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p3d.in embedding?
Should we have p3d.in embedding? It could be handy for geometry or modeling questions.

Is it possible here?

could come in handy, but then those discussions become dependant on p3d. At the same time we want to avoid using video as answer, how is that different?

As one of the p3d.in developers I can say that we certainly wouldn't mind embeds being used here :)

@iKlsR well Math.SE and mathoverflow have MathJaX which is considered a "very heavy dependency" by Atwood; as far as I know p3d.in is fairly light. As a developer it doesn't strike me as being too difficult to implement (although it's easy for me to say...)

Indeed. It should be enough to implement a tag that takes a shortid. Upon rendering of the tag it would be replaced by an iframe.

I can see how it could be useful, but in general I would have to say no, we should not enable it.
I feel that having this tool could potentially encourage more tutorial-style answers, which we should generally try to discourage. Most questions and answers on this site should be simple enough to be answered with text and screenshots.

Good point. We don't want tutorial-style answers.

I agree we shouldn't allow 3D embedding. I can't imagine many scenarios where an embedded 3d model helps illustrate a point.

Same here, it's bad enough we should even accept .blends at times. This is not a forum per say, answers should be concise and compact. I can only imagine this would clutter the site and encourage showcasing.

I think we should, because we already need screenshots to answer many of the questions. Why not have screenshots in 3D? Also, it will end up saving space where multiple screenshots are required.
If tutorial requests are too prevalent, maybe just enable p3D in the answers? That would allow people to answer questions (specifically topology questions) with a 3D model.

I agree it would be helpful to have it available for answers sometime. I don't see how it would result in "tutorial style" answers, since you can't animate P3D embeds or anything.

That might work!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Why use Blender Stack Exchange over Blender Artists Forums?
Why should users be using Blender Stack Exchange instead the support forum on Blender Artists?
P.S (Would a moderator mind adding this to FAQ?)

Because it's STACK EXCHANGE!!

Let's hold off on FAQing stuff until there's a bit more activity (and site-mods to monitor it).

This site is much more useful to me, as a novice who just wants easily searched questions. I'm so glad it was created.

Apart from the higher signal to noise ratio, and the format difference previously mentioned, I find that the Stack Exchange format is a lot more friendly towards people seeking information but not participating in the discussion.
e.g. drawing from my personal experiences with programming, before there was StackOverflow, researching a topic requires one to wade through pages and pages of forum posts to distill out the best ideas. While the same information is often presented on StackOverflow without the user even have to scroll down past the first screen.
The heavy participation of developers in Blender SE is also awesome. And I hope this continues.
BA is like a lounge, a good place for people to communicate.
SE is like a library, you come here to find the best answer to a particular question.

+1 for your analogy.

The support on Blender Artists wasn't the greatest. Questions and answers were bloated and non-informative, and most questions were not answered. Blender Artist is a forum made more for conversation-like interaction(which is fine, it's just not optimal for Question/Answer format). Stack exchange cuts down on the excess and gets to the heart of the problem: Questions and Answers. It's the best way to get quick answers about Blender.

+1 I agree, the forums are more of a place to showcase artwork and a general discussion area. Alot of the questions asked here would have gotten lost in the mass of threads.

The correct name is Blender Artist s.

@RolandiXor yep, fixed it.

@iKlsR ergo, a lot of questions have already been lost in the mass of threads.

StackExchange does a few things that BlenderArtists Forums doesn't.

Edit posts that need a helping hand (formatting, spelling, content, title) if you have enough points.
See a vote tally, which is the closest you'll get to an objectively graded answer.
It has nice enough syntax highlighting for discussing code snippets.
It uses markdown for markup, nice.
Comments on answers appear directly beneath the answers, and therefore are associated directly with them.
Heavier comment exchanges on a question or answer can turn into their own chat if things get lively.
Answers don't get a chance to go stale, if they include inaccurate information someone (sufficiently bothered by it) will pick up on it and edit it for future searchers.

There's plenty more I'm sure, but these are the main reasons for me.

You can sum it up with a section of the FAQ that says:

"Just questions, just answers."

I say so because on forums, you tend to get a lot of unrelated noise, to a level way beyond what you get in the comments (which can be flagged and cleaned up easily, or voted up when they count). Comments have a tendency to devolve quickly into unrelated banter; StackExchange questions tend to stick to the point.
Forums are not often kept up to date, an no one but the OP of a post or the forum mods usually has editing rights; on StackExchange, anyone can edit and anyone can keep things up to date where it matters.

StackExchange is a curated and evolving knowledge base that can be edited and improved by users who strive to fine tune information. I have personally gained quite a lot since the time i joined it.

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


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What Should We Do About Tags With Different Meanings Depending on the Context
What should we do about tags that can mean different things depending on their context? For example, mirror(although I'm sure there are many others). Mirror can mean: mirror modifier, mirror material or a mirror model. Should we make tags specifically for each one?
The primary reason I'm bringing this up is because it makes tag definition much harder.

More than likely, for tags like these there already exists another with which it can correlate to bring across its meaning or the scope of the question.
For example, mirror as you used it could have modifiers, materials or modeling to go along with it. In a worst case scenario we could have a question that entails all 3 (or more) like;
Q: Why does the material distort when I use the mirror modifier and extrude?
In such a case, it will be easy enough for the same reason we decided not to use version specific tags, once the question is being read, it will be made clear as to what is being asked. Also note that tags in general play very little in deciding what a question is entirely about.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because it makes tag definition harder.

@CharlesL did you read the last line? note that tags in general play very little in deciding what a question is entirely about. Tags can only tell so much about a question, at most they set the scope, attract more views and popup in searches. If in doubt, use the one that the majority of the question is about.

OK, makes sense. Thanks :D


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Is the discussion tag redundant? if most posts in meta are tagged with it
look through the posts, doesn't it make more sense to make a non-discussion or notification  instead? It's almost like tagging questions with question

Hover over the tag and read its description.

Discussion questions are the heart of your community. For example:
  Should a certain question be allowed on the site? For what reason did
  a moderator lock a certain question? Are said actions setting a
  precedent? Be sure to present your entire case and background
  information/data so the subject can be discussed fully.

Plus there are questions tagged with question and also with answer. Remember this is meta, we can post lists, resources or have general discussions about, for or against something for the main site etc. Every post here needs at least one tag, discussion can house nearly all of this as more than likely there will be a general giving of opinions on what was raised.

It is a bit unusual for Stack Exchange to enforce (force) a tag selection like this, but meta fulfills a special — and essential — purpose among the sites. We use meta as The canonical repository for all feature-request, support, and bug reports on the system.
To keep it a trusted system, you must assure that one of these these tags are applied to all the posts that need them.
So you can't really say "you must tag everything with one of these tags… or leave it blank." You essentially have to include a none-of-the-above tag discussion to make sure a selection is made in each case — assuring the collection is complete.

Please note that for some reason, the current system requires every question on Meta to be tagged with at least one of the following four mandatory tags: bug, feature-request, support, and discussion.  I do not see the point of this requirement, but I am not sure if this is likely to change.
Because the discussion tag does not seem to mean much, I prefer to use any of the other three mandatory tags whenever appropriate and never use the discussion tag with any of the other mandatory tags.  That is, I treat the discussion tag as “everything other than bug reports, feature requests, and support requests.”  But that is just my personal preference.

i made this post partially tongue in cheek, but thanks for the insight!


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We need more Questions!
So, I've been looking at the stats on area51 for Blender Stack Exchange and most of them are looking pretty good... other than questions per day. When the site originally started, there was a pretty steady amount of questions(about 20 per day!). Since then, the stats have been slipping and we've come to a new low of 7 questions per day. We have more users(since we went public), but we haven't had too many more questions. Does anyone know of any websites or social media categories/groups where Blender.SE can be advertised to beginner users?

This is only natural, other beta sites I have been on took the same turn right out of private beta. Give it time.. http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/89/how-do-we-promote-our-site We have exhausted pretty much most of what is in our power, the best we can get now is a feature from BN.

I'm noticing a trend that people will vote for answers of questions but not necessarily the question, I can imagine this acts as a disincentive to put much effort into asking questions that you already know the answer to. Unless you are also answering your own question.. There's still a lot of low hanging fruit, I suspect we will see sporadic efforts .

Carefully advertise it as a Q&A though, not as a forum. Increased traffic and a rise in the number of questions is great, if those don't end up closed because the site is misunderstood. As @iKlsR says though, I wouldn't worry too much at this point.

Can we answer the questions with more questions to raise the question count? (Seriously though, I think given enough time, this will resolve itself. For a beta, it's growing fine)

@MikePan, yeah, we're really growing now. I asked this question when we were down to two questions a day and less than 400 views.

Added this now as blender.org frontpage news item, and on our main education/help page.
Thanks for all the work so far, it's very promising!

Most sites will start in private beta with 20-50-ish questions per day (QPD). After private beta ends, the QPD stat normally falls below 5, sometimes as low as 1 or 2. After that it will plateau a while and eventually start rising again.
This is all part a normal beta's growth. Don't upset yourself too much about those numbers on the Area 51 page. They'll improve when the community grows and the best way too gather a larger community is to keep the quality high. Publicity is important, but without quality we won't go anywhere.

+1 for the note about quality.


