text:
Is XY Problem question need to be rewrite/edited?
XY problem happens a lot in BSE, especially Python and bpy question. eg. Print all information about an object, KeyError: key not found Blender python.
Most of the time an coder write down some script, then run it, then Python throw out an Error. Coder will keep tracking that error, and ask a question on BSE if they cannot figure it out. The question itself will become that Error rather than the real problem they want to achieve in their works.
I'm fine with these question since most of the question itself is a good defined question without ambiguity. And also from a fact rather then habit or personal opinion. We could directly answer the X problem without referring Y problem at all. But somehow BSE are encourage to let OP ask the Y problem and others should use comment to clarify whether this is an XY problem.
Let's assume we do infer about Y problem and answer the way to solve it, should we:

Edit the question itself to make it Y problem.
Let it still seems to be an X problem, people with the same though might search this keyword.
Directly mark it duplicated with Y problem question if there exist one.

The first one seems to be rude and angry with OP knowledge about the Y problem. The second one make it possible to follow the solving flow but make answer not that directly link to the question. The third one just make the question been "closed" and may lose some other possible solution toward X problem.
Any other solution or a rule that we can follow?

#2 seems to be the best option here, making it easier to find for future users, reducing the chances of recurrence , unless a duplicate exists, in which case it should be closed. When answering ideally address X if any solution exist, then succinctly explain why Y is better before presenting a solution.

Option 2 and Option 4 (which is what I do): Explain to people what the XY problem is in the comments and try and get them to understand that it might be to their advantage to reword their question to be about the original problem. If they don't want to edit it, answer the X problem (if you have time) but explain why that might not help.

AFAIC neither example posted is an XY Problem  For the keyerror have offered up a Y answer (I suppose)  to prod OP  towards using context rather than absolute naming.  Your answer, which I UV'd btw,  addresses issue in question..    IMO this one is https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/191242/how-to-check-if-node-has-a-name-property-while-iterating-through-materials  (needs title fix as its a nameless nodetree)  in that to the OP the issue is a nodetree with no name, whereas the problem is a node_tree reference pointing to None.

Thanks for the replying. @batFINGER Yeah that's post is what exactly I want as an example but I couldn't find one at the time I search. That post could be possible looked same as the one with AttributeError with similar concept. These kind of problem should belong to unfamiliar with Python when OOP scripting. Which seems to be too localized to solving it's own context when title or the question itself is not change. This is almost making a dictionary with those question as key and link to the same answer. Is this good for BSE? Or there is a good way to handle, help this situation?


text:
Delay before closing a question
Should there be some kind of delay between a new question being asked and it being closed for certain reasons - such as not enough clarity? It seems a bit harsh and unfriendly to me for a new user to join a community and ask a question, for it to be flagged as, for example, "too vague" and then to be closed within the space of an hour or two. This seems like insufficient time for them to have been expected to spot the flag and to be able to provide the information.
As a recent example, see Compositor nodes - holdout and combined at once. The question was raised and is, admittedly, quite vague - I didn't understand what was being asked and requested more information. Two hours later it was flagged as 'closed' as needing more clarity.
Now, I completely accept that the question needed more information and as it stands should be (eventually) closed - but to that new user it seems a bit harse to close the question so quickly. I know it can be updated and made active again (and the users have just followed the proper site procedure by flagging the question as it is) but it seems to me to come across are rather unfriendly and unwelcoming.
It would be better IMO to leave the question outstanding - but with the 'close' votes still present for a certain amount of time and only actually 'close' the question when that time has expired - at least 24 hours and preferably more. If the user hasn't responded to update the question in a couple of days I think it would be fair enough - but I think two hours turnaround would come across as unwelcoming to new users.

I agree in part with what was said, and some times refrain from close voting on certain questions for this same reason, since a mod vote is binding and the question gets closed immediately which can scare off inexperienced people.
I understand this may seem harsh or hostile to new users who expect to get an answer, but  closed question is not an irrevocable state.
In fact that is exactly what closing is for, the message box on top clearly states what procedures to take to get the question reopened, and saves both time and energy of writing the same comments repeatedly.
It also gives us access to convenient tools like queuing it up for review automatically if the question does get edited with more details, both increasing visibility, and the chance of getting an actual answer, while ensuring it does actually get new eyes on it again. Unlike a comments asking for clarification, which may get buried on the avalanche of new questions.
I think the issue stems mainly from the wording and terms used in the automatic messages. Closed sounds too "final" and irrevocable and may seem harsh for new users. Something like On hold or Awaiting Edit would be more adequate.
The issue isn't new and has been raised before, and the broader issue with close messages has been brought up on several occasions on meta like:

How could we improve our planned post notice improvements? or
Remove the suggestion to post a new question from the closed questions post notices

So the staff is aware of it, maybe something will be done about it in the not-too-distant future.

