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Should the tag [geometry-nodes-fields] be a synonym of [geometry-nodes]?
Duarte Farrajota Ramos made an interesting suggestion in a post that is worth discussing:

"I think geometry-nodes-fields tag should be removed and made a synonym of geometry-nodes. I don't think there's any point in keeping a dedicated tag just for that, since the use of fields basically implies geometry nodes."

Personally, I am not quite sure which decision should be made here. I support both views, because for me the subject matter is quite different, but of course Geometry Nodes Fields are a part of Geometry Nodes.
What are your opinions on this? What should happen to the tag?
Should it stay or continue as a synonym?
...I have suggested the tag once as a synonym and ask for your input.

Please be so kind and cast your vote here.

I suggested merging the tags geometry-nodes-fields and creating a synonym between geometry-nodes because as far as I can tell they are not standalone, and one cannot use Geometry Nodes Fields without using Geometry Nodes in general.
Any question about Geometry Nodes Fields implies it is also necessarily about Geometry Nodes in general.
Conversely the opposite may not be true, not all Geometry Nodes questions touch fields, but despite being introduced at a later time, Fields are now an integral part of Geometry Nodes in general, and used naturally as part of a larger workflow, I don't think they need a separate specific category.
I'd vote for merging because I don't think Fields deserves a dedicated tag, I suppose no one would be specifically searching for a posts forcefully with/without fields, that filtering by geometry-nodes-fields alone would benefit anyone.
Mentioning Fields in the body of a question should suffice both for searching purposes and to get relevant solutions if your problem does involves fields.

...I think the same then applies to [tag:particle-nodes] and [tag:particle-edit-mode], because these topics are not possible without [tag:particles].

Yes, some serous tag maintenance is overdue indeed. There are several other topics that don't deserve a separate tag, though I'm not sure about those particle ones. Not all particle editing is done through [tag:particle-edit-mode], a lot is done through parameters, and we have legacy particles that don't use nodes, so I don't know about those specifically. I'm not very up to date about particles though, so I'm not sure about this. It would deserve another topic

If you have any pros for keeping a dedicated [tag:geometry-nodes-fields] tag around please do post them in an answer, so the community can weight in. Also still waiting for your answer over at moderators election post. ;)

Oh, I didn't know that I should write a direct answer to this :D ...I would be interested in principle, and would stand for election. However, as you know, I'm quite limited to Geometry Nodes and I'm not always available. ...I'm not sure if I can be of much help here. What do you think?

There are no "moderation quotas", you dedicate whatever time you can. Also being proficient in all areas of Blender is not a requirement, not even something most users would be able to reasonably do.

Regarding [tag:geometry-nodes-fields]: No, actually there are no real advantages to having your own tag. In my experience, it's mostly questions about specific node constellations or setups. In the rarest cases a question was explicitly related to fields, but that still falls under [tag:geometry-nodes]. A sub-tag would basically just be confusing and would not bring any concrete benefits ...that's my opinion. But let's see how it's voted.

Was that right to suggest a synonym for [tag:geometry-nodes] at this link and wait for a vote, or should that be done here?

Never used that linked form, wasn't even aware of it. I'd say let's give it a try to learn how it actually works, suggest away for the sake of science. Otherwise posting here is fine as well, and actually preferred if it is controversial or at least requires discussion

I don't think this works well at all. Apparently, the voting seems to be completely lost in this link, because it does not appear anywhere active. I'll add the link to the question...

Indeed it seems to only create a list of synonyms in the corresponding tag pages where people can vote, but there is no notifications anywhere. You only see it if you visit the tag page, so visibility is really poor. I'll merge the tag anyway


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2022 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Blender Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2022-11-07. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.
Here’s how it’ll work:

Until the nomination phase, (so, until 2022-11-07 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into currently.

We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?
A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.

We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

A user is unhappy about a moderation decision. They post a complaint as a question in Blender's Stack Exchange accusing you personally of treating them unfairly. How do you react?

What experience do you have, that would help you be a good moderator?

How have you first come in contact with Blender and how long ago? Are you currently still actively using it professionally or for hobbies?

Copied from the last election: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2750/19307

Chat is not a central part of this community, and engaging in conversations there is not required nor mandatory. It is however a good way to interact with more regular visitors and socialize a bit beyond the more cold and distant everyday Q&A, since Stack Exchange is often accused of being cold and impersonal.
Do you think reviving our chat rooms is a valid goal, or is it just a distraction from our main focus?
Do you think it will bring users closer together a encourage users to stick around more?
Do you have any ideas or suggestions to engage user in chat or encourage posting more often?

How do you think the stack exchange sites should handle off-topic and opinion-based questions?

The Stack Exchange sites in general, or the Blender SE?

@Joachim Well, i think that even if we narrow the question to just Blender SE, it could be something that could be apply to any SE sites.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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2022 Community Moderator Election
The 2022 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

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

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


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Editing questions that include the tag in the title?
Is it wise to edit the title of questions if they include the (only) relevant tag?

Geometry nodes. How to Separate mesh islands by the largest island?
Arc Between Edge Endpoints Using Geometry Nodes
How can I make horizontal plane instances attached to branches using geometry nodes?

Or other questions where this is not explicitly the case, but where no other conclusion is possible that they must be geometry-nodes because of the already existing tag:

How to base point selection on a distance in a certain direction in Geometry Nodes
Rotate instances to face one object with Geometry Nodes
Relax vertices in Geometry Nodes

Should these questions/titles be edited for clarity or not?

I think that many users ignore the tag system, so I am of the opinion that if it is already in place and the edit adds no other value, then I would probably leave it alone in most cases. Newer users don't know how SE works, and how questions are  typically formatted. Because of this, one word edits may discourage participation because they think they did something wrong. In general though, tags alone should provide this information rather than the title.

@Timaroberts Thanks for your comment! You mean that other users who might be able to answer the question ignore these tags? Because the questioner already knows that they are Geometry Nodes. It might be wise to edit these titles anyway, just to push the tag system a bit, wouldn't it?

Having the "tags" mentioned in the title isn't necessarily bad. I understand they may be redundant, but on the other hand they speed things up by making the title clearer and self contained. It is easier to just read a title that mention them, than having to also go for the "small print" for tags, for example when skimming through the question list .

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos yeap and if you are not a Stack user just looking for an answer to a similar question, is easy to just read the title, because you don't know how the site works.

@Emir But only if you were to browse all questions without noticing the tags. For searching it doesn't matter whether it's mentioned in the title.


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2022 Community Moderator Election Results
Moderator election #4 on Blender has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are:

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

Congratulations! Looking forward to see both of you join our moderation team.

Congrats to the winners and welcome to the team. And thanks to Allen Simpson for participating as well.

Duarte: agreed: a special shout-out and thanks to @Allen Simpson for volunteering.

Congratulations @quellenform and Robin! I apologize for not running in the end, but figured there were enough candidates who also seemed to be a lot more in their element.

Thanks @Joachim. Counting on you for the next election ;)


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Animated gifs of Blender
I see a lot of questions and answers posted here with animated gifs of various sections of the viewport attached to them. Can anyone tell me how this is done? Does it involve a 3rd party application or is there an addon I can use with Blender?

Hello, there are several apps to make animated gifs, if this is what you're looking for. I'm personally using Screen To Gif

https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/963/what-is-the-process-for-creating-gifs-for-questions-and-answers/ https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/404/how-to-post-gifs-on-this-site/405#405

There are also online video to gif converters for free


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How can I ask this question in Blender Stack Exchange, without it being closed due to being opinion based?
The following is the question I recently posted on Blender Stack Exchange, but it was closed because it was opinion based:
What is the standard technical workflow for high quality short films?
What does a standard technical workflow for a high-quality animated short film look like in detail, from inception to finished product? Technical in the sense of modeling, textures, rigging, compositing, animation etc.
How can I phrase this question more objectively without straying too far from my actual question?