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Question title capitalization convention
So I've been wondering whether it's better to capitalize all the words in the title for example
1. "This is a Title that has Capitalized Words."
or just capitalize the first word as used in normal sentences..
2. "This is a title that has regular capitalization in it's name."
I've been capitalizing every word in the title. Here's my argument for that. Although most questions are titled in the matter of #2, I think #1 is generally used on most news sites. Therefore, I think it looks more professional.
However, I would like to hear what the majority of people think about this. How should we capitalize question titles?

This has been asked over on the SO and EL&U meta sites.
In short, Stack Exchange sites use sentence case because:

Question 'titles' are not titles in every context
Sentence case is more readable, particularly in lists (see the related questions on the right)

both good points.


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Is there any way we can get new users to read a short guide to asking questions?
And by short I mean, no longer than a paragraph. Let me explain.
We are closing questions because the question is too broad/vague, or too localized. I remember i used to use a program called Stomp, it made bassdrums. It came with a manual, and the manual had 5 questions that you had to answer before you could use the program. This forced the user to know a little about the program, it was playful (ie not condescending) and really helped me learn the program.
I don't expect each time a user posts a question, to be faced with a few questions to make sure they understand the stackexchange party line, but it would be superb if first time questioners had 4 or 5 multiple choice questions to establish that they understand what kind of quality we like to have here. If we don't we will end up doing more boring administrative work unfit for humans, and make people feel inadequate for not asking good questions.
With a bit of creative wording we can convince people to take the time to understand that blender.stackexchange is the best thing since sliced bread, and everyone can participate and be a valuable member of the community if they want. So from the very start we ask that they accept a few generally accepted ways to communicate with the rest of us.

No long meandering questions, boil down the question to the core if you can.
It is OK to ask many questions, but break them up into different posts so they can be answered separately.
Don't be too worried about spelling or grammar, at least don't let it stop you from asking questions. Avoid using 'text-speak' as a courtesy to us.
If you ask a question, please stay around for a while to see if it has answers or comments looking for clarification.

BAM.
thoughts? I didn't have time to make this shorter, sorry.

+1. To "Don't be too worried about spelling or grammar" can we add something like "but please don't use text-speak"? Things like "wat have u tried" on StackOverflow drive me crazy...

fixed it up a little, thanks for pointing that out.

I don't really think we can do much. They're already supposed to read the about/faq or at least the quick summary before their first question(which I'm sure many of them ignore).

maybe we can re-adjust some attitudes towards the user agreement, it can be better.

Well, the FAQ is out there, but...

Not any more...

make it a part of a "new user tutorial" page / link.
I don't consider myself unschooled in computers or systems (programming since 1974, business consultant since 1995) and just discovered site yesterday. I run the 2-minute drill on initial contact, but suspect initial Q&A submitted didn't demonstrate skill level experience should expect. extended view of other postings helped.
I suggest offering (or making a currently available page much more visible... I didn't find it) users an intro to the site. use examples of good and bad, reasons for each, and add links to followup pages in useful areas (the  command for instance). keep the 2-minute page option, perhaps a link at the bottom.
good hunting. have found the site useful, though some parts have been 'not so intutive' as I expected. (in fairness, part of my issues may be hardware related... I am using a very old 1st gen iPad on iOS 5.1.1.)


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Are there any banners or ads that I can use to promote this site on my site?
Please let me know how I can do my part. If there is any way I can promote this site with ads, banners, etc I would be happ to add them to my site.

SE doesn't make specifically branded banners or such until a site graduates and gets its own theme. Right now we'll have too make our own banners/ads.
You can find StackExchange's logo in a higher resolution here. Just be sure to follow their guidelines outlined here.
You can also find useful pieces of elevator pitch and such to describe the site on the About page.
You can see some ideas another beta site had with regards to a flyer to promote the site here.
As an after thought, we could have sort of a contest where users could design ads and post them on a meta post (sort of like Photography.SE's weekly photo contest). Other users would vote for the ads they like.

This has also been done over on Anime.SE, once we get some moderation in place, it will be taken care of http://meta.anime.stackexchange.com/questions/364/community-promotion-ads-on-the-se-network

You can get your user "flair" on your profile. It's an HTML anchor and image that updates regularly. You can use it to "show-off" your reputation and badge achievements.

Not sure this is what the OP is looking for

@Luke he could be. To advertise Blender.SE and his profile at the same time.

+1 I think flair is a very good alternative and i have it on my Blender blog :)


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How do I start talking in the chat room?
I've tried to use the Blender chat room and I can see posts there but I can't find any way to start to talk. I clicked everything imaginable and I could not get in.
Help? Thanks.

This is actually the right place to ask, and welcome to Blender.SE!

You need 20 rep to talk in chat. You can see your current site privileges here. Also, this should have been on a banner when you entered the chatroom.

Why do I need 20 rep to talk in chat?
Your reputation on chat is the same as your reputation on the parent site.
You can always enter chat rooms and listen with no rep at all.
We can't allow anonymous participation on chat, so we require a small
  bit of parent site reputation to ensure that chat is reserved for
  active, engaged members of the community.

In addition to the 20 reps,
I think something in a database somewhere might get updated only overnight. Yesterday I had over 20 reps but could only read the chat but not talk - but when I tried again today, I got in and could talk with no problem.

Yes, the cache sometimes takes a while to refresh.


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New Users and Answers that should be comments
I have seen some answers that really should be comments, but the users who posted them do not have enough reputation (50) to comment on someone else's post.
What should we do with these kind of answers?  It doesn't seam like they should be voted down or deleted, just moved.
Could we add a way for a user with enough reputation to move another users answer to a comment?
Or what about a voting system, like close votes or re-open votes?

Is there anyway to reduce the amount of the amount of required reputation to post a comment? (This 'answer' is actually an example of this problem. I want to ask a followup question, but it really probably should be a comment.) I understand that spam is an issue, but it seems overly cumbersome for the moderators.

Unfortunately not. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment, you just have to wait until you earn the reputation.

This mechanism is already in place. When you see an answer like that, click the "flag" button and select "it needs ♦ moderator attention > not an answer". Optionally, you can leave a comment explaining why the answer should be a comment. This will alert a moderator1. Moderators can convert the answer to a comment if they see fit.
As far as downvoting, it's probably best not to as long as the answer isn't blatant spam or such.
1 In our case, an SE community manager would be alerted because we haven't yet chosen our pro-tem mods.


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Filling the tag wiki and getting reviews
If we need 4000 points to edit the tag wiki then who is editing and approving them at the moment? I added transforms and dimensioning to experiment with how that works. My edits have not been reviewed, who do I contact or do those edits appear in a community officer dashboard?
I get the impression from the tag wiki documentation that it can be a great place to have in-depth coverage of topics. In addition to the excerpts, we are encouraged to go into detail -- i guess we will arrive at some consensus on how much detail.

Anyone with 1500+ rep can approve tag wiki suggestions. It usually takes 2 approvals from normal users for one to pass through and 1 from a SE mod.
Users with 4000+ rep can edit tag wikis without any approval. Also, you don't normally contact anyone, these are added to the Suggested Edits queue and will be addressed once seen.


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Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: Moderators Pro Tempore.
I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed:

We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.
Did I overlook anyone?
Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in no way a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why you'll have your elections in several weeks.
Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone.

Several weeks? Has graduation time been decided already? O.o (or is "several" supposed to mean "6-8"?)

@Manishearth the former could and might be possible since we are doing so well. ;)

@ikls  you may even beat Mathematica.SE for fastest launch! Good luck!

Yep I think we might out do our own expectations :)

Congrats new mods. Great to see you've stepped up

Thanks for the welcome. We already have 1000 views per day!

Great job folks. Great to have you leading the way. :)


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Policy for linking to blend files
Sometimes its so much easier to give a blend file as an example, or to give a blend file as part of an answer.
I think in some ways using blend files goes against the notion of having a concise text (search-able) answer, but in some cases to explain these things becomes tedious too.
Is there some rule of thumb we should use to distinguish when its OK to include blend files as answers (or with answers)?

As long as we aren't fixing stuff and sending the file back, where no-one but the OP can learn from the experience.
Use our best judgement. If we think we can help the OP faster by getting them to send a portion of the file or a new file with the same problem, why deny ourselves that facility? It can be counter productive to keep asking questions or to speculate, cut out the middle man.
it's like debugging code
It can be very instructive to the original poster to try to reduce the issue to the smallest possible .blend, sometimes simply getting them to remove all the other possible variables will prove a solution in itself. Just like asking someone to debug their own code by scraping away things that have nothing to do with the problem.
It is important to do a short write up after solving the issue with the .blend so that the knowledge is text searchable and not dependant on the .blend still being available.
Ultimately the file itself is irrelevant, but an accurate problem description and resolution clarification is.

We are not a direct support group like a forum per se, but sometimes the question does merit a .blend for several reasons, be it the question is difficult to put into words or there is a problem with the actual file and not what OP thinks it is.
For example:

Cycles Subsurface shader: GPU compute and CPU compute give totally different results
Artifacts in rendered geometry which appears okay in openGL / Solid view?

In such cases, it can be ok to post a small .blend. Also, we have PasteAll.org and Blend-Exchange which handles these specifically so that could be used safely in these cases.
So I say, we should but we should be very careful and accept files only when and where needed. Obviously we wouldn't accept a file from someone who wants a mesh tweaked or his 300 line script optimized.