Thanks Duarte. I think you’re right about the process and that it’s more down to the wording. “Awaiting edit” would be a good state IMO - gets the message across and seems far less “final”.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How can a new user bump a question?
Here's an example of a new user doing the right thing, and looking to see whether their question has been asked before. However, it was unanswered, and their only option to bring attention to the question seems to be to do the wrong thing, and ask it again in the answers section.
I apologise if I'm missing something obvious.. how should a reviewer advise the new user? It seems unfair just to slap the post down.

"However, it was unanswered, and their only option to bring attention to the question seems to be to do the wrong thing, and ask it again"
The correct thing is to ask a new question. If a question is technically a duplicate but original has no answers, there is nothing wrong with asking it again.
Do so by making a new post (not a commenting or writing in the answer section), and ideally mentioning the original post with a link to it, so as to acknowledge it and show research efforts.
It is not consideres a duplicate nor a wrong action, and except for mods you can't even close vote as duplicate of a question with no answers, or if any answers only have no upvotes or negative score.
To answer your question directly, to bump an old question a user can:

As Glorfindel mentions add a bounty if you have enough rep to spare.
Improve the answer by fixing any mistakes or adding proper tags.
Add new details or additional information that can help solve the issue, if those don't conflict with the meaning of the original author.

Ahh! Thanks, @Duarte I didn't know comments count as activity, and I'm glad a fresh ask wouldn't count as a dupe. That solves  the dilemma.

Shouldn't this job been done by Community ♦? I mean, it should bring some searched post in front of the queue using some algorithm (or it is randomly poke now?).

As far as I know Community user has limited goals, but any activity like commenting or editing does bump questions into the top of the queue automatically. In-Site search is admittedly poor, I often have an easier time finding posts through Google than built-in search

Definitely agree with in-site search, then it seem to be a design flaw for new user to bump up a question. There is no (quick) way to know what will happen after user did an action mention above. I mean, there isn't a guide to let a question been notice by more people. Or did I miss that tutorial?

I also thought comments didn’t bump the question - only edits and answers.

You are right, commenting does not bump it up the queue, my mistake. That leaves the other options left. It does notify the original poster, and at least the last person to comment, so it does get some attention on the question.

That answer will end up in the Low Quality Posts review queue (because of its length, and because I flagged it as Not An Answer), where one of the options after 'Recommend Deletion' (or 'Delete') is to post this comment:

This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. You can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question once you have enough reputation.

That post is not an answer, so it should be deleted, but the new answer did bump the question, so perhaps somebody stumbles upon it now and can contribute to a solution. That would be a nice side effect.

Sure .. I just thought it would be nice if a new user had a way of reviving an unanswered question without inviting insult.. Maybe the right thing to do is suggest the user rephrases the question and asks it again, but then they would get closed for duplication. It seems they can't win!

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


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Why edit that make easier to understand for new version of blender get rejected?
i would like to understand what make this edit not accepted by community ? https://blender.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/109170
In my opinion it help make thing more understandable as i personally copy the wrong version of the code before realise my mistake was just syntax of blender that changed over time.

Hi thanks for the edit. The answer already covered both versions, you just shuffled things around and switched the order. It doesn't seem to improve the answer content itself on any meaningful way or make it easier to read. Was there any particular reason or concrete goal for that edit?

See When should I edit a question?

I suppose the point here was "To correct minor mistakes or add updates as the post ages" - in that the text of the answer was assuming '2.79' was the "current" version. Swapping it around makes the 'current' (2.8+) method the default with additional info for what it used to be. I suppose it's just a matter of opinion but if the majority of users need the 2.8 syntax then it's arguably better for the version from the edit. That said it would be a massive undertaking to go back and edit all posts to be more 2.8-centric. A compromise would be to add 'In blender 2.79 and below:' instead of edit.

