the first time.) At that stage none of us want "stupid elitist rules" pushed, WE JUST WANT AN ANSWER. That is the disconnect. It is between (some) new users and the curators of BSE.

I feel that some of us (myself included) have fallen into a warden roll. We know how this site works, and efficiently act on anything that falls outside of the target.

war·den
noun: warden; plural noun: wardens
a person responsible for the supervision of a particular place or thing or for ensuring that regulations associated with it are obeyed.

We need to step away from that mindset and become more of an usher.

ush·er
verb: usher

show or guide (someone) somewhere.
cause or mark the start of something new.

Definitions from google
I really like the second definition of usher "the start of something new." When we help a new user we are starting his or her journey with blender.
However when a new user gets frustrated and quits, we might be ending their journey.

In the example question if you know the answer, answer the question (even knowing the problems with the post). But also leave those comments saying that you should only have one question per post. Or editing to give it a better title.
A new user like this is new to blender and BSE. Answering the question teaches them blender, comments and interaction teaches them BSE. Ideally the two should not be exclusive, nor should one be more important then the other.
Saying all that I'm not at all suggesting that we abandon all our "rules" just because someone has a stupid shiny "New Contributor" indicator under their name. We expect new users to learn the ways of BSE the same as we had to learn the ways of the road to get a license.
Ever hover over that new contributor indicator? It says something like:

UserX is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.

OK so answering should be no different, but asking for clarification and commenting. There in lies some wisdom.

TLDR
Give them (new users) a tad bit of grace. Help them along, be a usher not a warden.

Just to clarify I am not finding fault with the actions of any of the users named here. Some of the answers seem to interpret this post as if I had an issue with Ray Mairlot's comment. That is simply not the case. Terseness does not equate with unfriendliness. This post was written because I really do not know what to do. There were no problems with the interactions between that new user. Yet that user "rage quit". That is the crux of my question. What can we do? What should we do?

While I don't disagree in general, that "new contributor indicator" was something that always surprised me. New users aren't the only ones which should get their questions carefully clarified and answered; every user wants that and has right to achieve. However amount of questions is that big that clarification etc is asked as a short line without certain politeness. That said I don't see any confusing points made in comments; rules exist and are popping up everywhere in the guide when asking

I revisited some of my first posts on blenderartists. They weren't very good and simply got no response. I would have appreciated any kind of negative response (helping me to improve it). In Duarte's answer he states that the power users/mods are tired of seeing the same problems over and over again. I presume they often (not always obv) make the choice of giving a warden response (your examples) or none. Forbid them from being a warden and you may get less responses. Can you adress this issue in your question/answer?

Ray Marlot's comment qualifies as an usher comment to me as well, btw. Users quitting doesn't have to do with being unwelcome. I try to keep my comments constructive and friendly, but don't post a lot as a result.

After finding out that questions with no engagement get deleted automatically after 9 days I no longer have a strong opinion on the matter.

@Leander On the meta! (the "help center" has a reputation for being kind of unhelpful in some places), however pretty much everything can be found on the meta.

Well, the user did not quit because of nothing. He expected something else from the site and when he didn't get it and realized the site doesn't work that way he gave up. Probably expected personalized help without any effort. The solution may be better communicate what the site is to filter these users from the start. Imho there is no solution to keep them on the site, because there are currently not enough people to consistently "help them along".

I agree with @JaroslavJerrynoNovotny, Nothing to do about "rage quitting" in my opinion, it is part self-cleansing. As an active user you will ruffle some feathers sometimes, but I've also gotten plenty of comments thanking for the guidance, using the same "canned" responses. What gives? Human behavior is beyond the scope of this pages. I do agree that keeping things civil and keeping the site organized should be an ongoing effort, and users should be aware that is a touchy subject. Online communities are prone to have the same issues as society at large, no magic wand will work for all.

< sarcasm>
You must be new to this site.
While answering your own questions is perfectly valid and totally encouraged, please do so using the answer section.
< /sarcasm>
Nice post, joking aside I feel you have already self-answered this quite well in your own question.
At some point I started following a tip someone casually gave (I can't remember who but probably one of the mods or at least one of the veteran users here) which is Don't immediately downvote newcomer questions unless it is something egregious, rude, or spam.
It applies more generally to being more welcoming to new users. More often than not it looks aggressive and unhelpful, and at worse it just scares new users away and discourages improvement leading to abandoned questions.
As to the why, I guess we fall on the usual culprit: Frequent users just get tired of seeing the same mistakes and (understandable) beginner behavior, leading to frustration and more "aggressive" responses.
I don't really have a solution for that, I frequently struggle with it myself. The only half-measure I managed to develop is to not address those posts if I sense I'm in a bad mood, otherwise I'll probably lash out, downvote, post moody comments, or behave in a less conducive way.
I'll just wait it out, and "work in the shadows", by editing the question, linking to possible dupes, or pointing to the offended rules.
If behavior persists or the question isn't improved in a timely fashion, then "the system" will take care of it, or just fall through the cracks into oblivion.