You mention using PasteAll.org, But this removes blend files after a while which would get annoying if you find some questions is a year or two old and the answer-blend is lost, of course this can happen with any URL but pasteall is definitely not great if we want to keep blend files for useful answers.

@ideasman42 well, a good point. PasteAll was just a suggestion and it says files are kept for about ~5 months but granted the problem was solved, I really doubt anyone would be interested in looking at the file after that.. and also, said questions are usually very localized.

disagree, one of the best things about stack-exchange is you can benefit from older Q&A and see how others came to a solution, otherwise you may have to ask the same Q again.

@ideasman42 ah fair enough, this might prove true for a few cases. But PasteAll was just a suggestion, users are free to use whatever they want to and not everyone knows about PasteAll anyways.

sure, but we could discourage linking to temporary file storage -- just as you wouldn't want important aspects of an answer to be linked to in a temp pasting service.

Indeed. There's even a "don't provide link-only answers as they may become useless in the future, provide some text from the page you are linking to as well" rule because of future visitors. @ideasman42

I just encountered this problem this week. I did attach a blend file linked from pasteall, but 50 days from now it will be a broken link. It's better to encourage users to explain their process because that procedural list of instructions can be tracked within the stack exchange system. It can be read in plain english. It can be proofed and updated. Blend files can't be proofed and updated. As much as I want to link a blend file and plead that the community help me fix my problem, some future version of Blender might not be as backwards-compatible as the ones we're used to right now.
I think it's okay to include a blend file to supplement detailed instructions.

I agree with this. Unless it is extremely necessary, better to write it out as best as possible.

Be nice though. It is always a first priority to help someone. If a user doesn't know about this policy, let's still do our best to help them and point them towards a policy page. Not just one or the other.

I think answers should be as self contained as possible, but I'm not against providing a blend to provide more detail for an answer. I do expect a blend with a question to be more popular, in this case I think it would be used more as a way to find the exact issue and to edit the question to be better address the problem encountered. After the true issue is discovered and explained the need to keep the blend available diminishes.

EXACTLY. We're on the same page, sambler. High five! o/\o


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Policy for questions about older versions of Blender
There have been questions about older versions of Blender, in some cases this seems like the user could have updated their installation before asking especially if its an area thats getting large updates for each release.
Also with Blender theres rarely a good reason to stick to old version.
In the case when a question asks about some problem thats been fixed in a newer version of blender I would be inclined to close the question, but is this good practice?

I personally think we should not accept any questions pre 2.5x but let's see what people say, this was partly the reason why we didn't want version specific tags. It might encourage questions like that.

I have to agree with @iKlsR except for one thing: certain addons and scripts are specific to 2.4x. I don't think there will be too many questions like that, but there may be a few. I don't think most of the 2.4x questions most users are asking are relating to this anyway.

@iKlsR, You say. pre-2.5x but why would we even answer 2.5x specific questions? Theres always the very small chance that there is a valid question for an old Blender version --- but for the most part, I would think anyone asking a question for 2.5x would be advised to upgrade in the case where new versions work differently (or resolves the issue they ask about). This still begs the question How old is too old ?

@ideasman42 I did just to set a reasonable limit as this was where Blender changed direction, I know people who are still using 2.5x because they fear or rather know that upgrading might break their pipeline/workflow etc. A good point indeed, we need to know where to cap it.

We could choose to leave this topic open (and simply not have any policy).
In the same way stack-overflow doesn't exclude developers from asking questions about Python-1.0 for example,
Users might just have to accept if they ask questions about older versions, they might not get a good answer, or the answer may be to upgrade.
Having a policy could reduce noise --- questions about issues resolved in newer versions, but since there is not so much incentive to keep using older Blender versions, this may be worrying about a problem that isn't.
Note that this is more to post a point-of-view, if others share - it can be up-voted

2.49 is still available for download on some platforms (for example the irie PPA has it), but I don't think we should support versions older than 2.5x, regardless.
Supporting older versions can lead to a lot of confusion and to abandoned, unanswered questions. Our policy on Ask Ubuntu for example is to only support Ubuntu versions that are not yet at their End Of Life.
This would work perfectly for Blender IMHO.

Even supporting 2.5x I think is too old, If you are wanting to use Blender why use a version from 2011? (2.59)

@ideasman42: Because it comes with your distribution.  One reason a distribution is so nice, is that it takes care of all software updates for you.  I don't want to check if firefox, blender, libreoffice, gimp, etc etc have a new version.  I just want to run my distribution's upgrade program and be done with it.  Now I personally like to use the new features of Blender, so I chose to get it from the site.  But I definitely don't want to recommend, or even require this from people who just have a question and are happy with their packaged version.

People can ask questions about pre current Trunk releases, but it will be down to a dedicated few to bother engaging with localized issues that will effect only 10 people on the planet.
We already have a policy to avoid localization, unless the answer leads to some form of enlightenment and lifts the question into a wider context.
perhaps. a canned response with the core of this discussion:

'This question might not get many answers or indeed a satisfactory solution as it
  relates to a pre 2.6 addon or feature, please realize that the site is
  run based on the best intentions to answer all questions, but
  especially those that are likely to impact, and be useful to, the most
  users'

As the age of Blender and this StackExchange site grow, we will end up with questions that are "too old". It is inevitable. The best we can do is tag things early and often. If we stay in the habit, then users can filter out "old" results in their searches for questions that have already been asked. If you want a good example of this question answered, look at any of the other StackExchange sites that have been around for much longer.
When Blender 3.0 comes out, we can't make all these 2.x questions suddenly irrelevant.


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Time restriction before accepting answer
Is there a way for the site to enforce a minimal time limit before the question is allowed to be marked as 'accepted'? This should give more people a time to answer, and increase the quality of the answers.

If I remember correctly, new users have to wait ~15 minutes before they can accept. For own answers, OPs have to wait a day.
This is usually encouraged and or practised but users tend to go with what works for them at the moment and just accept answers. If something better or more indepth is posted, they can always unaccept the current one and accept the better one, but in the end it is what the OP chooses and when they decide to accept it.
We are a free and helping community, this is a learning experience for everyone and that is one reason why the edit functionality exists, most times questions can be improved or bettered with a few points etc. We can all chip in and make one good answer. If you feel however that your contribution merits a new answer, feel free to do so as multiple answers are always encouraged.

this sounds reasonable enough to me. Accepted! :)

Related: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/50703/192187


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Uploading screen shots into stack exchange questions/answers
How can I upload screen shots into the a question to help someone answer a question for me?  I can't find any instructions on how to do it. I have tried pasting and dragging a jpeg into the question box but have had no joy. Could somebody please either tell me or direct me to the relevant page?

Hi and welcome to the meta site. You asked this on the right place. Here's an answer

Also, for anyone coming to ask this again.. you need at least 10rep to do so.

@DantheMan Questions can't be dupes of questions on other sites. You can link to the MSO question, but people shouldn't have to check MSO before posting at Blender's meta.

As a preventive measure against spam, users with less than 10 reputation have some restrictions. Namely, new users cannot:

post images
post more than two hyperlinks at a time, either in a post or their user profile
contribute answers to protected questions
ask or answer questions too rapidly

Once you've achieved ten reputation (as I see you now have), these restrictions are removed. Additionally, You can gain more privileges as you gain rep. For example, at 15 rep, you can vote up. At 50 rep, you can comment everywhere.

Once you have the ten reputation, you can insert an image by clicking the Image button (Ctrl + G).

From there, it's pretty straight-forward. Choose "From my computer" and select the image or choose "From the web" and insert a link.
The full page on markdown is here. You can find it by clicking the question mark in yellow and clicking "advanced help" (which Windows users never do).


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How should we handle questions about features not yet in Blender?
Currently, there are several questions on the main site that ask about features not yet in Blender, either planned, broken or not documented. How should we handle these type of questions, most of them are valid but have no set answers yet. I don't think answering these questions do the site any good at the moment. Answers like:

Probably the first release with Volumetrics will be 2.69 or 2.70.

or

This is in the roadmap and hasn't been addressed yet.

Answers like these do not pass on any useful information and detracts from what this site should be about, we are trying to create an archive of information here, not a list of feature requests or todos. It is also worth noting that most of these are cycles questions since it is still under development..

Rendering smoke in Cycles?
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1296/is-there-going-to-be-the-option-to-mesh-your-sph-sim
How to use the volume socket in Cycles?
possibly Cycles Subsurface shader: GPU compute and CPU compute give totally different results
Is it possible to limit the "Cycles Shadow from Transparency" per Object?

How should we handle these type of questions?

Unless the feature is available in some form...

already written a branch or in blenders trunk.
available as a script / addon.

... I think we should consider it out of scope.
Someone can ask if a feature exists to perform a certain task, but unless its in a blender release, or already implemented to be included in the next release - I think the answer has to be NO.
Otherwise we get too much into speculation and discussing ideas of features don't yet exist.
We could answer: "No but this isn't hard to add", giving some hints on how to add - a script, C files... etc. but this should be kept very limited.
Once we start trying to help them program something themselves the discussion should be taken off stack exchange, or they can format their questions into something that fits into a scripting question in the cases where a python script can solve the problem.

