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UPDATED (December 24) Blender site design
I’m Courtny, senior product designer at Stack Overflow! I’m super happy for this community, because we have started on your site's design.
Your Site Design
The idea of the design is a reflection of the Blender site's subject and culture. This will help brand your site as unique, even while you share common elements with other sites as part of the bigger Stack Exchange family.
Design Concept
For the Blender site design and branding, we wanted to integrate a number of the great community ideas as well as give this site a unique presence on the network. We looked for inspiration that was simple and true to the Blender brand and product. We've gathered some artwork we found online for setting up a mood board.
Moodboard

Color Scheme
Overall, we wanted to stay true to the Blender brand colors that the community is familiar with.

Logo
For the logo, you can see that we have created a glyph and word mark combination inspired heavily by the official Blender logo (Shout out to gandalf3 for suggesting such a good concept!). The original logo is iconic to the community, and with the additional tweaks we've converted the "eye" glyph into a question bubble. Truly a mashup of the Q+A / Blender metaphors.
For the word mark, we decided to use an entirely new typeface. Not straying too far from the Blender branding, we chose Open Sans Condensed.

Primitive Pattern
One design component we really wanted to integrate into the community branding of this site were the core primitive meshes. These meshes are used by millions everyday in Blender to create amazing things. Of the 10 core primitives, one in particular stands out: Suzanne the Monkey. This would also make a nice holiday gift wrapping paper...but we're getting ahead of ourselves!

Swag
Here is how the community branding would be applied to a sampling of swag items.

Site Design
And last but not least, the site design! Click on the image to view at full resolution.

We believe the design and branding work very well for this community. We’d love to hear your feedback! If there are no major design changes, we’ll launch the new site design.
Congratulations!

EDIT - December 24th, 2015
Thank you for all of your input. We've made some changes based on the community's initial feedback.
Logo
There were enough people who weren't in love with the logo execution that we decided to revisit the design. We know that we won't be able to please everyone, but at the same time, we want you to feel good about the site and the community you've worked to build.
We explored a few different directions and landed on the execution below for the following reasons:

Clearly indicate that the logo is for the Blender.se community.
This concept still maintains character of the familiar Blender official logo.
Integrate the concept of Q&A speech bubbles, without overtly recycling the Stack Exchange master bubble.
No more socket, yay!

More to come after the new year. Have a great holiday everyone!

Looks nice, but... Will it blend?

The blue polygon looks awesome!

This is the question that I supposedly answered in the screenshot of the activity page. That question has 0 answers, not 4, and I do not have 511 rep! That screenshot was doctored!

The coloring is totally awesome. the links, top, bottom, everything is perfectly colored! I also love the picture of the hills of Stackexchangia for the moodboard :-)

Seriously? Asked yesterday, asked 3 years ago?

@NormalHuman The Stack design team handles site designs. A member of the team is assigned a site (In this case, me), and that individual works with Jin Yang (Creative Director) to produce the design. Generally, other designers on the team are involved in the internal feedback process as well. Once Jin green lights the designer's work, it is pitched to the community!

YES! I love it :)
The only thing which bothers me a little is the text in the socket, which feels "squished" to me. Perhaps I'm just too used to the wide font used in the original blender socket.. I know blender.org uses open sans condensed, but tbh that bothers me too :P But before I get carried away nitpicking, let me say again how beautiful this is. And I would totally use that as a wrapping paper ;)

Thanks @gandalf3! I had a hard time myself when familiarizing myself with the original Blender logo for so long...and then going to this more condensed typeface for the word mark. Overall, it's grown on me. It's different enough from the Blender logo that it is obviously a unique execution...while being similar enough to retain the original's essence.

The logo seems a bit round, perhaps Ton would let you use the real logo?

Do we get a mock up for the appearance of chat?

@GiantCowFilms We usually wait for that once the dust settles from feedback on the first pitch and design tweaks have been made to main site design.

Alright that makes sense

Looks great!  The one thing that bothers me is the socket font, it just seems a little strange though I can't pinpoint exactly what.  I'm not saying it should be the same as Blender's, just something seems slightly "off", but that's a minor point.  I especially love the use of Suzanne, especially the badges.  I also agree with iKlsR below about the custom tags and more triangulation.

My only critique would be the logo. I don't think it looks different enough from the blender logo that people would understand it represents something different and that the blender foundation hasn't simply released a new official logo.

The logo font is actually starting to grow on me, but I still feel like it's a bit too condensed. I'm curious how it would look with open sans, instead of open sans condensed. I think Ray has a point about the logo possibly seeming too similar to the Blender logo, but I think I'd rather take the chance. I personally like the way that it reflects the Blender logo while still being different.

Just a heads up, there's now a dedicated chat room for extended discussion of the design.

This is looking much better! I still have one small nit-pick (sorry). The L in Blender is really bothering me, I think the mixture if the different height and different slope are what is doing it. Not sure if that is something you guys noticed as well. That is really the only thing I can find.

The new logo is great!  @HATMAN I actually really like the slant on the l and d.

Perhaps the l and d should also be as tall as the B or use a common b? Not a biggie really, could grow on us. Other than that this looks fantastic, I'm all for seeing this everyday.

The latest looks fresh. Thumbs up!

Aw, I'm sad to see no pocket, but the logo looks much better! I also agree with @HATMAN about the slant, I think it would look better without it. I also think that it should be the same height as the rest of the text. Other than that, this is looking great!

Parkinson's law of triviality will come into effect soon :)

Yes, this logo is perfect! Very good work. I don't find any negatives, all the changes really pushed it forward. Side by side the new logo also has character and looks much more mature now.

STATUS UPDATE [12/17/15]
Hello everyone. This is Courtny again. I wanted to provide a quick update on status.
Overall, the community has some excellent feedback that I believe will make the design stronger. It seems like the chatter has died down mostly, so I've combed over all suggestions and comments. I wanted to list the highlights that I will be taking into consideration and incorporating into the next design round.
Logo

Probably the biggest amount of feedback was on the logo itself, and rightly so. It's almost too similar to Blender's official. Here is what I'm looking at doing:

Make the stem on the bubble more pronounced; visually make it appear more like a speech bubble.
Plenty of people seemed to like David's first design idea. I will take a stab at trying to more closely associate with the SE bubble concept.
Don't use Blenders condensed typeface
Adjust the socket drastically, or simply remove it entirely.
Incorporate "Stack Exchange" into the word mark. This will be a similar execution as was done over on the Salesforce SE site.

Header Background

Adjust the feathering on the header to be mo' betta. This would likely mean increasing it's width horizontally, or creating a polygonal pattern that will actually repeat (ideal).
Enhance the vibrance/hinting on the triangulation in order to bring out the mesh work more.

Miscellaneous Site Elements

Badges: Revise the Suzanne glyph per gandalf3's suggestions. Basically, want to have a more recognizable/visually appealing representation of Suzanne at small sizes.
Badges: Attempt to pixel hint the badges [SVG].
Badges: Use different glyphs for each badge type: (Bronze Cube / Silver Sphere / Gold Suzanne)
Tag Styling: Don't round them off, make them more "Blender" like. Consistently size them everywhere (design oversight on first round, sorry!)
Buttons: Not rounded.
Primitives: Going to play with updating a these to maintain accurate perspective. Original was a stylistic choice on purpose, but I'll see how a new batch looks per suggestions.

What's the timeline on the next round? I'm going to try and get a second pass of the design concepts up by the Holiday break. Expect to see something (late) next week!

Great to hear from you again! I think you really condensed all our thoughts into some very actionable goals. I am excited for the next version :)

How are you making the polygon background? It seems like it shouldn't be too hard to make it tileable

What buttons are you talking about here when you say "Buttons: Not rounded." Because I quite like the vote buttons the way the are in the design.

Everything you said sounds great!

Thanks for sticking with us in our quest for the right design. Being a community of mostly artists and creatives I know we're not all easy to please. As I type this I am imagining how tough the Graphic Design SE site design process must have been - although well worth the end result. Regarding the primitives, how about just using the pattern that gandalf3 made? I don't think we need to fix it if it's not broken. Or is there a rule that all final artwork must be created internally? As far as the logo goes, I like the concept of m.ardito's recent designs and I'd be curious to see your version.

@GiantCowFilms I was manually generating it in photoshop. If you're keen to let me know of another, better way to do it I'm all ears!

@Courtny Well I personally would use blender (Surprise), but If you're not already a user, it will probably be too time consuming to learn (Although once you know how, it is super easy). I will experiment with photoshop.

@GiantCowFilms No worries. I was just wondering if I could quickly do it in Blender or something with a helpful tip! I've got it pretty much covered (using a mixture of Illustrator and Photoshop).

Should be pretty quick in blender, I can write up instructions when I have some time later today.

@GiantCowFilms Thank you

@Courtny Okay, here is a quick proof of concept test (its tiled 4x sideways). The result is tweak-able, and can produce better results with a bit of extra work.

@GiantCowFilms WOW this will be perfect! I think we can run with this!!!

