text:
Why my Question is Downvoted?
I'm a newly active member here in Blender SE Network.
My Question - Rock PBR Texture Creation within Blender (Procedural) for export in game engines
here as Got -3 Downvotes.
As per the Guide to Ask Questions,

Search, and research
Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone

As you can check my Question, it contains what I researched on the Tutorial of Andrew Price, other Youtube and even Substance Designer does. I've even put some of the effort to tell the users about the existence of different Species of rocks. A research on different types of rocks as well as different ways it's made in other Softwares. That's all that I've found on internet worth of explaining here.

Be on-topic
Our community is defined by a specific set of topics that you can view in the help center; please stick to those topics and avoid asking for opinions or open-ended discussion.

As you can see the whole Question is on explaining the users, what I want. I tried to explain different things. Although there are some discussions regarding Substance Designer because it was really required to mention that software the reference image was done with it and if someone wants how noises are mixed, then he can easily see substance Designer Timelapse in order to answer my question better.

Be specific
If you ask a vague question, you’ll get a vague answer. But if you give us details and context, we can provide a useful answer.

I'm specific on the topic of what I'm trying to ask. I wrote everything in a chronological manner so that they can understand the question better. I'm specific to the blender and procedural materials, that's it

Make it relevant to others
We like to help as many people at a time as we can. Make it clear how your question is relevant to more people than just you, and more of us will be interested in your question and willing to look into it.

You can see, I've added multiple images of different references, from different sources in order to make it relevant to others, I also asked the question in a manner, that others can understand what I want to know and What I don't. I've also added a Good Title for the summery of the whole text so that others can easily search the question if they need.
I've really put my efforts into the question by posting multiple images of what I want to do and not what so that others will not be confused. I've done maximum effort to keep my question on the topic and Interesting and also have added information about the content about the non-StackExchange website like blogs/tutorials/youtube and why they won't help me.
Also, additional efforts have been put to keep the question short, simple and meaningful.
So, why my question is downvoted? What's really wrong with me? I'm now banned too from asking questions. :(

It's hard to tell the reason why those who downvoted  left no comments. The best way to remedy a question that is not well received is to add additional information and to document your progress as part of the question. In this case you show what you want to do, but it might also help to show what you have tried and the results you are getting, even if they look strange or wrong. Then others might actually be able to give you concise and useful guideance.

You wrote .... [What's really wrong with me?]. What does that mean?

@atomicbezierslinger I thought people don't like me

While I didn't downvote I think question is a tutorial request which also asks for something like "stars and moon but not like those ones". E.g. quoting - "tutorials to create a procedural rock... are of no use here.. I want to create a rock surface" "not a rock, but a rock material [ ] which can be used to create more shapes of rock with different Maps". First one shows no research in tutorials because there won't be one tutorial about everything you want. Second is just unclear about what's your need. So for me downvote reason isn't unclear, note also there is a comment about reason.

@AbhasKumarSinha.  I asked the question to verify your intent and to see if you equate your BSE activity to [you entirety].  I assume people barely know you.  It seems you now have votes in the positive and the question has been turned around.  I definitely believe you have to kiss the fishy bass of certain others or someone will tell you your fish stinks.   Sometimes one gets unlucky and gets multiple negative votes when one would be sufficient.  So be it. I have plenty of negative votes.  Who cares?  Voters can be like piranhas.  Another BSE Tragedy becomes an inspirational juggernaut.

I think I was the first to downvote the question and at that time immediately commented clarifying the vote.

I downvoted this question, because it shows no research. I simple web search gives me plenty results and tutorials on procedural rocks in Blender and (Micro-)displacement. Do they not satisfy your needs? If not, why (illustrate)? There will be no perfect way applicable for every situation. Narrow down your field! (Games, Realtime, Still, Animation)

It still resembles a tutorial request more than a Q&A question, and I won't retract my downvote (yet), although you have 5/9 positive votes currently.
When I downvote I...

don't dislike anyone on a personal level
don't think the topic is uninteresting
don't think your personal efforts don't deserve help

instead there simply will be one or two points which make it feel unsuitable for blender.stackexchange, as there are sets of hints for asking good questions.
Yet, there are awesome downvoted q&a's like this out of scope question, which I downvoted, but also had lots of fun writing an answer for. But the generated answer needs a lot of background knowledge to understand and may be not suited for a general audience seeking help.
I will point out what I (subjectively) think could be improved in your question. (Very nitpicky, and I understand that formulations are hard for us non-native speakers.)
Defining your topic
I can make out a block of bold text in your question, containing the question

I wanted to ask if it's also possible to recreate Materials/Textures in Blender like Substance Designer?

If this is the main question it is out of scope, because it requires knowledge about substance painter. The additional information of Substance Designer just mixes textures/noises/patterns to generate materials doesn't resolve this issue. Since most procedural materials do that, we would still need to know about substance painter to recreate its effect/workings.
The second image gives me no additional information, remove it! The first image has displacement as well.

There are many tutorials to create a procedural rock [...], but they are of no use here, because I want to create a rock surface.

Now, it may be difficult as you don't know the correct terminology, but did you actually follow one of those tutorials? Because, in almost every of those tutorials your going to learn about
- modeling (meshes, geometry)
- maybe modifiers (subdivision, displacement)
- materials, textures and displacement
If you followed one of these turials you have created a procedural rock material which is independant of your geometry. You must explain why this method didn't help you! If you need the textures in another application they can't be exported as every engine has it's own equivalent for their procedural techniques. But you don't mention your specific goal. [The material is covered in many tutorials, I followed them.]

Rock Surface = create Displacement, Albedo and Normal Map which is fully procedural [...]

This is important information and should be in the main question. But in what format do you need it? Blender material (can't be [tutorials, blabla]), image texture (can't be fully procedural)
This is my main problem with this question, which makes it unanswerable, because I don't know of a universal format for materials which contain procedural textures.
... if it wasn't for

and please share the .blend file

Ok, so you want a .blend file with a material. This is vital information and should be in the question, not just as an optional piece of the answer.

I want the recreation of Displacement/Normal/Albedo map.

But then a map again. A map refers to a two dimensional abstraction as in UV map. This would imply that you intend to use 2D textures, but your procedural rock needs 3D textures. As you can see, I'm in the dark what your desired output is.
Your last two images are useless.

To me they both show me a cg render of a rock. Nothing more. You explained, that you seek a procedural material and not a geometry creation method. This can't be explained by those two images, they convey identical/similiar information, remove them.
Be more specific

for export in game engines

What game engine? Every game engine is different.
Keep it shorter

shrink images so they don't block the browser window
don't repeat yourself
The first image of the Rock is what I want to recreate using Displacement, Albedo, and Normal Map
I want the recreation of Displacement/Normal/Albedo map
don't say unnecessary information
Other tutorials/blogs/ Videos are not helping me because they are not the type of rock which I want to create. [This is to vague to be useful.]

Research

a detailed study of a subject, especially in order to discover (new) information or reach a (new) understanding

The stackexchange faq isn't distinct in this point, but I would suggest showing the other users what you tried and then explain what didn't work. Everyone can do a web search of procedural rock material, but that doesn't count as research in my opinion.
I'd personally follow a tutorial with a procedural rock material. Then I'd have the material and assign it to a sphere as in your first example. Then explain in your question what's different from your result to what you want to achieve.
When people don't show me their own research with work/test heavy question I'm tempted to downvote, because it sounds like they want someone else to do their work.
"Hey, we need a procedural rock material for our project but don't have time to study and create it, let's ask the folks at stackexchange.
You will probably be able to do many of the steps of the answer you want. Give us your existing file/method and the answerer can make few and specific adjustments and explain them in depth. Creating a fully procedural rock material for free isn't an answer, its a job.
Research aside, here is how I'd word a question. I'm making some assumptions which aren't clear to me.

Create tileable rock texture maps for export to Unity
I have created this rock shader.
[Image + Blend of shader]
I want to export it as a tileable texture to use with many objects in the Unity game engine. For that I need to create a
- normal_map.png
- color_map.png
- glossy_map.png
- displacement.exr
How can I export the images from Blender?


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Are questions about the Armory game engine on topic?
Armory works only within Blender, however it is a separate product. There is a version that is an add-on, presumably that's on topic. Then the full version is a separate product, but you can't use it unless you run Blender, it works only within Blender.
So, are questions about it on topic?

I'd say yes; it's not all that different from an addon for an alternate render engine (for example). That said, it's a tricky question right now since it isn't totally freely available yet. I'll also note that there has been a project similarly developed "in" blender (microvellum), but I don't believe questions about it are on topic.

Honestly with the bge being basically dead now I don't see why not as well once it's fully open source.