In general terms
B.SE shouldn't be a seen as a destination for feature requests. It's OK to ask if a feature is implemented or where to find appropriate documentation and road-maps for planned or existing features. Better these questions get asked and answered on a public forum than repeatedly in private or IRC.
Asking about missing features / functionality
Sometimes functionality is only perceived to be missing, it might exist as an addon or relatively obscure key combo. (like control-A for skin modifier)
Questions about planned features
What else is there to do but reference the roadmap, preferably link it. Perhaps close it as off topic or beyond the scope?

For the last one, yes, close as off topic.

@zeffii, I don't think world_to_camera_view case is relevant. The question was valid, the answer happened to include a function which was useful to include in blenders utility module. But even if that wasn't the case the answer gave the user what they asked for. Said differently - just because some questions result in features being added, doesn't mean its OK to ask for features.

@ideasman42 perhaps I phrased it in an unfortunate way.


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Unanswered questions locked
Not sure where to post this reply but my original question was non-answered then locked, and labeled not useful.
Undo and Redo on Macbook not functioning
I just started using Blender on specifically on the very popular Macbook platform running Lion.  Unfortunately, the most basic of commands (undo/redo) do not work using ctrl-z. The answer given was that undo is ctrl-z, even though I specifically stated that does not work.
Every Macbook user running Lion is going to hit this problem.  The solution, it turns out is to disable mission control under system preferences for keyboard. I hope this helps others.

When you ask a question, please read the responses. The very useful answer brecht gave addresses your issue directly--use the 'Command' key instead of the 'Control' key. The comment I posted before locking your post explains exactly why it was locked: the question does not directly pertain to Blender, but instead is about the Mac OS itself. Please take a look at Superuser.SE or Ask Different for any future questions you might have on the issue.

First of all, your issue is not Blender itself, but the operating system. Most users on Blender.SE are Windows users, and if you continue to have issues you can ask in the comments. Starting a new question when it can be answered in one thread isn't optimal.

@CharlesL I'd venture to say it's probably split evenly between Linux and Windows actually :)

Yeah, that makes sense. I use Mac 75% of the time and Linux the other 25%


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Answering vague support questions (once)?
There are certain questions that don't fit our criteria very well, eg:

Why is blender crashing?
Why is blender's viewport so slow?
Why is blender running slow?
Why am I running out of memory?

The question that prompted me to ask:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1330/blender-is-lagging-when-i-am-using-it
In every specific case the answer will be different,
but it may be good if we have broad answers to these questions which list likely causes and things for the user to check.
At least in this case we can direct any further questions here (and mark them as duplicates).
Does this sound worthwhile?

Yes, absolutely! Answer them (once).
The ideal way to handle endless variations of the same trouble-shooting questions is to create what we call "canonical answers" — comprehensive guides about what users should do when they hit these commonly-asked crashing and performance problems.
Users keep asking these same questions in various ways because it is difficult for the author to know exactly what they are asking about… much less how to find the solution on the site. So they become numerous (and somewhat annoying) because you find yourself asking and answering the same basic set of followup questions ("Did you try X,Y,Z; could it be L,M,N,O or P?").
When answering these canonical questions, do everything you can to really overkill it. Write a detailed, step-by-step, ultra-clear guide with screenshots and examples. Those questions will become ultra-popular, brining in lots of traffic from search engines as folks search for this stuff. And every question you close as a duplicate of the canonical answer, you create yet another entry point to the site covering all the variations of how these questions are asked. If you continue to have great answers like you've provided thus far, you stand a good chance of attracting some great new users who will add value for years to come.

This rings quite true, we already have such one such question, albeit not 'once' and not really technical, it is our most popular question so far as it has many different variations.

This is a sensitive matter as we don't want to encourage too many of these questions as it isn't and shouldn't be in our scope. I also think we are already being very lenient by allowing .blend files. Eventually people will find ways to use these special cases to abuse the system and we are not a support group per se as opposed to how most forums operate.
However, there is a way that we can approach this for the time being. It would also be in the best interests of the site if we don't alienate new users. We can handle cases like these just as Gwenn dealt with Undo and Redo on Macbook not functioning.
Since we are very likely to get these questions again in the future, we can answer but lock it afterwards, doing this allows it to serve as both a useful part of our compilation of answers and also a firm example of what is and what is not on-topic here. This is only if the question is answerable and makes sense rather than some wild localized issue.
Additionally, SE will be rolling out new changes for handling questions soon, some of which might better assist us in making decisions and be more straightforward and obvious. An example is:

Questions will display as [on hold], rather than [closed] for the first five days after closure. (new)

The goal is to better convey that questions can be improved and
  re-opened during the period where they have the best shot at that
  happening
Questions put [on hold] will still not accept answers, and
  will behave identically to [closed] questions
The language will change
  to [closed] if the question is not re-opened within five days, to
  continue to serve as a clear long-term signpost

See all of these here on meta at Closing changes: on hold, unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized

As an alternative, We could add a Troubleshooting FAQ to blenders wiki and link users there.

That's a valid point about the alienation of new users, have a canned response that is clearly intended to inform and provide suggestions rather than 'this is not what B.SE is for'. The first few reviews of a new user post should pick up on that, and send them merely on their way.

I hope I'm just reading your answer wrong. How can technical support of Blender not be a part of this site? Unless I'm misreading your answer, you're envisioning a "how to use Blender" site... until you run into a problem; then you're outta here. I'm not sure that makes sense. You're going to be progressively alienating a larger and larger portion of your use base just as they need you the most. And I'm not sure putting questions [on hold] is designed to be the solution you are envisioning here. See my answer. I think it provides a better balance to handle all types of questions.

@RobertCartaino more of the former. Technical support is a very large part of the site but we have to take a firm stance on what we allow in our scope. I am aware of canonical answers, we have several of those and encourage them. Nearly all of the questions closed could not or rather still cannot be reasonably answered in their current form at all. Questions that pertained to graphics hardware and other sites that weren't even directly related to Blender or where the OP gave very vague or limited information on their problem. Those are what I am talking about in my answer.

@RobertCartaino We have discussed these extensively on the site leading up to public beta and after, nearly every question we see in danger, we leave a comment asking for clarification or try to see if it can be edited or possibly answered. Some are just dead ends however and cluttering the site with extremely localized or poorly asked questions is rather bad. Questions like this and this to list a few.

@iKlsR That sounds reasonable. Thanks for the clarification. I was reading this from what an outsider might read into this answer, and I wanted to make sure we weren't saying this site was only for "how to do things in Blender... unless you have problems."

The hold feature
After reading through the post on the blog.stackoverflow.com/.../the-war-of-the-closes I think this hold option provides us with a much friendlier tool to get better information out of a question.
The fact remains that some questions will be stated very poorly with inadequate details to give a straight answer. Generally if someone is able to describe  their problem concisely then they have already reached a level of understanding about the problem. These can be interesting puzzles, and rewarding to answer.
As long as B.SE is alive we will get people who are inexperienced with most or some of Blender and 3D, and it is unrealistic for us to expect that they will posses the right words to explain the problem. In these cases they must be prompted until the problem is clear, and phrased in a way that the Questioner understands and accepts. Once we understand the question we can release the question to accept answers.
So while we might not like the repeated back and forth to get closer to a good problem description, if we do an OK job then this person is more capable of asking better questions lateron.
I urge people not to modify the phrasing of weak questions until they have engaged with the OP and arrived at a fair understanding of the question, otherwise this site will be a time sink.

I wholly agree, closing seemed so final at times. Alot of our users aren't very good with English which also rings your last point very well. I often refrain from editing a badly worded or vague question as I fear it might lose its original intent or meaning, it's a very good point to note. Not everything can be saved but it at least gives people another chance.

All questions should be allowed only once (hence the duplicate feature). So the only question is are these topics, off topic? If they are users should be directed elsewhere.

At least in this case we can direct any further questions here (and mark them as duplicates).

You can mark questions as duplicates of closed questions, so there's really no need to make exceptions.


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Efficiently adding images to posts
When uploading a screenshot is there anyway to blow it up or somewhere to put it so viewers can see the full size of the image, as some of the detail may be obscured when shrunk down to fit the question box. thank you.

Normally, we can just open it in a new tab etc. You don't need to worry about this, as long as your original image has a decent resolution.

If you use an HTML <img>, you can enclose it within an anchor tag <a> to point it to the image. Make sure you upload it the normal way, first.

The only way to do this is with javascript or css, and it's not possible to include either in the answers. Unless this feature was added by website administrators, it's not possible.

Right clicking and opening in a new tab is the usual way to do this. You can also make a copy of the autogenerated image link, and then encapsulate the image markup in link markup, using the image link as your destination URL.

Expanding on Roland's answer, you can accomplish that with the following Markdown:
[![Click for Larger Version](http://example.com/img.jpg)](http://example.com/img.jpg)

Example:


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Where can tag proposals go?
Where should tag proposals be made?
(I want to suggest dupli or duplivert)

you add a tag, like any other tag, then submit the post. Then you click into the new tag and add an excerpt, which is then vetted by moderators.

"Creating the new tag 'dupli' requires at least 150 reputation. Try something from the existing tags list instead."

i'm not opposed to the tag, if you can write a concise excerpt for the tag wiki (and a longer description..if you feel strongly about it). I will add the tag to a post if you link it here.