What you are asking for is a double edged sword. You are basically asking to babysit new users, which takes more energy from the curators of the site. Not every curator has that or is willing to do that long-term. This might drive curators off the site (which is happening). You might get more new users reach their solution, but also drive other users off the site. The goal is to have database of well written questions relatable to everyone, it is not helpdesk service.
The beauty of how SE works is it regulates itself, there is no need to govern the user-base how to behave, because everything is voluntary and community driven. There will be curators more nice than others, some will do the ushering, some will warden. You get a Gauss distribution and the site will behave where the majority lies. Artificially changing their nature will make curators uncomfortable.
Asking RayMairlot to silence himself and not point out there are problems with the question is as problematic as asking the user himself to formulate a better question.
My policy is usually to be silent if I don't have much nice to add and I downvote the worst of the cases only. But is this really the correct action? There aren't enough ushers on this site to babysit these questions and if ignored these become dead weight to the site. Mostly unsolved, uncurated. Restrain in fear of the fragile user quitting just makes the site more polluted.
Solution: If the problem is you thought you could have answered that question, but the majority voted it was bad, was closed and the user quit and won't fix it, you can add that question to the site yourself. You can take the idea, improve it, make it applicable to larger audience and post that question and answer it. For the site it's not important which user adds it. By thinking about how you would word it so it's more useful to all users and if there isn't already question fulfilling the same task you might find out the question was rightfully closed or redirected to a dupe.
Generally if the feedback is polite and constructive, I have no problem of it being voiced. If there are snowflake users that will rather quit than have their problem solved and won't help the helpers with the question reciprocally, their problem is probably not that important to them. They need to be guided and nurtured to fit the site, and the reality is there are not enough good samaritans to do that. I believe these are mostly kids and when they grow up they will see past the negative experience they once had, will realize they will have different experience now and will return to the site prepared to fit much better, treating it less as a helpdesk entitled to getting solution for free.

I agree with everything you just said however, I would add that we should probably answer the question with an ending like "also, could you please ask only one question" etc. I know from personal experience that people on BSE can be unduly harsh. BSE is here for a reason-to help people with blender! And we don't want to act rudely if we want to be heard or payed attention to. We can't  expect everyone to be as far along in blender as us.


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Questions that just get Closed
I find it common that people ask for ideas for their project.  If they ask it on Blender.stackexchange, they get closed for being "to broad" or "off topic".  Then there are times when people ask for help, say, for a project.  They want a modeler, or an animator, to help them with their project.  These questions also get closed.  It's understandable why, but is there a place where we can get these questions answered?
Is there a separate place on stackexchange that allows users to ask so-called "off topic" questions?  It would be nice to be able to get ideas or help from people off of stack exchange, without having to find another site.
Thankyou

Ideas, suggestions and artistic input are subjective and opinion based and don't have a "right answer", and as such are not a good fit for our site. For that you can try the chat or other forums like https://blenderartists.org or various communities

I was afraid of that.

This site is not a forum. It is a simple question and answers site. Posts that don't fit that format are considered off topic. For "conversations" or more relaxed rules, you can use chat, but even that is limited for users with a minimum reputation. A forum format is better for that kind of exchanges.

got yah, thanks for the response


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replies to thread box very restricted
one can write a question and have paragraphs etc, add images.
reply to a reply and hit enter for a paragraph and the typing gets posted !
small little box to type in.
also I have to wait 40 mins it says before posting another question !
also I cant post unless I choose a tag but the tags available dont cover my subject at all.
could blender get a better forum interface as others have ?
Steve

You have already asked this before Comments are not for extended discussions, hence the intentional limitations. This is not a traditional forum for regular conversations, tags help guarantee your questions are on topic. If existing tags seem unhelpful your question is very likely off topic anyway

We're a little bit different from other sites. This site is not a forum at all. There are no threads but a single question and multiple answers. Comments are meant to help users guide the question toward answers, they are not meant to have conversations or discussions or to have personalized support for a single project. This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.  This is not tweeter or social media. Please take the [tour] to understand how the site works.

Comments are not answers. Use comments to ask for more information or clarify a question or answer. They are not editable after 5 minutes. That is how the site works. Questions and answers can be edited, there is no time limit and they can be formated with paragraphs and images

The time limits are because you are new (basically spam prevention).
Comments
What you are experiencing is the difference between posts (questions and answers) and comments not some kind of "replies to a thread."
Comments are meant to be short and simple (not an answer). There are no need for paragraphs, nor a full blown editor in the input box. You rarely need a larger input box for a comment (comments are limited to 600 characters anyway), but it can be resized. Just drag the bottom right corner.
Questions and answers (the real content of the site) is where everything happens. It is here you get full formatting, images, pretty code, etc. Because SE is a Q&A site, not a forum, the comments are treated much differently then questions or answers.
Nope SE will never change this core model to incorporate more "forum like" responses or features. Why? SE is not a forum. The site tour does a pretty good job of showing what SE is and how it works.
As an example: with an ideal question, there is no "discussion" there are no replies, or digging through pages of threads to find the answer. Simply a question, and answer(s) to that question. PS Anything posted in the answer section that does not attempt to answer the question will be deleted.
blenderartists (a forum) is great for art feedback and discussion. BSE is not for any kind of discussion. (If you want to discuss take it to chat or off site.)
Forum = message board for open discussion
BSE = Q&A site for blender
Tags
I'd be very surprised if we have no tags that cover your blender questions. Yet if there really are none then maybe that is telling you that your question is off topic. You might want to double check that if you find no suitable tags.