Sure! Armory questions are on topic.
However, I can not guarantee that you will get answers. (But that should not stop you from trying, everything started somewhere.)
We already take blend4web questions. I'd argue this is more closely related to blender then b4w.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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what to do with Yes or No questions
Often (especially in the unanswered list) there seem to be question which are seemingly answered with a yes or no.
I'm not talking about not answerable question, buts valid question which appear to in scope, (almost) an generally valid questions.
This is a good, relevant question, but the answer could be a simple "No, Blender doesn't have this feature." But according to How do I write a good answer? "don’t do that" is understandably discouraged. Should the answer be unanswered untill Blender gets this feature or a valid workaround?
Even worse with "Can I do A with method B in Blender?". The answer would be "Yes." and since the OP already is aware of the method, he is probably able to do it without a tutorial answer.
In a very specific context of this, this and this question: Should they get bumped untill someone comes along with a crazy workaround? (The last one even already mentions the workaround in the question itself.)
More context (yeah, my own stupid questions):
Yes > "Nothing to worry about, this doesn't affect performance that much."
Yes  > "This is the best workflow, there isn't anything faster."
No and No > "Blender doesn't have this feature (yet)."
Note, that in the No cases, a future answer like "Blender 2.8 has gotten this feature now." is not that useful, since the question was about the workflow not working. At the same time, a missing feature is not a bug. Or my three question have been closed as too localized as well, I seemed to think others could benefit from the as well.

If OP knows the method and still feels the need to ask a question, they are probably coming from another software, in which case some elaboration on the "how" still seems in order. In the case of a "no such feature" answer, one could elaborate on the "why not" or the "when will it" questions. I find it hard to imagine a realistic question to which there is absolutely no useful (even if peripheral) information which could be added to its answer.

Should the answer be unanswered until Blender gets this feature or a valid workaround?

It is perfectly acceptable to answer that Blender doesn't yet have said feature or just leave it. A helpful workaround if possible would be great as well. For example - Is there a way to acces external .blend file's data with python script?

Even worse with "Can I do A with method B in Blender?". The answer would be "Yes." ...

I tend to find that if a potential answer can't meet the minimum required characters then the question itself might warrant some looking at to see if it itself is on-topic or useful to anyone else really. So if your judgement deems the question to require minimal effort for OP to figure out themselves (as in simply pressing a button or two and seeing the result) and can be condensed to a simple yes or no, you can leave a comment and these might be falling under the localized close category and could potentially be flagged as well.

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

In addition to the specific questions you pointed to I would go with

It's not possible currently in Blender, you could say that and that would be fine.
Also not possible, fine to say that as well. Would also be worth mentioning that the game engine will be gone in the next major release.
The last one is a bit borderline but it seems there isn't a better solution available, would reaffirm their workaround and leave it at that for now, also seems that they could just map the cache location to a bookmark as a suggestion.

For your questions, I agree with your judgement on those, I would also just leave it if there is really nothing to say. Here is an example of a question that had no definite answer for some 5 years. Will Cycles eventually replace Blender Internal?. An answer can always be updated. It's also worth noting that the community bot will bump dormant stuff to the front page over time.

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


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Professional Way vs. Getting the image?
I just got into it with someone on BSE, and it lead me to a question about answers!
I do not work in a game/vfx studio but I do get paid to use Blender. So I do not know all the techniques that professionals use but I do know how to get a shot finished that can pass as high quality.
I posted an answer to help someone with a shader. I was then hounded by a long time BSE user about how my way was not the correct way and that I make it harder for people blah blah blah (Yet I was the only answer).
I assumed the upvote/downvote button was so the better answers can rise to the top, and the other answers can just be there so the OP has other options.
After going back and forth about my workflow this BSE user made me feel like its pointless to give answers unless they are 100% the "correct" way.
So that's why I am posting here. Although I know my way may not be the "best" way, should I still post answers even though I know a more experienced user will probably have a better way to do it?

If you have a valid solution, you should always be welcome to post an answer.
The goal of StackExchange is to give people answers. This includes not only the original asker of the question, but everybody else who sees the question later. Even if your answer isn't the OP's perfect solution, it may be a better help to somebody else who comes along later.
This doesn't mean that all answers are created equal, but, that's what voting is for. You should be welcome to post a valid answer, and, if a better one comes along, it will probably be voted higher than yours and/or accepted. The system works.

There's the answer for your (generally applicable) question, but I'd like to address something specific to your case:
From the BSE Help Center, we learn that comments should be used for "constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post" or "adding relevant but minor or transient information to a post".
It appears to me that the initial comment by the other user was intended as constructive criticism. It wasn't really received that way, though1, and your resulting conversation escalated to this comment by the other party:

Maybe it's just me, but I like to have my answers to be proper, not "something".

after which you were accused of being rude. My guess is that this is what prompted you to ask this question, with its emphasis of "professional" vs "what works".
In my opinion, one of the things that makes BSE great is the mix of professional and hobbyist users that we have here, and much of the time, there is more than one right answer to a question (each of those is a separate link). As stated above, there is sometimes a single "best" answer, but that doesn't invalidate all of the others.
Additionally, I think that your answer was more than just "something." It was a well-formatted, properly explained attempt at solving the question: the quality of content we want on this site. Just because your answer wasn't the "proper"2 way to do it doesn't make it bad3.

1 which is understandable, since applying it would have essentially meant changing your entire answer.
2 additionally, in this particular case, I don't think that there is a single "proper" way to do it.
3 "bad" answers are those that are "dangerously incorrect." I don't think that an answer that is not optimally efficient qualifies as "dangerously incorrect."

You are mostly correct. Almost any answer (I can't say any because I've seen a lot of bad answers) is helpful. Your example here is most certainly in the helpful answer category. I'd say 9 times out of 10 it could be a "helpful answer". (Even if it was not helpful to the OP it can still be a helpful answer.)
Take this as an example. I search for some problem, find a promising question with the exact same issue, but alas no answer. Well that is not helpful.
Now if there were an answer there, anything, no matter how far from being the best or proper solution, at least I have something.
Yes we should always strive to make the very best posts we can. But do not let some perceived notion of not being the best stop you from posting an answer. You do not need to have the 100% correct way to post an answer. (Who's to say it's the way anyhow?) In nearly every case something is better then nothing.
However you erred in the comments. The back and forth quickly went south. You know what comments I'm referring to.
PS good move coming to the meta to see "who was right" and not continuing a flame war.

Even not technically "100% correct" (but who's to judge that?) answers can still inspire people to think about the problem in a different way to that which a so-called "professional" might go about it.
There are many different ways of solving virtually any problem and different people in different situations will have different priorities and needs. Any alternative solution provides another perspective and is definitely worthwhile.
Keep posting - if someone disagrees they can always downvote or post their own answer.

On a side note (aka things I'd like to see re the SE way of things) : The ability for a user to  accept many answers, and prefer one,

Perhaps - although I do like the simplicity of having a single accepted answer. For any other particularly special answers you could award a bounty in recognition (and this shows against the answer to flag it for all time).


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Blend-exchange not working(Please accept the terms and conditions)
Blend-exchange won't let me upload my file despite me accepting the terms of service

Please add the OS and browser version that the error is occurring in.

google chrome Version 67.0.3396.99 (Official Build) (64-bit) I am doing this on a windows laptop

Try removing the # sign and everything after it from question url.

That worked thank you


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kbd shortcuts and unwillingness to comply
Related to comments on How to move points proportionally to keep edge flow good? , which are getting out of hand and inappropriate to where they're occurring.
I like helping people.  However, I am only willing to go to so much effort to help people.  I don't go to effort to do things that I think are a waste of time unless I'm getting paid, right?
I like to provide information that people would find useful, including keyboard shortcuts for Blender operations I reference.  I am not going to use  tags because it's tedious and I don't see any point to it.  So my question is, what would the BSE community prefer?
1) I walk away and stop answering questions.
2) I continue to answer questions but provide no keyboard shortcuts.
3) I provide whatever keyboard shortcuts are convenient for me and people that care about keyboard shortcuts can edit my posts as they wish.
To me, 3) seems like the best option for people using BSE.
Obviously there are going to be differences of opinion on this, I'm looking for something approaching community consensus, which I'll respect.

In my opinion you're approaching this too pedantically. Markup is for visual convinience to read and understand what's written. For example in original text of your linked answer shortcuts can be misinterpreted as description for that question (A, B, C as designating triangle and A as shortcut etc). If you are really bad with putting those markups inline then e.g. write them all caps with pluses in between, like SHIFT+C.

Thanks @MrZak , that is acceptable to me, and I'll do that in the future.

Also look here: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250/guidelines-on-the-usage-of-stackexchange-markup-and-style and here: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/388/button-to-insert-kbd-kbd-for-users maybe this could be less tedious for you.

