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Source code questions in 2016
Source code questions. Back in the day, we decided to put these questions outside our scope for a variety of reasons.
Now that we've graduated and matured more as a site, perhaps now is the time to examine the possibility of expanding that scope.

C/C++ questions with nothing to do with blender can certainly go on StackOverflow, but
C/C++ questions that have everything to do with blender are rarely answered on StackOverflow and have nowhere else to go.
Many questions would be localized, but then again many questions about the use of blender are also very localized. It should be possible to encourage a policy of asking generalized questions which apply to more than just a specific project, just as we do for regular usage questions.
This site has certainly benefited artists, but more technical artists and would-be developers are left without any really accessible resources on blender development. Most developer traffic is either on a mailing list, which leaves its content buried deep in a bottomless pit of archives, or IRC, which, while great for 1-on-1 debugging type problems, suffers from short-term memory loss and common questions must be asked again and again.

I propose allowing source-code questions, but with a carefully monitored lower-bound on localization. Questions such as "How to add a modifier" would be okay, but questions involving a project specific to the OP, such as "How to add a make-awesome modifier" would be too localized.
Really, the rules already in place for regular usage questions should work just as well for development questions.
I also suggest the tag for such questions be named source-code, with possibly more specific tags (e.g. rna, blenkernel) if demand is there.
The pros and cons of such an arrangement:
(at least ones I have thought of so far, if you think of more, please do add them)
Pros

Finally, an accessible, searchable, approachable place to ask about the internals of blender.
Possibly interest developers more in the site, resulting in more user-developer interaction
Increase in scope means there are more questions to be asked, and a wider reaching audience to ask/answer them.
Make it easier for community members to contribute to blender directly, resulting in more features.
Some users could even turn into full-time blender devs, resulting in even more features.
More persistent place to keep info for developers than IRC or the mailing list, and possibly easier to add to/more visible than the wiki.

Cons

Development questions could damage the site by driving away artistic users (doesn't seem likely IMO)
Development questions would go out of date as blender changes. This is of course also true of usage questions.
Some questions, such as "where is the code" questions, seem most effectively answered with some kind of general, universal map of blender's source, but such a map would have to be maintained.

If we decide to expand the scope, one problem we'll have to face is that we've been telling everyone that they aren't allowed for years. We can't just change our official scope definition to something like "The Blender Stack Exchange site is for people who use and develop Blender" and expect the source-code questions to magically come rolling in.
In order to "break the new scope in", we'll need to spread the word and set examples of what new kinds of questions are allowed.
A couple ideas come to mind:

Make a massive CW post on something relatively simple but with lots of common pitfalls (GPU style), perhaps obtaining the source-code and getting to compile (for multiple platforms)
Have a "source-code" day, where users aware of the scope update hang around in chat and have a question and answer party with all the source-code questions that have been in the back of everyone's mind since day 1. (and perhaps copy/paste a short description of whats going on with a link to this post at the bottom of each Q)

Does this include build questions?

@RayMairlot Offhand I'd say no, as most of them are probably one-off machine-specific oddities. Though I think we could consider the occasional CW post if recurring pitfalls appear

Surprised that internal code questions are considered off-topic. Seems like drawing the line at the python api is pretty thin.
I support the suggestion, here's why.
I agree with all the pros, although it might be pushing it to say "Some users could even turn into full-time blender devs."  Of course, it would increase the likelihood of contribution to development. However, learning the python scripting API is challenging enough, compiling code's another beasty entirely.
Re cons (including those listed in the variety of reasons link):

That the site integrity could be "damaged" is just silly. Artists are big boys and girls. But if we're worried they're squeamish, a C/C++ Internals tag could warn them that naked code is ahead.
Code going stale is a non-issue, IMO. Most items seem stable. Things that change, e.g., new features, bug fixes, would be (or should be!) self-evident, documented in the code itself. Blender's GUI stuff seems to change more often (to me anyway), but the underlying elements are also probably fairly stable.  This could be empirically checked, of course.  In any case, someone able to work at this level will (or should) already have enough coding and development experience that coming up to speed on changes is routine, bread and butter.
Re a code map - I disagree with even having one. The code repo IS the map, and - unless it was a totally simple question - the answer would likely, frequently require a link to the code in said repo for the context needed to make sense.  Here, there'd be the chance of having the dead link issue. If we tried to create and maintain a parallel map, we'd just double the headaches.

I'm in support of C/C++ questions, not just because I'm also interested in this personally, but because it seems necessary as there's nowhere else for it, as the OP mentions.
There's one other (non-disqualifying) CON which could turn PRO: we already don't have a great answer response rate (last I looked, it was ~= 75% and dropping!) ... adding in code questions might well drop the rate more. Or, maybe, such questions might get some of the existing devs to come over here and contribute answers

I don't really think a "map" would be very useful, but having attempted to find stuff in the source before, it is really not as straight forward as one would think. Certainly some kind of CW question explaining the roles of DNA, RNA, and where the actual implementation code lives would be a must-have.

The site's integrity could in all reality be compromised, the quality and quantity of recent posts has been overwhelming, and if you look at a site like Stack Overflow, there are tons of genuinely bad questions to be asked. However, if the community here agrees to be on the alert in the coming months as word gets around, I think that risk could be mitigated. It is not a good idea though to pretend it isn't there.

Yeah, that's really my only real concern too. I totally agree with allowing these questions, but my impression is that most users here that actually bother answering are mostly artists, or technical artists at best. Not sure there'll be anyone around qualified enough for answering, let alone provide actual quality answers. I hope it'd attract some devs, but they are already few and far between and wouldn't want them wasting too much time that could be invested in actual development, though I do recognize the value of possibly attracting new people.

@NᴏᴠɪᴄᴇIɴDɪsɢᴜɪsᴇ - the main reason I'm not worried about the site being compromised by bad blender c/c++ questions, (leaving bad questions in general unconsidered): the question quality would likely be higher as a poster would already be proficient enough in c/c++ to attempt the innards, and would or should already know how to formulate it. ... Might be a good technical question, but malformed on the deeper code level. That would require a more sophisticated comment/answer.  On the other hand, it'd be no big deal to flag "I'd like to learn c/c++ by coding blender."

Indeed, I agree with you. Just pointing out that we do have to be careful before making such a big change.

I am in full support of the proposition too.
For an addon I needed to add control points to the fcurve envelope modifier.  I've programmed in C / C++ but many moons ago.  Even getting tips on which file to look in / edit, I found my self sitting there and scratching my head.
The "kick-start" from Uncle Entity unlocked some of the internal rna "blender magic" on how to add features to the python API.
Source code questions, such as the example above, would prove to be an invaluable resource and enhance this site (and ultimately blender) IMhO.
Will also reduce the need to go "pestering" the devs on #blendercoders .

Questions about code can be a way to have more accurate information about Blender's behavior even for end user usage. This is can be interpreted to be the case here or here.
Another example is this one, which is not directly about source code (as asking about the algorithm) but the answer needs to be based on it (except if we can find an exact specification about this Blender's algorithm).
And this one is directly about the source, but IMO it could simply be reformulated as "what is the algorithm?" too.
I am globally favorable to allow source code questions as long as they are properly tagged so that they do not annoy people who are not interested in them and as long as these questions are about gathering information about Blender's behavior or Blender's function localization (in the project source). No more.
But, considering some Python questions in the trend "how to do this in Python?", I am not sure that allowing the same for C/C++ is a good idea because question like "how can I modify the source to obtain this?" is far more complex and far more dangerous about the consequent stability of Blender itself (and we could have other questions about "I have modified the code like that, but now Blender crashes when I do this, can someone help me?" or "I have modified the code but now the project fails to compile...") and IMO this can not be constructive at all for BSE.
To summarize, my opinion about that is :

OK to allow informational questions about the code like "how this function works or what is the accurate result of this function?" or "where is this function implemented?" (as long as there is no precise map of the code)
Not OK to allow any kind of debugging or development requests

In complement (to the code map), another category of questions can be "cook book questions" like "I want to add a new modifier : what are the different parts of Blender involved in it?" (modifier or nodes or editing functions...). But I think these cook books could be more efficient if they were described and maintained in an official Blender wiki.

A couple of the answers already have made good cases for why we should allow source code questions.
So, Lets try it!
Worst comes to worst, we can change the scope back. I don't think our site will be forever ruined if we have two weeks or so of blender internals questions. That way we can see if the questions will actually get answered.  In my opinion the only probable risk here is we end up with a stream of never answered questions, like graphicdesign.stackexchange experienced with 3D modeling questions. If that happens, simply undo, and life returns to normal, or at least whatever this site thinks is normal. . .

I'm not sure it's as simple as all that. We can try and shape the scope, but it's really defined the all users who "get" it.  It takes time for enough users to "get" the scope, and changing it once will be hard enough. Changing it twice (especially in rapid-succession) would likely cause confusion without end..

@gandalf3 I disagree. Anyone who'd have noticed the change in the first place, will probably notice the other change. Besides, most users who have trouble are first time visitors, who don't know what the scope is, either way.