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How to record and upload animated screen shot
A lot of posts and answers on blender.stackexchange have nifty animated screen captures to show where/how to select various options, or to show "live" examples of problems one is facing in blender. How does one record and upload an animated screen shot to post to stackexchange? (i.e., to capture cursor movements, mouseclicks, etc)

To record videos of your screen, you will need some screen capture software.
I use one called CamStudio.  It's very basic and doesn't have many options, but it does what I need and costs nothing.  It creates AVI videos.
When you create a question or answer, the toolbar at the top of the text editor has an Image button.  If you convert your video to an animated GIF, the Image button should accept it, but note that there is a file size limit, so don't think about adding long videos.
If you want a longer video, upload it to YouTube (or other video site) and include a link to it in your post.


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Allow questions that are potentially bugs in Blender
I've recently witnessed that question regarding potential bugs are put on hold, since they are among the questions consider off-topic.
I'd like you to reconsider this for the following reasons.

Users are asking this question on Blender's StackExchange because they are unsure what the cause of the issue is. It could be a bug in Blender, but it may also be a OS/hardware/driver issue, a misunderstanding of how a feature works, misdocumentation of a feature's behaviour, fringe cases of file format specification, problems with bad UX etc. The reason why they ask these questions is likely because they don't have the technical knowledge to identify the issue themselves, therefore also unable to write a good bug report.

If we can provide guidance to narrow the problem down to its specific cause, we should. Putting these questions on hold on and referring them to the issue tracker just puts the burden on the Blender devs. They have much more important things to do than chase information from a user that might not be a bug. Asking for system information, debug logs, exact steps to reproduce and an MWE blend file again and again takes time. If it turns out that the problem wasn't Blender's fault, they've just spend time on it that they now don't have for relevant issues. Blender's StackExchange could provide a filter for such issues by providing guidance in these cases and stop problems from being reported on the issue tracker that aren't caused by bugs.

Some legitimate bugs may have workarounds. While Blender devs work to fix the issue, we could provide the user with tips on how to reach their goal anyway.

Allowing these kind of posts would help solve similar new problems in the future or at least provide a direction on what to do.

It's not welcoming or helpful. Users are having legitimate problems and are looking for help and they just get send away. It's also discouraging technically knowledgable users from contributing solutions.

My proposal for a policy change would be

Putting on hold is ok for questions that are definitely bugs and there isn't any answer or workaround that can be provided by the community. Therefore putting on hold should only happen after a reasonable amount of time.

Don't put a question on hold if it already has a legitimate answer solving the problem or providing a work around.

If it's clear that it is a bug, provide instructions on how to file a good bug report or let a more experienced person in the community handle the bug reporting, if enough information are available to reproduce.

Perhaps we can discuss this and improve the support for the Blender community.

Nice question, some good points I have raised myself before. Asking for workaround for known bugs can be a legitimate question before they are fixed, filtering for the burdened devs is also a cause I would support, still at the end of the day all bugs should be reported

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I agree all bugs should be reported.

The current policy should stay, but people may need to be a bit more careful about jumping the gun closing before enough info is available.
In general as soon as it is clear that a close reason is appropriate, flag the question, it can always be reopened if the situation changes. If is clear something is a bug, then waiting longer isn't going to change that.
The close reason already links info on how to file a report (Best place to put bug reports?). If you think this is lacking, feel free to edit and improve it.
I think the only clarification that needs to be made is that if a question is phrased in a way that a workaround makes sense as an answer, and one exists, then it doesn't need to be closed.
In response to your reasons:

If the user cannot identify the bug themselves that's fine, we are identifying it as a bug for them with the the close reason. If it is unclear, then closing as a bug is already inappropriate.
If there is not enough information to establish it as a bug, there probably isn't enough information to answer it either (so help the user clarify their question). When there is enough information, you should be able to file a report. There may be further information required in later investigation, but that is beside the point.
Workarounds depend on how the question if phrased. If the question is along the lines of "how can I achieve X" (i.e. there is a clear end result) workaround answers make sense. If the question is just "I do Y and then it breaks", with no indication of what the goal is, it should probably be closed. This is always going to be subjective.
Many bugs are often short lived (in dailies particularly), or not that useful outside getting them reported. I'm not sure what value any of these posts would have long term unless they have workarounds.
The close reason is helpful, it tells them it is a bug and where to raise it, what else should be done with a bug? We can't fix it here. If a user doesn't understand what these close reasons mean then help them understand how this site works.

I've added an answer to Best place to put bug reports? that should help to write good bug reports and identify problems that aren't bugs.