As someone who absolutely overuses <kbd> tags wherever possible, I would hate to type them manually. cgslav already linked it, but I can't emphasize enough how useful I find the kbd insertion userscript.  (disclaimer: I helped write it, so I may be biased)

First off the comments you linked to are not inappropriate or out of hand. A user asked you to make your answer better by adding <kbd>. Suggesting improvements is one of the designed uses of comments.
Now on to your problem.
Unless you are planing on writing answers that just names the tool and not how to get to it; then I think you will find the <kbd> is much quicker.
Lets take the "Show Hidden" tool as an example. (I'm sure you know this tool, and use it all the time. However if you do not know how to get to it (and I always assume someone reading my answers will not) then you will have to show them:

AltH

Or

From the 3D view header Mesh > Show/Hide > Show Hidden

Which would you prefer? (I do both)

To get the best benefit out of your answers you should have the shortcuts wrapped in <kbd> tags. We even have something of a style guide for them.
It really is not that much work. I have typed <kbd> 1,830 times in my posts (and that is just on BSE).  It's something that takes very little extra effort and almost no extra time, yet makes the post much better.
Just do it.

If all that did not convince you, then yes your option three is the least bad.

You don't use the userscript? :(

I walk away and stop answering questions.

That would be an act of a little kid. Looking at the comment thread you were far from harassed, people just gave you feedback that kbd shortcuts are better readable and would appreciate you for formatting them.
No one forces you to do anything, format your answers however you like. The best answer gets the upvotes and I think you now know what such answer looks like. It has pictures, gifs, is well worded, structured into paragraphs and among other things has formatted shortcuts.
Putting time into this is not a waste

you save a fellow user's time if your answer doesn't require formatting.
you make better answers that gets you more points and you can brag about them when getting work from clients or when job hunting.

Basically the more effort you put into building this site the more it's users will like you and the better public image you will get. You can even get one level fancier with shortcuts to reach god tier:
⇧ Shift
If you don't care about any of this, that's fine, but I wouldn't count on other people editing your answers to look better when they know you are purposely making them that way.

That said formatting them could be easier, true. Could require less key strokes like > quote, **bold**, *italic*, [link](http://), etc. Something similar like this {Ctrl}+{C} or this <Ctrl>+<V>..
There is this: Button to insert <kbd></kbd> for users, requires browser extension.

My walking away would solve people's frustration when keyboard tags are not used (...) It's not a threat, it's an offer. And you don't speak for everyone on the site.(...) It is clearly something that matters to some people.

You are right that I can only speak for myself. But consider this:
This site is a competition. It's a hunt for points. Regular users on this site want those points - they give benefits (more rights on this site and the bragging I mentioned when looking for work or job). It's the currency here, people give bounties in them.
Something that can be improved is an opportunity to post a competing content. Anyone being frustrated by your answers would be stupid, trust me. If there is someone like that, do not pay attention to them, ignore them, their frustration is their problem and you don't have to solve it by walking away or providing no shortcuts, you don't owe them that.
People commenting (to increase readability of posts) are like people suggesting improvements to a competitor. If you reject those suggestions, it's tedious and not an option for you and the suggested benefits are not worth the effort - they can:

post competing answer (opportunity to get points)
edit yours

If there wasn't the 1st option and voting on answers, I would understand why someone might get frustrated - it would be like someone not conforming to standards of wiki editing for example. But this site is different. There is reward and there is opportunity to compete. Would you be frustrated if your competition did something you think can be done better?
Because of this, it's not your fault if there is someone frustrated with your answer. Some answer is always better than no answer and they can post theirs anytime if they think yours is low quality.
You might even find some benefactor altruistic people here that will edit the shortcuts for you without any frustration of doing work for you to help your answers be more readable and probably get more points. Anyone else can post competing answer.

"That would be an act of a little kid."  Nobody has a responsibility to participate in Stack Exchange.  Don't escalate.  I'm offering people options.

@Nathan The option of you walking away does solve what exactly? Nobody forces you to do anything as far as I am aware.

My walking away would solve people's frustration when keyboard tags are not used, because there would be fewer messages without appropriate tags.  I mean, "solve" is kind of saying it too strongly.  I don't get it, was that not clear?

@Nathan I think you miss-interpret this - no one is frustrated with you, I am not and it would be so sad if anyone else was. There is no reason for it, you did nothing wrong. Walking away would only hurt this site, not help anyone, that's why I called it act of a little kid - solves nothing and it's a threat. Sure you do get constructive feedback in this community, people suggest what you could improve - it's all in a friendly manner and intend, supported by arguments. This is healthy, helps you grow, it helps me grow, I learned so much from others and their suggestions.

No, you misunderstand.  It's not a threat, it's an offer.  And you don't speak for everyone on the site.  I'm glad you're not frustrated.  Don't think that because you aren't, no one else is.  It is clearly something that matters to some people.  It is not something I intend on doing.  When you're in a situation like that, offering to walk away is the adult thing to do, not the childish thing.

@Nathan I too care about how this site looks, true, it matters to me. But if you decide to not listen to the suggestion, that is fine, then people should respect your decision. I would not be mad or frustrated with you, why would I, you don't work for me or anyone else here. I would respect your decision to neglect formatting shortcuts and would leave your answer as is. I would give my upvote to the better answer or submit a competing answer that is better formatted. No one would like to become your personal assistant to improve your posts, I hope you can see that.

Thank you, I'm glad that you respect that.  It's important to me and I appreciate it.  I don't expect anyone to become my personal assistant to improve my posts, but they can feel free to do so if that's something important to them.  Why would I want them to?  I would have to think that keyboard formatting was important to want people to do that for me.


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Blender 2.8 and Duplicate Questions
On the stack overflow blog it is said that "questions are merely the sand that produces the pearl." and "that you optimize for pearls, not sand". So with that context here is my question.
The public beta release of Blender 2.8 is looming, and I anticipate a lot of "Duplicate" and or "Similar" questions coming in that will have much different answers now than in the past because of the keyboard remapping, menu and interface changes etc. so, how will the moderation policies adapt to accommodate or work around this?

What kinds of changes are you thinking of? I don't think asking how to do $thing in 2.8 would necessarily be considered a duplicate of asking how to do $thing in 2.7x.

@gandalf3 Well that's exactly what I was asking. Thank you for clearing that up.


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Image Error "i.stack.imgur.com redirected you too many times"
All browsers, Windows 10.
As of last night images from i.stack.imgur.com have been broken for me. In Chrome, attempts to load the image directly result in the 'redirected you too many times' error. Last night, the problem was just in Chrome, but now it's in all browsers. Deleting cookies has not helped. Is this problem shared? Is there a known fix, or is it server side?

This is a issue affecting more then just you. There were four of us in the chat with this problem. It has happened before (like when s3 went down), and will probably happen again. SE and imgur will fix it. Nothing we can do, and no there is no need to re-upolad images to "fix" them.
There were a few reports (1, 2, 3) of this over on the main meta. For some (me included) it seems to be better.


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Deleting answer by deleting content
https://blender.stackexchange.com/posts/115940/revisions
Is that an acceptable way to delete your answer when you feel you overthought the problem?

See When is it kosher to delete one's own answer?
Beyond the "no deleting accepted answers" enforced by the system, there aren't any particular hard and fast rules regarding deleting one's own posts. The usual etiquette mostly boils down to "avoid removing content which may be in some way still useful". It could be that this is the reason the delete button was not utilized in the answer you linked, as editing leaves the comments and edit history visible for all users.
That said, when going the edit route, I would suggest leaving the body intact (or in spoiler tags), prefaced with a warning which explains the reason the answer is no longer favorable. That way casual readers can see for themselves what the fuss is about without having to poke around in the revision history.


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Revoking false close votes from multiple users
I recently viewed a question that I initially though was a duplicate of another question, so, I voted to close it as such. Anyway, I asked for clarification just in case it wasn't a duplicate. After clarification from OP and a subsequent edit, I realized that it wasn't a duplicate and I revoked my close vote.
The problem is, someone had already seconded my close vote. Not knowing that a clarification and an edit from OP showed that the question is not a duplicate, that someone never revoked one's vote. What should we do in this case? Can we somehow notify the person who voted to reconsider his decision? Was that someone already notified but decided to leave the vote as is?
The question in question.

When you say that someone else has also voted to close the question as a duplicate do you mean that it still showed the "close (2)" under the question? Or was the question already closed? In the latter case you can notify anyone that has interacted with a post with an "@" in front of their username in a comment. It autocompletes for people that wrote a comment, but it doesn't autocomplete for editors, close voters, mods that added a post notice, the OP, ... - but it still works (you just have to be careful about writing the correct username).

@Secespitus The question wasn't closed, but there were two votes to close it, mine and another's. I do not know who the other voter is, so I can't notify him.

First off no, there are no notifications around casting a close vote/flag.
Now to the closing mechanics.
The only thing you can do is retract your CV (close vote). When a post has at least one CV it goes to the close votes review. There users either vote to close it (add more votes), or leave open (jump starts the aging process).
All CVs automatically age away on their own. So if this question does not get another four CVs in a week, I think I remembering that correctly, then that one vote will disappear.
If that someone else who also voted to close it comes back to that post they too can retract their vote.
However that is unlikely for a few reasons, most prominently there is no reason to go back to that post (the only place to retract that vote). There is no notification, mentions or status of your CVs. You just click the button, then if you do not go back to that post you forget about it.