Yes, but then those visitors spread the word to others ”idk what's the matter with your file, but maybe you should post on this site I just found... just mind you don't mention your GPU, or they'll get all excited and block your post". Then those users tell other users in a MMO version of telephone, and a reputation starts to form. Undoing that takes time "did you see that stackexchange place came to their senses and allows real questions now?" "nice, I'ma ask one right now!" later.. "what? Closed because of a little sourcecode? This site sucks!"

@gandalf3 Pity SE wont allow us to temporarily stick a big red banner saying source code questions are now banned on the question page. That would make undo scope changes easier. I guess you have a point, although I still think in practice, everyone is less connected than that.

I vote for allowing source code questions. And agree with all the pro points above. Plus the line between an answer that needs python scripting and source code changes is not always visible when you start to ask a question. You might end in the c code for what you want to do. Happened to me.
It is in general also very discouraging when you first have to think if your question is even allowed before you start to post something. Also source code is Blender.


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Cannot upload .blend through Blend Exchange
I am trying to upload a .blend via Blend exchange. But after uploading, instead of getting a url to copy and paste, I am getting this. Any fixes?

Do note that blend-exchange is run by a member of our community and it is a private site separate from the SE network. Thus this is not the best place for bug reports about that site. On the bottom of the help page it says to contact the site owner (GiantCowFilms), or open a github issue.

It was probably caused by the filesize. 10 MB shouldn't be a problem, but I recently reconfigured PHP, and the upload limit might not be correct. I will look into fixing this now

Thank you so much for pointing this out, this issue affected a large number of other users.
The exact error, verbatim from the log:

POST Content-Length of 12143120 bytes exceeds the limit of 8388608 bytes in Unknown on line 0

What was happening (to ALOT of users it seems, based on my error log), is that the file, which is sent in the HTTP post request, was to big for the post request limit set by PHP in the PHP configuration.
I swear I had expressly set the value to be big enough, but apparently it didn't work.
It has now been fixed.
The learning takeaway for me has been to actually test if config values have been updated, since sometimes something goes wrong in writing the new config.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Did I thank you for your AWESOME .blend upload thing? [LOUD AND CLEAR] THANK YOU GiantCowFilms FOR WHAT YOU'RE GIVING TO US !!!! and thanks a lot also for the HDRs :)

@Bithur Thanks for the kind words :)

I just can't say how much you deserve my (our) thanks.

@GiantCowFilms - there seem to be errors during upload again, regardless of the file size. Again, many thanks for this awesome service!

@metaphor_set Rewrite coming soon. I'm hoping that we will a) not have this many issues, and b) I will know sooner (I actually have some kind of error reporting). Anyway, I think the issue was caused by either a mysql or a php upgrade that I did in preparation to launch the rewrite, and did not fully test. Now Fixed.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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I could really use MathJax for a series of questions - how to build support for it?
I use blender to illustrate and demonstrate physics and optics, and it's incredibly useful. Blender + Python is a winning combination for science.
I'd like to ask several questions, and they involve math. Here is a question where I would have used MathJax for example. Instead I posted a screenshot from another Stackexchange site where I could use it.
The natural language for mathematics is not ASCII, it's equations, and MathJax support in many Stackexchange sites is widely used and appreciated. This MathJax in Stackexchange tutorial is helpful, but you can just edit any question or answer with an existing equation to see how it works.
If I understand correctly, if MathJax is turned on in a given Stackexchange site, it doesn't actually affect the user experience unless viewing a question/answer that requires it - it doesn't download until needed. But I am not sure about this. Is this true?
What would be needed to build a consensus that activating MathJax support for this Stackexchange site is a good idea? Are there any down sides?
There was a previous request here that has gone unanswered, and the answer to the question "Can we rethink requesting MathJaX?" seems to be quite positive.

I personally have no use for it, and have no real idea about the consequences or possible performance concerns it may raise. My guess is that there never was enough interest or momentum to actually implemented it, but if it does helps some users and there are no downsides, then I'd vote to add.

Right, with the technical shift in our scope I could see this being used more. Will poke someone.

So it seems this is possible but we have to do a bit of investigating first, posts that could get broken, existing posts than will benefit from this and examples of future questions etc. Consider this in progress.

@iKlsR OK that's great to hear! If there is anything I can do to help somehow let me know. Thanks for the quick reply!

@uhoh The more examples of existing questions/answers that we can compile the better.

@iKlsR oh, OK how to proceed? Search for questions that contain words that might be math related? I've never done it before but there are python API's out there for stackexchange searches, and I think stackexchange has its own scripted search utility. Is this the kind of thing you mean?

@uhoh Right, examples like these http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/690/enable-mathjax-syntax

@iKlsR OK that's actually something I can do. OK maybe a few days to learn how to best do the search.

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2196/can-we-rethink-requesting-mathjax?noredirect=1&lq=1 and http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/690/enable-mathjax-syntax.  (BTW I am heavily in favor of this proposal.)

@iKlsR Where should said list be compiled?  Should we make a community wiki meta post for it?

@PGmath that's an excellent idea - I don't know how to create one, but if you (or someone) starts I will contribute. It could use a bit of organization - not just a list of 101 questions, but broken down somehow so there are several good examples in each category. But I don't know what the categories should exactly be. Fudged equations, screen shots, fails, workarounds, questions that could have been better if... dunno. What do you think?

@PGmath we can do so right here. Just post whatever you deem useful in a general answer below similar to our resources posts.

@uhoh I'll bump this up the chain again thanks for the effort.

I am strongly in favor of MathJax support. As someone who usually write technical answer, not having MathJax resolve me to either compile Latex or screenshot MathJax rendered equation from some online site or a local page which takes some time.

@iKlsR Is this still going to happen? What still needs to be done?

Yikes, nearly a year. I'll contact a community manager again. @ScottMilner

Ok the ball has finally started rolling. We can expect an official reply from StackExchange as early as a couple weeks (hopefully this month). Thanks for being patient.

@iKlsR that's great news, thank you! If there's any thing I can do to help, let me know!

@uhoh More examples would help as we find them. Omar's posts are especially helpful.

It's taking us a bit longer to get to this, but it is on our radar!

You might find this discussion interesting: https://languagedesign.meta.stackexchange.com/q/45/34

Thanks for your patience. Yes, we will enable MathJax on Blender.SE!
The one real catch is that enabling MathJax will break the formatting on a few posts. I looked into the situation (query here), and there are only ~20 posts which have in-line $ delimiters. Workable enough, but folks around these parts will still need to be willing to do a little manual editing to update these posts.
All you gotta do is add a \ in front of the $ on any of the broken posts. I included an example screenshot below from Math.SE (where MathJax is enabled) to show what I mean.

Some SE communities have also created their own specialized guides to working with MathJax. You can see examples of those here, in case you want to create one of your own.
Update: MathJax is now on!

Yay! For a general guide to MathJax in SE I use this: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5020/284619

I have gone through all of the posts on the query. Everything should be fixed. The remaining posts that come up have $'s in code blocks, so they aren't an issue.

Are we encouraged to edit in MathJax to posts of other users?

@ScottMilner Yikes! Thank you. I was just prepared to do some late night edits. Definitely, as a holder of the edit posts privilege we trust your judgement when to use it! :)

I'd also recommend anyone with the time to create our own fancy mathjax guide. Could be a copy-paste from an existing one with credits. Would be great to feature and point new users to here!

Congrats to all those who lobbied for this.

I just tried MathJax here, updated most of my answers. There is a certain behavior that I would like to change, empty lines causes Mathjax to stop rendering, this seems to be similar to math.SE, is there a way around this? Also, upon editing a post with MathJax equations, it stops rendering until page is reloaded.

In accordance with iKlsR's comment, here is a list of posts which would benefit from MathJaX.  Anyone and everyone is encouraged to add to it as you like.

Update: Now that MathJax is turned on, please update this list to show which posts have been successfully converted.

Question How to understand the math behind Andrew Price's embedding his beer within his glass
Question Physical iridescence in Cycles?
Question Plotting 3D Regions
Question Plotting 3D Surfaces
Question Math logic between camera angle and lens
Question How to create a 3D object from a specific equation
Question how to change a mesh given by mathematical function with time i.e. how to include the time parameter in the mathematical equation?
Question (and answers of) How to: Exponential Fall Off for Volume Density?
Question How can I generate an object from a mathematical function?
Question Creating mesh on a surface with two variables
Question (and answers of) Blender Cycle's z-coordinate vs. camera-centered z-coordinate (orthogonal distance)
Question How to calculate Specular value for Principled BSDF node from IOR?
Question creating mesh on an isosurface
Question particle simulation
Question Write the Rotation Matrix Values of an Object by XYZ individually?
Question blender camera from 3x4 matrix
Question Animation nodes: rotate around axis
Question 3x4 camera matrix from blender camera
Answer to Detect light amount on surface?
Answer to How can I create a staggered, repeating procedural pattern?
Answer to Modeling a Klein bottle
Answer to Affecting a material based on another object's relation to camera
Answer to Possible to control a Driver from a Group Node input slider?
Answer to Is it possible to render a panorama in perspectives other than full 360°x180°?
Answer to How does the Turbulence Force Field work?
Answer to Liquid / glass interface IOR and normals in Cycles
Answers to What is Dot Product?
Answer to Matcaps and Normal Stretching
Answer to In BGE is there a way to apply gravity to the inside of a sphere
Answer to Trace visualisation in 3D - how to wrap curves onto a 3D mesh
Answer to Build color ramp out of math nodes?
Answer to What does the “unused” output on the Vector Math node do?
Answer to What does the “Absolute” setting in the Math node do?
Answer to How to construct a pyramid in blender but the edges of the triangles to be equal?
Answer to Possible to use object speed/acceleration as driver variable?
Answer to How to make a node group to calculate fresnel via F0 values
Answer to How to achieve this spline and particle effect
Answer to Creating Normal maps from a Texture?
Answer to Understanding 3D transforms and rotations
Answer to What do glossy distribution models do?
Answer to Camera angle for 50% height hex grid
Answer to Acces unmodified Normals on object with Custom/Transferred normals

Possible Benefit†:
Question How do you create a Math Formula for a Model Object?
Question (and answers of) functioning of the geometry node- what does it do with the vector math
Question How to simply find the code/script behind the volume scatter node so I can see the math?
Question How to make variable transparency hole in a plane with a math function using nodes?
Question Clarifying Blender skeleton animation and OpenGL
Question How to set a given Island margin for UV?
Answer to how are the math node operations in cycles calculated?
† The math in these posts might fit better remaining as pseudocode than being converted to MathJaX.