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How to distinghish 2.8 question (and the corresponding rendering settings)?
What can we do to understand the subject when the question can be 2.8 (or not) and can be Eevee (or Cycles)?
I think all is said, except that the OP rarely (never) indicate this context.
Previously this was coming by itself: Internal or Cycles. In 2.8 I've not seen any indication about it.
Do you think this is a problem? If yes what can we propose to solve it?
(for information, I don't know which tag to set about it. Version? no, 2.8? no, context?... so 'discussion' will be the good one)
An example : Weird reflection in glossy material when camera is in front of the object
The OP indicates 2.8 but which rendering system?

I'd say just ask them in a comment. However in this specific case I doubt the render engine is of relevance.

I think render engine is quite related when the question is about  materials with caustics (transparent / glossy), but anyway not much anyone can do on BSE except for usual "what's your render engine" comment and asking for a blend. Regarding tags - there is "eevee" one instead of "internal" and "cycles" so I think all the same here

@MrZak, less obvious in this deleted question https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/146356/let-light-through-solid-object-in-2-8 . Marked as duplicate but was it really a Cycles question?

Not visible for me since it's deleted, but anyway the general principle stays - if OP didn't take a minute to include useful screenshots (which in 2.8 isn't quite related anymore since engine dropdown isn't visible always) and didn't include engine specifics etc then only with comments

Aren't there tags for that? Shouldn't we just ask users in comments to add tags to the question (or add them ourselves)?


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reissue of questions
My opinion of this stack exchange system has never been good, I will never have a good opinion of this system, for many reasons, starting because it is a heater farm, but this ... !!! This is already a mockery, because I do not think that the user who reissues a question you just edited and re-edits the same question with your same corrections and even the same reference line of why you edited the question, sounds like plajio , as I have said

Ignorance of the use of bold letters to emphasize keywords in the text
Google search use bold in text

Bold or italic—think of them as mutually exclusive. That is the first rule.

First off please calm down. There can never be rational and useful discussion when people are shouting about the site being full of haters.
It sounds like you already made up your mind about this site (never good, full of haters, a mockery etc.) Thing I'm curious about is if you really do not like this site as much as it seams why keep using it?
Maybe because you like many of us do see the value of it, and in spite of all the built up factious walls of hate still want to help the site.
Your rejected edits
Duarte's answer is spot on as to why your edits are getting rejected. In nearly all cases changing a word or words to bold will be rejected.
As to your using "bold letters to emphasize keywords" lets read from the page you linked:

The second rule is to use bold and italic as little as possible. They are tools for emphasis. But if everything is emphasized, then nothing is emphasized.

https://practicaltypography.com/bold-or-italic.html
Your edit changed that question so that 33% of the words were formatted. I'd not call that "as little as possible."
This edit
What happened on the suggested edit you have pictured in your question is this:

You suggested it
The edit enters the suggested edit review queue. (take two votes to approve, two to)
rjg was the first to review it.
Still in the review Sazerac edited your suggested edit. Doing such in this case removes your suggested edit from the queue and the comunity bot comes in with the approve vote.

The reason for the same edit reason (not reference line) is because Sazerac did not change it (its not plagiarism). When reviewing in the suggested edit queue the edit reason is already populated with the reason from the edit you are reviewing.
Really there is nothing odd going on here. Sazerac edited your edit because he felt that the italics were worth keeping, but removed all the bold. You should be happy that he took the time to improve your edit, instead of simply clicking the reject button.
So in the end you get two rep, all bent out of shape, a meta post where hopefully you learn something, and now maybe you know why your edits are being rejected - and not by haters.

Thanks for posting here and bringing up the issue.
It has come to our attention that many of your edits are limited to adding scattered bold formatting to random fragments of text.
Bold formatting  is often used for emphasis, highlighting or calling attention to important parts of text. It should be used sparingly, if everything is bold then the effect is lost because nothing gets emphasized.
We know what bold formatting is and how to use it. Your edits however seem to overuse it on seemingly unimportant or random parts of text, they also don't improve the original post in any meaningful way, make them clearer or easier to read.
See the rules when to edit a question, edits should generally be substancial, quoting the help center:

Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than
  you found it. Common reasons for edits include:

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

As for the edit being accepted it was apparently accepted by the the Community user which is basically an automated maintenance bot. It was previously rejected by a real user for not providing any improvement to the question, which is also what I would have voted for, as you can see from the review history.

That means it was apparently automatically accepted, and got (correctly in my opinion) rolled back by a real user who saw no benefit in the edit.
Don't see this a personal attack. Voting, accepting, editing, reputation and rules on the site are not about individual users and should never be personal. They are always about the posts themselves and the keeping this site as clean and accessible as possible. The main goal is global knowledge not the individual people.
For this reason we also like to keep the tone positive and constructive and avoid rants or emotional posts.
This may seem frustrating, but hope this shows how this site works, and improves your opinion of the network.


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how can newly joined members to blender sa correct serious mistakes they find
Moving the 'center of the object' to the actual center...
this is not a duplicate. the answer provided (alt g) accurately answers a distinct question to what is asked in the purported "original question"
inaccurately marking this question as a duplicate of an unrelated question obfuscates the solution to what should be simple-to-solve situation.
please correct this.