@Courtny Okay, here is an answer, if you get stuck (I can miss steps sometimes) just ping me in chat, and I can help you and improve the answer: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/45383/3127

I like this a lot. Here's my quick feedback
CC

At the core of 3d, we work with raw polygons, everything seems too round, logo (I slightly prefer the original here), ask button etc
The header seems a bit bland but that could just be me
Other than the subtle background and the logo addition, nothing much seems to have been changed really

What I'd like to see

Custom upvote/downvote icons, really like the idea of using Blender's +/- icons for this and perhaps the checkbox for accepted
Custom badges (monkey heads anyone?)* These seem to look like Suzanne when viewed with perspective, use the orthographic front view which will make it appear not as long near the bottom
Special <pre> styles that match Blender's buttons (if possible, not sure SE's current stance on samp), another useful post Guidelines on the usage of StackExchange Markup and style
Custom tags* (tags matching the above ^ style would be nice as well)
Less rounded edges
Perhaps some more triangulation for the header and footer background, the overall look just feels.. a bit empty

*Blender site design ideas - input welcome!
Other than that, I like the direction this is heading. +1 for the minimalistic look and color palette.

@iKlsR Thank you for your quick feedback! I wanted to address one of your suggestions since internally we’ve begun work on standardizing core components of the SE network.
The up vote / down vote / accepted controls are core UI components to the SE network. As such, our product team is attempting to standardize their base display among all sites. This allows us to roll out network wide changes easier, as well as ensuring consistency among  user experience across any of our sites.

I definitely agree about the logo. I think having a sharper point at the bottom would look better. I don't really agree about bringing in icons from the Blender UI though. I personally think that that would end up looking quite ugly in the context of the rest of the site.

Maybe something that would help with making the triangulation stand out more (and possibly bringing in the mood of working with meshes more), would be to outline the edges in a very subtle light blue.

@DalekMaker Was just throwing some ideas out, these don't necessarily have to take that exact look seeing that they come from a darker themed interface for one.

All great suggestions!

I'm so happy this moment is finally here!
Having already expressed my initial enthusiasm for the design, I'll jump straight to the nit-picking ;)
My 2¢
Header imagery
I agree with iKlsR's comment about the header, I too feel like it's slightly barren.
There was talk of having a "render of the week" meta post (photo.se style). Or some kind of contest, if not quite that.
Perhaps the winning image could be put in the header on a weekly basis and shown off to everyone?

Suzanne icon
Regarding the perspective/orthographic Suzanne badges, there was some question as to whether the Suzanne icon is recognizable enough.
Here's a comparison between the new, perspective Suzanne badges, and my orthographic concept badges  (just ignore the poor colors on mine :P)

Note the perspective gives the slightest hint of the eyebrow things (which are not visible in the orthographic version), but almost entirely loses the ears.
The orthographic version doesn't have any hint of the eyebrows, but shows the ears nicely. That said not everyone saw ortho Suzanne right away either.
Apologies for picking on you @PGmath, but it seems you are the only existing B.SE user with all three classes of badge to be themed with the new site theme so far :)
Just for a larger-than-tiny reference, here's a perspective Suzanne and an orthographic Suzanne both shaded and flat:

Perhaps since many Suzanne images have Suzanne sitting on a surface (and therefore rotated backwards so as to sit flat), the silhouette would be more recognizable if there was a slight backwards rotation.
Here's Suzanne rotated 20° backwards and at a longish focal length (40mm from about 4 meters away) so there still with some perspective, but not quite as much as the wide-angle shot from before.

With some rotation both the eyebrows and the ears are nicely apparent.
Now the question is which is most recognizable as Suzanne at icon size:

I personally find 1. more recognizable, but 3. more aesthetically pleasing (however I'm not sure I could tell it was Suzanne if I didn't already know).

Tag style consistency
I noticed the "related tags" at the bottom don't match the normal tags.

It might be confusing to have tags styled differently in different parts of the site.

Pattern perspective
I noticed that the perspective on objects in background pattern seems inconsistent.
The cube, plane, and suzanne appear to have some perspective distortion, while the rest look fairly orthographic.
I realize these are probably intended to be more stylized than accurate, but to me it feels rather strange. So I had a go at making a mock-up of all-ortho primitives, and added some flat lighting for fun:

The logo
Many have already commented about the logo, but here's my own thoughts:

I find the point perhaps too rounded. While the arms on the blender logo are indeed quite round, most speech bubbles seem to have sharper points. Combined with some vague resemblance to the letter q, I like having a more pronounced "stem".
Maybe it's just me, but the socket seems rather "puffy" (too much padding).
I personally like it better when the padding is less thick than the white circle within the logo itself.
Regarding distinguishing from blender.org, it's true that it really looks just like the blender logo when placed in the socket with text saying just "blender". However I think this is more the fault of the text, and not something that can be easily remedied by changing the logo.
To an outsider there is no real concrete indication of what this logo represents, aside from the text. Especially when seen in contexts outside of the site itself, e.g. here.
I think attempting to communicate that this logo refers to the Q&A site through the logo alone isn't practical, especially when it's placed next to text which sends an ambiguous if not contradictory message.
Would it be completely out of the question to change our site name to something more distinctive, e.g. something like "blender QA" (as suggested by @iKlsR) or "AskBlender" (like AskUbuntu)? Or if not actually change the site's name, could a tagline or some other little extra text be worked in to avoid our "brand image" literally reading exactly like the blender logo?

#1 Suzanne looks awesome! (the other two are horrifically ugly!)

@X-27 Suzanne? Ugly!? ;)

the other two Suzannes are squashed circles with a blob underneath. #1 actually looks like Suzanne.

On the subject of orthographic rendering, I think the all the wire graphics on the T-shirt would look better in orthographic, as well as the Suzanne

@GiantCowFilms Most of them look orthographic (e.g. the cylinder and the torus), but others have more perspective (e.g. plane and cube). I too thought that was a little odd

No apology necessary, you're not "picking" on me!  I didn't originally notice anything wrong with the original Suzannes, but looking at yours now I definitely think they ortho ones are better.

I really like the "render of the week" idea too.

@X-27 #2 and #3 ugly, and coming from you? Both 2 and 3 look like nuclear explosions! (or mushrooms)

@David no, this is a proper nuclear badge. Maybe that will go on Ballistics.SE proposal....

I love the askblender idea.

Ask Blender would look  better like I wrote it, Capitalized, with a space. Also, What about dropping the socket, and making the text white?

Huge improvement on the background pattern icons!

+1 for changing the logo text or an all together different name!

@GiantCowFilms That would probably look nice on the site, but in places with a white background that wouldn't work..

I preferred it with all lowercase, or just blender. No uppercase please.

Ask Blender doesn't roll off the tongue that well.

@iKlsR Agreed it's not exactly perfect.. But I can't think of any others I like any better :/

@gandalf3 http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/6018/replace-the-existing-blenderqa-site-or-augment I kinda liked that name

@iKlsR Not bad! It certainly rolls of the tongue better, no need for an ampersand really.

I really like what you guys have come up with, it looks really great! I think this theme represents the community and the program very well. I like the polygonal backgrounds for the headers and footers, and the idea of having the mesh primitives as a background I absolutely love.
A few thoughts:

The logo text feels a bit cramped, a condensed font might not be the best choice
The blue might be just a tad too saturated
The background almost feels cluttered, maybe a little less contrast or a fade would help
The view count and date posted text seems to clash with the style a little, the contrast of new minimalistic and all-caps boldface seemed a little odd to me

I agree with most of the What I'd like to see points iKlsR made as well however I kind of like the non-capitalized Blender text.

Retracted that point, don't know what I was thinking.

I waited a bit till my opinion settles a little, so here are my feelings:

the design won't offend, but also won't enthuse. It's very basic like other SE sites. But other SE sites have something unique to give them personality, the polygon background is very generic. The only personality we get is from the grey pattern, which is similar like chemistry's SE background and not very noticeable.
logo is nice at first impression, but the longer I see it the less I like it. Mostly because of the font and how aligned/mis-aligned things are.
Icon is like Blender had a baby with 9CHAT:

I don't think Blender's logo is a miracle and for example the perspective distortion shouldn't be copied. That's a bad design thing in a logo.
The font is a no-go for me. Optically the text is not placed well. It works for the bl part, not so much for the ender part - too much white around and too much on top of text. Makes the left-side of logo seem fuller and the right-side seem emptier with text too much at bottom (the right-side is not centered around the half-circle). If you see the original Blender logo the letters have not that different height and there is bigger white margin at bottom than on top, which works better. I blame the chosen font.

The logo is also very similar to Blender's logo which is not a bad thing on itself, but combined with a generic and simple background it gives an impression of Blender Foundation site and not a Stack Exchange site. I don't think you want that. Rather tone the Blender logo similarity down a bit, and give the other design elements more personality (like the primitive pattern has).
The Suzanne badges don't work at all. They are too small for the silhouette to work. They look like some crooked displaced T's. Something I don't want to have as a badge (Suzanne yes but this is no Suzanne).
The colors also don't work. What about some shading, stroke and a bit of pixel-art highlights to make it look more expensive like this:

I think this can be accomplished in a 12x12 icon.
Fair point would be not to make it look too arcade-ish. Also line-art looks good with single color, but not shapes with large body in my opinion.

I am probably just missing some stroke around the Suzanne badges though:

Now what I would love and probably won't have is a darker color scheme. All the software I work with is dark themed. When I open SE site it is shock for my eyes, not a pleasant one.
I know you have to follow SE white design for consistency, but this site is for people who work in dark themed programs's mostly. Give it a thought and please give us the darkest design you can. For example when I go to BlenderArtists it's much easier on my eyes than SE.