Note that there are currently 129 questions tagged with mathematics, a huge portion of these would probably benefit from MathJaX.  Keep in mind though that these are not the only posts which would, as there are many math-based answers.

Super thanks to Scott Milner for taking the initiative to update these posts!

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

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


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How to handle a question which is a duplicate of a question in a different stack exchange?
In a comment to a question, OpenStreetMap export, I noted that the question was already answered on Geographic Information Stackexchange.
Should this be considered a duplicate and closed as a duplicate, or is a question (or answer) only considered a  duplicate only if the question it is already asked (or answered) on BSE?

If it was a duplicate (this case it is not) and fits on the other site, you could flag it and ask it to be moved to the proper site where they could mark it as a duplicate.
However it seems like the question you linked to is not what the OP is looking for.
In this case the best thing to do is to simply write an answer to the question on BSE. You can use parts of the other site's answer, so long as you give the proper attribution.
I would suggest any time there is a question that does fit our scope, but has already been asked and answered else where, you write your own answer here. By all means you can link to the other answer, even quote parts of it if you need to. Chances are that the question on BSE will be a bit different then the one on any other site. (Makes it easy to write an answer that is your own.)
It is as simple as this: There is a question that has not been answered yet on BSE, answer it.
SE has no system to close question as dups across sites, each site is separate while still part of the whole SE universe. Yes, questions are only considered a dup if the dup is on the same site (that can lead to some strange results, but it is what we have.)


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Are questions by new users rising, lately?
Is it me, or there are many more "first time user" questions lately?
If yes, would this mean there's a growing Blender interest by "newcomers"? But who they are really? 3D newbies, Blender newbies or BSE newbies?
This made me think: are there public statistics about such (and maybe other) trends/usage here on BSE? I wonder also if during user registration a few questions could be added to know what related tech user already knows about, and how much (maybe how many years), about  Blender or other 2D or 3D packages, just to get an idea but also to know better how to answer, without asking each time...
Also, it could be interesting to know trends/usage related to posting, answering, accepting, and all other BSE workflow actions and states...
Maybe I'm just curious today, but I wonder if knowing better users, could help to answer question better, in the end...

Here's a nice compilation of statistics. If you are proficient with SQL queries, then you might be interested in the stackexchange data explorer


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Why are people downvoting my question?
In my question here I asked about an issue I was having with my model but I refused to upload the file itself due to theft in the past:
Rigging my model and the head mesh disappears
Despite this, people have still asked for the model, proof of the past theft and continually downvote my question.
What I want to know is why people are being so harsh on me for asking a question? I thought this website was about posting questions if you needed help and I checked through other questions and I'm not the only one who isn't posting their models online, so I want to know why this question is getting so much bad attention?
Is there some sort of hidden policy or formality that I've missed that everyone else is doing because I'm seriously at a loss here.
I read through my question to see if it looks like a "troll question" but it seems fine to me, so I honestly don't know why this is happening.
The model is for an upcoming video game I'm making and I have had people harass me in the past to try and get info on the game but I seriously doubt these are the same individuals, so again, any suggestions on why this question is getting so many downvotes?
I even asked that on another post when someone asked a similar question and mine was deleted. I mean I've read through the policy and I'm not seeing what I'm doing wrong here.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down
Reading this, I still can't see what I did wrong from just asking for help?

Don't give up asking more questions. Don't give up on Stackoverflow either. I was trolled on my first week, but I have stayed regardless.

A downvote doesn't exactly mean you did something wrong, but rather your question was unclear, displayed an obvious lack of effort, or is simply something the downvoter found disagreeable.
In this case, I'd hazard a guess at "unclear" being the primary reason for your downvotes. Without a .blend exhibiting the symptoms, troubleshooting type questions like yours tend to devolve into a wild guessing game at best, especially without even a screenshot to be certain what the problem looks like.
That said, in cases like this, usually someone will suggest creating a simplified version of the problem .blend. I'm not sure why this hasn't been suggested yet in your case, so let me suggest it now :)
If that seems like an agreeable alternative, then this post may be of use when simplifying.

I want to add: It is very likely you discover the issue and a solution while preparing a demo file just by reproducing the problematic situation. It does not only help to protect your content. It let your supporters focus on the issue rather digging through the other content of your original file.

(full disclosure, i didn't downvote)
CraftyMaelyss - downvotes mean different things to different people (no matter what the FAQ's or Meta says about it). Getting a downvote sometimes tells you more about the person who downvoted than it does about the reason they downvoted. How people respond to downvotes can also show their maturity.
The reason people ask for a .blend is because it's the single fastest way to see if they know a solution. When you don't want to share the .blend things become more difficult and if the solution wasn't self evident from the description or images then people can only offer educated guesses (stab in the dark at worst) and that's rarely worth anyone's time.
Not sharing your .blend is of-course entirely your right and privilege (and omitting the reason for doing so is also acceptable and you don't need to invest time in justifying your reasons). But you should then provide some substitute of the .blend with parts removed or massively simplified so it offers no incentive to be "stolen". If you can't do that then it doesn't show the fellow site visitors that you've tried to understand the problem conceptually (outside of the current state of the .blend), and that's contrary to the goals of the community.

Well...
As you seem to already know downvotes (DVs) do not mean people are being harsh or mean to you. In most cases it is because there is something wrong with the post. For a general overview see the answers: When should I vote? But take DVs and the answer there with a grain of salt.
Try Looking at the title and first two paragraphs of your question as someone else would with no knowledge of your scene, workflow, model, rig, or anything else. Then see if from just those two paragraphs if you could solve the problem. No, nobody could answer your question with so little information.
On top of all that you have a large bold disclaimer saying how you will not upload the blend, so there is no chance anyone can help you that way.
I would say you got the DVs because your question is unclear. There is simply no way to give an answer with the information provided.


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Cannot vote to close a question
I tried to close this question: Fly through a window into a new world / scene? as I've answered a similar one asked earlier (Creating the Minecraft End Portal in Blender). When I've pasted the link in the Closing window the message: This question does not have an upvoted or accepted answer appeared. What's wrong?

Exactly what the error says. You cannot close a questions as a duplicate of a question which does not have an answer with at least one upvote. Luckily, your answer now has at least one upvote ;)


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Why are there only two committers for the Blender documentation proposal?
I noticed that even though there is a vibrant Blender Stack Exchange community, there are still only two committers on the SE Blender docs. Why are there not more? Is it just because no one knows?
I know it isn't a replacement for the main manual, but the Stack Exchange documentation project is a very useful, unique method; I think it would definitely be a benefit. Please go commit to it, so that it can be started!

Current Progress:

2 / 5

5 Committers:

gandolf3
pycoder
?
?
?

I wasn't quite aware of this tbh but stackoverflow is not the place to document Blender IMO. If i'm missing something in the details please correct me.

@iKlsR I disagree. SO has a [tag:blender] tag and code-oriented blender questions (python scripting) are on-topic there. Why shouldn't at least some scripting-oriented blender docs/examples be on-topic? That said, it doesn't seem like scope is all that strict. There's a vim documentation, and even a vlc proposal. Plus, participating in the beta shows enthusiasm on the part of non-SO sites, which should encourage them to expand SE documentation to such sites when the time comes.

@iKlsR It is a different type of manual...take a look at some of the other ones, and I think you will see how useful it can be. It should be on the general SE website or BSE in my opinion, but wherever it is, I think that it will be a help because it allows for easy information reuse. Someone can write an answer there, then link to it in the context of other answers so as not to have to write the same thing all that often. Another idea behind the documentation is that it is frequently edited by everyone, and so just about everything that gets voted up goes through many edits.