I don't see how that question is not a duplicate since it specifically asks about origin positioning which is what linked question is about. Alt+G in the answer to dupe is addition and wasn't generally asked in the question itself. More than that Alt+G won't do anything if executed without repositioning origin first so it is not answer by itself

while i'm sure you make some good points...
the cold, hard facts are that one has the correct answer, the other does not.

"the cold, hard facts" nope, that can't be a fact since it's disputable and generally subjective. "one has the correct answer, the other does not" Both have correct answers which is Set Origin menu. Alt+G mentioned by you is not an answer to the original question "how to move origin of the object to its center", rather to the question "how to bring object to the center of the scene when its origin is in its center". In the marked duplicate mentioned above Alt+G is not an answer. It will not work without setting origin.

Looks like a duplicate to me? Both questions are asking how to move the origin to the center of the object (or perhaps the center of the object to the origin). The answer on the duplicate also mentions how to move the object to the center of the world, but as far as I can tell neither question asked for that originally anyway.
If you'd like to add your own answer or, perhaps ask/answer your own question, please do!


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Should questions that need a new answer for 2.8 be flagged somehow?
I came across an answer that would have worked for my question, except the new layout in 2.8 has moved that item and so the answer was useless. I could ask a new question - but then, people who google the question like I did are probably going to be directed to the old question, and it won't help them. Also I've always found it difficult to effectively search for what I need on the Blender SE, and so I would hate to mess up this question's relatively good searchability.
So I daydreamed about some happy way to flag questions like this for updating. I know that only a small minority of users would so flag, but maybe that would still look after a big chunk of the issue. Do you think there is any good way to do this?
This is the question that led to this: Viewing normals in Blender?

You could flag, but who will update-answer them? Getting rep on new questions is hard enough these days, on older ones even more so. Judging by the amount of duplicates we get I assume most users aren't bothering searching much anyway. SE search engine doesn't help either, so I suspect incentive to post new answers on old questions is very low. It is probably more productive to answer on new questions  that get more visibility. Many answers for 2.7# are still valid anyway, base workflow and principles still work, save for some shortcut key changes which are easy to overcome.

Also see Also see https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2559/blender-2-8-is-going-beta-what-now which I think this question is mostly a duplicate of.

No
Flags are for things that are bad enough they need to be dealt with quicker or differently then could be using the tools given from the privileges.
Take a look at the type of flags you can cast:

PS would you flag the question or the non 2.8x answer?
Right away we know the first three flags will not work. Its not spam, rude, or it is not an answer. Or on the question side, should be closed and a duplicate... do not work either.
We're down to just "very low quality" and "in need of moderator intervention"
Hopefully the post is not LQ, low quality, but if it is that is a different issue so this flag should not be used to mark non 2.8x content either.
The custom flag "in need of moderator intervention" is not meant for this either. If I were to handle a flag that said "this answer does not work for 2.8" I would decline your flag with the either of these two reasons:

flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer

flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention

So what would be the best thing to do? Add the 2.8 answer yourself. Now in some case its ok to just edit the existing answer and add the 2.8x changes, but for some answers that would be extensively different add a new answer.
So you don't want to answer it yourself, or at least right now. then what? Add a link to the question in this chat room. The 2.8 Answers room is an experiment where hopefully we can collect and get "fixed" some of these non 2.8 questions.

I'd go against editing for anything other than very minor changes. Going forward as an actively developed software Blender is expected to continue changing, and answers would potentially evolve into some hard to follow Frankenstein with each version. Whenever possible a new answer is probably preferable, including updated screenshots

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos completely agree. Was thinking for minor things like shortcut changes, or this example.


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Answer using stable or master?
Taking into account that Blender release cycle will be pretty fast from 2.80 up, is it ok to answer using features available in master branch?
Pros:

Answers could be simpler
They can be future proof

Cons:

Not all users are comfortable using not-stable branch
???

Personally I'm using master for my daily work without any issues. Also I can see that more and more people in Blender community are using it, but it's only my observation from Twitter/BA/DevTalk/YouTube.
I'm not asking about experimental branches like sculpt or functions. Just master.
My heart say yes, my brain - hell no! What do you think about it?

At this point it's safe to say a lot of stuff have been ironed out whereas several months ago just the icons underwent several iterations so very little harm could come of this IMO. I agree with both answers below, just make a note that it might not exist currently or at all in the stable version.

I do this already. I don't see why not, but make sure to link the commit where the feature was added (and/or a relevant discussion on the tracker) and include the version number of the release it is expected to be be in.

X feature doesn't work like that currently, but as of commit gf098d0j (September 12 2029) you can use magic unicorn button to get the effect you want. This feature will be in 2.93, or in a recent development version.

Also of course explain how to use the new feature to solve the OPs question, with the caveat that the explanation applies to how blender works as of now and may no longer apply by the time the release rolls around.