Now do not worry, there is still one other thing you can do (although not really needed for something like this), bring it to the mods attention. We can kill CVs, or if it gets that far reopen the question (any 3k user can vote to reopen a post, we can do it instantly). So if I had the link hint hint I could clear all this up for you right now.

Alright, thanks. I added the question in question to the question. That was a lot of questions in a single sentence.


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Blender Stack Exchange Dark Theme
The site is too bright when working in a dark room or at evening when switching from all the 3D software that all has dark UI. Is there a Dark Theme?
If you have your own feel free to post it next to mine to form a database

I decided to share mine. You get it through userstyles.org here. Give it some time to get used to.

If there are bugs pls comment below, I am sure there are places of the site I never visited so there might be weirdness. Also I hope it works in most browsers the same.
The style also hides the New contributor messages, if you want them comment this section of the theme:
/* New contributor, code of condunt */
   .new-contributor-indicator
   {
       display: none;
   }

If you want to do anything with the theme feel free, it's CC0.
[Edit] There is update for the new design with left-bar navigation, but for some reason does not auto-update (at least for me), uninstall-install of the theme solves that.

For anyone not already aware, the stylish addon promoted on userstyles.org now comes with telemetry/tracking components. You may want to use stylus, a fork with those parts removed, instead.

Nice catch @gandalf3, I didn't even know the Stylish addon existed. For Chrome the right stuff is here: stylus for chrome.

Thanks Jerryno! I like this a lot. It may not be obvious, so I'll mention: after installing Stylus the install button works on the userstyles.org page. Disregard that the logo in the upper left is for Stylish - it is compatible with both.

This increased readability by an order of magnitude.

The blender stackexchange seem to have change these days: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ITwIo.png

@L0Lock Looking at it now also, I was away during weekend but will update it soon. Also I noticed the theme does not auto update very well when I make changes.

@L0Lock It's updated:)

awesome !
It could add one more suggestion, the "nex privilege" progression bar also needs some work: https://i.imgur.com/3HiW5BG.png And also this part: https://i.imgur.com/NVlVbgp.png

@L0Lock Good catch, thx. Fixed.

one last thing I guess, link in answers (and maybe comments) are a bit hard to see: https://i.imgur.com/z7mb3Tv.png

@L0Lock Try the update from yesterday, I am tweaking small things here and there as I bump into them. When I do an edit to the theme, the site tells it takes about 5 mins to update, but sometimes it does not update automatically. Sometimes it even does not update when hitting the update icon in theme manager and says it's up to date, when it isn't. And only after I uninstall and install again I can see the change. Weird.

I installed your dark theme again today, and it seems the SVG images that were hosted on svgshare.com have all gone down. I've patched the CSS for myself to get rid of the big red error images that appear in their place, but you might consider adding any relevant SVG images inline in the CSS instead. Cheers.


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Blender.sx font issues on Ubuntu
Recently, and I cannot pin point a date, in this website and its meta all fonts are bold-faced and its rather unpleasant to the eye. I've seen this on two separate machines (both with Firefox though) and using clean profiles.
At home, using OSX and same version of Firefox it is fine but on Ubuntu I have this issue. Other sister websites for stackexchange network are all fine. Below are some screenshots.
Any ideas?

Is it possible you have any extensions/userchrome stylesheets which could be doing this? If you start firefox with a fresh profile, does this still happen?

@gandalf3, I did restart my firefox in safe mode but still everything is bold-faced. However, I checked it with my colleagues machine (FF@Ubuntu) and it seems fine. It seems there is some strange problem with me only... I guess you could close the question.


text:
I see soo many questions, low views, and almost no answers
Title explains it.
Weird, right?

PS please never write a question with the body "Title says it." or such.

I do my best as I can answer some questions (I've been learning Blender for 4 years), but often the question is very badly formulated, or doesn't give enough details, or no screenshot, rarely any file... even after several demands, so people should make sure that their question is clear and simple

also it looks like a lot of people who don't know anything about bones and rigging use pre-made armatures or pre-rigged characters and want them to be fixed, I don't think it's the right way to help... Also very large questions like: after rigging my mesh is completely messy, it's obvious that some people have not even followed tutorials on the topic and it can't be summed in three lines...

WTL:DR  yep same problem on nearly every site, need more users to do all the other things (like answer).
Not weird. It's sad but, normal. You can look at any SE site and see the same content decline. (Its a big problem).
However here on BSE it's more pronounced. Why? Because we have many, Many new blender users. They only come here when they get stuck in a tutorial, or when their import fails. They do not (at the start) want to answer any questions, and in many cases they do not know enough to answer.
So, many brand new blender (and SE) users hits at both ends of the problem. They ask lots of questions (more on that in a bit), and they do not care to look around, and do not know blender enough to answer.
Now what about the rest of us that have rep? (hooray for useless internet points) Sure we may view the questions, even answer some every day. But there is simply not enough of us to answer. We get about 40 questions per day. I simply do not have time to read all of them. (Back in the day I use to go through every new question that was asked... but I digress)
Now what lies in these many questions? Looking at the top 30 newest questions right now there are 8 answered, and 1 UVed. Out of thirty.
No UVs could mean low quality posts, again a common problem with new users.
There being more answers then votes means either people are not voting on the questions (a couple of reasons for that), or the people getting to these questions can not vote on them (less then 15 rep).
The not voting could be because it is a new user and we want to be "welcoming" and not DV their post. Or it is not quite bad enough to DV, but it sure is not UV worthy.
The other reason for the more answers then votes, could be because there are new users answering them (because they all need more rep).

What can we do about it?
Good question. There is no "quick fix". In fact there is no solution. As long as there is an influx of new users we will have a huge question gap (and quality issue).
So tell everbody you know that knows blender to get over here and help this site out.
We need people to answer question.
We need the people to write the comments to the new users saying "we need more information, to be able to answer your question."
We need people to find the duplicates (there are LOTS).
As someone coined it we need more "curators."
Wow that turned out long.

Plus, with the insane policies being put in place, I don't want to risk being "offensive" in an answer or comment -

Any SE site except for interpersonal, they literally have no unanswered questions. It is probably the most successful network on SE.

Another important point is that everyone answering questions is doing so on their own time, out of the goodness of their heart, to help people.  It takes time.  Often times, answering a question means opening Blender, adjusting settings or doing some light modeling, perhaps rendering, and taking a bunch of screenshots.  It can take 30 minutes to an hour to answer a single question depending on the complexity.  Most of us have jobs, families, and other things to do besides answer Blender questions, so we have to find the time.  The only reward is reputation points, and many times people don't even "accept" the answer as correct so there's no reputation reward, only knowing you helped someone.
TL;DR - it takes time, expertise, and can be thankless, so there aren't enough people able and willing to do it.

Truly have nothing to add, except that your points are true. It's how it is. Imagine a different situation where the community is so well known amongst each other, and everybody usually know what theyr doing, it would probably bring more help in need as it acts as one, lets just call it 'family'. But like this, one just doesnt have enough time to take care of those massive amounts of questions, speacialy being asked mostly in the way you brought up in the comments above.

As for tbe newbies (im no pro in blender to make it clear), i only recently have become familiar with it. BUT, from the another field of creativity from which i come, i do know a fact that you best learn by trial and error, and errors will come in giant waves as you (they) go. Yes tutorials and help comes extra handy specialy in this time when there are lot lf thing to be done in shorter amount of time, but tou really absorb material when you actually 'get burned', when you hit the error. Time go ahead, and methods kinda stay the same, just that they come in a little different package.

This is normal and will get even worse with time.
As this site matures, it gets filled with all the questions and answers. Even now it provides a pretty complete manual covering almost anything you might encounter with Blender. This is because old questions are still relevant for new Blender releases.
Users that know how to search will likely find a solution, the problem is not that there is not enough information anymore as the site gets filled with it every day.
Because of this it is more likely to have low quality questions now, it got to the point that cegaton had to write this, which some would consider common knowledge.
Low quality questions generate low interest, low votes and low views. They also make spotting good quality ones harder between them.


text:
New Contributor indicator how to be a Contributor to Code of Conduct?
While Browsing Blender Stack Exchange. I noticed that some users are Contributor of "Code of Conduct".

If You hover the Text 'New Contributor' it Shows a message about "Code of Conduct". Although I already know about this code of conduct but I want to know , How to be a Contributor to Code of Conduct.

This flag doesn't mean that the user is a "Contributor to the Code of Conduct". It means that this user is new to the site and thus should be treated in a more welcoming manner in accordance with the Code of Conduct. In fact, you are a new contributor to this site and other users will see this flag on you for some time.

This flag is visible for a week following the user's first post. In your case, that was your first post in meta, hence the flag. For more information, see this meta post.

But some New Users with Reputation less than 50 are not shown with this Flag.