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-documentation/

I knew about it from day one. I was even very active with the documentation project on that first day. However I quickly got a distaste for it, there are and were problems with the system.
Personally I don't want blender docs on SO. I don't like the documentation system, and aside from coding questions blender is off topic on SO.
I'm sure not going to stand in the way of the blender tag getting its own docs there, but I am not going to commit to writing the docs. The more blender knowledge the better, I guess.
Yet, if there is this much of a struggle just to get 5 people to commit to starting the documentation (gandalf3 brought this very thing up over three months ago), I wonder how good it will be. The last thing we need is another so-so repository of half done blender knowledge.
So to answer your question, yes I knew about it, but the reason I have not committed (aside from needing more rep in the blender tag on SO even to be able to commit) is because I don't want to.

Fair enough, I won't argue about if blender is off topic or not on SO...

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-documentation/


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I think sometimes some answers are disappearing, is it really so? why?
Sometimes it happens that I see some answer to a post and later it is no more. eg: this one recently
I want to rotate a parent object and see how far a certain vertex of the child object has moved
I guess I should have enough reputation to see deleted answers, but this is not the case. Could it be a site/question "rollback", somehow?

First you don't have enough rep to see deleted posts. Look at the privileges page you need 10,000 to see deleted posts.
The question you linked to has 0 answers, deleted or live. Not sure what you saw on that one, but there have been no answers (maybe you got your links confused).
Last, nope the only rollback operation that exists is to "undo" an edit.
From the help pages:

What is a rollback?
A rollback reverts a question or answer to a previous version in the edit history. The rollback action itself then appears as the most recent item in the edit history.

You would still see a post that was rolled back. Only deletion makes it so non 10K users can no longer see it.

Now there are plenty of "answers" that I convert to an comment; some are completely useless and I plain delete them, but I will never delete a even halfway good answer.

no I'm very sure, and is not the first time: I don't remember the question ID, but I'm sure of the content. Eg: I commented there, suggesting a possible solution, later I saw someone else answered with a similar solution, pictures, an animated gif... it was clearly the same idea as mine, but as an answer, thus I remember it very well. Im really sure. Maybe the OP has deleted the answered question, and then reposted another identical but, I commented only once... on the first one,...

and about reputation, I searched the history here and saw this, http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/366/any-way-to-view-a-deleted-answer?rq=1, so I was misleaded, perhapsl, sorry.

no, you're right I confused one question with another... sorry

I really don't know, sometimes I feel like this happens, maybe with comments, also... it should be me....

@m.ardito The meta post you linked to was correct when we were still in beta, when the site graduated all the permission levels jumped.


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How to sign out?
Sorry if this question is really nooby, I'm just not sure how to sign out of blender stack exchange. Any ideas?
Much appreciated,
Thanks.

This has been asked and answered before on the main meta: How to log out of a Stack Exchange site?

Over Blender big logo on the left, you can see StackExchange logo, with a little grey triangle on it's right side. Click the logo.There you'll find log out to click on.

UPDATE: The original answer no long holds for either Chrome, or most mobile browsers, and possibly others.  Currently, the logout button is in the menu on the right side of the topbar:

Damn, I had to look around for this too. Now that I think of it, I don't think I have ever intentionally logged out of this site. I may have become addicted.

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


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Could somebody add low-poly and gameart related tags?
I noticed there's no low-poly / high-poly / gameart tags but I don't have enough rep to add them. Could somebody please do that?

Can you point to at least 2 existing questions you think could benefit from this classification?

low-poly makes sense, the other two don't, the first is irrelevant and the second is better sub-classified.

424 results for "low poly", 102 for "minecraft". example 1, example 2. I'm not an adept, but why not creating a "low-poly" tag ?


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Add a "Closing > Off-Topic > Not about Blender" reason
There seem to be a considerable amount of questions that pop up from time to time that are off topic because they are not specifically about Blender.
They are often about 'accompanying' software ( like GIMP, Inkscape, Photoshop), third party game engines (Unity, Unreal, etc), problems importing file formats in other software or 3D packages (3DS Max, Cinema4D, Maya, etc.), or feature requests.
Lately even general Python programming, simply lost users from other software like Sketchup, or Cinema4D, or some times totally unrelated.
Here are a few random examples of late

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/66731/python-debuggin
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/66708/blender-3d-interactive-car-model-for-online
How to make custom logo for published bge game
Can someone make a plugin for .nif like 3ds max has

These don't quite fit in any of the other Off-Topic reasons, and might happen often enough to warrant adding the option there by default.
What do you think, would it be worth adding the pre-defined off topic option? Is it even doable?

Yes I whole heartily agree.  In fact we have talked about this before, yet we never got around to changing all three of our custom messages.
I too think that a "not about blender" or something like that would be useful.
I even suggested something slimier before, here. (But that idea was met with a good bit of resistances, so some other wording will have to be worked out.)
Here is the same wording as I suggested before (just to sure up discussion):

Blatantly off-topic (this question has nothing to do with blender, or is off topic for this site).

That'd be a welcome addition. Also, for Opinion Based closed questions perhaps include a link to a forum like Blender artists or alike :)


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New off topic close reason
There is a consensus that we have to do something to address posts that are off topic. See all the previous meta posts:
Add a “Closing > Off-Topic > Not about Blender” reason
How should I flag tutorial requests?
Cleaning up our custom close reasons
Custom off-topic close reasons: 2014 in review (yes it is from two years ago)
I propose adding a "off-topic" close reason, which would link to our off topic list.
Remember we are limited to only three custom close messages, and we already have two of them used. Here are the two current custom close messages.
We have the bug report reason:

This question appears to be about an issue caused by a bug in Blender. These should be reported to the official bug tracker.

The second is too localized:

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.

Now my question is what should the wording be for the third close reason.

I think there will be agreement that it needs to deal with other off topic questions. Some examples: "How does my picture look", "How to do this in 3ds max" or this question (10k only link, community deleted it).
Finally here is my wording:

Blatantly off-topic (this question has nothing to do with blender, or is off topic for this site).

Let me reiterate that I'm 100% ok with changing, rewording, or using a completely different close reason. This post is just to get feedback on the new close reason (which we really do need).
Whatever we end up using I just want it to fill the need for a close reason to use for questions that have nothing to do with blender or any part of our scope.

Not really much of a fan of that wording ("blatantly" in particular seems too strong IMO). How about something like "This question doesn't appear to meet the site's topic requirements"? On a related note, I think the definitions of "support requests" and "hotkey questions" in that meta post could use an updated looking-at (not to mention source code questions). it feels like a fair number of our current valid questions could arguably fall under those categorizations.

I do like it, but I agree "Blatantly" can sound a bit strong, though I can't really come up with a better wording. Maybe Evidently or Totally off-topic - This question doesn't seem to be about, nor remotely related to Blender specifically ? English is not my first language so the nuances of the language may elude me.

My biggest complaint is that the "belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network" only lets you recommend meta.blender.se. This should be a fill-in-the-blank or a listing of many SE sites (not all, but like code review, stack overflow, graphic design, computer graphics, photography, etc.).

@pycoder I know how you feel, see my answer here for why we don't have more options, and what to do instead.

Perhaps instead a simple This question doesn't seem to be specifically about Blender would suffice. Because most of the time the user does happen to be using Blender, and said task could even be done in Blender but it is more of a general question about 3D modelling or about other related tasks  like parallel software/OS/file management

Two general themes to the custom off topic close reasons that I find myself sadly using quite a bit (but with different wording) are:

This question is off topic because it has absolutely nothing to do with blender.

and

I'm voting to close this question as off topic because it shows very little to no effort researching and/or writing this question.

Perhaps the third custom close reason should be used for people either new to Stack Exchange, new to Blender, or both. (This question is off topic because it appears as if the OP didn't even try to find an answer himself, and instead whipped together a poorly written post demanding an answer)
Of, even better - here's my blend. Fix it. Now. My project is due - tomorrow.


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Old forgotten unlabeled duplicates?
How to recenter an object's origin?
Moving the 'center of the object' to the actual center…
Is it useful to flag old duplicates as duplicates?
Should I just ignore them?

I would say yes, go ahead and mark it as a duplicate. (I just closed the linked question as duplicate.)
Usually, there is no harm in adding links to a place where other answers may help - the age of the question does not matter. If it has been answered else where on this site, why not point others to it?
There is an added bonus to marking old questions like that, which is that you bring added attention to these old questions. So yes go ahead and
Do bear in mind that all the same "rules" apply, they really have to be duplicates (again age does not matter).


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What is our criteria for a minimum effort?
This is a two part question, but it is centered around one issue: What is the minimum effort we expect to see in a question?
I bring this up because, yet again today we had another "How do I do X" post.
This is an interesting subject on BSE, some questions are heavily DVed, while others are some of our most popular questions.
There are several variations I have seen on BSE, listed below. Are all ok? Are some ok? Where do we draw the line? How do we distinguish between off topic and good question?

Post an image and ask how do I model this
Link to a youtube video and ask how do I make this effect
Conceptually describe the desired outcome, ask how to do that.