This is meta, anything about the site can be posted here if you are unsure or just curious, so you can post those here in the future and the community will respond.
Once you have the privilege to create tags, you can do so if you think your post is unique enough to merit a new tag.
Don't abuse this though, we keep strict tabs on the tags already in the system and as they are added. Often times you might find that your new tag can be generalized under a broader tag or the other way around. That being said, you can also just leave a comment under your post suggesting that the tag be added and someone with the privilege will add it if it's necessary.
Additionally, you are not obligated to do so, but if you create a new tag, again, feel free to create the tag wiki for it.

If you take a look at the awesome new Privileges page, you'll see Create tags, awarded at 150 reputation. With this privilege, you can create new tags simply by adding them to a question.
If you do not have the reputation to create a new tag, you can just leave a comment on your question asking someone with enough reputation to add the tag to your question for you.
There's even a badge for creating a tag used by 50 questions.


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Site(s) to use for uploading images and files
What are the easiest to use sites for uploading screen shots and blend files so that I can share them with the community members?

SE automatically uploads images to http://stack.imgur.com.

For example, I uploaded the above picture by clicking the Image button and the picture was uploaded to https://i.stack.imgur.com/vQQKL.png.
As far as .blend files, you can use any upload site. I personally prefer Google drive for convenience, but other people use dropbox and other sites.
Edit (by GiantCowFilms)
We now have Blend-Exchange which is free and dedicated for hosting .blend files for this site.

cheers for that

I have a post that I think can be useful pertaining to this, will link it here soon.

I had started writing one a couple weeks ago but didn't post it yet.

@iKIsR cheers that will be helpful

It's exactly as Luke says, it's best to use the dedicated imgur site to upload images. Here is a post that can help you optimize the images that you upload. How can I optimize images and screenshots that I embed in my post?
As for blend files, you can use any service you like, dropbox, box, mediafire etc. The best one to use in my opinion however is PasteAll.org. The site naturally supports blend-files and even offers some security should you need to use it otherwise. The only con is that files are kept for ~5 months or so.

To upload .blend files avoid Pasteall.org. Once the links go down questions and answers become incomplete... Use http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Indeed, my linked script is gone. In my case I should have used pastebin https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/39616/5334 according to pasteall: When you paste, just assume that it will be here forever, but consider that it may be gone in a second! We might delete really old posts in the future or something out of our reach could happen resulting in loss of data. and more recently: files are kept for ~5 months

Here's my suggestion about where to post ~.blend files related to questions on Blender Stack Exchange: www.blendswap.dom, or another of the free repositories of ~.blend files in the community. Using of one (or more, if we want to avoid the appearance of partiality) of these sites would eliminate the issue of files being deleted, and would expose users, especially novice users) to valuable valuable Blender resource(s). It might be necessary to negotiate an arrangement with administrators and developers of sites used to permit deep linking to the blend file in a dedicated area on their site, to permit users who are not registered on the particular site on which a ~.blend file is listed to download the files in a question or an answer without the need for registration, and to allow the upload of files which might otherwise not meet site guidelines.
We might also want to add an icon to the editing icons directly above the edit box that would act on blend files the same way uploaded image files are added to the imgur site.

Thanks for chiming in :) Here's some related discussion on this topic if you haven't already seen it: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/373/599, http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/297/599, http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/344/599, http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/166/599.

I saw those threads when I was looking for recommendations on where to post blend files. I had trouble deciding exactly which old question to answer, so I closed my eyes, pointed at the screen and answered the one I was point most closely to.

When the site gets out of beta, we will most likely get a dedicated service.


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Reasons for closing questions in beta
Going through the beta site, I noticed that some questions are answered and closed and others are answered and open. What are the rules for closing a question? I have questions that are answered sufficiently enough for my needs, do I have to close them myself?

In short, Lindsey, you probably shouldn't be closing your own questions. The main reason why questions get closed is that they, in some way, are not a good fit for our site. Good questions (even if they have acceptable answers) should remain open so that later users can potentially add even better answers later.

@Gwenn I make note of that in my answer, I think OP might have them a bit mixed up.

I am not sure exactly what you are asking pertaining to closed questions, you might be confusing them a bit with accepted answers so I will answer as generally as I can.
Some questions are answered and closed because sometimes it takes the community a while to accumulate the votes needed to close the question as off-topic etc. In that time, people might have posted what they thought to be ok answers etc. Here are some examples:

How to create a simple extruded box model?
What are the best graphics cards for cycles?
Why is Quadro slower than GTX rendering on GPU cycles?

Others are answered and closed/locked because while they are not good questions that we should allow on the site, we answer them because of how generic they are and because they are very likely to get asked again.
Lastly, some questions are possibly answered and closed because they have been asked already or because they are so similar in content with another that they can be merged. (Any any answers on the duplicate will be transferred to the first one.) Here are some examples:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1179/how-to-append-two-blender-files
How to Simulate the marble procedural texture in cycles
How can i use an image as a background in Blender Render?

Closed questions are basically those that don't fit well in the scope of the site and are too vague or broad to be reasonably answered. For example:

What are the best graphics cards for cycles?
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/573/strange-blender-bug-on-laptop
How do you keep a single object from casting a shadow?

Questions that are answered and open are because the OP didn't accept an answer.
If you have questions that are answered and you are satisfied with them, don't 'close' them per se. You can accept an answer as the one that was useful to you by pressing the little arrow next to it.
To see all the reasons questions are closed and for more information related to this.. See the section on it in the help pages.

Do we have an off-topic list somewhere here on Meta?

@DantheMan http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/1/12

You might want to check out https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions. It explains what "closed" (or "on hold")  are and why they are used. I will briefly explain here.

Some questions have already been asked or are answered by another question's answer. These are marked as duplicates, which is a type of closing.
There are some questions that aren't a good fit for this site. For example, a question about drawing unicorns would be off-topic here. It is not about Blender or the topics listed here.
Other questions are just unclear or ambiguous. A question asking "why isn't blender running quickly" with no further details or in very unclear grammar would fall into that category.
Some questions are very broad. For example, "How do I use blender?" is a broad question. People have written entire books about that.
Others solicit opinions rather than hard facts. "What is your favorite blender feature?" simply asks for everyone's opinion. There's no correct answer and cannot be answered factually.

When a question falls into one of these categories, users with over 500 reputation can vote to close them. When a question receives five close votes1, it is put on hold for five days. If the question is not fixed by the end of those five days, it is closed.
A closed (or on hold) question does not accept answers. A closed (or on hold) question can also be reopened by five reopen votes if it is improved.1
Closing is for questions that are not a good fit for the site or need work. When you receive an answer to your question that fixes your problem, mark it as the accepted answer by clicking the check mark beside it. No need to close it.
1 A moderator can close or reopen a question single-handedly if they see fit.


text:
How can I optimize images and screenshots that I embed in my post?
Uploading 1MB images or even 300KB images in a question or answer is often unnecessary/overkill and slows down page loads significantly especially when viewing on a mobile connection.
Similarly, really large dimensions are often pointless due to real-estate restrictions.
How can I keep file sizes down or adjust the dimensions of the images to reasonable and sensible numbers?
* Thanks to coleopterist over on http://anime.stackexchange.com for originally compiling this..

If you don't have the wherewithal to optimise an image prior to upload, here are a few tips on doing so directly on SE.
After embedding an image to your post using the upload feature on the site, you should see an imgur URL similar to https://i.stack.imgur.com/FOSov.png (just using this as an example). This should result in a large image (190KB, a relatively reasonable size, but even this can be optimised further):

But this image can now be optimised even further simply by tweaking the URL being used. For example tweaking the URL to https://i.stack.imgur.com/FOSovt.png (note that the filename now has an t (for small) at the end) will result in an image of smaller size and dimension:

This file is only 3.5KB in size and also smaller in terms of dimensions.
If the dimensions are unsuitable add an m (for medium) or an l (for large) instead. This will result in the following images respectively:

 (9.7KB)
 (25.7KB)

Other options that also appear to work are:

b (square crop?)  (38 KB)
h (high quality original?)  (190KB)
s (square cropped thumbnail?)  (15.6KB)

(I have no idea why the "square thumb" image is ~5KB larger than the "medium" one.)

If you'd nevertheless prefer viewers to be able to view your uploaded image in all its raw glory, simply link an optimised image to it by wrapping the code like this:
[![...my optimised image!][2]][1]

This will link the thumbnail to the original source file, like so:

In other words, those wanting to view a higher resolution [1] can do so by simply clicking on the thumbnail [2].

If these options are too complicated, just blindly add an l to the image filename in your post. This should display it in large dimensions and still load fast.
I should also note that anime/cartoon images generally tend to be more optimisable than photographs, etc.


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Is Blender.SE an appropriate place to ask for code review?
Is is OK to post scripts or snippets on Blender.SE for code review?
I'm trying to get up to speed on writing code (mostly Python, but perhaps also some C) which I could release to the Blender community.
I'd like to find out if I've got any habits that need breaking before I get too used to the whole environment.

Python is still on-topic on [CodeReview.SE], of course. :)

I will leave it to the concensus of the community to decide the final decision, but IMHO code review could end up leading to extensive discussion, which is not a good fit for this site.
However, code related questions (for example, if a particular section of your python code is not working as expected) are within the scope, so long as they are concise and able to generate a single, good answer.
For more extensive code problems, I would suggest IRC or Blenderartists.