@ShehrozKhan Sure, that's possibly because they asked a question a long time ago and had minimal contributions since then, that is, they are not new to the site. For more information, see this meta post.


text:
Why are 2.8 questions off topic?
I have a question about my Blender Stack Exchange post: How to do a simple smoke in 2.8 eevee
Anyway what can be asked and what cannot is almost to the point of semantics. I understand the reasoning. I would assume a “no 2.8 or Blender dev 2.7 “ would be a very easy to see notification somewhere on the blender exchange front page Or “for official release only”. Since I cant find reference “no 2.8 questions “, I am just concerned  another question I ask with official build will get removed because of some common knowledge of masters but not of noobs. What you should ask and not should be on the front page link instead linked and menued down in the help section.

Nope this won't be deleted, in fact this is exactly what the meta if for. Glad you stuck around and are now trying to learn more about the site.

I understand Wally, and so many other users, as the only hint given when asking question are:1) the title placeholder "What's your blender question? Be specific." and 2) only on desktop, in a side panel, is "Is your question about blender?". Yes, site's help and faq can help but only if you take the time to read them. Even a simple change to the question asking form could spare many discussions and closing votes needed. Who knows, next 2.9 could trigger the same misunderstanding, soon...

Not all 2.8 questions are offtopic. For example this one:
Where is the Layers panel in Blender 2.8?
is legit, because it is known the layer system will change and the question will stay relevant after the official 2.8 release. And in meantime it will clarify what's going on with layers in developer versions.
There are many questions with "Something does not work in 2.8" format. They are getting closed, because it's normal behaviour until official release comes out and also they get obsolete as that "Something" gets re-implemented back into 2.8.

I should've known not to ask about blender 2.8.

You can ask about 2.8, the reason is not the 2.8 version, but the nature of the question being too narrow. You are right this is not mentioned in the Tour section, there is only:

Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers.

And that you get the real disclaimers what is off-topic through digging in the help section, which is much harder to get to and not many newcomers will read right away.
There is a balance between simplicity and information abundance. I don't personally mind how little the Tour page covers as there seems enough moderating capacity of this site to filter occasional off-topics in minutes. Closing mechanic is quite normal and nothing to feel bad about. I can imagine there being a link to the off-topic list from the Tour/Front page though.
You might want to see some hilarious fictional examples of what gets moderated here (some are less fictional than you would think:)
Funny Questions #1
Funny Questions #2
Funny Questions #3
2.8 questions are not that bad in general, some might be even good and legit. As they are not the biggest offender, imho they don't require special treatment on front page.

Thanks..I have been hesitant to check my mail. I have a phobia of it, I think. I catastrophize what I think how people will respond. Silly.

When the first release candidate drops would be a good time for us to slowly start officially adopting it. Expect a featured meta post when this happens.

Thing is we don't want version tags as eventually 2.8+ will be the de facto standard and Blender has excellent backwards compatibility so the majority of our content will still apply sans some shortcut and interface changes/enhancements.

It's also still undergoing heavy changes for any answers to be useful to anyone a year from now for example. We want a curated archive of helpful posts and we've had several 2.8 related answers become obsolete already within the space of a week.

Why Beta release is "official"? The was a 2 official alpha releases yet. So if Alpha is not "official", maybe Beta also is not "official"?

According to what I was following on irc and code.blender the first release candidate would have dropped around that time. https://code.blender.org/2018/06/beyond-the-code-quest/, not alpha, not beta (last month) but close enough to production ready. That means less large breaking changes.

The information that you are provided is not up-to-date. Since blender alpha 2 was released instead beta, release plan delayed and RC is expected in 2019Q1
https://code.blender.org/2018/08/blender-2-8-planning-update/

I'd like to point out that "excellent backwards compatibility" is completely untrue for the python API.


text:
Need to tell blender developers to add different symbols in future updates
I am in need of letters which are not in the standard English alphabet. I personally am after the ancient Hebrew alphabet from the times new roman font file. I am not able to copy these letters from character map app and paste them into my blender project.
I know that, in mentioning this, I am also aware that there are many users from around the world that may be using blender, however, but do not write in European languages (for e.g. Russian, Mandarin, and Arabic to name a few).
As a solution to this I strongly propose and believe that it is paramount that the next future update of blender needs to implement allowing the default microsoft character map to show up somehow in blender, OR, for blender to have its very own (extremely extensive) character map that allows all users to have all letters and symbols of all the languages ever recorded in existence.
Where else can I better give this feedback other than this site?
I need the traditional Hebrew letters in the Times New Roman font to preferably be in my project as added text OR, in the meantime, if anyone can show me a versatile practical way of showing me how to get these symbols (as 3D objects only) into blender in a way that I can make them look bright, presentable and, mystical.

From the how to get these symbols (as 3D objects only) I suppose you want to create 3D text object with using non-standard font. In this case this is not a question to Blender developers rather to fonts used by Blender. In text object properties choose a font which supports those symbols, see https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/6920/1245 for more (comments as well).

For giving feedback to developers, see:

Best Place to put Feature Requests?
Best place to put bug reports?

However, an important step in that process is checking if the feature you seek doesn't already exist, perhaps in an unexpected form. At least in this case, it seems like it does: How can I add text in a non-english language?


text:
A Selectively Helpful Community
I've been on this site for quite a while now, but there's something that keeps bugging me. This might sound a reminiscent of the reform of the whole StackOverflow site that happened a while back.
It seems like, with so many restrictions on what people may ask questions about, and what questions are considered "good", that many people really aren't getting the thought they deserve. For example, one fellow earlier asked some basic, but a bit naive questions about 2.8. Instead of being answered in a constructive way, or asking for clarification, this person was responded to in the comments simply with "Please put this in a bug report. We do not deal with experimental versions of Blender." This is just a drop in a much bigger ocean of... unhelpfulness that I see here. Now - I'm not saying commenting asking for clarification, or explaining nicely why the question is unconsequential is a bad thing. But,
It feels like some of this community's guidelines encourage pushing questions away, rather then answering them, which is the exact purpose of this site. In the previous example, why does blender 2.8 need to be completely shunned? Why shouldn't this fellow have gotten at least moment of our thought? There's nothing inherently wrong about many of the "don't do this" rules out there, and there are people who get rejected because of this. Obviously, some 2.8 questions are indeed out of our reach. But not all are, and trying to use 2.8 and being confused shouldn't make a user inherently less deserving of our help.
One of the things about this site that is attractive to this site, for newer users, is the quick and efficient way to get assistance and knowledge. They don't have to invest time into other, more thorough communities. I believe there's a beauty in that. But, a lot of people here don't have other places to ask. Many are working in isolation - except for this site, and YouTube videos. Nowhere else to go, nowhere else to ask. For a long time, I wasn't aware of other blender communities. This was it. And to see some people seen as rabble on this site, just because they don't know what's "appropriate", or have nowhere else to ask, is saddening.
So, how can this community be helpful to more people? Rules are good, and a necessary asset for any community. But I believe helping people should be priority, rather than using rules as an excuse to not help people who might have no other sources. For some of things, it would actually be faster to give a quick 4 word answer, rather than say: "I'm voting to close this as off topic because"
What are your thought's on this? Can we be a more positive community? Is there anything we collectively can do to become a more positive, inclusive, and helpful group?

Hello leo. Let me just comment about the very example that inspired your post, as a clarification (since I'm involved). I was the one saying "maybe a bug report is more appropriate" because after having tried to give an helpful workaround to the user, I realised that they were indeed right: the feature they needed wasn't there. I did answer the question showing my findings and experiments (even if the question was already voted as off-topic by other users) and I said: "you're right in considering this a broken feature, so you should file a bug report". I really was trying to be helpful

(And I've answered several 2.8 related questions in the past week. I've agreed that that one was probably off topic because -- after investigation -- it looked like a bug to me)

No hard feelings towards you, that post is really just what had gotten me thinking and helped me put a finger on what

TL;DR This site is not a support forum, its a knowledge base. Therefore, restrictions on what is considered useful content need to stay. However, users feelings should not be hurt during this process.
The reason there are all these strange rules to what can be posted and not posted is that the primary purpose of StackExchange is not providing answers for questions askers. That might sound a bit crazy, but bear with me.
I don't know about everyone else here, but for every question I ask on StackExchange, I find at least a hundred existing ones that are useful to me. For example, I have posted only a handful of times on StackOverflow, yet I use it daily. The point is I use it as a place to find knowledge, not so much as a place to ask questions. It serves as an encyclopedia, not a support forum. This is key. The purpose of posting questions and answers is to build that encyclopedia for posterity, for the hundreds, perhaps thousands, or in some cases hundreds of thousands of people who will find your post when they search the web for knowledge.
In fact, the original problem StackExchange was designed to solve was that answers were hard to find traditional discussion forums aimed at support. You had to dig through pages or rambling back and forth to find information. The curation and ease of access to information is the entire reason this network exists, and must not be sacrificed.
Seeing StackExchange as an encyclopedia for future readers diminishes the role of the actual poster. A question is simply a statement that a topic needs to be covered in this encyclopedia. When you view questions as such, you can see how so many questions are viewed as "bad." For example, questions about pre-release builds such as 2.8 can quickly become clutter that makes searching the encyclopedia difficult to search. Many answers will rapidly (within days in some cases) become out of date1, meaning that users will have to click through them to find up to date information, wasting time. Long term, these entries are not valuable in our encyclopedia.
The point is, close votes, and downvotes are a way of curating the entries in this encyclopedia, to try and filter out the clutter and keep the knowledge base lean and relevant. All those restrictions are helpful guidelines as to what will be useful to posterity. The curation processes, and posts that go unanswered are part of the price that is paid to make this information easy to accesses.
However, I do strongly agree with you that an effort should be made to be nicer during the curation processes. To much curation appears to be a criticism of posters themselves, rather than a statement that a particular question will not be a good fit for the knowledge base. Too many question askers are not directed to support forums better suited to assisting them, or worse, rudely brushed off. This requires an effort in the community. The rules help keep the value and focus of this site, but users's feelings are not a price we should be paying for this.
footnotes
1 At this point 2.8's design is stabilizing. I think once the first release candidate is finished, it will be safe to permit 2.8 questions. The first RC is scheduled for release in 10 days, so this will be soon.