"How do I do X" (hdidx) questions can further be categorized into materials, modeling, look (I'm using "look" as an overarching term to encompass questions asking about the post processing, feel, style, etc of an image) and workflow (workflow encompass questions about the use of functions in blender).
The Material and look categories seam to lean towards being ok just to ask "how do I make this *example image here*," without anything further. Is that ok? If so we need to make that clearer and apply it uniformly. Or do we want to see a minimum something here?
Modeling is the one category that we seam* to expect to see some effort, and not just "How do I make this?". However as you can see from the links below, this category is no exception to our complete lack of standards. Some questions get DVed because the OP did not show any effort, or it is too localized, or too broad; yet here again we have question the go on to be massively popular.
I think the last category (workflow) is a good example of why we need "minimum standards", people should be asking how do use blender. Yet do we want to be answering no effort, "noob," "just make it work" questions?. This goes back to the original question of "what are our minimum standards?"
A plus denotes a well received question, a minus denotes a down voted question.
How to make a crystal material? +
How to make a spiked sphere? +
How to make a sun in Blender?
How to make a shockwave? -
How to make a flexible "garden" hose that can be controlled from both ends without losing shape?
How to make or simulate perspiration? +
How can I model ultra-viscous, dripping wet objects?
How to close view windows? +
How can I quickly generate / create a large city without modeling it all by hand? +
How can I make a wrought iron basket? +
How do I model a bottle case like this? -
How would I create an arch? +
How would I go about creating a spiralled dome? +
How to model hard surface sword -
Making a multi-colored candy material in Cycles? +
How to Construct a Diamond or Other Gemstone Material in Cycles +
Approach for a Cheese material with SSS in Cycles? +
And many more... (if anyone else wants to add more examples, positive and negative please do)
As was suggested by shog9 (an SE employee), we need some kind of minimum standards.

... Stack Overflow has MCVE, TeX has MWE, you need... Something to succinctly express what your expectations are here.

What are BSE's MWE (minimal working example)?
In cases where we do not need/want a MWE, what do we expect?
What are our minimum standards for questions?

I think the difference between the first downvoted one about the rocks beneath the castle, and the second one about the spiked ball is that the rocks would be easy to model, it would just take forever to get the details right. Whilst, the spiked ball was more about using modifiers and special modelling tools. One is asking for technique, the other is asking for somebody to do something for them or they are new blender and don't know anything about blender in which case they should ask a more fundamental question. But how to define them... idk

I agree with Sammy. The UVed questions ask for fundamental, basic, concentrated and fast to achieve things (demanding a little software knowledge), while DVed ones ask for advanced, time consuming techniques, that requires a large tutorial, not a simple answer. And they sound like: 'please do it for me, I have no Blender knowledge, very tight deadline and no money to pay the guys on Blenderartists.org'. It's like asking for creating a simple spring vs creating a box-spring bed (with a blanket on top of it :)).

Sorry, can't edit, but please fix the title: criteria is plural, criterion is singular, so your title should either be "what are our criteria_ or (unlikely) "what is our criterion".

For modeling questions

Reference Images
After some thought, the question must include an example of what they are trying to accomplish.
For example, this question How would I create an arch? should have included a picture of the type of arch.
Questions about how to model things should be phrased like this: How would I go about creating a spiralled dome? and should include multiple reference images. There should be a minimum of 2 different reference images. (which brings me to the next point)
Complexity
On all SE websites, the goal is to help users. Ideally, one user has a question and then in a few months another user has the same question, does a google search and can find the answer without having to ask another question.
Questions like this: How to model hard surface sword don't promote this behavior. Asking how to model a specific object is far too small of a scope. Only a few users would benefit from learning how to make that specific sword and if others wanted to make a different sword, they might ask a separate tutorial on their sword.
This question: How would I go about creating a spiralled dome? is a great question because there are thousands of little spiraled things, and each reference image shows a different style. The answer to this question must be a dynamic answer that can fit almost any of the styles in the reference images, and that is exactly what the answer is. Now anyone who wants to make a little spiral thingy on the top of their building has a simple solution that will work for any little spiral thing on the top of any of their buildings.
Example:
Here is an example of a minimum modeling question

Is there an easy way to model lenses?
How can you easily model any simple lens in blender???????

This is a good modeling question because anyone who wants to know how to model lenses in the future is presented with a way to make lenses in blender will not have to ask a separate question or search for a separate question about how to make bi-convex lenses.
We should encourage users to make the scope of their question bigger so that their question is more useful to a wide variety of users.

For material questions

Reference Images
Just like objects, you need reference images for material questions. You should have at least two reference images from different angles, in different environments, or in different shapes, or one high quality reference image if you can easily find more on the internet.
Previous attempts
Unless the material is extremely complicated (like iridescence) the user should have a screenshot of their node setup of their attempt, and a quick rendering with their attempt. This is so we are sure that the user put in at least a little bit of effort into making it and so that we can assess what they did wrong.
Why material is different than modeling
The scope for material questions should be much smaller than modeling questions because questions like "How to make a metal material" could have hundreds of thousands of different solutions that are all equally correct, but are different types of metals with different properties.
Example:

How can I make a denim material in cycles?
How do I make a procedural denim material?  I tried to make a denim material, but it just looks like this  Here is the node setup I tried

This is a great question because it showed that the user attempted (although very minimally because that "denim" material looks horrificaly unrealistic) and shared their attempt at a node setup .

Modeling Questions
Ok, here's what I think. It's kinda long but summed up into "one" sentence:

Questions pertaining to the creation of an object through modeling may only be permitted if it includes: description of previous attempts, images of desired results, does not appear to intentionally have someone make something the OP is too lazy or busy to make, and can not be easily created through the use of basic tools, requiring the use of advanced tools, techniques, and/or modifiers.

You can totally suggest changes to this - I'm not 100% sure of it, it seems a little ill-defined.
In More Detail
Include Sculpting?

Questions pertaining to the creation of an object through modeling

I don't know if you want to combine this with sculpting or not. We probably should...
Criteria
Previous Attempts
I think this is necessary if the OP wants to have a chance at getting a good answer and to cut other unnecessary "fat". Also, in this way, the person answering the question can put more focus on one area the OP is struggling with.
Image of Desired Result
I think this goes without saying; if the OP wants a good answer that actually gives him/her what s/he wants they need an image of the final product
Intent

does not appear to intentionally have someone make something the OP is to lazy or busy to make

Ok, here's what I really wanted to talk about. The OP can have all the above criteria but still asks for way too much. Like if they ask for how to model the Taj Mahal, throw in a picture of it and say the struggle with the domes, but still want the entire thing, pillars and all, then that's too much. All they want is an entire .blend because they're too lazy to make it themselves. BUT if they ask how to model just the domes, throw in a pic of the domes and really spell out where in the dome they struggle with and it seems genuine, then sure we should allow it.
Also, with things like the spiked sphere, sure you could model each spike and try to get it exactly right but would be tedious and improbable, if not impossible. So that question is asking for technique through the use of modeling and all those other neat modeling tools.
Material Questions
I think all 'how to make x material' should be encouraged. It'll be useful for future people and is quite different then modelling. Of course they need to include my first two criteria, desired result, and previous attempts, as should all "how do I make" questions


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When to use 'scripting', when to use 'python' tags?
In case I have a question about How can I use python to ...., should I use the tags 'scripting' or 'python'? What are most important differences?

See Should 'scripting' and 'Python' be made tag synonyms?
In addition, here is my interpretation of the differences:

scripting is for questions involving automation of tasks via scripts.
These could be shell scripts calling blender with various options, or python scripts running within blender.
I've also seen this tag used for osl when the question is more about the language itself, rather than accomplishing a specific something in it.
And since we don't have a glsl tag at the moment, opengl + scripting seems to be used when glsl code is involved.
python is for questions pertaining to the python api.

These will often overlap, in which case both can be used.

Great answer, clarifies it quite well


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Winter Bash 2016!
Its official, the winter bash starts on December 19, 2016 and runs up till January 8, 2017.
I for one am super excited (again).
However my question to all of you is, do you want BSE to not have hats?
To quote the email from SE:

If you want in, you don't need to do anything; that's the default this year, due to overwhelming positive response in previous years. If you want to opt out, have someone on your team reply to this e-mail to say so by Tuesday, 13 December 2016.

What is winter bash?

What is winter bash, you ask? Well you are in for some fun times. SE does this thing (winter bash) every year, where you get "hats' for doing normal actions across the site. (example: edit your profile, or UV a old question)

All right, cool. Thnx!

YEPPPPPEEEEEYYYYY!!!!

David "Super" excited really??? best to join in I suppose or Gen. Prescott might shoot me.

@batFINGER sure. Last year I created a chat room just for the winter bash. I was tied for first place in the great race to collect the most hats. I got 2 Archimedes hats. I had 39 of the 41 hats. I have been looking forward to this years since last years ended, so yes I think it is safe to say that I am super excited. (Is it possible to be too excited for the winter bash?)

@David and here I thought I was special for getting just one Archimedes hat..... :(

I thought I was specially for having a life

Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie a sombrero... at least 1.5m in diameter.

@DuaneDibbley Here you go. :)

Dear santa StackExchange, please add a Mario hat this year. PLEEEEEASE!

wtf  VLC player has joined the bash and is wearing a santa hat???

Why on earth would anyone not want hats?
Everyone loves hats - they promote lots more activity on the site during a time when there would usually be less.
There is no need to ruin the fun for everyone just because of a few weird outliers - that is what the "I hate hats" button is for. This button is put in place for these poor, misguided souls to click on to ruin the fun only for themselves, instead of for everyone.
Did I mention I like hats?