Sometimes If I update a question with a longish script to 2.8, I use the revision link to point back to prior eg for this particular answer  For 2,4 < version < 2.8


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What happen to code highlight?
The code highlight seems to change its theme, which make it very hard to distinguish between comment, string, normal text.
Did I break some setting in my browser? Or it is intend to change the theme?
If it is intended, why? Can we make it more distinguishable between those type?

test = {
    "string": "Run specified script in all context",
    "variable": desc,
    "module": bpy,
    "tuple": (0, 1, 0),
    "list": [2, 80, 0],
    "float": 3.14159,
    "comment": ""  # code highlight
}

Here on meta there doesn't seem to be any active code highlighting, as far as I can tell. On main it is working as intended for me on your second example. It isn't immediate thought, it takes a few seconds to "kick in".

Also this update from Prettify to Highlight.js went through, so you might have caught some maintenance off time or during transition period

Yes, can confirm it is a temporary change and now string colored as dark green.


text:
Moderator Campaign 2020
Since the mass moderators resignation last January David♦ and iKlsR♦ relinquished their duties, leaving us currently with only two active moderators, Gandalf and Duarte.
With the constant efforts of the community and tireless help from a bunch of very active users we have managed to keep the site barely in working order, but other that handling flags and doing regular basic maintenance work, that leaves us with little time and energy for much more.
We decided to have a moderator election in the near future, and would love to scan for potential candidates. To avoid finding ourselves in a situation where no one would apply or candidates would be unaware of the event, we are campaigning in anticipation of the actual election, as "publicity" for the actual application phase.
Many people are reluctant about the role but it need not be a a lot of work, nor an arduous task, in fact most of the tasks you already take on as regular users are the same as those of moderators, which helps lift the burden of actual official ones.
There are a few regular users of this site that know the community well, the ins-and-outs of this site, and would definitely make a very fine upcoming moderators. We would definitely love having them as colleagues in this task.
If you are interested or available to becoming one please post an answer below or leave a comment. We'd love to hear from all.

Okay then :). Since I'm not a good candidate for a moderator, I'd love to hear what can regular users do to help moderators carry the load. I'm currently just flagging dupes, but is there something that makes more sense? :)

As regular user you are probably limited by the system itself on how much you can help. If i recall correctly there is a limit on how many items in a certain queue you can review, flags can also only be handled by mods. Maybe you would make for good candidate. Why don't you try running, there nothing to loose ;). You may be relatively new to the site, but you've shown quite a lot of dedication so far. I'm also quite new and inexperienced as a mod myself, compared to other mods that were all here since the inception of the site.

Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll have the time required for this commitment, so I won't be joining as candidate.

@RobertGützkow while a present moderator is always better than an absent one, there are no established participation quotas or hard set hours you must put in. Your application would still be welcome

Great idea! If I could I would nominate Ray Mairlot, susu and batFINGER, they all trying to keep the site organized anyway so... Ray, susu, batFINGER - What do you think?

They would also be among my potential candidates, unfortunately Ray has specifically declined it, and Batfinger has not responded so far.

Since Jachym withdrew I changed my mind and joined as a candidate. I still don't have much time to spend, but I thought it might still be a good idea to have another person to choose from.

@RobertGützkow You did well, glad to see you running.

Cue the drums...

Today I'm announcing my candidacy for a moderator of Blender Stack Exchange
(With Suzanne the Monkey as my running mate)

That's right

We all benefit from this site, it'd be nice to give something back :)
Duarte and Gandalf probably need some sleep
After a year on the site I know enough to be of help

Plus, I really enjoy making stuff organized, so that's a bonus for me :).

We Promise:
(Sorry, I can't keep anything serious)

Full transparency

BlenderCare for All

Protection of traditional (and clipped) values

This message was approved by APPLE PIES FOR SUZANNE LLC.
(Yeah and I'd definitely show you my previous experience, but it's under audit right now...)

I knew you would not resist! Glad to see you running :)

Thanks :). I wouldn't go for it without your encouragement.

+1 You have my support.

Thank you @RobertGützkow, you just made my day :).


text:
2020 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection
Blender is scheduled for an election next week, October 12. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.

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

Here's how it'll work:

Until the nomination phase, (so, until October 12th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.

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

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

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

Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, typically containing 10 questions in total.

This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

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

After the 2.8 series Blender's popularity and visibility in the industry increased considerably attracting a lot of new users, this brought an influx of beginners to BSE.
How do you suggest we deal with the inevitable increase in lower quality posts, repeated questions and general unawareness of rules and conduct?

How do you feel about the current state of the community here?  What role does meta and chat play in your ideal for blender.SE, and how will you encourage this?