For the text I imagine something like the bottom left. And the site background and header being a darker tone. The site doesn't have to be white text on dark, but as it is now the bright white is too painful.

I love your answer, and totaly agree with all of your points except for the dark site. I said something very similar back when gandalf suggested the suzanne badges. Here was my idea for the badges, still suzanne but a more common shape. (Are my logo ideas any better?)

I agree about keeping it a bit darker, but not dark dark (like what most of us use in Blender). I think your bottom left one is good.

"this site is for people who work in dark environment's mostly" - I know the whole post is just opinion, but that was said like it was a fact, which it really isn't.

@RayMairlot sorry I meant program dark environments. Blender is dark, everything from Adobe is dark, Zbrush is dark, most 3D apps and tools are dark.

@Jerryno Dark backgrounds are EVIL for long paragraphs, unless you turn down the contrast massively, which looks just plain awful.

I wholeheartedly agree with you about the logo. Whatever 9chat is, it has no business making babies with Blender, lol. But I feel (and people will stone me to death for saying this) that we shouldn't have Suzanne badges, or Suzanne anywhere ...with the one exception being Gandalf's background pattern icons, which are very tastefully done and Suz is presented as what she is: a prim object (not a idol to worship, or the main theme of Blender).

+1 for dark background. I know I'm likely in the minority, but I've themed my entire desktop around a darker, easy on the eyes look. Most websites (BSE included) present a sharp and uncomfortable contrast. I've learned to live with it (perhaps I'll make a userstyle sometime), but having a native dark theme (or even a softer light theme) would give it a more welcoming and comfortable feel imo.

Regarding the logo, I always thought the subtle hint of perspective in the blender logo was rather clever. Blender has everything to do with 3D, and the logo reflects that in a very subtle way (no huge bevels etc) which works well even when icon size. Granted, we aren't trying to make the blender logo here, but I thought I'd throw my opinion around nonetheless :) Perhaps it would look less like "9chat" if it had a slight twist? Or even with the stem on the other side?

@gandalf3 Even when there is a resemblance with 9chat I don't think we will come up with anything better than you original design (which I like more than this rounded version). I think the problem is with the font and the socketing. The white socketing also helps the 9chat logo resemblance, your original icon is fine. I am definitely for a softer light theme, this one is so white it can't be any more white..

I'm not one to mince words, so I am being blunt with my criticisms. I think the designers did an excellent job on this and I am just nit picking.
The polygon background seems to fade off on the sides:

I can see why this was considered a good design, however, I think the background should either extend all the way, or at least have a wider feather, extending out more. This one is minor and quite subjective.
I also want to point out that the font spacing could be a bit wider.
Alot of other people mentioned this, but the logo is two rounded. I think it could be pushed more towards the shape of the stack exchange logo, specifically using a pointed end. In combination with the fonts it looks slightly childish.
The coaster/mouse pad thingies (if they are mice pads, they should be square, a round mouse pad will be  annoying).
The big thing with them is the un-motivated gradient. It makes the corners feel chopped off, and would work much better for a square. I think the better options would be a) ditch the gradient or b) change it a little.
I first thought a centered radial gradient, going out, would work, but that might look odd. How about a radial gradient, but a little bit closer to the bottom, like the one on the left:

These might need a bit of tuning, but the idea is there.
Note: Reject suggestions 2 and 3 on the image if you guys go for square, they only help with round.

Good suggestion! I was informed by Jin that mousepads will probably never happen (we actually have some SE branded circular ones) but it's not a standard swag item, just something fun to show off.

@Courtny Awww! I wanted a mouse pad, the one I currently have is looking on the old side, and wearing thin...

I know :( I spilled coffee on my SE one yesterday and ruined it. Also, circles do suck as mousepads.

@GiantCowFilms Mine too :/ Its so old it was probably made when mice used mechanical spheres.. Re. the background fade, it looks to me that it fades on both sides. Or am I missing something..?

@gandalf3 it does, I just didn't need to draw to boxes.

The polygon background seems to fade off on the sides

@gandalf3 My mouse pad nearly pre-dates me....... so yeah, its old.

@Courtny Shoot!  I wanted a mouse pad too.  (My current one is over a decade old and disintegrating into powder all over my desk.)

I totally agree- looks horrific fading out at the end. (I may be slightly over stating that a bit) but you do have a good point.

Swag makers take note: mouse pads are in high demand!

My thoughts

The header and footer are great! Good colors in the pattern. (I do agree with GiantCowFilms' thoughts in the pattern edges.)
I'm very curious to see what the mock up for the meta looks like. I would be in favor of a desaturated blue for the header and footer, instead of the common grey scale.
The overall colors of the text, links, vote buttons, and tags are great! I'm very happy to see a better contrast for the hover color. What does the hover state look like for the main links? (pictured below)
I do not like the shape of the badges, perhaps we have taken the "almighty" suzanne too far. I for one want to be able to say I have 6 gold badges, not gold suzannes. What if (for example) we use a different primitive for each badge?
What font is the body text? (I find it less readable then the current Arial)

A some what minor point: I don't like the site background "Primitive Pattern." It looks too childish with the the thick lines. The good part is the grey on lighter grey it is not too noticeable. :)  (However it looks great on the T-shirt.)

The logo
My big sticking point is the logo. I do not like the logo, at all.
It looks like just a odd blender logo copy. We are very much a part of the blender community, yet we are separate from blender. We should have our own distinctive logo.
Look how similar the two logos are. Especially when it is wrapped in the white outline, it looks

Instead, here are some example logos my brother and I made:

This first logo stays true to the shape that was already defined in our mock up logo, and found in many other sites across the network. The horizontal stripes pay homage to the SE logo. The colors are taken from the blender logo. A modern logo that mixes the familiar blender colors with a bold SE styled shape.

This logo is fully inspired from within blender. The icon is an adaptation of blender's familiar material icon. Again the colors are taken from the blender logo.

This logo is what happens when you take the the blender colors in the shape of the material icon, and spin it, as if it were in a kitchen blender. Which makes a fun an unique logo.

Here is a variant in the blender type white outline. Yet this may be straining too far towards another familiar blender logo.
I can upload the SVGs for the logos if anybody is interested.

So all in all I quite like the way you are headed with the overall design. (For me this is rather similar to how movies' logo played out.)
PS while we are talking about our new site, might we be able to get blend file hosting?

I don't know.. I for one would much rather have gold Suzannes ;) Interesting idea with the multi-primitive badges. gd.se did something like this. I like the top logo concept, but it doesn't work as well against the background imo. The pinwheel idea is interesting, but I'm not sure I like the kitchen blender analogy. This isn't a site for kitchen blenders (even if we do get questions about them..) +1 for file hosting :)

I like the idea of the different primitive badges. Maybe it would be something like a cube, then a sphere, then a Suzanne? Bronze, Silver and Gold respectively. I think that this would be a way to give better levels to badges. It would make it feel like more of an achievement to get a gold badge, because not only is it a different color, and counted in a different category, but you also get Suzanne to go along with it.

For the logo, I don't really like your last few ideas. They just doesn't feel like they have a strong enough foundation in Blender, or SE. While I get where your getting the inspiration from, It's just not a direction that I think is worth taking. I think that there might be somewhere to go with your first suggestion though. Something to experiment with might be to keep the shape, but also add in the "core" from the Blender logo. Then making the outside orange, but keeping the inside blue (helps keep the color scheme a bit more friendly), and then the white padding can stay.

Your first idea for the logo looks great, the second looks awesome. the last two are horrific, as  in Really Bad (I'd edit them out of my post if I were you) But- Your first two logo concepts are Really Good I'd say even better than the logo the designers made for us!

@DalekMaker I woud want a bronze sphere, a silver cube, and a gold Suzanne. because, in all seriousness, cubes are way better then spheres. They have fewer polygons, which makes it easier on the BGE. Cubes are nicely shaped, while spheres are so ... round! I would not mind replacing the gold Suzanne with a golden mech, but Suzanne might be more familiar to most of the users.

I like the Suzannes, don't take them away! I agree our logo could use a touch up, making the shape more distinctive, however most of those other suggestions are cringe worthy (sorry to be so harsh).

The first logo could be really good, the third one could with some work. The second one is a bit 2000's though. Clashes with the rest of the site a bit

Since I think the site logo as it stands is very close to the Blender logo, and doesn't really convey the Stack Exchange aspect, I took a shot at making something to more effectively communicate both ideas.
Against a blue preview background:

Download the .blend

With no background (transparent):

Download the .blend

With a third dimension:

Download the .blend

I find it on the ugly side and prefer some of @gandalf3's alternate suggestions.

@GiantCowFilms That's not really helpful critique. What don't you like about it? What ideas of Gandalf's do you prefer?

I prefer some designs that gandalf posted elsewhere (still WIP), the final output should appear on main. I cannot really give helpful feedback on the current design since I don't see how it can be improved sufficiently without fundamentally changing it . . .  Sorry to be so brutal but to me at least it feels like its just a bad idea - no room for improvement.