Just to add to Quellenform's answer, this question is much too broad for this site. Ask yourself, what would an acceptable or satisfying answer to your question look like?
Would a full description of a lengthy studio workflow, complete with employees roles, software used, standard practices be enough? Should it include step by step procedures or corner cases? That alone would probably be enough material to write a small book. That is way too long for our Q&A format, not to mention that it might well require including "trade secrets" most would not be willing to disclose publicly.
It is also something that is not universal across studios using similar software suites, let alone some global industry standard across so many different possible workflows. I don't even think it would be the exact same across different projects inside the same studio, as things adapt to particular project requirements.
To potentially make your questions on topic here I think it should be broken down into smaller issues, or focus on the single aspect you are having difficulties with.
From your post it seems to concern mostly performance or optimizations, so perhaps focus on those points alone.
Be sure to identify what are the bottlenecks of your scene, and search existing answers for solutions we already described.

This is not a usual forum, but a Q&A platform. Therefore the focus is to solve specific individual problems.
How do I ask a good question?
Guidelines for great subjective questions
However, your question is not focused enough and there are just too many answers to it because everyone looks at this issue differently.
Therefore, this is a question for search engines, books, studies, courses and there is a lot of technical knowledge and experience behind it.
It is therefore less suitable for this platform in this form, since no generally valid and comprehensive answer can be given.
You could do some research on the net and try out a workflow. If you have a specific problem that can be answered clearly, then you can ask this question here and I am sure that then the question will not be closed and there will be an answer.
If you want to get opinions, there are still the many Blender forums on the net, which are more suitable for discussions.


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Asked a question; actual answer was combination of two answers with some extra info
I asked a question. Two people answered, and each provided half of the correct answer with a tiny bit that was missing. I have no idea how best to select the "correct" answer.
I am totally new to Blender.
The question in question is Move vertices parallel with face they define.
Thanks!

... a very comprehensive answer from @Duarte . In this case, I would approve the solution you found most practical, and  actually used :)

Thank you @RobinBetts for your answer there and comment here. As best as I can tell, it's split down the middle in terms of actual used-ness, and I got myself confused by the other answer through some light EBKACing!

Accepting an answer is not mandatory, though it is encouraged.
See help about what you should do if someone answers your question.

To accept an answer:

Choose one answer that you believe is the best solution to your problem.
To mark an answer as accepted, click on the check mark beside the answer to toggle it from greyed out to filled in.
You may change which answer is accepted, or simply un-accept the answer, at any time.

Accepting an answer is not mandatory; do not feel compelled to accept
the first answer you receive. Wait until you receive an answer that
answers your question well.

Also see What does it mean when an answer is "accepted"?
In short the accepted answer should ideally be the one that fully covers your issue, barring that, the one most closely addresses your question.
If non really answer in a satisfying manner you may also:

Answer your own question with the solution you found or compiled from other answers. After a grace period of 48h, you may choose your own answer as the accepted one. Be sure to write something that distinguishes itself enough from existing answers to justify its existence.
Alternatively, you can also comment on any answers of your choice, or that helped you the most, and encourage the users to include those missing details that really made the difference for you.
Stack exchange also encourages you to edit any posts you find to make them more useful. With that in mind, you may also edit any answer you found useful and add any missing steps you discovered by yourself.

Both last two options would be preferred, since they allow you you to accept an exist answer, awarding the authors the deserved additional reputation they worked for.

Thank you. I've accepted this answer :)

Thanks, made a few changes to make it a bit clearer


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Should I flag comments as no longer needed for fulfilled requests?
I noticed there is a flag No longer needed

Should comments that request something like:

please provide the blend file

be removed after they have been fulfilled with a comment like:

i have added blend file to my post

? Should both of these comments be flagged as No longer needed to weed out comments noise?
In addition I'd like to know if the No longer needed flag punishes the commenter? Because it shouldn't right? As the comment has just gotten outdated.
It would be nice though if these comments were removed by the persons commenting since both comments cancel each other out and only make the comments list too long if they remain.

Sounds reasonable. I would prefer it that way. Unfortunately, these users usually don't add their blend file via https://blend-exchange.com/, but via other cloud services and then add this link as a comment. What should happen with it then?

Yes please flag them, those are usually irrelevant in the long run. Flagging one comment per post is enough. As far as I know it does not penalize the user in any way

Would it be reasonable to delete surplus links to cloud services, on the grounds that they aren't archival, when they can no longer aid answers in the short term?  Ideally the answers would not depend on the links.

Deleting outdated or broken links is ok, migrating them without user consent is not. There was a discussion about file migration to Blend Exchange a while ago, the issue was accepting a different terms of service.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos From my point of view, file links to various clouds should be filtered anyway, because they actually always contain links to files that remain unavailable in the long run. A better guidance on how to use https://blend-exchange.com (possibly via upload icon in the RTE, as with images) would be helpful and would also eliminate any ambiguity from the beginning. Would something like this be possible?

A button in the toolbar would be the best way to ensure usage of Blend Exchange, but that is not up to us mods or even as a community, I think. I think this has been brought up in the past, but that would probably require development from the network staff, and I'm not so sure they be willing to spare the labor for supporting a service run by a third party.

From the main Meta FAQ, comments are *temporary "Post-It" notes. It is more than reasonable to flag them for deletion when they do not add value.

AFAIK there is no flag that harms a user, but you should consider any follow-up action from a community mod for some flags


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How to solve the problem of dead links to external clouds (blend files)?
I'm beginning to realize that it's quite inconvenient when a (blend) file related to a question or answer is lost over time because it's no longer available.
External links that are outdated can be corrected under certain circumstances, but files that are essential to the question, such as blend files or images that are linked to external proprietary clouds and are then no longer available, can no longer be corrected.
Of course, from the user's point of view, it's convenient to be able to link any files from your own cloud, but I question the usefulness of that, especially since it could lose the long-term value of a question or answer.
Hence the crux of the question:

Does it make sense to keep the ability to link any files in a question/answer?
Would it be possible to disallow linking to specific files or clouds (at least in the questions and answers)?
From a technical point of view, is there a way to integrate https://blend-exchange.com/ into the rich text editor so that there are fewer cases where essential information is missing from the start? (Here is the proof that this is possible in principle, only can it be simplified and made available to all users?)

My goal would be to reduce the number of useless questions by creating policies that largely prevent dead links by not allowing links in the first place that may be dead at some point in the future.
PS: A user could of course always be so free despite such policies, and continue to post links to external clouds in the comments, but from my point of view it would make sense to at least keep questions and answers more restrictive.

It is untidy. I wonder what you think: how many of the questions ( as opposed to answers ) which depend on  linked .blend, or other files,  are of much searchable generality? How many of those are of much use to the archive a long time after being posted? Most often, those ones  seek a solution to a particular symptom without knowledge of the cause, and if there is any generality, it's in the answers.

@RobinBetts If these questions/answers are not relevant for the search and also have no long-term benefit, why are these questions not deleted right away? And yes, it would be great if the answers to these individual questions/problems would always turn out to be generally valid. After all (or in the long run), it's always just about being found and creating a collection of knowledge, or am I wrong?

@RobinBetts And there are answers that have become obsolete due to the constant development of Blender (Geometry Nodes, for example). Only unfortunately, the original Blend file is then often missing to be able to give a contemporary and correct answer to it. I think therefore that it can be a problem in a way if this original information is not preserved. ...for example. Or am I looking at this too narrowly?

@RobinBetts Take this question as an example. Without the Blend file, it would have been impossible to provide a meaningful (or satisfactory) answer. And again, it has not been possible for me to provide a universal answer. From my point of view, the whole post would have no use in the long run if this information was not available, and could not be reconstructed on the basis of a concrete example.