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

Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

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

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


text:
2020 Community Moderator Election
The 2020 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

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


text:
2020 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire
In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers.
Due to the submission count, we have selected all provided questions as well as our back up questions for a total of 8 questions.
As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes. Please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written, and also including a link to your answer on your nomination post.
Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.
Good luck to all of the candidates!
Oh, and when you've completed your answer, please provide a link to it after this blurb here, before that set of three dashes. Please leave the list of links in the order of submission.
To save scrolling here are links to the submissions from each candidate (in order of submission):

Nate_Sycro27

Jachym Michal

Timaroberts

Teck-Freak

Robert Gützkow

After the 2.8 series Blender's popularity and visibility in the industry increased considerably attracting a lot of new users, this brought an influx of beginners to BSE.
How do you suggest we deal with the inevitable increase in lower quality posts, repeated questions and general unawareness of rules and conduct?

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

How do you feel about the current state of the community here? What role does meta and chat play in your ideal for blender.SE, and how will you encourage this?

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Jachym Michal

Update, October 18th
I decided to withdraw my nomination from the 2020 Moderator Election.
Due to some unexpected circumstances (new job and stuff...) I probably wouldn't have enough time in the next few months to properly fulfill moderating duties.
Good luck to all the other candidates :).

After the 2.8 series Blender's popularity and visibility in the industry increased considerably attracting a lot of new users, this brought an influx of beginners to BSE.
How do you suggest we deal with the inevitable increase in lower quality posts, repeated questions and general unawareness of rules and conduct?

The same way moderators always did.
By relying on self-moderating mechanisms of SE and stepping in when needed
Blender SE is becoming a library of sorts, already having answers for most basic questions.
It's increasingly more important to keep it organized, so it can keep fulfilling it's purpose.
Adding more moderators (eventually more and more) feels like a step in the right direction

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

In summer 2019, I finally worked up the courage to try 3D. I downloaded Blender 2.8 and got hooked instantly (often spending 16 hours a day) and have been using it every day since then.
It's an awesome journey, and this site is a big part of the experience.
But if you're wondering, no, I don't get paid to use Blender. And I like it like that :).

How do you feel about the current state of the community here? What role does meta and chat play in your ideal for blender.SE, and how will you encourage this?

The community here is amazing, otherwise I wouldn't stick around. Yet I understand some people became disillusioned with SE over time, and I don't blame them.
But for me, this is still the go to place to meet skilled yet humble people, willing to learn new things and actively share their expertise. Not just about Blender.
Meta is a useful tool for giving feedback to moderators, and a good way to learn about how the site works and what moderating is about.
Chat (Renderfarm) may feel a bit uninviting at first - I personally didn't want to intrude as a new user. But I belive it's a good opportunity to talk about (un)related stuff, and get to know people around here just a little better
And the encouraging?
How about: "Hey, great answer [new user] make sure to visit our chatroom here, we'd love to get to know you better :)."

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

We're human, right? Let's open a personal chatroom and talk.
I'm not here to deal with anyone, I'm here to make this site a better place :).

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Again. We're people, we can talk about stuff.
→ "Hey, I noticed you closed this question. I feel we should keep it
open, it could generate a lot of interesting answers. What do you think?"

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

In no particular order and often intersecting:

First, they should (and currently do) keep this site a pleasant place to visit, mostly by helping others use and navigate the site
Second, they help where SE self-moderating mechanisms fail (rude comments, disputes between users, trolling...)
Third, they keep this site going! Their job isn't to know everything, but to make it easier for others to find the right answers

A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?

Honestly, I could do without that BIG RED Diamond next to my name.
I'm proud of my involvement on the site, but I'm a bit afraid some (new) users will take me just a bit too seriously
However, I'll gladly wear the diamond so users know where to turn for help. For this reason alone, the diamond is worth it.
It's also a nice reminder that people around here trust me

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

That was my first question before I even considered running.
It's simple. Regular users are limited by the system in their involvement. Instead of flagging problems, why not solve them right away?
And regarding the rep - I'm almost at 18,000 with most moderating tools available, yet I still feel I could help more

Well, this was fun :).

If I understand well, Blender is still a hobby for you (that's mainly the case for me too). Do you feel it as a limitation compared to professional people?

Hey :). It certainly limits how much time I can spend Blendering. However, I'm glad my income doesn't depend on my Blender skills yet, it makes the whole learning experience much more fun :). With regard to moderating I don't see any difference. Is that what you had in mind?

Jachym, yes, thanks!