@GiantCowFilms Well you have the right to hate it, but that still doesn't get us any closer to getting a logo that communicates "Blender + SE". David and TARDIS Maker came close, but David's kind of resembles a country's flag more than the Blender logo, and TARDIS Maker's looks like tire marks have streaked through it. (No offense, guys) I think having a balanced blend of both logos makes it easily understood at a glance - as a remix of existing symbols rather than just the Blender logo with two of its appendages missing. Hopefully someone can come up with something that people won't hate.

Yes, I agree... I was merely saying this isn't the best choice, but thank you for throwing your idea in. Sometimes I feel like design can b a bit of a chance game where you just need to keep chucking more ideas until you strike lucky. Hopefully with this many people taking enough shots we will succeed!

@GiantCowFilms Cheers. I'm going back to the drawing board and looking over the icons in the SE site list, and realizing that from the standpoint of being easy to recognize within that list at a small size, the present icon is actually well-suited. When I saw the concept stickers, t-shirts, etc I thought: "Nobody who sees this on a shirt will know what it is". But now I'm inclined to think that looking good in that list is the higher priority. Still considering possibilities...

@Mentalist You nailed it regarding the site list. We design for considerations of our primary use cases (digital format, small sizes, needs to be unique, but not completely unfamiliar to a user who only knows the Blender brand). Design intent is not to abstract it so far that we lose that connection with our passer-by visitors. In fact, we'd rather like them to stay a while and take a second glance ;)

Nice job! Overall, I like it.
I think I mostly agree with everyone. I've already expressed that in a few comments.
The logo
I quite like the logo idea, but it's just too rounded. As some others have said, it feels a bit childish. Kind of like it's a safety logo.
I prefer the original:

Some people say that it's a bit too similar to the Blender logo, and are afraid that people will come here and think that this is an official Blender site. While they have a valid point, I think that it should be fairly easy to tell it apart just based off of the content.
I think they're also forgetting that when you aren't logged on, there are several sections that explain what the site is about.

Home Page

Question
I think that's enough of a disclaimer.
To me, the most important thing when it comes to that, is that people don't expect to be able to come here to download Blender. That they can immediately tell that this is a Q&A site, and not the official Blender web site.
Weather it looks like "official" Blender isn't really important, imo.
Now, I did make a logo based off of @Davids first idea based off of the SE logo. It didn't really turn out all that great, but I thought I'd post it just in case it gives anyone any ideas.

I'll probably experiment a bit more with it also.
Badges
I definitely want Suzanne Badges. I also like the idea of having each type of badge be a different primitive. Like I already said, something like having bronze be a cube, silver a sphere, and gold be Suzanne. This isn't important though. Just a fun thing to have.

I like bronze be a cube, silver a sphere, and gold be Suzanne!

bronze sphere, sliver cube, and gold Suzanne!

The logo idea isn't work too well. In my opinion the lines aren't really working. I think we are forgetting that they are supposed to communicate "Stack" as in stackexchange. Currently they just look like stripes.

@GiantCowFilms Yeah, I agree with you. I just posted in the case that it might give people ideas. Although did this need a DV because you didn't like the mockup logo, when there is a lot of other stuff here also?

@TARDISMaker I have not DV'd

@GiantCowFilms Okay, sorry.

With respect to the word mark, I don't have any particular preference for any of those suggested, and have the same problem with all of them: I think the label should specify that the word mark is for "Blender Stack Exchange", and not for "Blender" by adding the words "stack exchange", or the SE symbol to the word mark.

Yeap! We're going to head in a similar direction as we did over on the Salesforce community and incorporate "Stack Exchange" into the word mark to ensure we are concise.

I just thought about a logo variation, quickly sketched in two slightly different styles, here, if this can help somehow:

added another,

The one on the bottom won't work when small, and "SE" is a rather vague term outside of certain contexts. The above logos, with the questions marks, are off balance, and are visual confusing. They give the impression of reaching down to pic something off the floor. Overall I'm not terribly fond of all these mashups.

I love it! I think we should add something about fluid simulation to the mood board. I know it might go against the minimalistic theme, but I think it would very cool!

Why fluid sim? That isn't what blender is known for (The fluid sim is probably the weakest out of all the simulation engines). If we represent that, we'd probably want to add smoke sim, cloth sim, the game engine the compositor... the list of blender functions is endless. I think it might be best to stick to the basics. :D

I understand your point about we would have to include all the other sims, but I maybe I am the only one who finds the fluid sim so fascinating! I just spend most of my time in between projects just messing around with it... XD.
Just my opinion

Just another logo idea...

Download the .svg

I would actually say this would be a better recommendation for general 3D site or something. It isn't very blender specific. Furthermore I find the design noisy, it looks terrible small and is generally confusing. However, I do like the concept of the arrow controls. I think this may need some work, but it is not without potential.


text:
Bringing back scheduled chat - Meet the Pros
A little over 2 years ago when we entered public beta, to drive traffic to the site and engage our then avid users we came up with the idea of scheduled chats where we picked an active "celebrity" in the Blender community, invited them to a chatroom and bombarded them with fun and interesting questions for an hour or so.
Granted this quickly failed for several reasons.

the site didn't have active moderators back then so we had to have a super mod sit in the room
we didn't have enough people participating (had to beg people from other rooms to join :)
timezones

With us becoming a permanent member of StackExchange and having a very active community and many chat regulars it's a good time for this to resurface. The two events we had were very successful and informative, we had Jonathan Williamson (author at CGCookie) and Campbell Barton (main Blender developer) lend us their time. Find the transcripts here scheduled-chat.
To bring this back better than before, here's what we want to know

who should we interview next?
thoughts as to how to make this a regular thing, weekly every last friday interviews anyone?
what we can do to ensure this becomes a thing and encourage our community to participate.
should we center these around a theme, have different segments or just pop questions on the fly etc?

Interview next (for starters): Andrew Price, Gleb Alexandrov, Ton Rosendaal

making it weekly event will most likely kill it , you will run out of "Celebrities" and regular audience and interest

Great point, evey last friday could work. Mike Pan is my nominee for now.

Greg Zaal, Reynante Martinez maybe? Every last friday would be good.

@Chebhou I wonder if we could have different off-week programming, to keep up interest . . .

@TARDISMaker Good one with Greg. I thought about Reynante but couldn't be bothered to look up his name since I was in a hurry

Ton would be cool.  @Chebhou is right too, we definitely should do it monthly, not weekly.

I'd say that if we do a theme for the interviews, it should be rather loose. Also, a few more suggestions, Andy Goralczic, Sebastian Konig. I'm trying to think of people who would give a bit more variety. Also, Kent Trammel?

In addition to those mentioned... Brian Savery of Pixar who is heading the development of Renderman for Blender, Brecht Van Lommel or any of the present Cycles devs (or just any Blender devs really), Blender open project artists (support Gooseberry!), Enrico Cerica who is well known for his work with Blender+Octane, CynicatPro who has been bringing a lot of PBR knowledge to the Blender community, or developers of major add-ons such as Blend4Web or Sverchok.

Pierrick Picaut anyone?

I'd be interested in chat with @TroyJamesSobotka and Sebastian Koenig

We could raise participation by asking the interviewee (out of the kindness of their hearts) to post/tweet/announce the interview so their fans come and visit us. Some members of our site might actually find out about it that way, since not everyone know/reads about chat & meta.

exactly the chat and the meta posts don't have that popularity

~10 people is more than enough for one of these sessions (usual amount in chat every other day) and meta posts can be featured on the main sidebar for those extra few views. Also a good time to see if we could possibly launch our own site blog.

We may even get some new users this way too.  People who join to talk with so-and-so but stick around to participate on the site.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Images in comments?
I have seen people post comments with links to images on Stack Exchange's very own Imgur installation.  How can you upload an image for a comment like this?

I just upload it in an answer section then copy the URL into the comment :P

@gandalf3  I thought about doing that, but I was wondering if you had a less Mickey-Mousey way.  I guess not :)

You can also upload the image to the chatroom and copy that link.

Quote from GiantCowFilms : Using external sites can cause a lot of broken images, which is really really bad. The default imgur installation should always be used unless there is a VERY good reason not to.
Steps you can follow...

Prepare your images
Safe them on your desktop ...
Click the icon that has a mountain and a sun on the text input tool bar
Click on the big blue box that says "Drag and drop or Click here".
Navigate to the image on the desktop and click "Open"
Click on the "Add Picture" button.

You can also use http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ to share your .blend files in questions.

DO NOT DO THIS
Use photobucket.com personally. Just copy the uploaded file URL using
the easy copy URL button on photobucket site and just paste it here,
using  the little mountain icon that says "image" when your mouse
hover over  it. I also use mega.co.nz for uploading blend files, mega
provide a very  clean and easy to operate interface, it's pretty much
free for the average  user 50GB of space for free.
It's pretty easy to do. Image is a great way to show others what you
are talking about!

Using external sites can cause a lot of broken images, which is really really bad. The default imgur installation should always be used unless there is a VERY good reason not to.

Ok I will give that a try. I have always the impression that forums don't want to manage user's images and would rather have a external site handle the load.

@hawkenfox, what you wrote is true on forums, but stack exchange is not a forum  and has different considerations.

I would often comeback later to delete unecessary comments. I use it as friendly way to say "I have got the message and I am willing to comply".