'Why not deleted straight away'?   Yes, I guess I was hinting at  a purge, there, but not on..?.  Policy pretty hard / impossible to define, destructive of accumulated rep. That question: (Nice answer BTW)  After some time has passed, I guess I'm suggesting that the .blend in the question is no longer so useful. The .blend in the answer is, for a much longer time.

I agree with you. It would be very good, especially with an edit-tool, to guide .blend links to blend-exchange on BSE, in the same way as images are guided to stack.imgur,  SE-wide. Rarely, it's necessary to exceed blend-exchange's size limits. Those could be from comments.

Some of this as been discussed before https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2869/look-at-my-file-via-pasteall-or-others-and-answer-me-the-good-way-now I have strong feelings about files in posts, I rarely include any in my answers at all for other reasons. I think all posts should stand on their own without the need for downloading a file, save for some questions where recreating an issue can be time consuming.

Answers that rely on a file downloading are as far as I'm concerned poor answers, and most questions that require downloading a file are in my opinion too localized and should be closed. Of course I won't enforce this more strict view and have relaxed the rules a bit, people should be able to get their answers, otherwise this would be a desolate site. But I still think it makes them a low value questions in the long term.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I completely agree with you in both comments, actually. However, this is (as you know, I don't know other topics that well) often hardly possible with Geometry Nodes without knowing the exact setup. Rebuilding is often too uncertain. In answers, on the other hand, I tend to consistently supply the blend file for the same reasons (Even if the answer would basically do without blend file). Strictly speaking, most geometry node questions are very localized (70%?) and without a blend file the question would remain open forever because no one wants to bother rebuilding it all.

I agree that questions only answerable with access to the blend files should be avoided if possible, which is already up to our discretion with the "too localized" flag. My suggestion for cases where this isn't easily possible, such as e.g. geometry nodes projects, would be to encourage adding the relevant information that were needed from the blend-file to the question after an answer was written and accepted or that this information is included in the answer. Both would help to understand the underlying issue and also help with discoverability.


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Is it possible to give away ALL reputation points as bounties to other users?
...of course bounties are welcome, but does it possibly contradict any stackexchange rule I'm not aware of to give away ALL my reputation points to other users over time in the form of bounties?
I don't mean transferring RP to a single user, or targeting specific users, but actually using all my RP over time to highlight other outstanding answers!

Background:
I earned over 24,000RP in 300 days, answered 590 questions, was the first in the world to earn the gold badge in geometry-nodes, was elected moderator, gained great recognition, and sometimes caused a lot of headaches. For me, it was a rocket launch, so to speak!
And I have more than achieved my personal goals.
And all this, only thanks to your help and approval!
Now it's time for me to pass on this recognition and appreciation to others, I think.
One of the questions that came up in the moderator election 2022 was:

Chat is not a central part of this community, and engaging in conversations there is not required nor mandatory. It is however a good way to interact with more regular visitors and socialize a bit beyond the more cold and distant everyday Q&A, since Stack Exchange is often accused of being cold and impersonal. Do you think reviving our chat rooms is a valid goal, or is it just a distraction from our main focus? Do you think it will bring users closer together a encourage users to stick around more? Do you have any ideas or suggestions to engage user in chat or encourage posting more often?
(By the way, did you notice the typo?)

But aside from that being a nonsensical question as long as chat is so outdated and impractical in design, the real question should be how to motivate users to post great answers more often!!!
And that's where my thought comes from: If bounties are awarded more often for great answers, that might motivate some users to post even more great answers. And active engagement makes the chat more likely to be used anyway!
All I'd have to do is spend my reputation points and pick the most notable ones out of the plethora of posts.
Theoretically I could give away 50RP to at least 480 answers at the current time.
In the end, I would be your moderator with the lowest reputation, but at least I can enjoy having been a driving force for this platform for a while.
I would definitely go a way that probably no one has gone before me.
Of course, it would also make the Bounties section a bit more crowded, and make other questions seem less prominent.
However, I personally find that in almost all cases the offered bounties are too small, and the questioners are much too stingy anyway, compared to the free service received.
One could invest here quiet a little more!
Would I be questioning the usual procedure? Yes, of course!
Would I break the rules with that? Maybe!

The only important question is whether I would break any rules with this procedure, which could have negative consequences for me or other users (deletion, sanctions, etc.) due to the automatic detection of unusual behavior?

I don't think you'd be breaking any specific rules, as far as I know, though it might inadvertently subvert what bounties are for. Your reputation is a visible indication of your knowledge and dedication to this site, giving it all away for the sake of the common good, while noble seems a waste of your hard earned efforts, and well deserved reward.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Hmm, thank you, good point. Of course, I'm questioning (to some degree) the usual system of bounties by doing this, since I'm really just giving away bonuses instead of looking for answers. I may not have thought it through to the end on that point. On the other hand, though, maybe it really would be a way to motivate some users, wouldn't it? Of course I worked hard to get it, but owning RP doesn't really do anything for me (or anyone else) compared to good answers... Currently it is just an idea.

"RP doesn't really do anything for me (or anyone else) compared to good answers." It actually does, for other users it may well serve as some sort of "seal of quality" or vague indication of expertise, for anyone reading your posts, indicating that you are a reputable user with a good record, thus your answers are likely to be of high value. For yourself, if the rep itself means nothing to you personally, it may still be of some use as some sort of "portfolio" proof of expertise in the industry, as maybe part of a curriculum vitae.

Still an interesting idea, posting good questions even more "basic" ones that haven't been asked yet to encourage new users may be a good idea, even without the primary goal being exhausting away all your rep back to the community from the start. Maybe some interesting "challenges", well masked as a good question to not arouse the most conservative of users. Those seem to have worked well in the past, if we don't do it too often that people loose interest.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos "Maybe some interesting "challenges", well masked as a good question to not arouse the most conservative of users. " ...that is a big challenge from experience ;-) But a good idea. ...I will think about it.

The lovely things about this idea are self-evident :) .. my 2¢ on a couple of cautions?  1. The conversion from public to private currency risks being misinterpreted as favouritism .. distribution would have to be carefully considered, taking that into account.. and 2. perhaps some of the perceived value in [bounties-to-reward-existing-answers] lies not so much in the points transferred, as in the exceptional nature of the gift.

@quellenform: FYI, rewarding existing answers is one of the options for why you're starting a bounty, so that part is a valid use of the bounty feature. :)

I sometimes have good ideas, and sometimes bad ones.
...This was probably a rather bad idea.
From the comments I conclude that this would be a remarkable approach in itself, but would actually upset some established systems.

the distribution of points would always be subjective, and the impression of favoritism could arise.
a really fair distribution would not be possible, because I would not be able to distribute points equally to all users in all subject areas, nor would I be equally competent in all areas to achieve a fair assessment.
it would possibly counteract the hard earned reputation of other users through bounties.
reputation points are not made to be distributed to the public, but serve the reputation of individual users (and to a certain degree in consequence also the reputation of the platform, since I am a moderator here).
there might be other (better) ways to get users to give excellent answers.

Therefore, I hereby close the question and consider it solved.
In principle, giving up my own reputation points would have been feasible and justifiable for me, but I realize that this makes little sense and would only be a drop in the bucket.
Nevertheless, it should not stop me from rewarding really excellent answers with a bounty, as long as it is feasible and the contribution is actually an enrichment for this platform!
Thanks anyway for your feedback!

One other note: As soon as you dropped below 75 reputation on this site (for any reason), you'd lose the set bounties. (I'm not sure how this would interact with currently active bounties; I assume you could still award them normally, just not start new ones while below 75 rep.)