@timaroberts How often would you frequent blender.se a moderator and how much time would you dedicate daily/weekly/monthly to review/edit?

Oh, you've got perfect timing, @Leander :). I've got offered a new job today, which wouldn't leave me with enough time for proper moderating. I'll decide tomorrow, whether to withdraw or not.

@Leander As for the dedicated time, I'm in a similar situation as Timaroberts. I frequent the site a few times a day, and that wouldn't change as a mod. I'd make it a priority to keep the queues in check over answering questions :).

I would be happy if you didn't withdraw. Duarte mentioned, that it could be possible to also add the runner up from this election and they were thinking about it. In that case it would be better to have more candidates than fewer who can split the work.

Thanks for the support @Leander, I considered that too. But all the other candidates have more experience with moderating than me, so there's still enough to choose from :). Also, I wouldn't withdraw if there were only two other candidates left.

Sad to see that you withdrew, but congratulations on the new job! Even though I don't really have much time for moderation either, I've decided to join as candidate. Just to make sure that people have a bit of a choice.

Echo Robert, sorry to see you off this list, maybe next time.

That's great news @RobertGützkow :). This election is going to be way more interesting than i thought... And good luck of course, the lineup is pretty strong this time :).

@RobinBetts Oh, you can count on that :). Thanks.

@JachymMichal, it seems the vote is open but you're not there. Is it intentional? If not I think the vote is kind of rigged?

Hey @lemon :). Nothing is rigged, I decided to withdraw two days ago. I've put a short explanation in the beginning of my answer here.

@JachymMichal, ok I understand... too bad for us, imho. Wish you plain success in your new job

Thank you @lemon, that's very kind of you :).

After the 2.8 series Blender's popularity and visibility in the
industry increased considerably attracting a lot of new users, this
brought an influx of beginners to BSE. How do you suggest we deal with
the inevitable increase in lower quality posts, repeated questions and
general unawareness of rules and conduct?

For starters, use your votes. If it is helpful at all, if it is well written, then vote it up. If not, vote down and leave a comment why so the OP can improve their Q/A. Quality content should be voted up.

Be patient, and be understanding that the majority of posts currently tend to be “write first don’t read”, and users will generally have no idea how to format their text the way we are accustomed to reading, or how things work here.
 Edit and improve these (ideally leave a short comment why so the OP can learn why their post was changed)

Be nice :)

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

I started using Blender sometime around 2.70 or so, a little over 6
years ago. My first experience with 3D modeling was with very early versions of Lightwave running on Windows 95, and when I found Blender I was hooked immediately, and have been since.

I mostly use Blender for personal projects, but will occasionally use Blender commercially.

How do you feel about the current state of the community here? What
role does meta and chat play in your ideal for blender.SE, and how
will you encourage this?

This community is an amazing place, and there is an incredible amount of knowledge here. Even though there have been some troubling times in the past year, we're human. I like to err on the side of people personally. Meta and chat are incredibly important to the community, and should be used more!

If you have a problem, or question about the site, go to meta! If you want to converse for more than two lines of text, go to chat! Bonus, chat can be a little off-topic :)

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of
valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of
arguments/flags from comments?

I don’t think that I have yet seen such an issue here on BSE, however, if ever such a situation occurred, I think I would handle the flags first and then directly contact the user should the situation merit that. Communication is always better. :)

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc
a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Communicate! If there was ever such a case, I would simply reach out and gain an understanding of their point of view. Often, asking questions clears things up.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

As little as possible

I think that moderators are the people accountable to the community for the feel of the site and how it runs. Basically, the mods are the ones who step in to handle what the system can't on it's own.

A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the
past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will
do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?

New users especially will immediately see mods as an authority, and it is up the mods to be discerning, and fair in how they speak and act towards them. While the diamond will certainly carry it's own weight. I already try to do my best now to treat both new and established users with respect, and fairness. I will continue to do so if elected.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more
effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

There is much more that I would be able to do for the site as a whole, as a mod.
I already do what I can, flag, edit, review, comment, etc.
This will continue of course, but I will be able to directly deal with the occasional spam, or obsolete comments, help bear the weight of the flags,ect.

You're the only one so far that would ask why another moderator closed a question, rather than saying why it shouldn't be closed :) What are the close vote queues like?  My impression of being a 7k user on [elu.se] is that moderators mainly handle flags.

+1 from me :). I'd be happy to have you as our moderator.