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


text:
Should we rename our community bot?
Every site has a community bot which takes the credit for any server action that needs a user id, such as suggested edits.
There is no need for it to be named "Community," we could rename it to anything we like.
I'm proposing "Francesca," a name that originally comes from here, and has a long SE tradition (since 2009!).
Also her gender has been firmly established on the main meta to be female.

I know this isn't a feature-request but I'm going to have to status-declined this discussion before it gets too far along.
The community user is identical on all sites for several reasons.  First, it's the bot taking community actions so the name "community" fits perfectly. Second, we like consistency and renaming it to something specific on Blender would be confusing to a user arriving here from Stack Overflow or any of the hundreds of other sites.
While we appreciate your enthusiasm, we don't think it's appropriate to change her name. Plus, you don't want to make the her angry, you won't like her when she is angry.

ok, I understand. Francesca will remain only in thought.

Because she's the hulk, thats why. :P


text:
Tips for new users
The Zen of BSE as I see it

BSE isn't a forum
The search facility (top right) works great! Use it - you'll be surprised what you find.
Your posts can be edited by anyone. This is normal. You wont loose any rep.
Comments should lead you to update the question with more information before we answer.
Comments are editable for a period of 5 minutes.
Read a comment carefully before hitting Enter to submit.
Keep the comments area tidy, remove comments after dealing with them, even if up voted.
A Question with many comments prompts BSE to provide a dedicated (but public) chat-room.
Up vote a comment that helped you.
Up vote any Answer that helped you.
If you get a satisfactory Answer accept it.
When you Down vote consider leaving an explanation.
Use screenshots, learn to crop (landscape tends to make images take up less vertical space) and keep text out of the image
Avoid resubmitting the same Question as another new Question. We will close it. (promise).
If the Question didn't get an answer there's usually a good reason (and it's not because we didn't see it).
Any of the following actions will bump your question to the front page again:

edit the question with more details
streamline the question (Imagine you had to pay per word, how much of your Question is new information)
include a .blend use http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ for permanent storage

To emphasize words don't use capitals, they'll get edited out anyway. (promise)
Take time to craft the Question and its Title.
Title your Question in a way that contains the core of your Question.
Ask 1 main thing per Question, if that's not possible then limit yourself to one topic. We might still ask you to split the Question into multiple separate Questions and will often suggest how to split it.
We encourage you to ask as many separate new Questions as you need.
Read the markdown formatting tips for text and code. (markdown lets you stylize your content)
Use correct tags for your Question. Tags are important

For much more information read the Full FAQ.

+1 for having a "beginner to SE" cheatsheet. I bet most of our new users are also new to SE entirely

I'm tempted to break it out into two groups Questions and Answers , there's things i'd like to say about answers specifically.

Here is an important tip: use questions for asking questions, and answers for posting answers. do not post your opinions and advice in a question! :-)

You need a new first (or second) item in the lisst, @zeffii: "Before asking a question, use the search facility to see if the question has been asked, and answered before".

I agree brasshat!


text:
What's the point of closing as unclear?
One of the reasons for closing a question is as follows:

unclear what you're asking
Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.

I get that there are a lot of unclear questions, and that we need to let the askers of such questions know that they need to majorly rephrase and fix up their question so that we can answer it.  But what's the point in closing such questions?
Say the person does fix up their question and make it understandable, now we just have to go through all the shenanigans of opening it back up again so someone can answer it.  And even if they don't end up fixing up their question, all closing it does is make it unanswerable, so even if somebody manages to decode it and thinks they can answer it they can't!
So, why do we close questions as unclear?  What harm does an unclear question left open do us?

I think the vote-to-close is a bit of a misnomer and misdirection, don't we put these questions on hold when it's unclear? The question gets locked but the language of 'on hold' suggests it is still redeemable.

@zeffii  Yes I guess that's the terminology that is used, but it's really functionally no different than being closed.

OK, but saying something is on hold rather than closed conveys a different message. Like if someone puts you on hold while on the phone, you expect to be able to resume the conversation in the not too distant future. Unlike if someone says 'i'm going to hang up now'. If i had it my way the options would be share | edit | close | hold | flag | protect

because if you flip the u and the n in unclear you get nuclear! :-)

I agree that we should keep the question open for a time period. Let some users vote it as unclear when more than 3 marks the question as unclear give the original poster say 10days to rectify the question? If he fail to do so , there is a high chance he already found the solution?

I think closing helps encourages the OP to make an effort to clarify their question. If they know no one can answer, they know right away that they aren't getting an answer if the question is left as is.
If it's still technically possible to add answers, then they might (knowingly or not) end up waiting and finding out the long way that no one is answering.
If someone thinks they can decipher the question, they can edit and decipher it for everyone else too. If their edit is accepted, the question will be put through a review queue to (hopefully) re-open it quickly.

That said, the OP can't be expected to just clarify their question after being told "it's unclear". It's possible (even probable) have no idea what to clarify; what appears as total nonsense to an outsider may make perfect sense to the writer.
I'd suggest always leaving a comment with an unclear vote, describing as exactly (and clearly) as possible what it is about the question that isn't understandable.

It should also be mentioned that closing bad questions that no one can possibly answer removes the question from the un answered list, improving our answer ratio.

@X-27 Well.. tbh I don't think those statistics matter a whole lot now that we are graduating. (idk If they really mattered much before for that matter :P)

There's never a reason to put a perfectly good answerable question on hold. Some questions do need clarification and putting them 'on hold' is the mechanism we use to get it. An OP who is invested enough in getting an answer will stick around and be happy to clarify once prompted.
The question needs to be clear or else the answer will become a meandering tour-of-blender, covering many possible answers in the hope that one of them hits the spot. This takes a disproportionate amount of effort than it's worth to both parties.

Questions rarely remain 'on hold' when the question has been clarified. if at least 1 person elects to reopen it, other reopen votes will often follow. You can always leave a comment to a moderator to suggest you are comfortable with providing an answer.

It seems to me that questions that are unclear fall into at least two categories. One category is questions from users whose first language is not English, and as a consequence, the obscurity of the question is perhaps to some extent the fault of Google Translate or Babblefish. Another category is when the problem of clarity lies in the perception of one or more readers, rather than the questioner.
I understand the value in closing questions that are unclear, or poorly asked, but in my opinion, the vote to close should always be preceded by a comment requesting the OP (or someone else who understands what the OP was asking in the question) to clarify what was meant. After a suitable duration (in this case I propose that "suitable duration" would be 36 to 72 hours) has elapsed, then a vote to close is reasonable.


text:
Feature request: 'Someone write this code for me'
I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but it looks like it, so here it goes.
It would be very useful if there was a special tag or a section for people that don't need an answer but rather want a simple script as an answer. Right now, where do this questions go? They would be easier to spot and answer if they all shared a common tag.

I doubt these kind of requests would be very well received. If the OP is clearly not searching for knowledge, only solutions, I would guess that fewer potential answerers would donate their time for free.

This isn't dead, fear not. We're actively looking at a way to integrate this or something along these lines in a way that it's actually useful and not just to appease localized questions. It's our most popular tag so we have to curate it somewhat.

I have a slightly different interpretation of this question, but I agree with the general sentiment that a tag for feature-request on the main site would promote something that the site wasn't intended to provide. My more nuanced view is that we kind of already pick and choose which questions are reasonable "feature requests" - even when they aren't specifically labelled that way.
People will ask all kinds of questions on the main site - Some of these questions are well beyond our scope. Some will be honest 'does this exist? it would really solve this problem x i'm having'. In the best of cases the answer to those is, "No, but it's easy to write a script for it".
I think those of us who solve problems by writing scripts really enjoy showing how relatively simple it is to solve these problems. We tend to respond better to questions that would benefit Blender as a whole, not just the one OP who has some specific need.
Often what makes the scripts seemingly balloon in size/complexity is the Boilerplate needed to (un)register an add-on and operators. Script length doesn't correlate to time / effort.

Complex problem descriptions can have simple solutions
Simple problem descriptions can have complex solutions.

I think if you want dedicated Scripts you should be looking at a site like the blender network (by and for Blender professionals).
Or.. bite the bullet and learn Python. That's an investment nobody can take away from you.

Feels like "solve my homework for me" on Stackoverflow. That's generally disliked. That's why this feature request is getting downvoted.
You will have to find a different website for "make this for me" kind of questions/requests, outside the StackExchange sites.


text:
Where to put Feature Requests?
Where should I post feature requests? So that nobody tells me, that it is the wrong place and so that also developers might see it very quickly...?

See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/1190/599

Features for Blender.SE?  If so, then you can post it on Meta Blender SE or Meta Stack Exchange.

No not the sequence editor.. For the whole Blender application in general...


text:
What should I flag link-only answers as?
When voting to delete an answer in the review queue there is an option

link only (and not spam)

However, there is no such option when actually flagging answers.  When flagging link-only answers I usually use either

not an answer
  This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.

or

in need of moderator intervention

so I can add an explanation.  I usually just put something like "Link only."  Both of these have been picked up and resulted in the answer being deleted.  But for the sake of consistency, what should I really tag such answers?

Relevant MSE Discussion - Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

I use to flag using the custom reason with something as simple as "Link only answer."
As a mod now, that would be great.
Just so you know among the three general flag types:

not an answer

very low quality

in need of moderator intervention

which of those you use does not make much of a difference. Those three are all handled the same way by us mods.
However, spam and rude or abusive have special meaning. These two should only be used when something is spam or offensive. These have more "power" than a normal flag. For example after 6 spam or offensive flags not only is the post deleted and locked, but the author will loose 100 rep.