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2022: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Blender over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

All comments on a post moved to chat
27
0

Answer flags handled
1,908
199

Answers flagged
51
2,056

Comment flags handled
157
127

Comments deleted⁷
1,220
4,416

Comments flagged
1
283

Comments undeleted
12
0

Posts bumped
0
8,259

Posts deleted⁶
1,439
6,847

Posts locked
1
51

Posts undeleted
18
244

Posts unlocked
0
1

Question flags handled⁵
552
229

Questions closed
2,963
144

Questions flagged⁵
127
673

Questions migrated
8
0

Questions protected
2
36

Questions reopened
205
6

Revisions redacted
2
0

Tag synonyms created
5
0

Tag synonyms proposed
4
5

Tags merged
7
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue
2,590
2,290

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue
341
2,301

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue
1,209
7,526

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue
295
893

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue
246
852

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue
246
207

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue
361
1,245

Users contacted
6
0

Users destroyed³
19
0

Users suspended²
2
24

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Blender without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). Community can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2021: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^


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Can you delete a Blend Exchange file after is has been uploaded?
I might have a question I would like to ask on blender stack exchange but I feel to get the best answer it would be beneficial to upload my blend file in its entirety. This question could be beneficial in the long term as I don't see too many answers about the subject. My problem is that if I upload my blend file, a project that I've been working on for months now, users could easily take my months of work for personal gain and I have heard of this happening before. I would like to be able to delete my blend file after the question is answered and I don't want the person answering to be able to upload it in the answer. I have considered just appending specific parts but I'm not sure if that would generate the best answers in this case. If I decided to go through with it, is it possible to completely delete the blend file afterward, not just from the script of the question?

I don't think this is possible on Blend-Exchange.It would be very unusual for a technical problem that is solvable on Blender SE to require an entire, complex project file to represent it..  Can you indicate the nature of the problem; why it can't be represented by a stripped-down, toy example?

You seem to be very protective of your work for someone asking for help for free on a community focused on sharing knowledge and learning together. Maybe stack exchange is not the right place for you then, and you should be seeking professional help, where privacy can be expected.

I think it's harsh to criticize someone for seeking free help to a commercial project - after all, it's perfectly normal to use free software for commercial projects. On the other hand, when someone asks for help, is given an instruction to share a .blend file, and then provides a 100 MB file, I can only be open-minded enough to assume total noviceship of the author and inform the the project should be simplified. I think 99% of cases can easily be stripped down and compressed below 500 kB.

We are not a personal assistance service.
The main goal of this site is to build a high quality database of questions and answers that are above all else expected to be searchable and helpful to future users facing similar problems, rather than just help the individual who posted them.
If your posts has the single goal of solving your individual issue alone, and has no broader use helping other users facing similar issues, then it is probably not a good fit for this site.
Having that in mind, ideally, any posts here are generic, well explained and illustrated enough, in such way that files are completely unnecessary. Otherwise, any attachments shared here through Blend Exchange or any other service, would be essential to understand the question or provide a solution, and as such shall remain available for any future visitors as well.
Depriving other users of the information someone provided for free, seems selfish and not in line with the spirit of this community.
Permanent hosting is one of the founding principles of Blend-Exchange, if not the main advertised feature.
As Robin Betts mentioned, a complete file with a full project is rarely necessary and even undesirable to solve the issue. Generally the process of isolating an issue is a great diagnostic tool itself, not only is it halfway to solving the issue yourself, it also narrows down the scope for potential helpers, while improving the quality of your post. If you can't simplify it enough to share it here, then you might consider getting professional help instead, where privacy can be requested.

Its really just a one off thing and I have already searched Blender stack exchange for answers on the specific subject but haven't found them. Like I said already I think it would be valuable to add to the database of questions knowing that it doesn't exist yet and It would apply to anyone going down the same path. I guess I will just have to take time to try and try to reconstruct it outside of my original file of question. If I could delete my file it would still provide the answer in the end, it would just make it much easier to ask my question and feel safe about it.


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What means bold in the achievement button?
For the first time, I see this:

For which reason "blender axis to angle" is in bold? What does it mean?

This is a new entry that you have not yet opened and is used to highlight unread messages.
As soon as you click on it, the entry will be displayed again as usual.


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Should fixing AI generated Python scripts be off-topic?
Should questions like this be off-topic?
I think this is not really a suitable type of a question for Stack Exchange.
It seems to me that the idea of Stack Exchange is to share knowledge, but in a case like this it's more like a job or a task of fixing output on an AI model. The person asking is not really interested in the knowledge, instead they want to get a product - a working script. Also it seems to me that questions like this are always going to be about very specific scripts that are only useful in very narrow context so it doesn't seem to me like they are likely to be useful to others in the future.
Should fixing AI scripts be considered officially off-topic on BSE?

I have already left my personal opinion about this in the comments of the question.
Personally, I do not see a suitable place for questions that arise from insufficient knowledge and the use of ChatGPT.
As you correctly say, in most cases such questions are problems that arise from the fact that the questioner has no idea about the matter, asks for a solution at ChatGPT (which also has no idea about the matter), but the solution is faulty, and the dear people here are then challenged to look for a very individual solution to a very individual problem.
And since the questioner actually only wants others to solve his personal problem quickly, without searching intensively for a solution himself, I think the effort is too high and the competence and time of the answerers would be better spent elsewhere.
This has little use for this platform from my point of view, and the questions should be closed as "not suitable for this site" or "too localized in its current form" in my opinion.

If someone posted random garbage and hoped the community would turn it into code for them, that would be out.
I guess, for me, the question is: 'How close is this post to doing that?'
OP has made some effort.. but it looks like guesswork.
The comment I would be tempted to make would be : 'Go back a few steps, follow some tutorials, code some simple things by hand, get an idea of the landscape you're working in. Then you'll be in a  better position to see and fix the flaws in the slightly screwy maps GPT has given you to it, and the questions that remain will genuinely be your own, not GPT's.'
But I don't know how that translates to policy.

Personally I don't have a particular problem with ChatGPT related questions per-se, as long as they abide by our rules and code of conduct here.
Whether we want to accept them or even answer them here as a community is a very valid question of its own, that probably warrants a dedicated discussion.
The issue I see in this particular case is that, as you correctly described, it is essentially a "job post". Also more broadly seems to me like a general programming question that probably belongs in stack overflow instead.
It basically reads as a "fix it for me" post, with no apparent broader goal of learning, just an attempt to get some working solution with minimal effort.

Until we can find a counter-example, I propose to generalize all questions with ChatGPT code as "low effort".

It's not off-topic: it's about using Blender, and an error related to a Python script. Perhaps in this case it could be considered off-topic, as mathutils is not a Blender-specific library - though whenever I google python vectors, I only see numpy vectors and Blender related docs.
It's not too localized: while trying to import bpy.mathutils hasn't been a problem historically, I predict it might become more popular as chatGPT repeats its mistakes.
The ultimate problem of ChatGPT is that solving a single problem like this will help no one; after solving one bug, there's probably 10 more bugs waiting in line. Also agreeing to solve ChatGPT's mistakes is agreeing to eventually solve every possible syntax mistake.
Maybe it belongs to Code Review [Apparently Code Review accepts only working code, thanks Andrew!]
If someone writes a question with a good title, explains what he wants, then pastes ChatGPT code and describes what this code does that he needs, and where the code fails, the code snippet will serve as a clarification of the problem, rather than too localized definition of the problem, then such a question I would find to be valid, with the chatGPT part being a valuable addition.

I think if someone asks specific single question that is meaningful but related or illustrated by AI generated code, that's awesome. But I also think we are going to see people just pasting generated code and asking "why doesn't it work" or "I would greatly appreciate any help regarding the issue." My concern is that it is no longer a question then.  I think Crantisz made a brilliant point. I like the concept of minimal level of knowledge to understand the answer a lot. If it's not there, is it still a question, or "fix it for me" request?.. If it's not a question, I think it is off-topic.

@MartynasŽiemys by definition of the "too localized" flag, your question should be useful to other (future?) users of BSE. Therefore I'm not so sure the answer has to be useful to the OP. It's probably a useful heuristic, however.