I, have no hats, but, upon hearing about this wonderfull "winter bash," I decided that I too would like to be an esteemed hat collector.
The only real question: Are helmets hats? Or are they not hats?

Throughout history, men have worn hats as a way of showing how much better they are than other men. “I buy hats,” a behatted man seems to say. “I am better than you.”
  In wartime, hats were a useful way of conferring rank, and ensuring that casualties were confined to the lower classes (hence the famous command of “Don't fire till you see the tops of their heads” at the Battle of Bunker Hill by William Prescott, a general renowned for only shooting enemy combatants who were poor). During peacetime, hats have been instrumental for men to let the non-hatted know just who is wearing the hat around here.


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Blender is currently unusable on NVIDIA GPUs (M - MX family)
Update 2
Waited a couple versions or so, can confirm issue is now gone in 376.33. Tested on a Dell XPS 15 with a 960M.

Update
This issue seems to be only on the M - MX family. Desktop GPUs aren't affected.

Due to the influx of the "Blender is lagging" posts, I'm going to pin this on the main site until the issue is resolved, and our close-votes review queue calms down. From what I've seen only 2.78 users are posting but it might affect other versions as well.
See Blender 2.78 with Windows 10 lags when interacting with the UI and the official release thread for the driver is here https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/978895/geforce-drivers/official-376-09-game-ready-whql-display-driver-feedback-thread-released-11-28-16-/1/
DO NOT UPDATE TO Official 376.09 Game Ready WHQL Display Driver (Released 11/28/16).
If you have already, the best "fix" is to rollback to your previous working driver, personally 375.95 seems to be a good version in the same month. If for some reason you can't do this, open the NVIDIA control panel and force Blender to use the intel chipset, if you have that option (not recommended as you might see flickering).

What's the correct response to all the lag questions? Close as off-topic because it's a driver issue or answer one and merge all the duplicates into that?

@RayMairlot We support hardware type questions to an extent now remember, the latter is what was done and is recommended. Also there is a new driver out that I should test and see if the issue was resolved.

We support hardware questions? Have you got a link to a meta question regarding this?

@RayMairlot Woops, I meant to say performance, kinda interleaves but yeah as detailed here http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/354/canonical-posts-for-hardware-questions one post for any widespread issue as a canonical post or answer and link to that.

Just leaving this as reference link to the original question in case one needs to close as duplicate http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/68311/blender-2-78-with-windows-10-lags-when-interacting-with-the-ui

To clarify, by M - MX family you mean the mobile GPUs, not workstation-class Maxwell architecture GPUs which are also prefixed with an m.

@PGmath yes, mobile

I am using NVIDIA's graphics driver v376.54, and the problem was still there for me. I removed the driver and Blender is running smooth. The problem is still here guys.

@AfzaalAhmadZeeshan Maybe update to latest? 378 here working fine.

@iKlsR, works like a charm. :-)

the problem is still occuring in 397.93 version, using 2.78b I hope they will deal with this in 2.80, i'm using gt755m

What is this post doing on meta?

@NicolaSap There was a bug in a Nvidia driver and we were getting flooded with questions related to it. It served as a place to point users to since it could be seen in the sidebar on the main site.


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Tags for Issues with drivers

Update
This issue seems to be only on the M - MX family. Desktop GPUs aren't affected.
Due to the influx of the "Blender is lagging" posts, I'm going to pin this on the main site until the issue is resolved, and our close-votes review queue calms down. From what I've seen only 2.78 users are posting but it might affect other versions as well.
See Blender 2.78 with Windows 10 lags when interacting with the UI and the official release thread for the driver is here https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/978895/geforce-drivers/official-376-09-game-ready-whql-display-driver-feedback-thread-released-11-28-16-/1/
DO NOT UPDATE TO Official 376.09 Game Ready WHQL Display Driver (Released 11/28/16).
If you have already, the best "fix" is to rollback to your previous working driver, personally 375.95 seems to be a good version in the same month. If for some reason you can't do this, open the NVIDIA control panel and force Blender to use the intel chipset, if you have that option (not recommended as you might see flickering).

Can we add a tag for these sorts of questions?
It seems like there are lots of questions about strange behaviors in blender that are "driver" issues, but I'm not sure that this tag is sufficient because "drivers" in blender are completely different than drivers in your OS.
Please add your thoughts on what tag (if any) we should add for these questions.

we have a hardware tag.

@david drivers aren't hardware.

true, but most of the question we are getting are asking about the graphics card. It is only after the question is answered does the the OP learn it is a drivers issue.


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What are the constraints on how loose a comment can be?
I know that Answers have to remain on-topic and relevant to the question, as well as attempt to answer the question asked. I'm not entirely clear on the boundaries on comments though. For example, in this question I answer the question fully, however afterwards I have kindof a casual mini-discussion with the OP (the discussion remains on-topic). Is this behavior fine or would it be better if I avoid interacting with people like this?

Yes, discussion and social conversation are great! The only thing is to consider moving it to a chat room if a particular discussion is getting lengthy with no sign of slowing down. This keeps the comment section tidy and allows other comments to be more visible. (There should be a prompt to do this automatically after a certain number of comments have been exchanged)

Comments are disposable. Small conversations are probably fine, however, the comments are not a chat room. If there are more useful comments, the ones with upvotes will stay, while the ones without upvotes may be deleted

Comments don't get deleted based on their votes... the person commenting can delete his/her own comments. Else they can be flagged so that moderators can intervene. Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1102/following-a-thread-sequence-when-edited/1104#1104


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Where would be a good location to post a Blender Addon request/idea?
I have a pretty good idea for a blender addon I figured I should throw out into the addon developing community. Would Blender Meta be the place to do this? Or the Blender Surface Site? Or should I use a site other than Stack Exchange?

PS the [meta-tag:feature-request] tag is for feature requests for the site, not blender.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Blender Surface Site" but no the meta, nor the main site would not be the correct place to post that. See point 5 in the off topic list.
You could try on blender artists, or if you happen to find somebody who is interested, in our chat.

By surface site I simply meant the main site

Isn't there an idea site somewhere, blender right or something like that?

@iKlsR There is http://rightclickselect.com/ but that is about suggesting features for blender, not add-ons.

Unfortunately ideas for addons are a dime a dozen; everyone has a million requests for addons and features, but comparatively (very) few people know how to actually code them.
Of those even less are willing to just make an addon for a "random bright idea" for free.
My advice to you is: just let it go. If you really  must you can dump it in the bloated feature request bucket that is http://rightclickselect.com if it makes you feel any better.


text:
We or I? Should we (or I) edit?
I found this question: Object rotation in game engine
Should I edit to replace all the "We"s to "I"s for consistency or is it fine that the OP referrers to him/her self as "we"?

As an aside, the OP could be working in a team so then it would really be "we."

^^ Similarly, I think it's common to use "we" in an answer to refer to both the question poster and the answer writer.

Does not matter (at all). This would be a case of micro editing, and if that is the only thing in the post to fix, you don't even need to edit it.
There are no set standards on what pronoun, or what tense the questions must be written in. If one user uses "me" and "I" but another uses "you" and "we", it does not make any difference. The information is going to be there either way.
Unless you are a grammar professor we you are not going to care, you came to BSE to find out about blender.
Unless it really detracts from the question, or there are other things that you need to fix, there is no need to try to make everything perfect.

Correction: "Unless one is a grammar professor..." :-)


text:
Add feature for high reputation users to manually mark as answer?
I've noticed for a while that sometimes someone will answer a new person's question, but that person will forget to mark it as answered, even if they are reminded to. I have a feeling this happens because people just use the site once and once they get the answer they want they never come back. There should be an option for people with high reputation (I.e 3000+) to mark the answer on a question that has been abandoned for ~7 days. Perhaps maybe if someone who posts the answer could request it to be looked at, and see if it was just a neglected answer or not.

A question is considered answered if it either has an accepted answer, or has an answer with positive score. So, the feature you propose already exists: every user with 15 or more reputation points can mark a question as answered by upvoting an answer to it.
The sole meaning of the  "accepted answer"  checkmark is to indicate what answer the question's author preferred. Allowing someone else to place would destroy the meaning of the checkmark; it would be more logical simply to remove the checkmark feature. The community's opinion on what answer is best is already expressed by their votes.
References:

Would it be possible to have a “community accepted” feature?
Is it possible for someone with high reputation to mark as answered?
Allow users to accept answers on questions they didn't ask

and so on. This feature keeps being proposed and keeps being declined; by now it's in the same category as "require comments with downvotes".

I agree, I don't see the point in adding this feature, since we know a answer is good by the upvotes. The feature to choose an answer as an accepted answer is here with the purpose to differentiate between the answer the question maker choosed, because he feels it answers to his/her specific need and question. Adding this new feature will make the accepted answer feature useless.


text:
Why the comment privilege needs 50 reputation?
Why comments need 50 reputation? Everyone needs them to get more info from who asked the question in order to answer and get more reputation! I usually find questions that aren't very clear so I need to add a comment telling who asked the question to provide more info or the .blend file so I can answer the question and get more reputation. Because of this people with <50 reputation can hardly answer a question, and that will keep their reputation low, and that will keep the comment privilege locked, and the loop continues...