The same applies to experimental branches; if there's a branch which solves a problem the OP has, by all means, mention it. Just be sure to note the caveats involved with using it (unstable/maybe hard to install/etc)

I tend to stay with the stable main releases for answers, however that is not to say upcoming feature should not be in answers.
A good example of this was when cycles got the shadow catcher. There was no good way to do that before, so having an answer that pointed people to the daily builds was immensely useful.
Plus when feature X rolls around to the stable build we already have an answer documenting how to use feature X.
Like gandalf said (not that Gandalf) if it is clearly labeled that this is a experimental/master/daily build/upcoming feature then there is no reason not to put master branch feature in answers. Its no different then when we answer with a feature and say added in blender 2.xx.
TLDR:
Sure, just make it clear that this feature is not in "normal blender."


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how do I answer a question which looks to have been removed as 'ambiguous' (How can you render Eevee animations quicker was the original question)
I could not answer this question: as it had been deemed 'ambiguous', So I had to comment...(I would disagree that it's an ambiguous question, as I can answer it).
So this is in the hope of reaching the person who asked the original question.
If you're using Windows (can't speak for other OS's), and Nvidia GPUs (plural) you can DEFINITELY (DEFINITELY) render Eevee animations quicker, by running an instance of Blender per GPU. (Assuming you're not doing this already that is!)

Quick screen grab of me getting 3 frames in the same time as only one if you only render with the GUI, or 'run as administrator' the .bat file
Here's the link to what I posted on Blender Artists for the full 9 yards...
https://blenderartists.org/t/render-eevee-animations-n-times-faster/1177668
Cheers
Mark

Hi MarkS, I think it's great that your trying to help. You could post a link to this Question on the original question as a comment. However, your concerns are valid, Stackexchange Sites have a unique way of handling things, which takes a while to get accustomed to.

If you have some information you want to share (as you just did in your question), opening a new Q&A is the right way and I'm happy that you did the work. However, questions for questions and answers for answer. Please separate your post into a question (which should be the only content of the question) and add your own answer. Yes, it is not unusual to add your own answer to your own question. That way, you can (1) accept the answer (2) people can find it easily and upvote it and (3) this question will be remembered as "answered" by the system.

Hello peeps! Can't link to the original question as it's gone... Sorry, but I didn't know this 'meta' place even existed. I was only trying to pass on the answer the only way I could work out how to...

@marks in that case feel free to post a new question yourself and answer it all together, you may even gain some upvotes in the process

Write a proper question (you can check the help center if you're unsure how to write a good one) then add your answer.
Leave it open for a day before accepting your own answer. Who knows, maybe even someone else can come up with a better solution!

Read the previous comments: I didn't ask the question, was merely attempting to answer it when it was removed....

@MarkS I know that, but since the question got removed, write a new one and self-answer. The same as Duarte Farrajota suggested in a comment, I'm just writing it as an answer.\


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Combine prism topics into the caustics tag?
Does anyone see reasons for or against the caustics tag including prism topics?
Caustics are not explicitly prism-rendering, but caustics are often prismatic in small degree.
Or, could we create a prism tag for following related topic?

Look at the google quick answer box for both "caustics" and "prism."

While they both are about rendering light based effects, that is where the similarity ends.
No I would not include prisms in the caustics tag, nor synonymize them.
If you feel we need a tag for prismatic effects, then I'd normally say just create a new prism tag (even though I think that is is rather ambiguous), however seeing the very low usage of the caustics tag how about we rename it to something like "rendered optical effects." That would include both prisms, caustics, and other effects like refraction.

I like a group tag, but would be worried that someone may not find it.  caustics and prisms are common search terms.  Can we synonymize both of them to whatever is the group tag, so when someone types 'prism' for the tag, they see the group-tag + hint text?  I'd try to add these, but I think my rep is too low

While there might not be many uses of the 'caustics' tag, there are plenty of questions mentioning caustics, they're just not tagged correctly. In my opinion 'rendered optical effects' is far too vague and would probably be immediately misused by people who see the word 'rendered' and presume it relates to anything related to rendering. If anything, a new 'refraction' tag could cover anything prism related (caustics does include refraction but also includes reflection).


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What's the difference between Stackechange blender and blender artistes
What are the differences between them and in which way should we use each?

The two are totally different, Stack Exchange are question and answer sites with strict rules, while Blender Artists is a casual forum

Stack exchange is a question and answers site, not a forum. It is meant to be used for focused questions that require a concrete answer (more on this on the [help] section, or on the [tour]). It is not a place for discussions, opinions or showcase your work.
Blenderartists.org is a forum with many specialized sub-forums, there you can ask questions as well, and discuss your opinions and voice out your grievances. Note that threads on that site can go on an on, so finding concrete information it is not as simple and straightforward as on this site. Blenderartists.org has more traffic and participants. But the signal-to-noise ratio can be harder to navigate.
So if you just want a simple answer, use the stackechange site. For mixed topics and random conversations use the other one.


text:
The moderators of Blender Stack Exchange are on strike
In direct response to the disorderly firing of Monica Cellio and the increasing distrust in SE policies and tone shift towards the community as a whole, all the mods of BSE have recorded themselves as "Inactive."
What does that mean? We will be non-active except for critical cases.
Our protest is completely independent of the LGBTIQAP+ debate this issue now has spiraled into. The community's present heightened state of disapproval and mistrust of SE stems from two massively unpopular actions SE took within a short time frame:

The spontaneous de-modding of Monica Cellio, and by large the community as a whole after the fact.
The pronoun change in the Code of Conduct, the FAQ for pronoun usage, and SE's handling of the community's response.