I've noticed the community bot doing things (such as downvoting) when flags are marked as helpful. Not sure if it does different things with different initial flag types, but it might?

@gandalf3 The DV comes when a VLQ flag is marked helpful.


text:
Cant log in to unregistered account
I created an account with blender stack exchange today, in order to ask a question, but for some reason the account is unregistered. I have other stack exchange accounts so I created another blender account.
It seems as if there are two accounts - one has a green profile picture and the one I use with my other stack exchange accounts is purple.
I cant reply to an answer or upvote it on my question but I can edit the question, through my purple account. I have no access to the green account.
How can I get full access to my account? Or can I merge the two?

Ok, I think I see what happened.
You already had an SE account:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/20782/matt-majic
However, today you came to blender stack exchange, and without logging in you asked a question (that is one of the ways an unregistered account gets created.) thus creating:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/20779/mattmajic
Now (I think) you went and "registered" you old SE account with blender, essentially locking you out of your unregistered account. (Normally for unregistered accounts there would be a register link at the top of the page.)
The easiest thing for you to would be to ask for your accounts to be merged.
check
So within 24-48 hours you should have only the one matt majic account.

Cheers I think that was what happened. I asked for them to be merged


text:
Should we have tags for Pie-Menus?
Pie-Menus are well implemented now and finding their way into daily workflows with Blender. Should we create a pie-menus tag or a pie-menu tag at least, even if they are rather specific?
From the Wiki:

A pie menu is a menu whose items are spread radially around the mouse.

+1 from me. From a quick estimate we have maybe ~20-30 questions which could use this tag.

Just FYI, I'm working on a big retag (will be on meta) and had already included this in it. (so yes I support it.)

@David Thanks for your opinion. You are the tag guru, then we should wait for your proposal :) I assume it's hard work to re-tag the questions, so let me know if I can help to edit the posts.

I think so. I don't know how many questions we've got for them so far, but they do have special code api's and stuff, so there's definitely room for coding questions.


text:
How to ask scripting questions - efficiently
I read many of the scripting related questions / comments / edits. Some comments and edits are predictable and a lot of them fall in these categories

trying to get more info
trying to reduce the question to one topic at a time where possible.
trying to understand the desired end-result (to allow focus on a solution rather than fixing OP's code).
fixing code indentation / pep8
asking for Minimal Viable Product code snippets, to allow us to see how far they are in their understanding of the problem. Makes plugging in solution code easier.
asking for full error messages, telling about debugging with terminal open.
... i probably missed many

Is it realistic to expect all comments / edits to be avoidable? I don't know, but why not at least attempt to streamline it. I'm optimistic that we can do this much better. Some of this is covered in this question/answer, but i'd like to see if we can compile a list of "pro-tips" for people asking questions about

add-on development
general bpy scripting
problems using / installing existing add-ons (with errors, code stuff ..not conceptual usage)

StackExchange continuously evolves and new ways of pre-empting weak questions will emerge (maybe show this list for the first 5 questions by one user tagged as bpy, script, python.)
I'm looking for pro-tips from you, kind of like the zen of python : short points which make a path of least resistance bordering on philosophy.

In no particular order or phrasing (non exhaustive).

Don't worry we don't expect you to be proficient at Python or Blender.
Familiarity with Python is a bonus and get to know how a feature behaves from the UI before trying to script it.
TextEditor > Python > Templates > is a great place for short Blender Python (bpy) snippets (UI, mesh operations, icons).
yes use the search feature for a few minutes, usually feeding 3 or 4 keywords returns some interesting results.
start Blender from a terminal to catch errors that don't get reported into the info header.
if you get Errors generally the first or the last line of the error will return search results, but if you can't make sense of it. Paste the full text of the Error as an Image or as Text into your question to get faster answers.
If you have code describe its desired outcome first
then show the code, but do show it.
sometimes your code can be replaced by simpler code, that's another reason to describe your end goal.
if it's a lot of code please take the time to figure out the shortest possible code snippet you can provide that still allows us to run it and see the undesired outcome for ourselves. Even if this seems a lot of work, most likely you will learn a lot from the process and possibly solve your own question before asking it.
if there are multiple problems, split your question into separate questions. We don't care how many unique questions you ask, but we do care about keeping the information modular and applicable to narrow topics
Narrow questions allow the title to be more descriptive and easier for searchers to find answers and up-vote your question.
if you paste code make sure it's indented correctly in your question and uses 4 spaces and not tabs
if your code snippet relies on a .blend with certain conditions (animation, keyframes, example objects) please link to one so we can load it and load the code and hit run.

Thanks for this. Since python is our largest tag, we're looking to have a post/discussion soon about revamping the scope of this. This will be a good reference.


text:
Community Promotion Ads - 2016
It's 2016 now, and we've made some changes to the sidebar size. As such, we can now restart the Community Promotion Ads for 2016!
Keep in mind, we have updated some of the guidelines compared to previously - the changes are marked in bold in the Image Requirements section.
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

the site's twitter account
interesting Blender addons, tutorials, and other resources
relevant events, conferences, or meetups
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px (2px if high DPI) border surrounding it.

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

Support Blend-Exchange, the free long-term .blend hosting site. This ad will show new users where they can upload .blend files, and remind experienced users.

Like this a lot

Extra Info: The blend count is dynamic and updates directly from the blend-exchange server.

That is so cool! It makes me want to upload a blend just to see if the count updates :-)

still at 859.... I'm waiting for it to go up.....

@X-27  It's gone up.

That is sooo Cool   !!!!!!!!!

I don't think I need to ding this for the border because while it isn't solid, it's still around the whole ad so its shape is still very clear. And also the regulations didn't SAY solid though it's a lot easier to do it that way...

I always wondered how blendheads look like. Awesome!

It's not a bug, it ...should be... a feature !

what happened to "no more than 250px width?

@RadishofKnowledge 2x resolution for retina happened.

Filesize is too big, must be 150KB or less

Support the proposed Stack Exchange site for other 3D programs and 3D theories. You may need this resource in the future as you expand your tool set - many already feel the need now!

This proposal will also support questions about Lux Render and other opensource 3D tools, so it could very likely become immediately useful to you.

Could the down voters give some feedback? if there are issues with the ad, they can be fixed.

I gave a downvote as I don't personally see it as a good advert, design wise or message wise, particularly when comparing it to the bright, clear, blendernation advert, currently above. Are general users of the site aware of what a 'proposed site' is and that it will be on SE? I think the image looks quite drab in terms of colour and not really a 'modern' design. I also find the 'Get the answers you need' to be very generic as it gives no indication as to what answers I will find. No offence meant, all just opinion of course.

@RayMairlot Trying to explain your message in its entirety is not always possible in a tiny little sidebar ad. I personally prefer giving enough information to make someone click for more. Besides, not all the ads here need to be targeted for general users. This one is more aimed at the top 10%, which is that is needed from this site to make the proposal happen - which is why the add was made in the first place. This add will do its job, and that makes it good enough in my eyes. Of course if someone has a specific suggestion, I'll try it out. I always like to improve my work :).

Exploreing is spelt Exploring..... and depending where you live modeling may have 2 L's

@angussidney Ah thanks for that, it makes the layout work better :) (as well as not make more literate people than I cringe)

Filesize is too big, must be under 150KB

@GraceNote Fixed

Some odd messaging here... as if Blender users are in the dark and should be looking elsewhere to be enlightened. Also, there was a "3D Graphics" SE site that went into beta and ended up closing - http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/5022/3d-graphics, How will this be different?

@ideasman42 How will this site be different - not very, but that is not a problem 1: There are enough questions, basically ever question on this site, x3 or four, plus more relating to scanning and other fields. 2: There are enough people, Max and Maya users alone eclipse the size of the blender community. Therefore this site can make it. The issue is the right people aren't on SE, and this time we will try (once the site is launched), to post and share the site across the internet.

@ideasman42 In a sense blender users live in a dark box of one software package. Most commercial software users/professionals can name 6 or 7 packages that make up their workflow. I have explored other software a bit recently (specifically for texture painting), and have discovered how much really good tools can help. Blender can render and model well, but it simply cannot compete with commercial offerings in many areas. B.SE users might benefit from a resource if they ever do leave their one software workflow, and that is what this add is advertising.

PS: Choking this ad is going to send this new 3D modeling proposal the way of the last one.

That there was a last one is even more confusing ... it was just a few clicks away from the re-proposed 51 site to the message that it was closed 4 years ago. http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/5022/3d-graphics ... these two need to be decoupled somehow.

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted, now with 80px more width! It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting. Gonna need to update the graphic soon though...

Can we actually have this as one of the circulated ads.

Adapted from Community Promotion Ads - 2016 - it will show the number of questions with bounties if these exist. The size is not a problem.

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


text:
What to do with trivial suggested edits?
From the help center:

Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged - try to make the post significantly better when you edit, correcting all problems that you observe.