The first point about beginners is very important I think. Frequently this is boring, specific, repetitive, and/or with no general interest. However we can answer and be nice, I tried to do often. Yes, ok. Any idea for a better management of these cases? I must add (joke, of course): how to ban directly any question about donuts ; )

@lemon Yes, sometimes very specific, and to that point I try to remind users that Q's should be useful to future users and the OP. To manage it is good to know the dupes, use the search or even better to  have canonical answers or community wikis to refer to. The donut Q's by now are mostly dupes, so close as dupes. But still be nice, and encourage them to ask other Q's.

@timaroberts How often would you frequent blender.se a moderator and how much time would you dedicate daily/weekly/monthly to review/edit?

@Leander day to day varies :) Could be 30 minutes, could be an hour in a day... no hard limits. I’m already around a lot, so not much will change. :) I’ll try to at least dedicate enough time to have queues caught up so it stays manageable. Does that answer your question well enough?

Yes, it does. Thank you.

Re 1. what is being "nice".   We have  recently lost RayMairlot, a tireless editor / reviewer / keeper of the tags... A new user took umbrage at a tag edit and spat out some of the usual obtuse, ignorant  vitriol. As you'd be aware this occurs too often    Our comments are ignored, edits reverted. Then no matter how rude this user may have been, another user rides up like a white knight  and comments /  answers to reward the  tantrum thrower, whom in getting what they want is then "nice".    IMO the suggestions in the CoC lean towards  patronizing. Do we really want these gimme gimme noobs?

@batFINGER to me, "be nice" means just that, literally not only as in the CoC. At the end of the end of the day, we are all human anyway. :) Some new users will stay and contribute, learn how things work here... great. Others won't. It's unfortunate that we've lost many long time users that contributed great content and worked hard to maintain the site. At the end of the day, remember we all started somewhere with a first ask, some better than others and then learned from other users comments and actions, hence why I suggest be nice, vote, comment. I hope that answers your question :)

Robert Gützkow

After the 2.8 series Blender's popularity and visibility in the industry increased considerably attracting a lot of new users, this brought an influx of beginners to BSE.
How do you suggest we deal with the inevitable increase in lower quality posts, repeated questions and general unawareness of rules and conduct?

I would suggest we use the votes and flagging system of StackExchange, just like before and encourage member of our community to participate in the review process. Additionally, new users should be informed about the rules and guidelines that apply to this website. I personally think it's important to keep the community friendly and welcoming, which means when new users are unintentionally breaking the rules, they are given polite reminder.

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

The first time I've used Blender was in high school, probably around 2010, and I've been using it ever since. Blender has been a great tool for both professional and hobby projects. The last professional project I was involved in was the preparation of 3D models created with photogrammetry for an augmented reality application. I'm also a moderator on Blender's bug tracker since November 2019 and a Blender developer with commit access since April 2020.

How do you feel about the current state of the community here? What role does meta and chat play in your ideal for blender.SE, and how will you encourage this?

I think the community is fairly organized and well behaved, despite the exodus of moderators. It does seem that the number of questions since the 2.80 release has grown significantly and the number of answers not as much. I hope that we can create an atmosphere that encourages our newer members to contribute high quality answers of their own.
Meta can be useful to help members with issues that they have within our community and how it is organized. It also allows me to ask question to fellow community members, when I'm unsure how a particular issue could/should be handled. This is important since the perspective of one moderator may not be same as those of the community members or other moderators. Feedback and communication are key components to a healthy community.
Chat is great for the communication between members of the community, especially for having a direct conversation with a particular user. This can be helpful as a tool to solve issues one-on-one. Furthermore, it allows to facilitate more lively discussions that sometimes occur on questions and are better suited for this purpose than the comment section. If I'd see a particular long list of comments as moderator I would move them to chat.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I would try to have an conversation over chat with them, to see why they are leaving such comments and if they are aware of the impact these comments have on other community members. I'm certain that reasonable members will try to improve their behavior in the future, if they are politely reminded of the positive and helpful community we're trying to create here. Should the problematic behavior continue or even escalate, I would confer with the other moderators and take actions that we deem appropriate.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

That would depend on the particular case. If it was closed, then I would leave a comment why I think it shouldn't be and vote to reopen discuss this with the other moderators since moderator votes are binding. If it is an action that can only be reversed by moderators, which poses a high bar for reverting the action, I might post a question on Meta to discuss or contact the other moderator directly.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Moderators help to keep the community organized and running. They ensure that the members don't have to deal with rude comments, spam, overly large number of low quality posts or duplicates, content that belongs on another StackExchange website and much more. Essentially, they are are the teachers or parents of this community making sure that nobody is fighting, everybody is learning and the place stays tidy.