To be 100% clear, we (the mods of BSE) are inactive in protest of the way Monica Cellio was de-modded.

If you are just hearing of all this for the first time let me try to quickly fill you in, more details can be found here and here.
On Sept 18th mods got a hint that there would be a upcoming CoC pronoun change (this was in a mod only chat room). Monica held the opinion that the singular they is grammatically incorrect and would not refer to someone as "they".
Monica had a further correspondence with SE via email.
On Sept 27th Monica's moderator privileges were removed - without any warning.
To make matters worse SE maligned Monica on meta, in responses on child metas, on twiter, and in the media.
On Oct 6th SE issued an apology saying they treated Monica wrongly.
Then on Oct 11th a working draft of the new "Moderator Warning, Removal & Reinstatement Processes." was released for moderators. This rubbed salt into the still fresh wound. Under the new processes there is no circumstance where Monica would have been removed in the way she was.
Whether or not you agree with SE that Monica violated the CoC, the issue still stands that she was removed without due process. This could have happened to any of us at any time for the same or a similar reasons. It's pretty frustrating to think that the sacrifices and years that went into growing one's community, curating it, welcoming new users, handling hundreds if not thousands of flags can be gone in an instant in such a manner and as such we have decided to join the dozens of moderators in making a stand.
There is an unprecedented level of anger, mistrust, frustration and fear across the network. Never before have we seen users create open letters to Stack Exchange or see meta posts with -1000 and lower scores. Never before has a mod been removed like this. We are in uncharted waters here and I truly hope SE can sort all this out before we reach a point of no return.
While we are late in mustering a response, we hope that the collective voices of us the moderators across the network do have an impact which will be heard by SE. The reason for our protest is two fold:

To visibly add our voice to the outcry against SE's actions.
To show support for Monica Cellio. I can not imagine how rough these past few weeks must have been.

Thank you for your support!  I don't want to bring the argument onto your site, but I think it's important to note that in that TL discussion I was seeking clarification about the new policy so I would know what would and would not be a violation.  I was trying to stay on the right side of the policy while exploring approaches that would also meet my needs.

@MonicaCellio Thanks for the clarification. I just want to say: Though the parts of SE we inhabit don't tend to intersect much, I still recognized your name from browsing the occasional hot network question over the years. Just from that, you stood out as an exceptionally level headed and empathetic person. My respect for you has only grown since then. I'm sure I'm only echoing what you've heard no end of in recent times, but your patience and perseverance are truly admirable.

Thanks @gandalf3 -- much appreciated!

Unfortunately, new pronouns are JARGONS. They are increasing hundredfolds, very confusing and complexing.
I am ok with simple easy-to-remember pronouns like he, she, it, we, and they, but I get wholly confused by NUMEROUS arcane pronouns like xe, zir, sie, etc.
Video below demonstrates ESL students' confusions over new pronouns that are unheard of in all the past decades. That describes precisely my predicament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzNGkwGYE4E
In the future, you and I might get replaced by new obscure pronouns. What happens if we misuse you on another person who gets triggered by it? Does SE penalise us for our simple mistakes? Or will SE notify us of our mistakes and give us guidance on pronouns?

I believe this Question was not meant to start a discussion on the CoC pronoun issue, but merely to inform about the Mods position on the de-modding situation..


text:
Merge [loop] and [looping] or make them more specific?
I noticed that there are two confusing tags: loop and looping and the latter has around twice the amount of questions.
It seems that both are used for questions on looping animations, code loop and shape/edge/face loops.
After discussing with Merlin, my suggestion is to make looping for looping animation and create a specific tag for edge-loop. Questions about code loops should have the loop dropped and retagged as python, scripting or something else relevant, this is not a programming SE so there should not be specific coding tags.
I volunteer to help retagging the questions if someone approves the edits (or someone with higher rep could just do it more easily).

Code loops are basic flow control in programming, having a tag for them here would be redundant.  The more imperitive split would be between edge-loop and animation-loop. Depends on your philosophy, here's Stack Overflow's tagging rules which would suggest that anything with loop in it is a meta-tag

@Merlin According to the rules [edge-loop] would not be a meta-tag. The concept is different from a code loop and questions would benefit from this separation.

Yes, edge-loop is an operator in blender so it should exist.  I would argue that anything referring to code loops should be retagged python,api and scripting or similar and that loop be dropped as a reference to coding.

I can't do much until someone approves some of my edits / I gain more rep, but I'll try to at least fix the tags on the coding questions.


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Is there a site for getting help with learning to use Blender?

I have a question about my Blender Stack Exchange post: Is there any instructional/tutorial articles or videos for face mocap?