I often run across suggested edits in the review queue which seem quite trivial, often just correcting one or two punctuation or spelling mistakes.  Sometimes the suggested edits aren't even fixing anything technically wrong, just adding a tiny word or something that makes it read better.
From the above quote it seems obvious that these are discouraged.  But that doesn't say anything about what to do with these types of edits pop up in the review queue.  Should I approve them?

related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/241/micro-editing-does-everything-need-to-be-perfect?rq=1

I typically approve these if I don't see any other problems with the post.
I like to rate the triviality of an edit proportionally to the number of things the edit could potentially fix.
For example, if the post is riddled with typos grammar errors, poor tag choices, unhelpful titles, etc. and the edit corrects a tiny punctuation mistake, then I would likely reject and edit.
If the post has a couple grammar errors and "help: blender question" for a title, and the suggested edit fixes the grammar issues, then I would pick improve edit.
On whole I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the editor. If an incomplete edit touches on only a few small issues, yet fixes them the same way I would likely fix them, and it would take me longer than e.g. 1 second to type up the same thing, then I'll choose improve edit.


text:
Why is this question off-topic?
The question is exactly about blender not recognizing my keyboard. Why is it off-topic? If it's not about blender... then it's about what?
No hotkeys working at all in blender

There's reason added in the closing description - "This question appears to be about an issue caused by a bug in Blender" and link to answer for handling bugs because chances are this problem is caused because of this reason.


text:
Blender site design: Captcha / 404 / Error page - input needed!
We are working on finishing touches for the site design, and one of the fun parts is coming up with the design concepts for the 404 / Error / Captcha pages. We generally like to have metaphors closely tied to the site's primary area of focus.
So, what concepts or or ideas would you like to see for each of these pages related to Blender? If you have any clever ideas, we'd love for you to help us out!
Examples of custom 404/error/captchas:
Chemistry 404
Chemistry Error
Chemistry Captcha

@MrZak Thanks for contributing!

Maybe a bit unimaginative.. But for the "something bad happened" page, perhaps some kind of 3D model gone wrong could work

For 404, a classic "not found" situation in blender is when missing textures cause objects (or even the sky) to turn bright pink. Perhaps not the easiest color to fit into an existing colorscheme though.. :P

For a captcha, maybe you could have Suzanne amongst a group of humans being put under the spotlight (or otherwise being 'singled out')

@gandalf3  How about a sad looking quadbot with some missing textures?  The quadbot is a fairly iconic Blender symbol with some more complexity (and thus easier to mess around with) than Suzanne.

@PGmath What's a quadbot..?

@gandalf3  Those things from Tears of Steel.  See my answer.

Looking at all the suggestions so far, my favorites are David's broken blender error, Dontwalk's "I am not a monkey" Suzanne captcha, and my (inspired by gandalf) pink Quadbot 404.

Any updates as to what is happening with this?

It's been a few months and nothing's been done, anything going on with this?

Captcha
For the Captcha page I envision a picture of Proog from elephants dream, redrawn in a style similar to world building's awesome new site design. Direct link to the poster.
Elephants dream was all inside a machine, captcha pages are meant to discern users from machines.

Error
A picture of a broken blender. The glass shattered and the blade bent. (not in a box or looking like this picture)

source
For anyone thinking that this joke is too overused, the error page is a perfect place to put it. This is the least viewed page of the three error pages; and a broken blender sure is an error.

404
perhaps a more stylized version of blender with nothing in it. (again going back to that poster) No text, no 3D view, just blender very lost. (and a real thing that happens).

Here are some good 404 pages from other network sites.
https://codereview.stackexchange.com/404
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/404
https://travel.stackexchange.com/404
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/404
https://workplace.stackexchange.com/404
and even
https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/404

I love the broken blender!

The broken blender error is great!  I don't really get the Captcha/Proog link though.  I also kind of like Gandalf3's 404 suggestion better.

I agree with @PGmath

Here are my concepts.  I decided to use the Quad Bot from Tears of Steel since I think it lends itself to manipulation and interpretation than Suzanne (and it works really well with the captcha).  Though it's not quite as obvious symbol of Blender as Suzanne, I personally at least see it used quite a bit in the Blender community and immediately recognize it as closely accosted with Blender.

404 not found:
Inspired by gandalf3's suggestion of using missing image textures.

Error:

I do like David's broken blender Idea a lot too.  If someone can pull off a good render of it I'd go for that just as well.

Captcha:

I accidentally rendered this one at low-res, low samples.  I'll fix that sometime.
The posing on this one could use a little work.
(I'm not too swift with armatures so if someone could give me a little guidance on how to move the feet on his rig that would be cool.)
I know the rendered Quad Bot doesn't technically fit with the minimalist flat look of the main site UI.  But I think it actually looks pretty good as long as the backdrop matches the site background color, it looks like he's sitting there on the page staring at you.
The Quad Bot is licensed (CC) Blender Foundation | mango.blender.org.

The continuity here is brilliant.

I kind of like the idea with the tiling, but it doesn't really fit with everything else. I do like the "I am not a monkey" though.

I was going to suggest having the monkey scratching his chin for a 404, something akin to the thinker. Alternatively the Blender logo with the dot in the middle missing.

Captcha:
The StackExchange network would like you to prove that you are not a robot. because reasons.
We'll let you continue if you can answer the following question correctly:

This site offers support for Blender. What kind of Blender?

A kitchen appliance designed to make delicious smoothies full of vitamin D3
I don't care, as long as it blends.
A program designed to let you create 3D models / animations

Error
Something happened. Give the site a few minutes to recover.
This is our fault not yours - try back later
404
The page you tried to connect to doesn't appear to exist any longer. If it was a question it may have been deleted by the person that posted it.

i'll add images later.

Just found this now. +1 for the captcha query :)

Cool concept. LOL :D


text:
"Meet the Pros" — Scheduled chat #3 with Mike Pan
As you may already know, we are bringing back regular scheduled chats with various blender professionals.
We are honored to have the esteemed Mike Pan as our next guest! Mike is well known in the Blender community and "dabbles" in 3D art, programming, game-making, book-writing and photography. He has over 12 years of Blender experience and a keen interest in scientific visualization
This event will be held in chat on

Friday, January 29, 2016 at 23:00 UTC. (6:00 PM EST)
We hope to see you there :)

You can browse through past scheduled chats here.

This event has ended. You can find the transcript here.

Just a question, why so late?

Unfortunately it's very difficult to schedule an event like this and have it work for everyone around the globe. This time works better for people in the Americas, which is where I am at. Sorry!

@NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ We should still have a small crowd, enough to get a good chat session going!


text:
New Site Design is Live
As you can see the new design just went live. Which means this site has been officially launched! Congratulations! Thank you for your valuable design feedback.
If you see any CSS/styling bugs, please start a new post and tag it with "design" and "bug".
Congrats on the launch and thank you for being an awesome community!

Sweet!  I just opened a question in a new tab and got a (very) nice suprise!  It's awesome!

Thanks to everyone, our amazing community and the community team for working with us. It's been a great 3 years and we're happy to finally be a permanent part of SE!

the meta looks like a black and white picture of the main site.. not outstanding, but better than default...

here's the first.

Yay! Now we get to find out if the rumors of swag are true

@gandalf3 The cake is not a lie.

Plot twist!  (now I have to actually get portal so I can understand what all this cake business is about..)

BTW, should meta have no polygon background for the footer? I'm not sure if thats by design or not.

@GiantCowFilms I'm seeing a polygon footer. Wonder if that's catching or a browser issue. Which browser/system are you using?

I can confirm it is absent on the latest version of Chrome on Windows 10

@KurtisBeavers tried Shift-F5, no results

@KurtisBeavers I can second or third the no polygon image in the meta's footer.

@NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ http://i.stack.imgur.com/iTGV4.png

Ditto @NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ for me.

@NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ should be fixed now.

@KurtisBeavers Yes indeed, looks good.

I still can't believe how super cool the new design of the site looks like. I'm proud to be a member of Blenderstack :).


text:
Footer's New Background Image and Height

As shown in the image, the footer is taller then the background image. (small lighter blue strip along the bottom) The footer is 509.917px when the image is only 500px.
That can be fixed by setting the padding-top on the #footer to 0.
OR
Lowering the padding on the .footerwrap down to 10px.
I personally thing the first method is the better option.

Good catch. Thanks. Will push a fix soon.


text:
How to keep SE from scaling my images?
When I upload an image for a question/answer on SE, the site seems to scale it to fit the standard post width.
Often this is useful since it gives a nice uniform clean look to the post.  But sometimes it's annoying, such as when I want to put a small image inline with the text, or if I am trying to put multiple images side by side, or just if my image is too small to be scaled up that much.
Can I keep SE from scaling the images I upload?  Or (even better) control the scaling manually?

Images are never upsampled AFAIK. If your image is smaller than the width of the post, it should work as expected

@gandalf3  This image is definitely scaled up.

It looks like the file itself has been upsampled. Right click > view image shows it just as it appears in the post for me.

@gandalf3  So you think imgur is scaling the images?

idk, that's really odd. I've never seen it do that for me..

@gandalf3 It does that to me all the time.  I often turn my DPI scaling way up to take screenshots so I can get them higher res to minimize this effect.

I don't suppose it's possible your screenshot taking software might be doing this? Can you check if images look upscaled prior to uploading?

@gandalf3  That's definitely not it I just use good old fashioned print screen and MS paint.  And they don't look upsampled before uploading.