I was thinking about posting code that works but which may or may not follow best/good practice.

Expanding on what RolandiXor said — You can also swing by the site chatrooms, some people who dabble hang there.
I agree with his answer as code review is too wide a subject and can often be seen as non-constructive as more than likely your questions will be extremely localized if not completely out of scope and that defeats the purpose of the site as one of our main goals is to create a compilation of reusable and general answers… answers that can benefit others.
All that being said, you can get away with this at times depending on how you phrase your question, optimizing code, best practices and runtime errors etc. are on-topic but general "what do you think of this snippet" or "how can I rewrite this to be more pythonic" are not ideal questions.

I actually find critiques of specific examples useful - programmers are typically pretty good at abstracting away from specifics ;) I understand the SE philosophy though.. thanks.

I doubt you'll want entire scripts scrutinized, people tend to be more vicious on smaller portions of code. What's the saying? :

Ask a programmer to review 10 lines of code, he'll find 10 issues. Ask
  him to do 500 lines and he'll say it looks good.

Why get someone else to profile your code? Find your bottle neck (in itself a learning experience) and then ask people if there are better ways to do it, I think blenderSE would be a fine format / place to approach it that way.

No, code review is off topic. Just as "Does my model look good?" is off topic.
The person asking the question needs to take the code they write and formulate a valid question which is more specific.
This will probably mean they have to break up their script into a smaller example, and identify enough of the problem so they can ask a useful question.
Further, we have the patch tracker where we review code for inclusion in blender, bf-python mailing list - for devs to ask general questions about their scripts.


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Asking questions concerning people's opinion
Have been trawling the net trying to find decent tutorials for various parts of blender and was wondering if it is acceptable to ask on this site. I know this concerns people's opinions but was wondering if I put a specific area of blender down i.e node editing, video editing, constraints, if it would be allowed.

See this post here, this might help a bit pertaining to this site.. we also have a beginners reference post.

When an area of Blender isn't clear to you, instead of looking for tutorials, look for the words needed to focus on a question about specific things. The wiki pages for the various areas in Blender are reasonably informative, but had they been perfect then sites like BlenderSE wouldn't need to exist.
You can always drop into the main blender chatroom on StackExchange ( currently) The RenderFarm to ask people about tutorials for topics. If no one is active, ask anyway and check the logs later.
You will find you learn more if you ask for fellow chatters to help you find the vocabulary needed to do your own search engine searches for tutorials.


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How are Tags read?
If a question is asked, and a certain (what might be relevant) 'tag' is not added, does it mean that answers, relative to that missing 'tag', will be excluded (as being 'beyond the scope of the question')?
For example, in my question:  How can I change the centre of rotation of objects during an animation?  I thought the tag ' Animation' would suffice, along with the details in my question, but if there's a chance of solving the problem by scripting, would I only get a 'Scripting' answer by adding the 'Scripting' tag?
By the way, the answers I got work (I had already tried them previously), but in a very limited way, and don't really solve the problem. Now the question, and answers are just left hanging there!

Expanding on what Luke said.. Tags decide very little on the type of answer(s) you will get on a question. For example, the question you linked could have had rigging or constraints added too, that didn't stop people from adding those solutions.
As he also said, it is just a fancy organization feature so don't depend too much on them when asking questions. For short term reasons, they help to set the scope of your question and possibly attract an audience and for long term reasons, they are nice filters for searching for answers etc.
Here are some simple dos and don'ts to keep in mind when tagging however..
Do:

tag with the closest related tag(s)
use as many as you think you need to the maximum
create new tags if the current ones aren't good enough
retag the question as needed if you update it

Don't:

tag the question with what you are expecting as an answer unless it relates somehow
use unrelated tags to fill space
retag the question with the method that solved it unless it relates somehow

It is also worth noting that if anyone thinks additional tags are needed, they more than likely will be added.

No, tags are simply used for organization. If a question is missing a tag, go ahead and retag it with the correct tag. If an question lacks a tag, the quality of the answers should not suffer (assuming the question body makes clear the question).


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Layout and Text problems on Blender meta
I have just asked my first question on Blender meta, and when I tried to submit it I got an error:

First, it said '…see the error above.' but there was no error 'above'! The red 'flag thingy', to the right, said 'At least one of these tags is required - 'bug feature-request discussion support' (like a sentence rather than a list of tags). To someone new, this doesn't really make sense! I clicked on it hoping the error 'above' might appear to help me understand…do you understand my point? Luckily I managed to figure it out and I hope I'm not being too picky. :)
This time I'll make sure I add one of those 'odd' words to my Tags - before submitting.

I think the error message might be referring to the outlined box..

I have added the tag 'bug' thanks to Luke's suggestion

Every question on meta should fall into one of those three categories. It is mainly to keep everything organized. Because of that, the system requires every meta question to contain at least one of these tags.

discussion
designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

bug
Indicates you've found an erroneous or unexpected behaviour in the system that needs to be fixed.

support
You need help with the use of one or more of the site's features.

feature-request
You have an idea for a new feature, or for a change to the existing functionality.

I don't think he was really looking for an explanation of the tags, just that it was a bit confusing what to do at that point but it's a good read nonetheless.

@iKlsR yes you're right, the point I was trying to make  was that the words: 'bug feature-request discussion support'- are all bunched together with nothing to indicate that they should be read as separate 'tags'.

I see. In that case, this question should be tagged with [bug] (because the tags should at least be separated by commas).

@SteveW this isn't too bad, if you click in the tag box, it should prompt you with options.

@iKlsR maybe it should say: 'Click in the tag box for options' then?

@Luke yes, commas, I was hoping someone would pick up on that. :)


text:
Can we have all our site tweets fall under the #b3d hashtag?
For those who don't know, every StackExchange site gets an automated twitter account. All these basically do is

…publish the most interesting content on each Stack Exchange site every
  three hours — without ever repeating themselves.

Ours is @StackBlender and it is starting to attract some attention.
Blender already has a massive following on twitter under the #b3d hashtag which was accepted as the standard ~3 years ago and twitter is a community we haven't really reached out to yet.
Currently, the tags that are added to the tweets are next to useless as they are very vague and don't have any scope per se. Tags like #pythonapi and #nodes to name a few. Can we dismiss appending those tags and just use one tag for all our site content?
The #b3d hashtag is very active so I don't think we will be spamming anyone who follows it and this might help give our site a boost in visits etc.. One we could use at the moment.
* credits to zeffii for the idea.

Yes! I really like this idea. I'm on twitter a lot and the only blender related tag I ever visit/tweet on is #b3d. In my opinion, Twitter would be one of the best sites for promoting Blender.SE posts, as tweets are obviously short, quick messages (and won't really spam twitarians).

I like this idea. Also, this site is doing very well from what I can see. 600 visits per day is actually pretty good for not even two months old.

@Luke yeah, might be expecting too much, but we were at 1k some days ago. :)

Ok, this is done - all new tweets here will include the tag #b3d and no other tags whatsoever.

Maybe we can use a minimum up-vote count before getting tweeted, this might minimize attention to questions that are beyond the scope of B.SE.


text:
What questions should be definitely off-topic?
Obviously questions not about Blender would be off-topic but what should be the general yardstick for off-topicness?
Update:
Since the site has moderators now and we can better address on/off-topicness, we feel it is time to start rolling out some of these to our help page where needed. This is so we can have one definite place to point new users to.. etc.
It is also worth noting that none of these were thought up by any one person. These were decided to be the norm and are only here because of them being agreed upon by the majority. Poke around meta or browse through the discussion tag to find these.

Shouldn't this have been determined while still in definition phase?

It's still useful to have a place on Meta that you can point to.

@DantheMan You can still change/fix/improve the scope as you go. :)

Per suggestions and discussions, those that should definitely be off-topic are:

Requests for tutorials and lengthy HOW-TO's1

Can anyone make a tutorial on doing X?
How can I animate a short film in Blender?
Please recommend links to tutorials.

Package or software comparison questions

Which is better for doing X, Max or Blender?
Which is better for animating for games, Maya or Blender?

Hardware specifications, recommendations, reviews or faults

What is the best processor to run Blender on?
Why does my new graphics card run Cycles 10% slower then my old card?
How can I prevent my system overheating while rendering?
Should I buy  $X$ or  $Y$ GPU, what do you recomend?

Developing Blender (in C/C++), Python scripting is fine

How can I add a new editor type like Tracking to Blender using C?
How do I code with C++ in Blender?

Feature requests or localized technical questions

When will Blender get brushes like those in zBrush?
How can I port Blender from OpenGL to DirectX?

Critique and Showcasing

Does my model look OK?
How can I model this object better?
Has anyone used blender to 3D print? I would love to see examples!

General 3D resources (aka not blender specific)

What is a good place to buy 3D models?
What is the most common file type?

Questions about other Blender websites excluding the wiki & manual.

How do I submit an article to BlenderNation?
Where do I find X on the main Blender website?

Support requests

If a blend file's required to answer the question, it's generally not a valid question and belongs in a support forum like blenderartists.

Bugs

These should instead be reported to the tracker. See this post for more information.

Job Offers of Requests

Can someone do ____ for me? (Paid or Unpaid).
I'm looking for work (Paid or unpaid).