I had the impression that's what this site was for, but when I asked a question about something I am trying to learn to do, it got deleted for being "not allowed", and replaced with something unrelated. I've tried the other sites on https://www.blender.org/community/, but they seem to have nearly zero users/activity in their forums and have proven to be similarly useless. So, is there any place someone can go for help learning to use blender, or is it more like every blender user has to go into it completely blind and do their best to figure it out on their own?
Please keep in mind that this site doesn't let me make responses (it uses some obscure "reputation points" system to lock me out) so I probably won't be able to answer questions or provide further details once I post this. If you know of any site or other way that someone can get help learning to use blender, please share!

Have you tried using https://blender.chat, it is a portal into the blender IRC channel.

Hello and thanks for posting here and bringing up the issue.
Blender Stack Exchange is the place to ask questions about Blender, and learn using it.
This is no regular forum however, and there a few strict rules to help create a high quality Q&A knowledge database, rather that just casual conversation compendium.
You question was closed for being a request for tutorais which strictly speaking is not really a question about using Blender and is considered off topic. It can either be answered with a basic Google search, or if it requires a full blown tutorial, it is considered too broad and complex and as such cannot effectively be answered here. These are generally linked to a generic community approved list of resources for Blender which among other content includes links for known quality tutorials and videos by reputed authors.
I'd recommend taking the tour  to better understand how this site works. This may seem unfriendly but do come back if you have focused questions about any specific issues or difficulties you encounter using Blender.
For anything else I'd recommend using any of the existing numerous communities like https://blenderartists.org , social network groups or any other forums not focused on coding and development


text:
Questions lacking research
There are increasing numbers of questions that are "How do I do this" + picture.
The basic rules of [SE] are that questions should be focused, show some research and are basically non-forum type begs for help.
Something is seriously broken on [blender.SE] as the help vampires are quickly becoming the norm, they aren't being flagged or down-voted.
While I appreciate the need to be polite and good, the blatant lack of effort by those posing questions is becoming more than a little grinding.
It is getting to the point where folks aren't even watching / reading a tutorial before jumping onto the site to abuse the generosity of others.
This sort of thing used to be quickly stamped out on [SO] but seems to be rampant here. Does the community really condone this type of question?

It depends, if the question is useful for others and not just a "solve my very specific problem from start to finish" then I think it's ok for a new user to make that mistake. Remind the user in a comment about the rules, be stricter the next time this happens. Personally I'm glad that moderation isn't handles like on Stackoverflow, which I don't consider a good example in this regard, and our moderators apply common sense. Enforcing rules is ok, but it should still be a welcoming community.

Thanks Robert, I do try to be gentle with the new folks, I understand that learning is daunting at first, but I will try to apply the same methodology as best I can.  I am concerned though that the [ask] and [answer] pages are not clear on [SE] policy and that they need to make more effore in asking a question.

If you've got suggestions to improve the linked pages, I'm sure we can discuss them as a separate meta post.

This right here is the beginning of site rot, and is actually very demanding and quite exhausting for the community. Unfortunately I know of no good solution to the problem, downvoting/harsh reactions are frowned upon as per the CoC, so ignoring such questions is all we can do. Luckily we have been getting a recent inflow of active users who have the positive energy to deal with it.

Would it be possible to get an option to filter questions from people that have 1 rep? 9 times out of 10 new members have very poor quality questions, that could be resolve in one simple google search, and if you take the time to answer them properly (which takes a lot longer than the time it took them to ask said question) they will not mark the topic as answered and you get no rep at all. I can totally see why this could become detrimental to new users that genuinely try to ask good questions but isn't that still better than having experimented users going burn out from all the spam?

@Leander I was asking if it was technically possible to the moderators. I guess my answer is more of an opinion (I'm not sure how the Meta forum works and what should be an answer actually) which is: I think something needs to be done, we can't just simply ignore the vast majority of questions as Duarte suggested. Reasoning behind this is that people like me who enjoy helping others and finding answer to tricky questions will end up leaving somewhere else.

Of course it's possible, you can just write a tampermonkey script which requests info from the api.

The thing is that a lot of the people on this forum are not able to down vote yet because of the lack of reputation also that many people don't know how this community works.

It isn't that it is something we condone, but more a case of all the active users who used to discourage it became tired of constantly trying to keep the site clean from the no-effort-leeches, and moved on. And now there is very little effort to try to keep the site clean. Hence why on the first page it is not uncommon for 30+ of the posts to be from new users, be very low quality, have no votes. Of course no one wants to help people begging for help, so they remain unanswered.

Why not make it so that you need at least 10 rep to be able to ask a question? This will force ultra beginners to go elsewhere for answers when they have extremely easy questions (any google search will yield them a result anyway) or try to help other first.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos downvoting should be the solution for poorly researched questions, and perhaps a polite comment to push to user in the right direction (what have you tried? have you searched for a tutorial? can you edit to add a screenshot of your setup / upload your blend file?) This is the sort of thing I've been doing on GD.SE and it helps interested users to learn how to use the site.

"a polite comment to push to user in the right" That would be the correct thing to do, but review queue stood at 30+ posts by new users last night. It is hard to find the time or energy.

@RobertGutzkow It's not a welcoming community anymore, since this dead brain above me is in charge for spreading his stupidity.