Sure. It does make sense that in addition to that, usefulness should also be judged in wider context considering more than just the person asking.

Just want to clarify that [CodeReview.SE] doesn't accept non-working code, so "fix my code" is off-topic there. The usual site for debugging questions is [so], but if it's due to a trivial issue/typo (missing import statement), then it will be closed anyway.

Although the answers given are good enough, I feel the need to add a few thoughts.
Of course, as a good question involves independent research and study of the topic, that is not the main point. The main thing is that the questioner must have at least minimal knowledge in the area in which he asks.
By minimal, I mean the level of knowledge that allows you to understand the answer, to assess its correctness and importance. You will never respond to a request to model something (within this site) but you will give answers to questions that a beginner may have in the process of performing this task.
Correcting code is asking you to do a task, but not finding an answer to a question. So that it is off-topic.

I agree with you but I think it also depends on the framing of the question. For example I think it can be beneficial to help someone who used a script that doesn't work in one of the recent versions because of an API breakage : It can be helpful to others having the same issue in a separate script using the same API functions. In the case of GPT it's almot always a very specific usecase that the asker didn't frame correctly within the constraints of GPT and so the script is terrible and is barely salvageable : It will only help 1 person to fix it, and only in this very specific scenario.


text:
Upload images in comments
How do I upload an image from desktop to this site to reply on a comment?
Can someone share the steps and share the necessary links?

Depends on the operating system. On Windows, you can install "ShareX", press "PrtScr" key, drag a rectangle over the screen, wait until you hear a ding, then in your comment paste the link using CTRL+V shortcut.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75491 https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/963/what-is-the-process-for-creating-gifs-for-questions-and-answers/ https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/404/how-to-post-gifs-on-this-site/


text:
Community bot closes for the wrong reasons
This is in regards to https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/292724 , which is already closed, so maybe some folks can't see it.
This question quickly gathered a lot of downvotes.  Community bot closed, giving a reason of "abusive or spam."  However, this question is neither.  It's not a good question, but the reasons it's not a good question have nothing to do with either of the reasons offered by Community Bot.
The user is probably being told their question was closed for being abusive or spam, and scratching their head-- or, perhaps, just writing off Blender SE as full of it.  They may not realize that it was a bot that closed the question.  Apparently, there were no comments from any users offering suggestions to the questioner as to how to find out what they wanted to know, just downvotes.  No comments can be left on this question currently (I don't think there are any privileges left for me to earn related to this....)  I suspect that if this post were closed for other reasons, I could comment to offer advice to the questioner-- IIRC, I've done so in the past.
Is it possible to get community bot to be a little less certain about the reasons that a particular post garnered so many downvotes in such a short period of time?  It is not necessarily because a post is abusive or spam.
Note that there is an additional weirdness here-- atm, the post is marked as viewed 4 times, with a score of -6, implying that some downvotes were cast by users who never viewed the question.  I'm not sure exactly where that comes from, maybe the view count resets when the question is closed, but it's definitely weird.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
It all happened while I was absent, I'm only aware of the events because of this post.
As far as I know community bot doesn't erase posts of its own accord, it generally acts on flagged post by other users only.
Looking at the question flag history it was first flagged by Smoke Detector bot as possible spam, then put up for review and confirmed as spam by four other users doing reviews. This is what prompted community bot to erase it.
The fault here (if any) would be from those users who confirmed the post as spam despite not looking like it at first sight. The post however originated from a new account which matched previously known spammer names and also matched some of the same keywords keywords and patterns of previously confirmed unwanted posts.
As for the six negative votes, when a post is flagged as spam the community bot user downvotes the question on the user's behalf (to spare the user the associated reputation penalty for downvoting answers), this is in addition to any optional user cast downvotes, hence why the post appears to have more downvotes than views.

Are users actually capable of confirming SD's suspicions?  It sounds like this is on the basis (primarily) of IP address; are users offered the similar posts to judge and say, "This is the same user"?  Maybe in some cases, we could say, "Yeah, this is just guerilla marketing," but that doesn't seem to be what's happening.  I think that we should expect that when a user has a question deleted, that they try to improve and repost the question, and that such shouldn't be considered as spam, but as how things should be, even though some tries won't reach the target.  Spam is 2+ open questions.

For most spam posts the offense is quite obvious, users can easily identify by simple visual inspection, regular users obviously don't have access to advanced info about the account like IPs or nothing of the sort. The users in question are all low or no rep, "trusted in other communities",  with little involvement in this community. Not sure why they confirmed the flags, either they are benign bot accounts themselves, they are aware of smoke detector insight, or they just arbitrarily confirmed spam flags by "me too" blind flock behavior.

"the community bot user downvotes the question on the user's behalf (to spare the user the associated reputation penalty)" - only downvoting answers cost rep, as far as I know. Will downvoting a question cost reputation?, Why does downvoting an answer cost reputation while questions not?

@MarkusvonBroady True, updated for clarity

The question itself may seem legitimate here (even if its content is questionable).
The reason why the bot deleted the question is because the user behind it had created some accounts with obviously dishonest intentions (some of them have been deleted already) and some (or all) of his posts were actually spam.
So the bot worked splendidly and showed in a very precise way that there has been abuse here before, and in this case that there will be abuse here with the highest possible probability.

To describe the situation a little more precisely:
There are some mechanisms running in the background here, which check the processes according to certain patterns for every (!) action on SE page, in order to be able to detect any misuse at an early stage.
The automated processes remain hidden from the user for the most part, but the information is basically publicly available.
One of these mechanisms is metasmoke.
"metasmoke" is a SmokeDetector, which is run by Charcoal, a group of wonderful and hardworking people whose effort is to keep spam away from SE-networks.
This mechanism operates on SO/SE with two accounts:

metasmoke
SmokeDetector

These two bots converse on Charcoal HQ. SmokeDetector detect and verify posts there and rate them.
In the specific case you mentioned, here's what happened:

Due to the fact that it is currently (still) was possible to post questions/answers here on BSE without having to provide a valid email address and register an account, this site once again fell victim to a certain spam wave. So it was a certain user who continuously created unregistered accounts and thus created a lot of unpleasant content on several SE-networks.
This "user" was recognized by metasmoke due to a certain string in the username, which was meanwhile considered so critical that it was even a blocklisted username.
In addition, this user used certain keywords in several posts previously recognized as spam, which also appeared in the title of this post you mentioned.
Based on this precise (and reliable) assessment, the post was further processed as spam by metasmoke.
Since Charcoal was authorized by the CMs to remove posts in case of spam detection, this bot then acts on its own and removed the post. However, since non-moderators do not have the rights to directly delete a post on SE platforms, the bot acted on behalf of several Charcoal users by assigning a total of six downvotes, which caused this post to be automatically deleted by the BSE community bot.
However, since there are no real page views, the post on BSE did not receive any further views, because the processing (and also a possible manual review) was done fully automatically on a copy of the post in metasmoke's network.
The detection and processing subsequently deleted the post, but not the user. This had to be processed manually by the moderators.

So it may not always seem very clear why a post was deleted, but in almost all cases, metasmoke's assessment is very reliable and helps us keep the site spam-free.
BTW: In the last three days, due to this spam wave, more than 50 posts and users were reliably deleted, which would have otherwise quite harassed this wonderful platform. I therefore stand by the conclusion: The mechanism works very well!