Thank you for posting this; you've highlighted something I've been trying to put my finger on for a while now.
Most of the time when a question is outside our scope, it's usually possible to point the OP in a helpful direction, even if just with a comment. For example, if the OP is looking to pay someone to model something for them, we can link to blenderartists.   Sometimes this is a bit harder when the topic is rather far from our average users' expertise, but even here there was an attempt.
I try to give the OP somewhere to go if their question is closed, even if just by linking to the resources question and/or suggesting they search for tutorials on $xyz. I'm certainly not alone in this practice, but I feel like it has gotten less common over time, no doubt partly due to the number of questions we get now (many from new users).
Beyond that, perhaps some aspects of our scope could be re-evaluated, or better defined. There are a few points which have come up already:

Source code questions in 2016
Should we expand our scope to allow simple howtos?
How should we handle questions about features not yet in Blender?
What is our criteria for a minimum effort?

But in practice not all those have effected much change (especially source code questions). If we want to change our scope, we have to find a way to communicate those changes to question askers (which will be harder to do now that we have a reputation of being picky answerers).
Regarding 2.8 questions in particular, I personally remain opposed to their being considered off-topic. Perhaps now — with the 2.8 beta approaching — would be a good time to re-evaluate that policy?

But I believe helping people should be priority, rather than using
rules as an excuse to not help people who might have no other sources.
For some of things, it would actually be faster to give a quick 4 word
answer, rather than say: "I'm voting to close this as off topic
because"

I 100% agree with this and I usually try to stick to this philosophy (which is also the same outlined in the code of conduct.
For instance, I believe that the automated comment that is added when you flag a duplicate

Possible duplicate of [...](...)

should very rarely be left alone (only if the questions are clearly identical in scope). Sometimes it's necessary to add information to the user, something like "The other question is about meshes, but the answers apply to curves as well".
Unfortunately, people will massively downvote trivial mistakes (like a good, 200 character + picture answer, where the low-rep author has mistakenly written "million" instead of "thousand"); or they will flag as "unclear what you're asking" questions by new users where some details are missing but the problem is clearly evident in their screenshots.
I don't know if the badge system (e.g. civic duty, deputy) somehow leads the users to "be the first to flag/report/downvote" stuff, without encouraging friendly help. I thought of them as balanced but they may have some downsides.
As for Blender 2.8:
I am happily answering several questions about 2.8 (this gives me the opportunity to learn it better).
(Eevee & particles: hide mesh emitter at render   -   2.8's Grease Pencil: Is it possible to scale several frames at the same time?   -   2.8: Is it possible to Scale up the Grease Pencil object symbol?)
These are about features that are clearly going to stay, since they are stable, well integrated in the new workflow, and covered in the Blender Developer's blogs and videos. I'm 95% sure that the answers will apply to the final release.
In the rare cases where they are about bugs, I believe it's healthy to tell the user they are likely dealing with a bug (and, if possible, draft a workaround in the comments). Unfortunately though the bug tracker is now only open to crash reports, so the users really don't have a place to go to get feedback.
[Disclosure: I was active in the question that Leo is referring to. I have both answered and agreed that it was likely to be about a bug, thus off-topic]


text:
Create 'gltf' tag?
Similar to existing fbx and collada tags, would others be open to creating a 'gltf' tag? See https://www.khronos.org/gltf/ for format details. It's a relatively new format, but there are currently ~40 questions mentioning glTF, and ~5 in the last month. If those 40 were tagged, it would be a roughly average popularity tag for this site.
Disclaimer — I'm part of the Khronos Group and help to maintain the glTF format. I'd like to use the tag to watch for new posts so I can answer questions and handle any bugs. I don't have 300 reputation, and cannot create tags.

Sounds good to me, created. Thanks for your time and initiative. Ton has also been a big proponent of the format for a while now and with Eevee, Godot and general support when moving between packages, curating these is a great idea.

As a type of addendum, please try to keep the answers on-topic as related to Blender https://blender.stackexchange.com/tags/gltf/info. This is an example of an offtopic question.

Sounds good, thanks!


text:
Blender SE's updated site theme is ready for testing!
As part of implementing the new unified themes across the network, we're gradually rolling out updated site themes for each site. As of today, we have enabled your updated site theme for testing.
If you can't see it right now, that's by design! This is a very early test implementation of your design and we need your help finding issues with it before we make it live for everyone permanently. So, keep in mind, there will be things that need fixing! We'll address those things as we can.
If you'd like to review it, here's how:
How do I enable it?
Click here and check the "Beta test new themes" option. This will turn on the new theme for all sites that have one in testing, including this one. Here's more info on how to opt in. You can uncheck the box to revert to the older theme until the site is live for everyone. Note, while turning it on is immediate, it will take a few minutes to revert to the old view - but it will go through!
What type of feedback do we need?
On this post: Bugs related to this site's design elements
Please help us look for issues/bugs related to the theme design and how we have mapped the old theme to the new. This needs to be done within the limits of the new unified theme.
This could include colors of sections of the design or text, problems with JavaScript add-ons (if applicable), the logo or top banner appearance or other artwork.
You can also feel free to ask questions about the new layout if you're unsure how to navigate it.
On Meta Stack Exchange: General concerns about left nav or theming
There are some things that are definitely changing everywhere and can't really be adjusted on a per-site basis. A few of them include:

Top banner is shorter in height, so some artwork has to be adjusted along with some logos.
Left Navigation is active everywhere (but can be collapsed into a menu by visiting your site preferences - instructions here).
Responsive layout is active, which lets the site adjust as browser widths change - no side scrolling (some pages haven't been updated, yet, though). For now, if you prefer the scrolling, you can disable this by clicking the "disable responsiveness" link in the footer.
Many site elements including tags and voting arrows are standardized across the network.
Link underlining is active. In an effort to make links more visible, they are now being underlined.

If you have concerns or issues regarding the left nav or the overall approach we are taking to theming, then this Meta Stack Exchange post is the right place for feedback.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some unique design elements like voting arrows and tags that are being standardized in this process. Keeping these custom elements makes our ability to maintain the sites too complex and, while we're very sad to see them go, we're in a difficult position of needing to make the site designs work together so that we can continue to address feature requests and bugs that will make your Q&A experience better. This is addressed in a Meta Stack Exchange post if you want more detail.
What new themes?
If you're like, "What the heck are you talking about?", then you should read the Meta Stack Exchange post entitled Rollout of new network site themes (and maybe the posts it links to for the full background). To follow along with the rollout of these new themes, go here.
Thanks so much for your constructive feedback!
Oh, Who am I?
If you don't know me, I'm one of the Community Managers here at Stack Exchange. I'm here to listen to your input and convey it to our Design team for responses and fixes to bugs. I'll do my best to respond to your concerns and explain whether changes we've made are bugs that can be changed or if they're by design and why.

I haven't tried the beta theme yet so I have no opinion about it (apart from not having had any issues on other SE sites that use it). I wonder if it's because of people's opinion on the theme or because they feel like this announcement post is of poor quality that they are downvoting. If it's for the former, that's bad! If it's for the latter, please -- people -- explain!

ok @NicolaSap because you asked. I was one of the heartless unspoken DVer's. My DV has nothing to do with Catija, her post, the quality, or how it was written. This is about the left nav, period. I'm not going to get into the whole theme thing here. I just left my DV and moved on. Will report any bugs when I come across them. (which is what this whole post was supposed to be about).

Thanks David for the clarification. I acknowledge that the new theme is not much appreciated around here (I repeat: I haven't gotten into this topic or argument before), and I realise that there's something bigger than an internal BSE thing at stake here. Voting is anonymous and isn't to be judged on SE (apart from serial voting), I just felt that a reason such as yours is not among the "good ones" for a DV, but thanks for coming out and claiming it

I agree, with you there. DVing because you do not like the under laying issue is not a great reason. (It would be plain wrong on the main site.)  However meta is a little different, her we do vote to agree or disagree. So here it is borderline, ok probably not right. This is not about the theme (too late for that), but just letting you know to test it.