Related  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214173/why-do-i-need-50-reputation-to-comment-what-can-i-do-instead, http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252133/50-reputation-points-to-make-comments. If you post an answer even without asking for details but still provide some potentially related and useful details the answer will have great chances to be upvoted.

It's mostly in place to prevent spam.


text:
Should we migrate all future .blends not on Blend-Exchange to Blend-Exchange?
At Blender Stack Exchange if someone wants to share their .Blend with us, the community-preferred method is through Blend-Exchange, kudos to GiantCowFilms, Gandalf3, TenShrike, and mhsjlw.Whenever a new user, or any user, asks a question including a .blend and ISN'T on Blend-Exchange we almost always request they do so. So why not do it for them? To clarify: Whenever a new question is asked that includes a .blend NOT on Blend-Exchange we auto-migrate it.
Cons, yep I'm starting with Cons

Privacy - People may feel a little invaded if we switch their .blend hosting site without consent
It's not legal
Insert more cons here

Pros

No more asking to move .blend, just doing
This is just a guess, but it may encourage more people to download the .blend
File preservation - .blends won't expire
Insert more pros here

Of course, if the question-asker doesn't want their .blend on Blend-Exchange they can always remove it from their question.

Some times, files won't fit under the imposed size limits. Other than that I don't see any real advantage, that would be a tremendous amount of work. And if a file is not easily downloadable, the users won't download the file and the asker wont be getting any quality answers. IMHO that should be incentive enough to move the file themselves

The only pro I think really matters is preservation. At the moment we have a bunch of dead pasteall links which is pretty annoying. It'll be a bit of work indeed but I'm not against anyone volunteering their time to help future readers. However, anyone who chooses to share a personal blend falls under stackexchange.com/legal so some legal issues start coming into play. Also, the most important thing I think is that this should be done sparingly at times for "useful blends", those not demonstrate some technique or fix a problem (answers) as a problem blend is hardly useful to anyone really.

Licensing. We can't just take someone's file and put it on another site.

Possible duplicate: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/827/599

Is there any info where to upload files in the first place? I've just looked at Take a Tour and searched Help Center for 'blend file', 'blend', 'file' and 0 results. I'm pretty annoyed myself by constantly telling users to upload a file to Blend-Exchange.

@LukeD As Blend-Exchange is third party, it is not included in the Help Center. However, I think it would be better if it was included

@SammySwanson It's third party, but everybody (including mods) encourages people to leave blend files there. I've asked question couple minutes ago and another drawback is that you can't paste question link in Blend-Exchange until you ask question :) So you need to ask it and edit to do this properly.

Sadly, That is not possible
At least not without consulting a lawyer. The problem is that when people upload to blend-exchange they agree to the terms of service which give blend-exchange the rights to distribute their file however it wishes. Only the owner of the copyright of that blend can do that.
That might not be entirely necessary, but a legal expert would be needed to determine that.

Due to legal reasons, we probably can't do this automatically.
But we can do it semiautomatically
We can make uploading and migrating blend files as easy for the user as possible. Possible ways (ignoring how easy/difficult these are to implement):

Add an upload button to the question editor. Right next to the "upload image" button.
(optional) Automatically detect links to blend files while writing the question and put a note next to it saying that we prefer Blendexchange hosting.
Normally, users can edit a question. The question owner then has to approve the edits. Users can flag questions as "Blend file uploaded at third-party host" and the question owner will receive a notification and when he opens the question a big "migrate" button shows up.

See, it's not fully automatic. But we make it as easy as possible for the user since the easier the action is the more users will use it that wouldn't have before due to laziness.

That would be great, yes, but stack-exchange hasn't helped thus far in blend-exchange, unless we can actually get them to add these things they are just hopes


text:
Hats Contest (say good bye to the Winter Bash)
The contest is over and the winner is 10Replies
See below for the full results.

In case you did not know we have contests here on the meta from time to time.
Before the hats are all packed up for another year, lets do something fun to make them last just a bit longer.
The objective of this contest to is model and render a hat (or more then one), but not just any hat, a hat from the Winter Bash. All the hats are laid out here. Keep your hat as close as possible to the original.
Some rules:

Use Blender. (duh)
Keep it nice, nothing a reasonable, average person wouldn't want to show to a five year old.
Include .blend file, we want to learn from each other, and yeah we want to check that you really did make it in blender.
You can edit/change your submission at anytime up until the deadline (1/11/2017 UTC 00:00:00z).
Late entries are not counted, but you may as well post it (not like there's a prize)
Only one entry per person
Downvotes will not be considered when picking the winner

Winner:
This is a popularity contest where the entry with the most up votes by the vote cut off deadline (January 14, 2017 at UTC 00:00:00z) wins.
The winner will get bragging rights, and not much else. Except for the knowledge you gathered from trying something new.
Deadlines:
All images must be posted (as an answer below) by January 11, 2017 at UTC 00:00:00z.
Only votes before January 14, 2017 at UTC 00:00:00z will count towards the winner.
At or around January 14, 2017 at UTC 00:00:00z this post will get updated with the winners.

The winner is 10Replies with his "First Responder" hat. congratulations!
Here is the standing and the vote totals at the time the contest ended.
+------------+-------------------------+-------+
| User       | Hat                     | Votes |
+------------+-------------------------+-------+
| 10 Replies | First Responder         | 12    |
+------------+-------------------------+-------+
| David      | Maverick                | 10    |
+------------+-------------------------+-------+
| Ward       | I Have A Little Dreidel | 8     |
+------------+-------------------------+-------+
| Kidus      | Just Here for the Hat   | 6     |
+------------+-------------------------+-------+
| *Carlo     | Philantropist           | 6     |
+------------+-------------------------+-------+
| Luka ash   | Amped Up                | 5     |
+------------+-------------------------+-------+

Note that Carlo submitted his entry after the deadline, and so he is not eligible for the prize.
Here are the links to each post:
10Replies, David, Ward, Kidus, Carlo, Luka ash

Nooo! I will never say goodbye to hats!

@X-27 It's okay, just let go.

My head will be so cold without hats  ;(

I'm going to keep the hats by screenshoting my profile pic w/ the hat and setting that as my profile pic. Problem Solved! :)

@veryrandomme did that last year. it was... unique

@Ward Do it every year and watch as your endless hat collection grows

Well played linking to PPCG, whether intentional or not ;)

so Carlo was "not eligible for the prize" - aww. that is an awfully big loss...

What year is it? Does your hat tell you? I didn't think so. High quality hats. Produced by a modern noise free high quality factory.
Now you can know what year it is
IN STYLE

Upvote for Suzanne

Just so you know, the last image is a close up of the feather. It is only partially rendered because I didn't quite finish it in time...

Maverick

will add blend after I clean up the unused bits, and pack textures

HAVE A LITTLE DREIDLE
With under a day to work on this since I leave tomorrow, I’ve decided to take

Keep your hat as close as possible to the original.

very literally. :D Iḿ not sure how i managed to do poorly at such a simple model, but when you have the kind of lack of experience that I do, itś easy!

That being said this is probably the laziest and suckiest entry to this contest, but whatevs. hope you enjoy.
I also uploaded to sketchfab if you want to see the model in 3D but don't want to

Either way, enjoy! have a happy new year.
(I tried making a video of me modelling it, but only was able to capture about half of the process because I'm stupid. I will add that to this thread as soon as I edit it.)

Nice! You sure are not the "suckiest entry to this contest", especially as yours is the only on so far.

Philantropist
A little bit late for the competition, but I'll post it anyway:

The original reference:

Very realistic! Great job!

Just Here for the Hat
I rendered it using blender internal. Modeling was the easiest part. I spent most of my time on the lighting. After lots of trial and errors and after using about a billion lamps I got it to look like the hat. Anyway, here it is.

And the .blend:

That turned out REALLY close to the original. Well done!

Amped Up
Haven't worked on many other projects other than just one model for the past few weeks so this was a nice little thing to do(and leave until the last minute to complete) I've never done this sort of art style before either.

Rendered in cycles. Couldn't get the handle bar to look the same, as it had some weird lighting in the original, and also the original was slightly more warped.


text:
Remove the Development tag?
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/development
Since the actual development of blender is off topic for this site, I see no reason to have the development tag.
Most of the questions with this tag have been closed, should be closed, or are borderline off topic

http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2216/source-code-questions-in-2016

@iKlsR Hmm, I missed that post. We really need to fix the help center (although nobody uses it anyway) I was going off of this post http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1/what-questions-should-be-definitely-off-topic/6#6


text:
Can we get a "Not Answerable" close reason?
https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/71770/2217

Picture just for historical reference.
That is just the latest example from the plethora of questions BSE gets that may be clear, on topic, but we can never answer. As such we are doing a disservice to the OP, as their unanswerable questions just sit around (and they walk away from this "useless site"). We should at least tell them (with a CV) that we can't help you here, then maybe there will be edits, and a good, answerable, question may come forth.
I understand that we need to be very careful about just slapping a "bad question" label on questions, but I think there are enough question of this type, that do not fit any of the existing close reasons, that the benefits outweigh the risk.
I'm proposing a new custom close reason, I do not have optimal wording. Please post your ideas in the answer section below.