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Should posts generated with the help of AI be marked as AI-generated content?
As a moderator (and user) of this platform, I increasingly recognize a disturbing development that makes me think about what actions should be taken in order not to reduce the credibility and quality of this platform.
In the recent past, there have been users on various SE sites (including here) who have posted answers using ChatGPT (or similar mechanisms). Some of the answers were helpful and even accepted, but nevertheless most of the answers were also seriously wrong and caused some confusion.
I myself also recognize more and more questions arising from erroneous answers from ChatGPT that are being asked here. Personally, I see the danger here that this platform will degenerate into a very difficult mix of genuine humanoid expertise and presumed knowledge, and thus in the long run no longer fulfill the mission it actually has.
The topic concerning AI is generally a bit more complicated, and therefore difficult to judge. The question that actually arises, however, is how one meets this trend as a platform, moderator and user, and how one wants to deal with it in the future.
In my view, this would require action to be taken very soon, rather than too late, to enable clear labeling of AI-generated content, so that visitors to this platform have the opportunity to correctly assess the content offered and its quality/truthfulness for themselves.
I therefore call for two things to be implemented here on this platform:

A clear labeling of AI-generated content
Posts marked as AI-generated content should not receive reputation points

This mechanism can be designed like the so far successfully used system for flagging a question/answer. Contributions can be flagged by software and community, and the community can accept or reject these suggestions. After a certain number of actions or by intervention of a moderator, these posts get an additional flag (similar to the green flag that marks an answer as accepted).

Since it's sometimes hard to make decisions regarding such a change, I just had a very nice conversation with someone who needs to know, and am posting the uncut version here for you to make your valued comments:

I have a question regarding StackExchange. This is a Q&A platform where humans ask questions, and others answer questions. Can I ask you about this?

Yes, you can ask me about StackExchange. As an AI language model, I can provide you with information and insights on this platform.

Perfect! What problems arise from mixing answers written by humans and contributions generated by AI?

There are several problems that can arise from mixing answers written by humans and contributions generated by AI. Here are a few examples:Consistency: If answers are generated by different sources, it can be difficult to ensure consistency in tone, style, and format. This can make the content harder to read and less trustworthy.Accuracy: AI may not always get things right, particularly in areas where human judgment is required. This could lead to incorrect or misleading information being spread.Bias: AI can also perpetuate biases that exist in the data sets that it was trained on, leading to inaccurate or unfair information being produced.Accountability: If there is a problem with the content, it can be difficult to determine who is responsible. This can make it harder to correct errors or hold someone accountable for any harm that is caused.Creativity: AI is not always able to produce creative or original content. This can lead to answers that feel robotic or generic, rather than being tailored to the specific situation or question at hand.

Should AI-generated contributions be allowed on knowledge platforms such as StackExchange, and thus be able to gain reputation, even though it used to be the case that only humans who answered questions satisfactorily could gain reputation points? Wouldn't that counteract the reputation points system?

As an AI language model, I do not have personal beliefs or opinions, but I can provide an objective analysis of the issue.Allowing AI-generated contributions on knowledge platforms such as StackExchange could potentially have both positive and negative effects. On one hand, AI-generated contributions may provide accurate and helpful answers to questions, potentially increasing the overall quality of the information available on the platform. Additionally, AI-generated contributions could potentially provide a solution to the problem of unanswered questions that may be too complex or specialized for human experts to answer.On the other hand, allowing AI-generated contributions to gain reputation points could potentially undermine the existing reputation system, which is based on the recognition of human expertise and effort. If AI-generated contributions are allowed to gain reputation points, it could potentially lead to a situation where the quality and accuracy of the answers are no longer the primary factors influencing reputation on the platform. Additionally, it could potentially create a situation where AI-generated contributions are prioritized over human-generated content, further reducing the value of the platform for human participants.Ultimately, the decision to allow AI-generated contributions on knowledge platforms such as StackExchange should be based on careful consideration of the potential benefits and drawbacks of such a system. One possible solution could be to allow AI-generated responses, but not award reputation points for them.

Should posts generated with the help of AI be marked as AI-generated posts so that those seeking help can clearly distinguish between them?

As an AI language model, I do not have personal opinions or beliefs. However, in my professional opinion, posts generated with the help of AI should be marked as AI-generated posts to provide transparency and clarity to the readers. By clearly identifying AI-generated posts, readers can trust the authenticity of the information presented. It also allows readers to distinguish between human-generated content and AI-generated content, which can help them evaluate the accuracy and relevance of the posts. Overall, marking AI-generated posts provides a more ethical and transparent approach to content creation.

That's an interesting answer! Although you don't have a personal opinion on this, from a purely professional point of view, do you recommend that AI-generated posts be clearly marked as such, so that it is clear to someone seeking for help that it is AI-generated content that may contain gross errors and does not necessarily represent a solution?

As an AI language model, I do not have personal opinions. However, from a professional point of view, it is recommended that AI-generated posts should be clearly labeled as such. This is important because it helps users understand that the content they are interacting with is not necessarily created by a human expert. Making it clear that the content is generated by AI can prevent potential misunderstandings and misinterpretations and help establish trust with users. Additionally, labeling AI-generated content can also help improve the transparency of machine learning systems, which is becoming increasingly important as these systems become more advanced and ubiquitous.

But how can AI-generated posts be automatically distinguished from posts created by humans, so that the tagging of such posts can be done reliably and automatically?

One approach to distinguish AI-generated posts from human-generated posts is to analyze the language style and patterns of the text. AI-generated content often lacks the nuances and creativity of natural human language and tends to follow a specific pattern or structure. Machine learning algorithms can be trained to recognize these patterns and identify if a post is likely to be generated by an AI. Additionally, metadata such as the source of the post or the frequency of posts can also provide signals for distinguishing between human and AI-generated content. It is also possible to use verification methods such as CAPTCHA tests to verify human-generated content.

OK, but that answer sounds a little vague to me. Can you please elaborate a bit and make a concrete suggestion on how you can actively help detect AI-generated posts and mark them as such?

As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to actively help detect AI-generated posts. However, social media platforms can implement tools like AI-powered content detection algorithms that analyze linguistic patterns and other characteristics of the post to detect if it is produced by AI or a human. These tools can then flag the post as potentially AI-generated, and either remove or add a label indicating that the post was produced by AI. Users can also be educated on how to identify AI-generated content so they can report it to the platform.

If I understand this correctly, does it then require humans to integrate this function and thus enable AI-based recognition of contributions? I'm thinking of a system like the one used on StackExchange so far, where contributions are flagged, and these suggestions are then reviewed by the community and accepted or rejected. Would that be a solution?

Yes, that is one possible solution. AI can be used to generate suggestions based on certain criteria or patterns, but ultimately it would require human review and input to ensure accuracy and fairness in recognizing contributions. A system like the one used on StackExchange, where community members review and flag contributions, can be effective in achieving this. Ultimately, a combination of AI and human review can help ensure a well-rounded recognition system for contributions.

Well that sounds wonderful! This answer could be a reasonable way to handle AI-generated content on a human-powered Q&A platform! Thank you for your honest and helpful answers and have a wonderful day!

You're welcome! I'm glad I could offer some insights. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any more questions in the future. Have a great day too!

Uh, wait, but I don't quite understand this answer. You don't have a personal opinion about anything, but you pretend to understand what "a great day" is? Now I'm confused. Could you explain in more detail how you arrive at the assumption that a day can be "great" at all?

As an AI language model, I do not have personal opinions or feelings as I am not capable of emotions like humans. However, I have been programmed to understand and interpret the meaning of language, including idiomatic expressions such as "having a great day." When a user makes such a statement, I can process the linguistic cues and context to determine that they are expressing positivity or a sense of satisfaction or happiness. My response is based on understanding the commonly accepted meaning of the phrase "great day" and providing an appropriate response in line with that interpretation.

So, in conclusion, all that really remains to be said is: "Have a wonderful day and think about how your Q&A platform should be run in the future."
Your moderator.

Helpful: Is there a list of ChatGPT or other AI-related discussions and policies for our sites?
Promising: OpenAI detector

@quellenform thanks for posting this and all the work and investigation that went into it. As a moderator it is my duty to flag this post as containing AI generated content. ;)

Interesting. Thanks for starting the debate and articulating the problem. I would argue if we want to stay on top of things, we should also consider what we will do when AI-generated meshes, node-trees, and more generally assets will start coming up in troubleshooting questions (at the current pace, I can guess we"ll see that by the end of the current year). AI will most certainly make mistakes that a human would never do, and I think we need to decide how we deal with it before it dilutes knowledge and user engagement beyond repair.