A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?

I'm not sure how much different others will look at my past, present and future actions. I do know that I have and will work hard to ensure that all my posts have a high standard of quality. Everything I do on here already has my real name attached to it.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

I believe it allows for potentially quicker actions and a better ability to intervene e.g. when I'm seeing an argument that happens in the comments. Since I'm not a moderator yet, this is likely something that I could provide a better answer to after having used the moderator tools for a while.

"I would leave a comment why I think it shouldn't be and vote to reopen" as a moderator that vote would immediately open it.  In my opinion moderators are like parents, and should be a united front to the community :)

@marcellothearcane My bad. In that case, check with the moderators first. If this candidacy wouldn't have been so spontaneous due to Jachym withdrawing, I would've had time to familiarize myself with the moderator privileges.

I've asked a question for each candidate, about a point (that I feeled) to be cleared or explained or simply want to react on. From your answer, there is this "teachers or parents". You certainly know that rep points or any status does not give the values here (because we are just participating but low rep users can be as skilled as we are or more). On which plane "teachers or parents" is to be considered?

@lemon This was only meant to be interpreted figuratively, not as a statement about experience or status. Essentially the moderators make sure everything is running smoothly, similar to teachers or parents.

Curiously, the private moderators chat room over at stack meta is coincidentally called Teachers Lounge in a nod to how moderators are supposed to be the "shepherd" guiding the various communities

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos, appears much more like school supervisor to me. Don't know if shepherd is better (will try to find some sheeps here and ask them) ; ) But ok, nothing essential, just wanted to know what Robert meant.

You are not the first to dislike the name, it is subjective but seems to be a common misinterpretation.

BSE! I would like to be in the running for the 2020 moderator nomination. I have already within a span of 8 months completed over 1,400 reviews, and answered many topics in Blender Stack Exchange. I believe I would be a good moderator on BSE, so I nominate myself in for the election.

(1) After the 2.8 series Blender's popularity and visibility in the industry increased considerably attracting a lot of new users, this brought an influx of beginners to BSE.
How do you suggest we deal with the inevitable increase in lower quality posts, repeated questions and general unawareness of rules and conduct?

With new users, some do not always fully understand the way BSE works, so they may create posts which are not acceptable on BSE. However, this should be (and is) treated with kindness, and a moderator should simply say that it is non-acceptable. This is what I will try best to do. (1)

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

I have had experience with 3D modeling for over three years now, and have been using Blender for two years now. I am currently using Blender mainly as a hobby, but am also working with it for commercial purposes. (2)

(3) How do you feel about the current state of the community here? What role does meta and chat play in your ideal for blender.SE, and how will you encourage this?

I myself do not use the BSE chat often, and so should not be contacted on it frequently, however it is a great way for others to share work and to answer questions that might be off-topic/closed on BSE. I think to keep it, and possibly add newer features that can enhance your experience with it. (3)

(4) How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

I believe that comments to posts (which in a large way help the site) that ruin/damage or are against the topic, and make the name of the author look bad, are completely unnecessary. I also believe that comments posted as retort to another comment, or in a way that makes fun of the original post (which do not help the post in any way) should be deleted, or not posted. (4)

(5) How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

(6) In your opinion, what do moderators do?

I believe a moderator should look more deeply into a question before flagging, as I feel they are not currently. I have seen multiple posts on BSE, (and have had a couple posts), flagged as duplicates or something else, which are not as they are flagged for, and can be improved such that they can really benefit the site. However, when it comes to genuinely stupid posts that do not help the site, I will make haste to do away with them, as they do not help the site in any way. (5)(6)
If I am nominated as a moderator, I will try as best as I can to look more deeply into posts before flagging, while also making the necessary edits, and improvements to the question/answer wherever I can. (6)

(7) A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?

I would not see myself "above" everyone else simply because of my status if I was moderator, but would want to be seen as someone that can help frequently when needed. (7)

(8) In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

I do not have a relatively large reputation (in terms of points), but I have made a large difference in cleaning up the site's new posts, and low-quality posts. I try to review as frequently as I can, and do the best job I can. (8)
Thank you

Also, don't forget to nominate yourself on the Election page :).

Could you qualify a bit more what you called "genuinely stupid posts"?