You can specify a height and width by inserting the image via a HTML tag.

Upload your image via the standard image uploader, copy the image address and delete it.
Copy this line of HTML into the editor and insert the values:

Notes:

The attributes MUST be listed in this order
There is no need to specify a height attribute, it should keep the aspect ratio
DO NOT include the px extension for the width attribute

Example:
Standard Markdown

HTML tag:

(not anymore!!)

What's the alt attribute do?

@PGmath you know how in markdown it asks you to insert an image description? Same thing here. The Alt (alternate) text is displayed if the image is not available or if a screen reader is used.


text:
Low contrast wordmark in chat transcripts

Really minor, (maybe even intentional) but it bugs me all the same..
Thought I'd report it just in case it wasn't supposed to be like that :)

Note the same logo/background is used on the list of Blender.SE rooms

Sorry, I forgot to check and fix that part in the excitement of the launch :) The logo has a darker background now in those places.

Now it looks very weird in the chat room list page...

I would add that this same issue is visible on the site chat page: http://chat.stackexchange.com/?host=blender.stackexchange.com (oddly none of the other chat pages are styled with the new blender site theme.)

Why would they be? AFAIK only the site page is specific to blender.SE

This also occurs in any of the B.SE chat rooms.
For example, part of the conversation with Mike Pan today: (Don't hate on Mike, he realized his mistake soon after :P)

You can barely see the "Blender Stack Exchange" next to the new logo.

LOL, a wonderful addition to our site history.


text:
images in discussion forum?
I am unable to see the image that appear inside a question
Using scenes and render layers to composite an object isolated on white background with shadow

Are you on a mobile device?  Sometimes images appear broken for me when I am on the mobile site on my phone.  They do have a mobile app though where I can see images fine, it has other problems though.


text:
SE.com "All Sites" logo wrong
The All Sites page on stackexchange.com still has the wrong logo for our site.  The talk bubble color seems right, the logo just hasn't been updated yet.

Looks fine to me

http://shouldiblamecaching.com


text:
Allow permanent blend file hosting
Now that we are officially (yay) a part of SE, we can revisit one of the main issues that has "plagued" our community and been largely inconsistent with our derived meta of how our site should work.
We want a familiar place to permanently store blend files as opposed to random services such as mega and temporary hosts such as pasteall.
This is not a want, it's a need now

Can we have a service for uploading blendfiles?
Where to upload .blend files - non-expiring links
Should all "Ask A Question" pages encourage the poster to upload their blend?
Can we re-upload .blends to more permanent hosts?
Including a .blend file

Huge thanks to GiantCowFilms for stepping up with a solution that worked well but we are in need of something more convenient now. For one, we would like this to be intuitive and normal as in we don't have to remind or tell users to attach files (see 3rd point above).
I won't go into any more detail since this has been discussed many many times, see my answer here for a quick overview.

Maybe it's worth asking the blendercloud guys if they could sponsor / host it. ducks -- good for the name propagation.

While I think many questions would benefit from having a blend file uploaded, I think there are many that would not, so I'd be more inclined to use the verb "facilitate in place of "encourage" in bullet item 3.

@zeffii BE still has quite a bit of space left, and moving to another 3D party sponsor will only delay the inevitable. I think the only good forward moving solution will be to have SE host it.

well, what makes it attractive for a site like imgur to host stackexchange images? what kind of deal exists for that?

I imagine some tags could use a small .blend in their description too as reinforcement of complex topics.

Commenting to let you know that I've seen this and I'll circle back soonish.

@bluefeet any news on this?

This type of request has been made before and we have never offered up storage for files like this because there are so many 3rd party storage options.  I asked internally to see if it's feasible for us to host this for you, but currently, we don't have any structure in place to do so, and we have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future.  I'm going to have to status-declined this request.

Yes, big thanks to @GiantCowFilms for stepping up. Without seeing the stats for blend-exchange and analytics for BSE it's tricky to establish how much having a convenient and permament .blend hosting feature available has contributed to the firm growth of BSE. I would be surprised if the effect was negligable.
Allowing large .blend shares does strike me as potentially counter productive. As a teaching tool we should be encouraging people to do one of the following two options. (Some people do this automatically because they have time and have learned how to learn)

(Subtractive)
make a duplicate of your .blend and do the following to it:

remove all the stuff that doesn't need to be in the blend

materials
objects
textfiles
packaged images (etc)

if only a part of an Object is problematic border select around it, invert and delete the rest.
only when you can't remove any more details without making the .blend useless as a communication tool, then upload.

(Additive)
start a .blend from scratch, with the simplest representation of the problem you face.

How often would the OP solve most of their own problem by being automatically confronted with a suggested diagnostic approach.

I can only think of three cases where a large .blend could possibly be justified: (1) large textures are required (2) Detailed high-poly geometry is required (3) Troubleshooting is being done on a scene that is large, and it cannot be reduced further (most can be reduced without interfering with troubleshooting, and reducing usually makes troubleshooting easier).

While it has been helpful to have more files available it has drawbacks. One of them being users asking questions like: Here's my file, someone please fix it for me!, with little or no effort to describe the issue or formulate a proper question. Even worse is that some answers become "here's your fixed file" and only through detective work can someone else learn.

cegaton, yes! .blends can reinforce learned helplessness. We like to think we're helping, but in the long run quite often it results in 1) A question that's only useful for one person. 2) possibly doing that one person a dis-service if they didn't create the shared .blend purely for the sake of demonstrating a single issue. (us solving it without them taking the time to single out the issue)

zeffii, BTW, if you want blend-exchange stats, contact me in chat, I could potentially get them for you (I'm not great with MySQL).

unfortunately i'm not free to sink time into this within the foreseeable future.


text:
Reputation per Day one day off
Why is my Reputation per Day Graph always displaying results a day off?

When I click the day after the one I want I will get the correct results below. But this means, I cannot watch the reputation changes of today as there is no "tomorrow" clickable in the graph yet. And it's very fiddly to press on this very tiny space just above the horizontal axis on a day after the one I want my results to be shown when there was no reputation change on that day. It works with one or two pixels high to click on this. But this seems to be a Bug on SE?

what os, browser and version are you using? None of that works for me, (I don't even get the box with the daily stats.)

This seems to of been addressed on the main meta: Reputation for graph is off by a day

Yeah, that's the thing. It's already listed as a bug there and even for quite some time. I'm on the latest Chrome, Windows 7.


text:
Old logo is still used in iOS app
(I reported this for the RPi site when it graduated, and now you've done it again for Blender!)
The old logo is still used in the iOS app for the communities sidebar and the Profile > All x communities page:

Sorry for the low-res picture, I had to edit It and submit on my iPad.

Note that the meta site logo is working properly (strange)

The old logo is appearing in chat too http://i.imgur.com/jgrmYQW.png

@Wanda That was one of the things I reported on RPi too....

This now appears to be fixed.

The chat graphics dont seem to have been dealt with, I tried a hard refresh, perhaps it's separate to the ios app issues.

@Wanda Make a new question tagged design and bug, that would probably bring more visibility

The old logo is still in used in the chat context menu


text:
How do we get more options when flagging a question as belonging on another SE site?
At the moment, at least for me, the only option I see for recommending migration of a question is to BSE meta. In my opinion, there needs to be either a wider set of choices available to which to recommend migration, or a "fill in the blank" option where the flagger can make a specific recommendation, or some combination of the two.

See http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/261196/238438. So far I haven't really noticed a lot of content consistently showing up which definitely belongs on another site, so I'm not sure we need any default paths (yet). For now, if you see something, flag it as "other" and one of the mods can migrate it.

related, essentially same question: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/824/off-topic-other-stack-exchange-network-limited-options-why


text:
How about a recommended practices page?
Might there not be value to the community for something akin to the Resources question where we assemble a list of answers providing "recommended practices" for the benefit of less experienced members of the community, especially when the best practices are not necessarily immediately obvious. One of the first "recommended practices" I would suggest should be on the page is to frequently apply scale and rotation. There are others that should be on such a list, too.

I'm not so sure about your idea. I'm sure that if we could get people to properly trouble-shoot their .blends before asking a question the quality of the site overall would rise, but having just another meta post for people to ignore isn't the way to do it.

The "Resources" page I reference in the question is on the main BSE site, not the "meta" one. And I would expect that trouble shooting might come into play on such a site in the case of something on the order of "when I see this condition in blender, this is the first thing I check". But what I propose is something broader than just a trouble shooting help.

Please understand I don't have any real authority in saying this, but I don't believe another list of workflow tutorials would be necessary as both the resources question you linked and the beginner's reference question already serve close to this exact purpose.

I agree. What we could do is find a way to better link it to newcomers.


text:
The old logo is still in used in the chat context menu
The old blender logo is being displayed in the chat context menu. Both in the side bar and from the main chat window.


text:
Hovering on the date of a comment changes its color to the default link color
When you hover on the post date of a comment on the meta site, the color of the date changes from light gray to bright orange. This is different from the main site and other metas (at least Stack Overflow Meta). The links on the other metas don't change when you hover.
Edit:
When the link is visited, the bug doesn’t re-occur.
Edit 2:
To fix this, change this CSS rule:
a:hover

to this:
:not(.comment-date)>a:hover

For convenience, here's a comment to test it on ;)