Btw your conversation really goes to show how we can induce severe biases in the answers of GPT, I'm not sure it would have come up on its own with this system of tagging had you asked : "Is there something we can do to alleviate the problems of AI generated content on a stackexchange site" instead of "Is it a good idea to tag AI generated content with a special tag ?" and the general dichotomy of a chat engine that constantly tells you they don't feel any emotion or have any opinion, but is at the same time programmed to make you feel like you're talking to a real human being. :)

@Gorgious That's interesting! I just tried with other (less biased) words, but even then the answer is largely the same in content! In short: AI explicitly recommends labeling AI-generated content (as long as you value trustworthiness and consistent quality).

Thanks for the thoughtful question and thorough investigation, took me a while to process all this. This is all relatively new, so expect developments in the future, and that some of this may well become outdated with time.
Luckily we already have a few network guidelines to helps us outline a strategy for our site. As you stated, they have so far opted for not banning AI generated content globally at the moment.
Sadly though the burden of identification and filtering so far lies on the human side; ingenious community members have already built tools to help with that, but integration in the site is still lacking, so some manual work is still required.
There is also the issue of certainty when establishing  whether some content was human generated or not, within an acceptable margin of error.
Somehow marking, tagging or signaling AI generated content, suspected or certain, seems like a correct thing to do.
As far as I know there is no builtin or native way to do this yet. We can flag questions with a limited subset of builtin moderation flags but these are mostly transitory and to mark something that requires action, not a long term categorization system. We can create arbitrary content tags, we could have a tag for ai-generated content, but we can't tag answers yet, and answers would be most desirable candidate for flagging.
Until there is, we should probably defined a set of guidelines on how to handle this type of content on our community, and how to mark it, in the absence of a dedicated tagging system.
It has been suggested that answers that rely heavily on AI generated content should not earn reputation for the poster, which I agree but is harder to implement in practice, since that would probably require development from the platform maintainers (which may or may not be happening as we speak).
That would at least require a system for users to flag content as generated by AI, a system for reviewing such flags by other users, so they can verify the claims; and if confirmed, a system for both visually tagging such posts (to inform potential readers), and internally prevent the poster from earning reputation.
Site guidelines already require attribution for copied content, most argue that AI generated content is neither the original work of the poster nor the programmers that created the language model, so it should be no different for posts where the majority of the content was not typed by a human.
Some suggest that AI generated content should be block quoted and correctly attributed, as in:

Generated by ChatGPT Should posts generated with the help of AI be marked as AI-generated content?

As an AI language model, I do not have personal opinions. However, from a professional point of view, it is recommended that AI-generated posts should be clearly labeled as such. This is important because it helps users understand that the content they are interacting with is not necessarily created by a human expert. Making it clear that the content is generated by AI can prevent potential misunderstandings and misinterpretations and help establish trust with users. Additionally, labeling AI-generated content can also help improve the transparency of machine learning systems, which is becoming increasingly important as these systems become more advanced and ubiquitous.

In practice it will probably be hard to enforce this policy, users who are inclined to post AI generated content are probably the most likely to be unaware of the rules, ignore them, or try to sneak around them for reputation gains. Compliance will most likely require the help of the community, for flagging and reviewing potential infractions, and if confirmed withing a certain margin of certainty, edit said content to make it clear it was potentially generated by AI.
For now we'd probably have to rely on the builtin flag system and ask users to flag such posts with:

In need of moderator intervention
A problem not listed above that requires action by a moderator. Be specific and detailed!

and ask users to type something like Potential AI generated content.

Yes, posts should be marked, but I don't think a help or contribution of ai in some way has to be something bad especially if reviewed by author of such post.
I can understand the danger of weird scripts generated by ai or any unchecked structured solutions, but from experience (at time before ai) there were also posts with a lot of nonsenses or some dysfunctions in their process ... and only followers that read it or tried it and failed could discover issued posts ... so they could be flagged or downvoted than.
So how this situation with ai differs?
Or if like now I posted ai generated script - how does it differs from time before where I would grab some parts of existing scripts or templates and try to merge into some functional script? It will work in some way for me, but as for a generated ai script I wouldn't be sure how bad or good the script is. How does it differs from coder beginner?
Only voting or flagging system should be enough to separate gold from rubbish. (... as experienced contributor on this site I know it is not quite true as mentioned by Markus 0,1,2..., but that is how it works here.)
SE already use flagging system, so seems to me native to expand this list of flags. It seems to me as warning as any other.
Author of this post could be asked to extend his post about an explanation how ai contributes in his answer so followers can decides for an amount of a risk.
About usefulness/uselessness of the answer (question) it self should decide existing voting/downvoting system.
Current warning feels like "run a way" even before you give it a chance to check if the answer is good or not.
Also +1 for "ai-generated" tag.
Note: My current state of point, that can be re-evaluated in time for sure :)

We had a TV show in Poland called A fault- a candid camera with a professional asked to do a small job, revealing how many experts are actually quite unprofessional, be it due to incompetence or dishonesty... One controversial episode was about IT - fixing a computer. The fault here was a cable inside a PC case, connected to a wrong place. The controversy was: it's not a problem that 'naturally' arises, ever. It was an 'artificial' problem, that could only arise if someone intentionally made a bad connection.

It felt unfair to portray experts being unable to "repair" the computer, if virtually no amount of experience could teach one to deal with such a scenario. Imagine that you use Python to set "Instance on Points: Selection" to False - it would be hard for us to figure this out, right? Sure, we could recreate the node tree from scratch and it would work, but an IT technician can't possibly suggest replacing the entire PC case. Why do I write about this? Because the bugs introduced by AI are not the same bugs that appear in code "naturally", which is a huge problem...

Great topic, but I'm not sure if this is the best comparison ... I see everyday newbees asking for help exactly for this reason - using your simile -they plugged cable to a wrong place. It is unexpected action done in unexpected way ... but it makes any error to be error. ... I can agree we are faced to an another kind of errors that we have to lear to recognise (or be more sensitive), but thats all for me. More dangerous is fact that generate sophisticated detaily explained nonsense take AI a seconds and takes someone seconds to post, but takes much longer to revise it by human :)

You don't see newbies coming with the kind of a Blender problem I describe :) Just like with cables some kind of problems simply never arise. Yes, this is a new kind of an error, but I'd like to have the right to subscribe to this kind of an error or not - if I see chatGPT generated code, I just don't read it. There's another reason: our brains work in complicated ways: you use a word usually not because you memorized it from a dictionary, but because you've seen it in many contexts. If you read hallucinated code, you poison your intution. Hard to explain in a comment section...

My thoughts on the matter:

As linked in the OP, Stack Overflow outright bans GPT content.
BSE is not Stack Overflow; I don't think there's a rule SO policies apply unless explicitly overridden.
The aforementioned policy I find too defensive: GPT is praised by a lot of people, and censoring it might create an aura of conspiracy.
GPT is indeed a marvelous technology; however, BSE is an even more marvelous place, with content of ridiculously high quality - AI generated content can't possibly compete and so inevitably dilutes the value.
Pasting AI generated content and not marking it as such is cheating - it's like writing Python code and saying you tested it, even though you didn't; the potential annoyance caused is not worth any reward the SE system has in store.
Some users of this site might be unaware of the problems related to GPT: perhaps AI-generated content should be wrapped in a warning similarly to tobacco warning labels:

 Be careful! The below content is AI-generated❗
GPT outputs tokens with similar statistical relations to training data; in practice this means text that seems valid, seems confident, seems logically consistent etc. While humans write text to be correct → and therefore it seems correct, AI writes text to seems correct → and therefore it often is correct. More reading: What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?