PS if you think that "too localized" would work, not only here but on more of these questions, then just forget all this. :)

I have to agree with you, honestly. Also, it'd clear up things like the unanswered section a little, maybe.

Out of curiosity: Why Off-topic > Bug Tracker is not ok in this case?

@poor because I have seen way to many question that have nothing to do with a bug in blender closed as "bug report." With this little information, why should we be suspecting the blender devs are at fault and not some user error?

Ahh, yeah makes sense, thanks @David.

Would this not fit into the "Unclear what you are asking" category?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos personally I dont like that CV reason for this type of question. The question is perfectly clear, although it is not answerable and lacking details.

@David If the question is lacking details then I would argue that it is not "perfectly clear".

For this particular example at least, I quite like "too localized".
To me, the "too localized" reason is for questions so specific, one would not expect any (or hardly any) other people to have them.
A question about a specific crash on an antique version of blender certainly seems to fit that description, especially as the crash is not readily reproducible (forgetting for the moment that questions about crashes generally would be better off as bug reports).
That said, I'd like to exercise caution with the "too localized" reason, as it doesn't really offer the OP any guidance on how to improve their question. I don't think this is avoidable, as writing useful instructions for improving all manner of esoteric questions in a single paragraph doesn't sound feasible. I expect any new close reason attempting to fill a similar roll will suffer a similar problem.
To combat this, I'd say it's extra important to comment some feedback specific to the post when closing, indicating what makes the question localized and why. For example, in this case, the main thing making this question esoteric is the blender version. So, to address that:

Is there any special reason you are using 2.72? The latest version of blender is 2.78a. If you still get a crash using the latest version, consider submitting a bug report


text:
sometimes I see/comment/answer newest questions which then disappear from the list
I don't know if this really "happens", or there is something I don't know about the questions workflow, but I just answered to a question, and another answer came too (none accepted), but then in the "unanswered => newest" list it disappears...

and it's not "closed" or "deleted": through my profile page I can still visit the question... and I just reloaded both pages... still the same.
is it some form of caching?

This is because the question disappeared from the Unanswered list.
The question is very much still visible. (Right now it is still on the first Newest Questions page.)
Only questions with 0 up voted answers, and do not have an accepted answer appear on the unanswered list.
You answered it, and you answer has one up vote. That alone makes the question answered, but it has two up voted answered.
So the question is  definitely answered, and that is why it no longer shows up on the unanswered list.

oh yes, I thought only about accepted answers counted... thanks, I was puzzled...


text:
Is it possible to get notification for new questions through some platform?
Last year, I was active in stackexchange but now I have so much work that I don't have time to look at the new questions or browse the old ones.
Is there is a way to get a notification when ever a question is asked in my favourite tag through facebook or google chrome or other platforms?
So for instance, I have experience in Animation nodes, would it be possible to get a notification when ever a question is asked using the AN tag?
That way I can do my work and head to stackexchange when ever I am needed.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25224/email-notifications-for-new-questions-matching-specific-tags


text:
Community Promotion Ads - 2017
It is a bit late into this new year, being that we're already in the second month, but we are now cycling the Community Promotion Ads for 2017!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

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

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

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

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

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

Image requirements

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

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

For some reason, I have not been able to use the same image link that I used on the meta of Gamedev. The image will lie if the committed percentage changes over time.

Why the enforced requirement for an image from i.stack.imgur this year? This breaks any dynamic images, such as the blend-exchange ad from last year.

copy/paste from 2016: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/a/1011/599

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

There has been some criticism that ad is ugly, or doesn't have good "copy." Last year, however, it over 1,000 clicks, and has been shown to work. Besides, this proposal needs all the help it can get.

As the 3D proposal didn't pan out I made a simple one with the help of Scalia that leads to the 3D tag on GDSE. Perhaps it would also be useful to edit this one from "Support the Proposed Site!" to something like "Support 3D Questions!" and also linking to GDSE for now

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting


text:
Remember to check for "duplicates"!
Many times, it happens to me: I comment to propose a solution but I always forget to check for duplicates questions.
Is it possible to add a clearly visible message (maybe above the text box) which remember that when a comment is about to be posted (eventually for answers too)?

I'm not sure I follow. Check for duplicate whats? (comments?)

@gandalf3 ... questions... effectively, I will add that editing the question. Thanks

For answers it may be could be done (although looks like probably not).. Not for comments I think (at least because where to position that box so it's not annoying? And maybe one is commenting for clarifying?). This is kind of habit which e.g. I tried to create for myself.


text:
Would this community benefit from documentation like stack overflow?
As the title says, would we benefit from having documentation?
It's a useful aspect of stack overflow and it's certainly something that I would find useful.
As it stands there is a blender tag on stack overflow that we can create documentation for. But it would be good to have blender documentation reflected or moved here.

For those interested in helping with the documentation, here is the link for SO https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/blender/commit


text:
Deleted question following an answer
Well... just now, it is a bit irritating to tell the truth... but maybe that's life!
I just spent around an hour to answer a question and following that the question has been deleted.
Was my answer bad, or any other reasons? Understanding the cause is the main point to me.
What are your experiences about it?
The dead link: Parenting mesh with armature deformation problem

Just FYI that is not a dead link. any user with 10,000 or more rep can still see deleted posts.

@David, yes I know. For my information is there anything in my answer that leads to something bad for the OP (my way of writing or other)?

I have no idea why the OP deleted that question. There were no down votes, nasty comments, or anything that would make them want to delete it. (Maybe they just realized some stupid mistake.)
The question was deleted by the OP at 2017-02-21 08:43:01Z, your answer was posted at 2017-02-21 08:03:49Z some 40 minutes before the question was deleted.
In those 40 minutes, did the OP read you posts? I have no idea (my guess would be that he did see it).
This has nothing to do with you, or your answer. It looks like a good answer.
For whatever reason, the OP just deleted the question.
I will talk with Tak, explain that deleting posts is not helpful (in many ways), and ask why he deleted this one.
One way or another, I expect this post to be undeleted.

Thanks David for the answer. Don't spend too much time about that. Yes as I said, this is a bit frustrating, but not the end of the world. I was in hope to give some general indications (as far I am able to do), so I hoped it could be useful for 'many'. But again, I was much worried about something like 'my way of writing is not good' or something like that I may need to change myself

FYI I have talk to Tak on chat. All is OK... thanks David


text:
Strange tag stack on Google, re: blender.stackexchange website (suspicious bug report for admin)
I noticed something strange about stackexchange while doing a Google search. In one hit to stackexchange with a really odd tag stack (see screencap). Thought you'd want to know there's a bunch of completely unrelated tags there, like "travel" and "christianity". Also, I noticed that most stackexchange hits didn't seem to have that tag stack? Seemed odd, so here you are:
the search URL: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=math+language+blender+driver+expression&*
the specific link with the weird tags: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjfnOL70KbSAhWD1CYKHWrfDPoQFggmMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblender.stackexchange.com%2Fquestions%2F8135%2Fusing-a-scripted-expression-driver-to-combine-two-angles&usg=AFQjCNH8ZOT_dyP5s05x56KPz-00OoCyfA&sig2=sSzDT-QE_O8xm40mjOecsA

I don't see anything strange or suspicious there (besides I didn't get that result with your query); travel and christianity (along with English Language Learners and Japanese) were parts of domain names travel.stackexchange and christianity.stackexchange respectively which were lucky enough to be caught into the results by search engine.

Where's the bug? Can you clarify what you believe is wrong here?

This is not a bug, but google turning up exactly what you searched for.
You searched for "math language blender driver expression" and "language" happens to be in the footer of every page.

So right there you hit blender and language (on every page). Then that page you linked to takes care of the "driver" and "expression" thus google in all of its wisdom is left to show the footer and how it matches your query.


text:
How to understand BSE stats on http://sese.evbpc.com?
Following some links, I have found this.
How to interpret it?
Mainly about the "needs work" comments and the curves going down?
Surely, the more answers are given, the more people can find a solution (so less questions for the site).
But... ok... what are your thoughts ?

The "needs work" and similar judgments come from the Area51 stats.
Percent answered
We've pretty much always had a steady supply of questions which aren't easily answered, perhaps due to relative obscurity, or lack of OP responsiveness, other reasons.
These occasionally get a great answer, but most of the time they just join the pile and sit there. This drives the ratio (answered questions)/(total questions) down.
Back during the beta there was more reason to care about this, as the site's success was presumably judged based on this stat, among others. You can actually see some of our efforts to stay above the "acceptable" threshold by closing obscure questions as too localized, organizing answer parties, etc:

Graph from stacker. I was unable to find a way to make the site you linked graph data from further back.
Note that the sharp drop near first intersection with the "acceptable" threshold is a glitch; a similar artifact can be observed in the data for other SE sites.
Once we graduated these stats became less important, and less effort was spent maintaining them.
Answer ratio
Unlike programming questions, many blender questions can be pretty completely covered in a single answer (e.g. "how to change the theme?").
There are definitely many exceptions to this, but I think it isn't too surprising or concerning that the average blender question receives only one answer.
I don't think it's anything to worry about, because there are plenty of examples of slightly more open-ended questions being positively showered in answers (e.g. things like "how to model <simple shape>").
Most questions just don't readily lend themselves to such special treatment.