This kind of requests can be done on blenderartists.org. There are forums for paid and volunteer work.

Licensing and copyright issues

Licensing a game
Use of trademarks or copyrighted models or images.

Use: https://law.stackexchange.com/ instead

1This has caused quite some commotion, I clarify what I mean in Regarding questions and answers as tutorials

I'd add Hardware to that list as well.

Could you add: Developing Blender (the application - C,C++), this doesn't include python scripting.

Does changing the question to How can I add a new editor type like Tracking to Blender using python? make it ok?

@greatwolf technically as stated above, yes, since python can be used to add gui elements it could be a valid one even though it would not be plausible and would be accordingly dealt with

I guess the question I'm trying to raise is what makes python any more appropriate to ask than C or C++ because technically writing python scripts is a form of blender development.

@greatwolf see my last response, python is used in the development of Blender, it can be used for several purposes such as adding GUI elements and as such could be valid. Another reason is C/C++ would stray too far from actual Blender and more into low level stuff and os related complexities. Python is used extensively in Blender and is a main part of it. So as I initially said, depending on how it is worded, it could be valid but would not be plausible or at least get a definitive response if used as it is in the example above.

Questions like "Does this render look cool?" or any sort of "Rate my model"-type questions.

I suggest we take some more time before we begin jumping on questions that appear to fit this criteria. We need time to define, though we must be relatively stringent of course.

Questions regarding hotkeys. These are easily available by a quick google search, or can be simply asked in the chat.

Should questions about building development builds be off topic?: Eg, How can I build Branch foo on github url bar, I tried but I got error message baz. .... closely related, should questions about running development branches be off topic? (GSOC work in progress branches for example).

@ideasman42 GSOC yes and building to some extent but we can't take any error messages (or at least any overly complicated ones like pasteall dumps), remember there can only be so much wrong on a users end and the site is not really a debugging/error-finding service per say.. if a question is deemed too technical it can and will be addressed accordingly.

I don't want to be too strict about hotkey questions, because I worry that we'll become newbie-bashers. There are already a lot of good questions about "the best way to do X" where there is more than one "hotkey" answer. The rest of this list seems fine. nod

Back to building blender being off-topic, This is a question about building an experimental feature. Check the comments under the question and you can probably see why we might be best off considetring these questions off topic - http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1574/using-blender-as-a-python-module

Requests for tutorials and Lengthy or ridiculous how to requests could be merged into one item IMHO, maybe Requests for tutorials or lengtht HOW-TO's ?

@ideasman42 perhaps a meta expanding on it as I have expanded on the tutorial request bit and feel free to edit the post.

@iKlsR What about asking for help in "community projects"?

Note, I wasn't sure if we should consider customized blender builds off topic - asked in separate Q.  http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/722/should-questions-about-customized-blender-mods-be-considered-off-topic

So, if questions about hot keys are off topic, why is there a "hotkeys" tag? Or should the issue of questions about hot keys be reconsidered?

@brasshat Granted this was over two years ago, the scope of what is allowed has been changed ever so slightly in some cases. After we get our design and or more mods it could change again. Made a note to update this.

Pirated content, e.g. "ripped game models", also templates, that need the original author's permission to be modified, should also be on this list.

After reading this (just now) and the comments, I find the wording in #4 unclear. Is it that C/C++ questions are not okay and Python questions are? If that's the case, would adding something to the part in italics be possible to clarify? Such as putting it in parenthesis and writing: (This does not apply to questions about Python scripting. Python scripting is on topic.)

In my opinion, a concrete question about Blender whose answer is not immediate to everyone who cares and which can be answered objectively by a post of reasonable length should be accepted here.  If a post is too vague, not a question, not about Blender, immediately answerable by everyone who cares, cannot be answered objectively, or cannot be answered in a reasonable length, then it is off-topic.
I do not agree with the list.  (A question about software comparison is bad only if it is vague or subjective.  “Why does my new graphics card run Cycles 10% slower than my old card?” is not a question about hardware specifications or reviews, but a question about Blender which requires knowledge about hardware.  A question about development of Blender is a question about Blender.  A question about hotkeys is bad only if the answer is immediate to everyone who cares.  And I fail to see what is lengthy about this question or its answer.)
More importantly, I fail to understand why we need a list like this at this early stage.  Let’s solve the problems we face instead of the problems we imagine.

With regard to the last point, I think it is important to establish the boundaries of the site early.

@grc: It is fine to ask “Is a question like this [something concrete] on-topic or off-topic?” as long as you can reasonably expect someone will ask it.  Asking for a list of  “definitely off-topic” questions is different from that.

A list of off-topic questions needs to be created for the FAQ. Discussion usually begins as early as the definition phase of Area 51. I don't see why we should wait for bad questions to be asked.

@grc: Because we cannot imagine what will be asked.  If you want to ask something and wonder whether it is on-topic or off-topic, it is useful to discuss it.  But if you just imagine someone might ask it, leave the decision until the problem becomes real, because whether it is on-topic or off-topic depends on the details of the actual question which we cannot imagine now.

@grc: FAQ stands for frequently asked questions.  If the site does not receive any off-topic questions during the public beta, we do not need the list of off-topic questions as FAQ.  But that will not happen in reality, so do not worry.

@YuAsakusa its been nearly 3 weeks already, much of this list was contributed to by several users based on actual questions we saw that didn't fit in the scope of what this site is or should be about. If we don't lay the foundation from now, what will happen when new users start running amok asking about scifi films and making games? This is not a forum per say and since most people are used to forum style discussions, it is a good idea to get this information out as quickly as possible and as grc points out, we will need a FAQ eventually.

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


text:
What should our FAQ contain?
Coming from Programmers where we've had entire wars over site scope and the FAQ, I think it'd be good to get this hammered out as soon as possible. So what should the FAQ contain?

This is definitely a good thing to settle as soon as possible. However, given that this beta has been live for less than half an hour, I don't think we've seen enough questions to get a feel for what works, what doesn't, and what should be clarified. In other words, I don't think there's enough information yet to answer this question well.

Oh, I'm well aware of that, I just like getting things nailed out early...really, really early.

Oh, I agree. One of the first things we settled on Christianity.SE (where I'm a mod) was the site's definition of "Christian".

Perhaps it makes more sense to think about the FAQ after some period of time, repeat questions or questions with a lot of votes will start to emerge and from that list you will get meta questions that tend to be a combination of a few more common questions - those are the kinds of Questions that FAQ are great for.  But also we'll want to see a few 'First Principle' topics that help shape how someone might think about asking questions and finding solutionsm, like: "do i really need to ask this question or should I google it first for 10 minutes"

I suppose we could start off with the most obvious ones, which might not actually be frequently asked questions, but still questions that are good to have in a FAQ. Such as "What is Blender".

Wait a few months, see what questions people ask frequently, and there's the answer to your question.
Some websites have fabricated FAQ pages.  They guess at things visitors might want to know, and write questions and answers.  Maybe the information is accurate and useful, but the FAQ concept is treated a writing format. The worst-offending sites don't even have a good description of what they're all about, who runs it, what they offer - it's all shoveled into the fake FAQ.  "Frequently Asked Questions" ceases to mean much.
We shouldn't do that.


text:
The Elevator Pitch?
What should the Elevator Pitch be? Should we have an official one? Might be good to have one for community ads and the like.

Just brainstorming here: "Blender.SE is a Blender community(?) for experts, beginners and hobbyists, who are all ready to answer and ask questions you might(/will? to be a bit more aggressive) have about Blender."

A searchable community driven database of ranked questions and answers.

A free, community-driven Q&A site for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games.

Do note that some of the Blender for games thing applies solely to BGE, rather than to game development using models created in Blender; there's a certain degree at which we stop caring; we don't necessarily care about how to apply animations in Unreal, but we do care about how to get a high-quality .obj export for later use in a program that we don't need to worry about here.

Blender.SE helps you to understand Blender3d in depth, not only face value. It is an original site with a special texture and color. When posting make the object clear so you don't drive the community off the edge. If you don't make your point the site will eventually be rendered useless and be driven off the SE grid.
Remember there is always another perspective to shed more light on the matter. We hope to see you on the scene and have you blend in to the mesh of enthusiastic users. We hope the site will be animated and useful.
Try us out!

puns intended...

haha. I love this. :)


text:
Should questions that compare Blender and <insert competing 3D modeling software> be allowed?
I can see that a category of questions that would potentially be very problematic would be questions along the lines of "Which is better, Blender or Maya?". Now, such a broadly general question such as this shouldn't be allowed for other reasons, but what if it's more along the lines of "How does Blender handle materials differently from Maya?" or "Which renders faster, Blender or Maya?"? Should such comparative questions be on-topic for this site or off-topic?

I think questions focusing on interactions between applications are fine like "How do I prevent texture corruption when exporting to application x's format?" are fine. I think comparing performance in general is a can of worms that should stay firmly closed.

Agreed. Questions like "Why should I choose Blender over X" type of questions should be avoided.