Oh, so the leftnav approaching closer here as well. Sad to hear. Also I'd love to hear more about customized 404 / not a bot etc pages much more than about leftnav and link-underlining (although questions about 404 etc were already asked without any answer).

@David: I'm not sure if you know that you can hide the left nav. I personally can't decide which way is better, but some people prefer their nav in the top bar.

The new logo looks like it has been saved to SVG in Adobe Illustrator without enough decimal places. The default number of decimal places is 1, but a minimum of 3 is probably needed to represent the logo in its full glory.
Because of this it lacks in details and the logo looks off compared to the old one. For example the "B" looks off, the 'l' is to thin etc. See the attached images for comparison:

The old and new logo as rendered by Google Chrome in macOS:

This is probably status by design, but I'll bring it up for thought.
The "Ask Question" button is now missing on the users page, user pages, tags page, tag pages, all of the review pages (including all the tools), the tour page (At least here it forces users to read down to the "Ask a Question" button.), and the help center.
That is a lot of places where I can not ask a question. Why are we removing the "Ask Question" button, the one thing SE is meant to do, and making it harder to get to the ask page?
In short I have to be on the Home page, the questions page, or a question page, to be able to ask a new question.
Can we please put the "Ask Question" button back everywhere? I mean we have that whole new (empty) left nav, and is begging for buttons.

So, when we pulled the Ask button out of the top bar, this did become a problem and I agree that it should be addressed. In the question I mention that many pages haven't been redesigned for the responsive layout - pages like the review queues and profile pages - hopefully this will be a consideration when they are reworked. I can't actually remember if anyone's asked to move the Ask Question button into the left sidebar but my guess is that it'd be problematic since we allow users to collapse it, which means it'd be missing on every page.

Is it intended that you have to go through the help center to find the badges page?
I wanted to check on one of the badges, and could not remember how to get there (shows how often that page is used). It did not occur to me to check the help center. I loaded the old theme, and clicked the badges button, simple. (then from the url figured it would be in the help center)
Seeing how it is a very secondary page I understand removing it. However the left nav is still quite empty. Could we not add it back there?
What was the reasoning to drop the "badges" and "ask question" links when the nav moved to the left?

Badges (and privileges) can be reached by clicking on the achievements dropdown. It's in the top line of the pane. It's actually been there for a while. :) I forget about it all the time, though. That said, Badges are a pretty important part of the site mechanics. You're not the only one who'd like to see them in the left nav. https://i.stack.imgur.com/eI8dp.png

Ooh, that's useful (and I feel dumb).

On my user page when there is a blue number box showing the count since last click, the underline for that tab disappears.

(no that number is not edited.)
My browser and OS:
Same setup as always, still running FireFox 52.0.2 esr on vista.

I looked through the css and the issue arises from the border-bottom:2px solid transparent; and border-bottom:1px solid transparent; deceleration in the #tabs a,.tabs a style on lines 7045 and 17749 respectively (well at least in how FF unminifys it.)

:( Hmmm... I don't have any events here to reproduce this but I don't see it on sites that I do have events on that are also in testing. It may be browser/system specific. Could you add some details in that regard?

PS you should have an event on BSE now. (and it likely works in your browser)


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Should we ask users to indicate what version of Blender they're using?
Given the changes in 2.8, should we ask the users, whether they are asking or answering, to indicate which version they are using, in order to make sure that the answers provided are correct?
Or, alternatively, create versions tags 2.79 and 2.8?

It's not necessary. On the one hand, if the users are experiencing an issue, we would usually ask for screenshots, which makes it very clear whether they are on 2.7x or 2.80.
On the other hand, if they are looking for a feature or requesting advice on a workflow, the good answers will spontaneously start to transition during the Beta period from a majority of 2.7x-based to a majority of 2.8-based (and will be mostly independent from the version, apart from the hotkeys). They will likely contain the necessary remarks about "if you're using 2.8, you will find it in this other menu / with this other hotkey", either straight away or after an edit/comment by another user.
Of course, if the question is about fast PBR visualisation, or advanced creative uses of the Grease Pencil, the answerer will very likely push for 2.8.

I'm also against version tags. What the users need are answers about how to use Blender, regardless of version. A question is rarely about a particular version of blender: answers may be. So the solution is to slowly edit the answers we come across to be up-to-date.

See https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-should-be-the-version-tags as well. Eventually 2.8 will be the standard and Blender has excellent backwards compatibility.

That's a good argument as well. I haven't used Blender for that long and backwards compatibility is a problem in so many softwares that it's not even funny...

The real question is, when a new version comes out that moves everything around, who is going to go back through all of the old questions and post new answers with new screenshots for the new version? And then which answer do you mark as "accepted"?

Today I'm for the umpteenth time looking for answers on a Python API problem I'm having and I get only irrelevant and outdated answers. It's tiresome. Please allow 2.8x tags at least.

Editing to be up-to-date is kind of a pipe dream.  It'd be great if it happens, but it's not going to happen.  Looking forward to 3.0, we're going to see massive changes to any geo-nodes questions and answers.  Most solutions are going to be useless for 3.0 users and cause confusion.  And even if we were to edit stuff, we're not going to edit up/downvotes, which were made in the context of a specific version.  Unfortunately, sometimes, questions and answers are specific to versions of Blender, and this can lead to problems with new users finding the best info.

I don't agree that version tags are unnecessary. There's a ton of tutorials on how to use Blender, but as I am testing 2.8, and learning blender at the same time, most of my questions are "where did they move [feature name] to in the new 2.8 user interface?", which is a 2.8 specific question. I may already know what the feature does, but not how to invoke it in a version that moved everything around and changed hotkeys which differ from a tutorial created based on an older version. There may also be version specific limitations or bugs.

I also think that from a (n educated) supporter's point of view such tags may seem unnecessary, but from an (uneducated) user seeking for advice such tags may be very helpful. Consider you think you've found the solution for your problem, and then you discover that it does not work for your version. Frustrating, isn't it? And don't assume or demand that users always run the latest version, please.

So many of my answers now begin with "As of Blender 2.8x...", not at least including a nod to the version seems insincere, especially when we mark questions as duplicates against 2.79 answers.

I think we must include a 2.80, especially for python questions. The API did unspeakably things to backwards compatibility. Please, please consider allowing at least a [2.80] tag.

Disagree, there a just a few minor API changes and the old posts can updated easily based on the official guide. Also if you look around, python answers are usually got less votes but they are much more labor intensive than most of all the non-python answers - to respect the effort of the original authors updating the old answers is the way to go (IMO).

The two versions of the API are not compatible in any meaningful way. Affirming otherwise is simply wrong.

Again, there is only one version along with minor changes, recommend reading: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/Python_API (as mentioned) and you'll see that all the "changes" are more like improvements...

Again, you must not have ported any code. I have, and I've seen that page, and pretty much all the documentation regarding changes between versions. That documentation is pretty much useless once you pass the "hello world" examples.

Also, there are lots of questions about API changes. You yourself have answered some. We are making things difficult on purpose here, determining by screenshots or by "context" if an answer apply is quite short sighted.

From experience answering such questions: Most people are just lazy reading the wiki page, eg: 'bpy_prop_collection' object has no attribute 'link'? -> 100 lines, swapped out one line of code. Re "useless docs": just your opinion... waste of time, no real discussion here. Any "useful argument" might be more helpful to understand why you want this.

Because when I had a problem specific to the API version I was using, I spent more time reading through lots of questions and answers that didn't apply (materials and UV mappings)

And here I am today, again wading through pages and pages of irrelevant answers because people don't want to add a measly tag.


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GPU post maintenance
It's been a while since we made Enabling GPU rendering for Cycles?, and a few things have changed since then (opencl support has come a long way, but also has more than a few issues worth documenting). As the main answer is already quite lengthy, I propose splitting it into separate answers by operating system and GPU manufacturer. That way we can link to the instructions more precisely and supply an index like this.
Since it would be a little weird to make the current highly-upvoted answer specific to a particular operating system + manufacturer, I suggest putting the index there. Hopefully it remains on top, or if not, we can link to it instead of the question.
Unfortunately, this does mean breaking the edit history up. Spelling out credits for everyone who contributed in each new answer would probably generate excessive noise, so, perhaps people who contributed a section before might like to author the answer for that section?
Otherwise, if there are no objections, I can start splitting things up tomorrow.

(Coming from me, an infrequent user of this site) Thank you for taking the time to keep questions and answers up to date and keeping some indispensable information organized.

I have not contributed to the answer in question, but I will say that I see three possibilities for this.
First off that CW answer should not be the index. The index belongs in the question. There are three sorting methods for answers, we have no way of knowing if the "index answer" will be on top. Any index for a post like this needs to be in the question.
Having established that we are left with three options.