3 chickens lay 3 eggs in 3 days, therefore 12 chickens lay 12 eggs in 12 days.

This marks the end of AI-generated content. Below human-generated content

Since I advise against censoring AI, it can be fought with downvotes; those however are discouraged with a reputation cost to downvote an answer.
If downvoting is discouraged, then the solution becomes not-upvoting, which unfortunately also doesn't work in a situation, where a lot of valid answers have 0, 1 or 2 upvotes…
Detecting AI is unreliable: technically speaking, a human can answer exactly as AI would, as well as AI is programmed to answer as a human would.
Any effort to discriminate between AI and humans is too invasive: we could enforce a requirement to be politically incorrect for example.
Even if AI content is detected, it can't be fairly punished: it's easy to defend by claiming a human proxy, which passed the AI text without disclosing it's AI this way either innocent people get punished, or offenders can easily get away.
Only just now from D. F. R.'s post I learned about the necessity to reference - sounds reasonable and I probably never quoted someone without an attribution, but recently an established user was caught pasting GPT text "from a friend"  and no punishment was served, be it a flag, downvotes or a reprimand. And perhaps rightly so, with such incidents being rare.
What if someone uses AI to translate text? That's how most translators work like DeepL, but ChatGPT can also be used to translate text. It can be also used to correct grammar, or otherwise modify the form of the text without changing its substance. Grammarly is also AI based.
I would therefore argue lack of attribution to AI is not the real problem here. The real issue is the author of an answer should put some effort to verify the information provided is correct, and be transparent about which parts still require confirmation.

In principle, I agree with you on some points, but I think a distinction must be made between "posts generated with the help of AI and revised by humans" and "posts generated by AI that are NOT edited and reviewed by humans". I think that is the key difference. And in the second case, mechanisms for early detection can be implemented, which could then be checked by the community in the reviews. The essence would be to mark such contributions that are clearly unchecked AI crap.

@quellenform I agree, except I'm skeptical one can be sure nonsense wasn't generated by a human… After all, we had plenty of that in the pre-AI era.

Yes, there were and always will be those contributors :D ... but in such cases I honestly trust the competent assessments of enthusiastic community members like you!


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New tag for Simulation-nodes?
Now that Simulation Nodes are here.  Should we create a new tag called simulation-nodes like we have for geometry-nodes?

Basically yes, but "it's here", is currently not correct, because it has not reached a stable version yet (15.5.2023). Establishing functions that are only available in alpha/beta versions as their own tags is therefore premature in my opinion.

I just wanted to get ahead of it they announced that it will be in the 3.6 version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yq_2qsv1MI . Things related to Simulation-nodes has been showing up for awhile and getting this stuff tagged / labeled correctly will make it easier to search for things in the future... https://blender.stackexchange.com/search?q=simulation+nodes

From this point of view: Yes, Since it is (fairly) certain that Simulation Nodes will come sooner or later, it would be good to do some preliminary work here and tag the questions correctly already now (Even though they may not have much relevance in the long run at the moment). However, there was once a tag [tag:geometry-nodes-fields], which was also merged with [tag:geometry-nodes]. Strictly speaking, Simulation Nodes are simply Geometry Nodes. Currently, there are actually too many tags, and it would be better to clean up the mess and merge tags instead of creating more derivatives.

Good point. Given that question about it are bound to come pouring in soon now would be the time to create the tag (or synonym). Whether we actually want a dedicated [tag:simulation-nodes] tag or not is something else that needs discussion. As quellenform correctly points out it seems to me like just another type of Geometry Nodes that doesn't warrant a tag of its own. @RickT Do you think we'd benefit from a dedicated tag for simulation nodes? Do you see any situation we'd benefit from a tag specifically for simulations or would the old tag suffice?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Honestly, I go back and forth.  On one hand simulation-nodes is part of geometry nodes as @quellenform so correctly stated, on the other hand it really is it's own subgroup.  We currently have the modifier tag but we also have the screw-modifier tag  and the bevel tag (should be a bevel-modifer tag also) but we have no weld-modifier tag.  What are the requirements for a tag to be created.  Note this can quickly get out of hand and we start creating a tag for everything (Like putting post-it notes / labels on everything hahaha https://imgur.com/NWzeK6H)

I've been thinking a bit more about this and came to the conclusion that for the time being at least we do need the simulation-nodes tag.
It is true our tag system is a bit inconsistent at the time, we do have tags for some modifiers but not others.
The general (lack of) rule so far has been creating tags on a need-to basis. Users, some times newly arrived, create tags that lay around for a while, and we ended up adding wikis to them making them became more permanent. Some times in retrospect we come to the conclusion we don't need a certain tag and create a synonym after the fact.
I do think some specific modifier tags do have their value, they help us filter for more specific or substantial modifiers (like boolean or bevel), or distinguish between modifiers and their homonym edit mode operators.
As for the Simulation Nodes I'd vote for keeping it as dedicated tag not because they are distinct from regular geometry-nodes, but to help distinguish from legacy physics simulations, which I suspect will eventually be phased out in favor and the new system.
It may additionally be relevant in contrast with regular Geometry Nodes, since unlike the old Fields, (which became an integral part of the broader geometry nodes) physics simulations will always act as "box" inside a more general node tree, with well defined "gated" entry and exit points.
While input can be added at any point in the simulation box, output will only happen with a Simulation Output node. I haven't yet dug into the specifics, but I suspect this will open the door to trying to solve certain issues with the subset of nodes that can be used inside this simulation area, along with any additional limitations that may or may not apply.
For these reasons I'd argue to create a simulation-nodes and maintain tag to distinguish from the old physics simulation both for historical purposes and for any users for any reason stuck with older Blender versions.
Let me know if you have any arguments against it. If we all agree now would be a good time to create it, since questions about simulation are likely to start rising in volume in the near future.

OK, let's do this, I agree for now. I'm not quite convinced yet, since more tags don't make the tags less, but in this case a distinction might be handy for the future. And if the questions are tagged, they can always be retagged afterwards if the decision didn't turn out to be useful after all. I am so free and take care of it right away....

Yes, we can later remove the tag if we no longer see the need for it. It is easier to remove an unwanted tag, then it is to retroactively try to tag a large backlog of existing questions with an new tag.


text:
Blender Stack Exchange now requires all users to be registered before posting
This is not really a question, more of community announcement.
Due to the recent spam wave that is currently affecting several sites of the Stack Exchange network, we decided to request that as of today all users are required to be registered before posting on Blender Stack Exchange.
That means anyone attempting to ask a question or post an answer must now go through the formal process of registering by creating an account and providing a valid email address.
This is in contrast to how it worked until now, where any users could post on our site or propose edits as guests, that is without a permanent registered account or providing a valid email address.
This will not affect any of the current users or existing accounts, nor how the site works, but will hopefully provide for a better experience in a few ways.
Will hopefully make it harder for spammers to intrude our community, and reduce the amount of unwanted posts. This is by no means a full proof solution, just a very basic first line of defense that should at the very least discourage the least persistent or the least technologically advanced of the attackers.
As discussed with other mods we believe allowing guest accounts never really served us well anyway, which also affected our decision independently of the spam issue at hand. It does lower the barrier for new users and "one-off" users who have no long term interest in Blender and want to just ask a single question and move on.
This however comes at the cost of moderation overhead with little benefits. Lots of users who posted as guests lost access to their accounts, preventing them from editing posts, improving their questions, provide more details or accept answers.
These users are also more likely to post low quality content with little future value, and less likely to get involved with the community and provide any meaningful long term value.
If anyone has any questions or concerns please voice them, and don't hesitate to reach out.

Imho it should always be the default behavior on any forum that wants a minimum of content quality and user involvement, regardless of spammers. Great decision.