Questions that do this should either

relate to any interaction the two software have. (file formats they might share, how to efficiently import/export from either to the other etc.)
ask if Feature X from from (other 3D modeling software) is available in Blender
ask what similarities they might have  OR
ask if it is possible to perform a certain task in Blender (for people who use other 3D software and are interested in trying Blender)

+1. Sometimes best way to describe a feature: "You know, like  has"

FAQ:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?
Avoid asking questions that have nothing to do with Blender Stack Exchange.
  This is not a random discussion area, it's a place for improving our community and website together.


text:
How should be the version tags?
Make it sense to create tags there also include blender as a part of the tag e.g

blender-2.67

Is not be easier/more DRY to create only tags for the version number like 2. 67 because we are here in the blender stack exchange.
What you think?

Hey! You guys are talking about me! I did that!

We're don't talk about you but about the future of the version tags. You were only the initiator of the question. :D

I propose that there be two (maybe three) levels of specificity. For instance:

blender-1 vs blender-2 (likely will rarely be used, if at all)
blender-2.4 vs blender-2.6 (huge changes in interface, inner structure, etc)
blender-2.66 vs blender-2.67 (new features present in one version and not earlier versions)

I would say that when tagging a question, the more general, the better. For example, if you can do the same thing in 2.4 as in 2.6, then it makes little sense to tag as 2.67. Perhaps we could also use tags such as blender-2.4+ for questions where an answer exists in 2.4 and up as a way of clarifying that the question isn't about 2.4 only, so answers in 2.6 would be fine as well.
One thing's for certain though: there is no use in having a blender tag. It adds no value to any question. I'm currently a mod on Christianity.SE and the tag "christianity" doesn't exist because there's no point in having it.

The problem with this is that you will have many many tags.

@PhoneixS: It's better to have many specific tags than a few too-broad tags.

Yes, if we will have version tags, they must be for specific version (2.66). And thinking again about it, well, there isn't so many new releases.

The site is about Blender, let the questions specify the version.

I agree. Must be specific version tags. This matters a lot when talking about bugs.

I agree that blender should not be a valid tag within the scope of this forum.

Should we just shorten it to 2.67 instead of blender-2.67 ?

@DantheMan: There is potential for confusion that way. After all, Cycles, Yafaray, and other programs also have their own version numbers.

@El'endiaStarman Ok. Good point.

Having version tags has worked well for us on Ask Ubuntu. Sometimes there are issues and questions specific to a single version, and it is useful to separate these out with a tag.

I'd encourage the use of either a blender prefix or a version prefix in order to make it clear what it is that number refers to. It might be obvious to many but the clarity would be improved even if it's less DRY.

+1 for version prefix

I think we should only have one tag, something like versions or builds, which would be used for questions relating to different versions of blender.
Some examples of existing questions which could use this tag:
Mesh appears normal in solid mode but looks weird in textured mode
Blender release life cycle and versioning
Such a tag could also be used for upgrade questions such as this one:
Is there a way to update Blender without deleting it and downloading the new version?
This might be a stretch, but this question might also be eligible for such a tag:
Working with VRML 1.0 files in the current version of Blender
I feel that having many tags for specific releases of blender is overkill when most questions are only related to the current version, but there are enough questions that are related to versions of blender that such a tag could make sense.

Blender versions are actually stable builds for the most part. I say one tag is enough, the builds tag should cover any of these questions. versions is a very vague version of what OP and El'endia Starman suggested.

@iKlsR They could be synonimized, but I think it would be good to at least have a prompt for whatever tag we use if a user starts typing versions or releases

Good note, I will make this so.

The problem with doing this for questions about different versions is that, as time goes on, a build that was up-to-date will become out-of-date, and a build that was beta will become the release-- but nobody will constantly update tags of all questions.

This would be extremely messy, if such a tag were to exist, it would be one set tag such as blender and that alone. If a question is tied to a specific version it can be specified in the question and or answer.
That being said, I am against such a tag as it would make little if any sense or even be of any use as the site is about Blender and presumably and preferably, the questions will be too.

I agree, keep it simple and tag with only [tag:blender]

Seconded. Having version-specific tags is too messy.

@iKlsR: I'm not sure if you're arguing for or against a plain [tag:blender] tag. Can you clarify?

@El'endiaStarman The first paragraph I was evaluating what could happen if one were to be used and the second I clearly say why it makes no sense. I have edited it to be a bit clearer.

@iKlsR I agree that this would be quite messy, but I think there would be a use for a single tag. (though maybe call it something more meaningful than [tag:blender]) See my answer


text:
Can we blacklist the "blender" tag immediately?
Following the lead of Caleb on Christianity.SE, who requested that the tags "christianity" and "christian" be blacklisted six days into the private beta, I recommend that the tag blender be blacklisted. As we are on a site about Blender, having such a tag adds no value to any question because any on-topic question will be about Blender.

+1 see my answer here. http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/a/10/12

possible duplicate of How should be the version tags?

How about the [tag:3d] and the [tag:open-source] tag?

There should already be a ^blender$ intrinsic tag blacklist. All sites (betas, at any rate) have this.

On the bicycles.SE site, you can use 'bicycles' as a tag (though your post will immediately get edited/deleted).

I agree that the blender tag should be blacklisted. Could we also look into blacklisting other tags that are inherent with the use of Blender, such as graphics?

+1 I think it makes a lot of sense to blacklist it, if all questions can fit under the blender tag then why have the tag at all?

You're not always asking about graphics...

to expand on @JNF's point: the [tag:scripting] and [tag:python] tags have little if anything to do with graphics.

How about the 3d and the open-source tag?


text:
How can we ensure Blender.SE doesn't share 3DGraphics.SE's fate?
For those not in the know, an older, now defunct 3d graphics.SE never made it out of private beta.
What can we do to make sure Blender.SE has the best chance of at least making it out of private beta?

Its been only a couple hours and we have nearly half of what they had after 33 days! It's a good start!

@iKlsR, How did you check that?

@DantheMan in the link in the question above, it said they had 177 users after 33 days. I go to new users on our site and see that the newest one is 60.

Is it something we do, or does it happen because of the need and objective popularity(and better focus) of subject?

There are several variables involved but the major one is publicity. Even in our commitment phase which took nearly a year, I myself had no idea of it until I randomly stumbled across it. What we need is publicity. IIRC every Blender release totals around at least 200k downloads which means that there are lots of people out there, people who want to learn.
My main suggestion is to share the site wherever and whenever you can, tweet a well written question or answer you found useful and or share a new tip or trick you learnt via your social and personal pages. Invite or tell a friend.
This site is a refreshing take on Q&A and Blender in general. It also helps us to stretch ourselves from dusty IRC channels and lengthy confusing forum threads. Lets make this into a great community!

One of the problems I've faced with publicity is an antagonistic community. Even Blender Nation's editor refused to report about this site when I suggested it.

@RolandiXor if we can't go big, we can at least start small. :) Several prominent persons in the community and a few developers are already here.. so lets see what happens.

To help with publicity I'm happy to help promote it across the Blender Cookie facebook and twitter.

@JonathanWilliamson That's awesome! What do you think about hosting a scheduled chat with us once we get into public beta?

@DantheMan sure I'm game. Shoot me an email via jonathan (at) cgcookie.com

Voting is important.
It feeds one of the stats on the Area 51 site (Avid users) which is used to determine how well this site is doing and whether to keep it running.
If a question receives a lot of votes and/or comments, it can end up in the "Supercolider" which is the "Hot questions" section of the main dropdown at the top of each page.  This brings a lot of users to that question from other parts of StackExchange.  I don't know if this happens during the public beta (and it certainly won't during the private beta) but when it does, even obscure questions can end up with hundreds of votes and dozens of answers.
Voting also encourages new users to contribute more by "rewarding" them.
Voting is also important in the long-term. Once the site is well established, the votes on the answers is how people who find a question through search engines can tell which answer is the best.

Ah yes, I saw a question there this one time. Said question now has over 3k views.

Another important difference with the 3D graphics SE is that the Blender SE is more specific. It is about one program instead of a whole area. It's hard to see as a user of the 3D graphics SE which subjects are in the scope of the site and which aren't.
Therefor i think that a specific Blender SE has a lot more potential and change of success than the 3D graphics SE.

It did work for 'stack overflow' though.


text:
'Rendering' tag
I feel that this tag is not needed. Whenever it has been used so far, it's also accompanied with the tag for the render engine. Such as cycles yafaray freestyle. Shouldn't we just get rid of it? See for yourself: rendering

it can be useful.. say for discussing rendering techniques/theory etc..

@iKlsR good point.

@iKlsR but I think that if a question has a rendering engine tag, that it shouldn't have the rendering tag.

We should keep the rendering tag.

I personally prefer this option, by the way.

We should keep the rendering tag.
Although many questions regarding rendering are specific to a particular engine, there are still a good number of questions that might arise independent of the rendering engine, or questions that ask for comparisons between the different engines. Also, there are a number of features of the rendering process that are general enough that even if the user is working with one engine, the answers might still be useful in a different engine (such as speed/optimization questions).

Also, since tag nesting is not currently supported, if I'm looking for wide-range questions on rendering, I wouldn't want to go through all tags, having one is helpful

We should keep the rendering, but remove it from every question that already has a rendering engine tag.

We should get rid of the rendering tag.

why do you have two different answers?

@iKlsR He wants rep.

@iKlsR, I've seen this done quite often on several different other SE sites I'm a part of, mainly just to make it easy for the community to choose the option they like best.

@Dan the Man, no, you can't get rep from the meta site.

@PeterCassetta Ah ok. Didn't know.