Delete it. I know sounds crazy, but hear me out. Any information in it (that's not outdated) will be in its corresponding new answer. The most recant comment was from 19 months ago, and there is nothing really needed there. Gandalf you are the original author you would be the one starting the new answers, so no problem with authorship.
Convert it to one of the new sections (say the windows answer). But how do we choose which platform gets a 100 vote bonus offer the others, the new answers?
Lock this post and start a new one. Like you said some things have changed. We could lock this as historical, and link people to the new clean post. (Seams better then deleting an answer, and solves the lost revision history issue.)

How many answers are we talking here? Will it be just Win, Linux, and OSX, 3 answers. Or will it be Win cuda, Win opencl, Win intel; Linux cuda, Linux opencl, Linux intel; and OSX cuda, OSX opencl, OSX intel, 9 answers?
I'm not sure which is better. I think if we go with the new post then just split it all up.
If we do decide that all nine answer is better and we keep using this post, then I think the standing answer should get retired (deleted).

The index answer would be the best, because it would have all the information inside it. So it should be voted up as the most helpful. And if this is not the case and there is answer more helpful, be it. That would only show the proposed structure of indexing is not working and people want something else.

@JaroslavJerrynoNovotny SE's format is not great for this type of info post. If there is any point to have an index, it needs to be first. (If you are using a Mac, then you will not care at all about the Linux or Win answers, even if they are voted higher.) As I said in my answer,
there are three different ways to sort answers: active, oldest, and votes. We have no way of keeping any set order to the answers. I think an index is a good idea. People coming from google can find the section they need. However for that index to be any good it needs to be in the question.

So don't try to make info post that does not work in SE's format, tailor it so it works with the system and not against it - the logic needs to work like this: a general question and an answer for it that covers all the cases inside it (not multiple answers for each case). Because such answer would be too long, it will be just bunch of links to other specific questions with each having answers. Like Enabling GPU rendering on Mac, Enabling GPU rendering on Linux, etc. Also for each such specific question, there might be multiple ways how to get it working.

See this as an example - I linked another question in the answer, because it was already covered there. What if all the cases of GPU enabling were covered on SE already and someone asked a general question? You would just post an answer full of links to those and the answer itself would not have much more content than that. Pls do not try to bend the site into being a wiki site, it is not, the result would be ugly.

As long as the score doesn't go too low (!) the accepted answer should stay on top. I don't like the idea of deleting the main answer as that would erase pretty much all traces of who contributed what..

To clarify, I am thinking more along the lines of your 9 answer example. I chose GPU manufacturer instead of CUDA/OpenCL though, as, say, someone on Linux with an Nvidia GPU may very well be interested in setting up both CUDA and OpenCL. Also, as the instructions for linux differ a bit between flavors, there will likely be more than 9 answers (e.g. separate debian and arch answers).

Regarding starting a new post, that will break all existing links to the current post. Sure, we could link to the new post from the existing one (or close as duplicate), but I'm not sure it's worth putting an extra "manual redirect" in the chain.

@gandalf3 I think it's important to preserve the original. There may be information that is still relevant to some people. I would either keep the anwswer and edit it to make it clear this is 'legacy' information or make a new question and close the old as a duplicate.

@RayMairlot The content won't change, it'll just be split into separate answers. When the answers are edited/updated, sure, old information will be hidden in the edit history, but it's still there (and no different from how the current single answer works). If the current answer were mostly obsolete I'd agree with archiving and moving on, but for the most part I don't think that's the case. If we were to completely rewrite all of it the end result would probably look pretty similar.


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I want to embed YouTube videos. What should I do?
I usually include a YouTube link when I post a question.
But I want to embed YouTube videos.
What should I do?

I think you should format a question in another way then. Question should rely on information which can be gathered from the question body without any videos (short gifs as exception). YT videos can't be embedded on this site and in my opinion shouldn't be. If you really want you can include a link to it but summarize its contents in text

Related: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/93/599

BSE does not have YT embeds on purpose.
It all comes down to two types of posts we are trying to avoid: Link only posts, and "fix this" posts. Adding a video embed would just worsen both problems.
A video embed does not fit well in the SE system. A post could too easily be totally dependent on the video (link only), which would just make the this kind of problem worse.
So what should you do? Write your question, then link to the youtube videos. Remember any external source (like youtube or blend-exchange) must be supplemental. Generally, a question should be understandable just from reading the question. If a video is really necessary to get the information across (in most cases it isn't), then by all means link to it. But under no circumstances should should your question be a video and "See video for the problem."
Same goes for answers. When you write an answer, write it first then link to the youtube video. Remember any external source (like youtube) must be supplemental. Your answer should still be helpful and understandable on its own, not dependent on any links. If a YT video helps get the information across better, then by all means link to it. But under no circumstances should a video be your answer.

It would be nice to have a button in the formatting tools that does the thumbnail link method.  While we're at it, it would be nice to see this for blend file uploads too, but I am aware of the difficulties and reasons which may prevent this.


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A question form
Maybe a question form, with the Image Link field required, should be introduced to the site? It must be wearisome to ask for screenshots all the time. I noticed these requests are pretty frequent here.

It is already changed which made uploading images from external resources even harder than it was so maybe doing this easier is not what is meant to be done

On a site like ours where we have such a broad range of questions. I've always been against any kind of question template. The reason being that no matter how you craft a template you will have good questions that do not fit the prebuilt question pattern.
If we go and "require" screen shots what would happen to all the questions where images are not really needed?

What is the NLA Editor used for?
Can Blender render pngs with the background transparent?
Is there a way to have one material for cycles and the BI
What's the quickest, easiest way to point the camera somewhere in blender?
Controlling the "strength" of cycles' Bump node
Precisely move the 3D cursor
What is non-manifold geometry?
How move object between scenes

and on and on.
Not every question needs a picture.

The reason asking for screen shots is so common, is because we have a lot of "I have a problem with blender, can you fix it?" and we need a lot more detail to answer.
If everybody asking such questions took the time to narrow down their problem so they could ask a specific question, we'd be in a whole different boat. Lots of things would be different, and better. But as it stands we get a deluge of low quality, and in many cases plain unanswerable questions.
So instead of forcing everybody to include a picture, why not just try to get people to write better questions?

For some time I wanted to have kind of cast-vote on the question but instead of closing there would be crafted comment added with "add images, see how etc". This however doesn't really fit with site model, just a thought about easier handling with lots of "pls add images" comments

@MrZak believe it or not that is very similar to an excellent idea from one of the CMs I saw on the meta. Lets hope SE management lets something like this happen.

If so, questions could be read before they`re published. In case of bad quality a message like"Question rejected. Be more specific." may be sent.

I go over some tips here from wayback -- https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/608/how-do-i-ask-a-question-that-is-hard-to-describe/609#609


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How do I attach files in comments and sub-comments?
I can't find a way to attach files (specifically rendered videos .mkv or "FFmpeg" in blender) to my comments. I'm new to the site so it might actually be really obvious.

What do you mean by "mkv or "FFmpeg" in blender"? Do you expect them to be a part of your .blend file? The only files expected to be attached on the site are .blend files which help to narrow down the problem and should not be the only definition of it (tldr add screenshots and description). Files of other formats are not attached and shouldn't be. To quickly illustrate something you can use .gif or link to YT video with description.

Sorry, I'm a beginner at blender and this website. I meant rendered videos. Is there a way that I can add rendered videos from my computer to my comments?

The same principle applies - only files applicable for showcasing the question are expected. .blend files as priority together with images and description. Any videos are large for download and can't be embedded in the posts, only usual links to external resource. It would maybe add clarity if you [edit] and write why do you need to add videos to question or comment.

I need to attach the files to showcase a graphics/lag error after a 5-hour render, which is why I won't upload a .blend file (I don't even know how to). I think I could do a .gif, but I'm not sure how to record and upload one. I use OBS for recording, but I don't think it can record in .gif. I could do a YT vid, but it seems like a .gif would be easier.

You could always make some screenshots on the frames where "graphics error" is visible and include them. I don't see why not posting a file just because it renders slowly; though the .blend attached should have minimal example allowing to reproduce the problem (only one object / action / strip etc). See how to record gifs

Ok, thanks! (comment too short)

and if you really need to show a video, external solutions are there. Youtube as example. Or google drive, or openload, ... For animation reviews (meaning there is a need to review frame per frame, anotate on frames, etc), there are some specialized websites, like syncsketch.com


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How do you create a chat room from comments?
I've seen chat-rooms created from over-extended comment exchanges, copying the accumulated commentary into the room. How is this done?

There's a button which automatically appears on particularly long comment threads. Unfortunately there is currently no other way access this feature. I have not tried the javascript snippet posted in the answer there, but I'd be happy to give it a go if you have a particular conversation in mind.

I must have been particularly inept at finding search-terms for existing questions on this issue. Here is the thread I think would be better in chat. (I've seen shorter exchanges moved, but I've had no offer from the bot.)