Posts which basically try to troll BSE and/or are spamming or scamming the site. I.e. someone trying to sell scams to users.

@Nate_Sycro27, scamming is very very rare. But ok, thanks.

@Nate_Sycro27 if you wish to run nominate, you have 3 days, AFAIK answering the questions  does not nominate you. https://blender.stackexchange.com/election

@batFINGER Completed!

@timaroberts How often would you frequent blender.se a moderator and how much time would you dedicate daily/weekly/monthly to review/edit?

@Leander It might vary per day, but usually about 2 hours per day whenever I am using my PC

Teck-Freak

After the 2.8 series Blender's popularity and visibility in the industry increased considerably attracting a lot of new users, this brought an influx of beginners to BSE.
How do you suggest we deal with the inevitable increase in lower quality posts, repeated questions and general unawareness of rules and conduct?

For dealing with repeated questions we got a nice system of pointing out duplicates, checking if they are indeed duplicates and closing them with a link.
Concerning unawareness of rules and conduct, it should be pointed out in a comment, linking to our code of conduct. For both, low quality posts and posts not following our rules minimal editing should be considered to bring it up to our standards. And always, always use your votes and comment on why/how to enhance a question or post.

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

When I was young I used to draw and invent a lot. My cousin showed me an early version of blender once it got OpenSource somewhere 2002. I hardly used it, since I could draw well and fast back then, and Blender seemed to slow/hard for my needs. When my brother found out about "Elephants Dream" I looked into it, and when it came out May 2006 I downloaded Blender (2.45? 2.49?) and made my first real animation (a light sabre throw - yes I am a nerd ). From then I played around with it every other week or so. It went much more real in university, where I had my own computer and would use it bi-dayly. Also I learned Python and in second semester got a students job as programmer working with Python and Blender and have been using it ever since.
Currently I am using Blender almost dayly, but I don't do much artwork anymore.
I use it in work 3-4 days a week and for hobby half the other days. (With 2.78 and 2.83 and I still dont like that you're forced an 'active tool')

How do you feel about the current state of the community here? What role does meta and chat play in your ideal for blender.SE, and how will you encourage this?

The community is awesome and very helpful. I remember it as even better, but that might be my memory playing tricks on me.
Meta and chat are important for BSE, but shamefully I got to admit I hardly ever used either. I would like to encurage usage, maybe with a comment towards new folks.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Weirdly specific for something very hypothetical. Well, I got to deal with the flags. Arguments should be outsourced to chat (we're all human). If someone just attacs in the comments, I think one should contact them directly. If it keeps happening, I'd delete said comments. I can see how feelings can stir up, but if you don't provide valid reasons for your argument, I'm not sure anyone would like to read it.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I would try to explain my reasoning why I think that was wrong, and depending on the individual case I'd try to reopen the question. Communication is the key.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

minimally invasive modifications! In my eyes, a mod is in a weird superposition: you're a friend to anyone, you settle fights, you're the Good-Guy-Greg meme personified. However from the sites perspective, you are also a surgeon - your job is not to show how good you are with the scalpel or to make beauty-operations. Your job is to do the necessary tasks at hand, without to much complications.

A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?

I'm not sure. I see why it is needed, but I dont think that'll change me much. I try to be nice and helpfull anyway. Am I being "the first among equals"?
I don't know and frankly dont care much either. On a scale from -10 to 10, with -10 being royally p... unhappy and 10 being highly positive, I think I'm on a -1, maybe? Slightly annoyed, but not enough to even call it annoying?

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

I could solve problems that standards can only point to. Also, I'm far from a 20k or even a 10k.

Good luck everybody! May the one most fit for this site win. ;-)

+1 from me :). Even if you don't win this time, please do stick around in our chatroom

@JachymMichal Thanks mate. :-D I will try to keep in touch.

In .3, you say " I remember it as even better". Do you think things have changed with time here? Why and what to do for it in your opinion?

Oh. The honest answer to both would be "I dont know". My best guess is that some of the old members are slowly ground down while we get a flood of people that dont see the rules and ... lets say traditions of this site. Like I said though: it might be that I changed.

@timaroberts How often would you frequent blender.se a moderator and how much time would you dedicate daily/weekly/monthly to review/edit?

@Leander It might vary a bit between bi-dayly and twice a day. I'd say about 3-7h a week should be reasonable. Probably I'll do more on weekends. If I notice more has to be done, I might up it a bit (maybe 10-ish), but I can't give a fixed top limit right now. Starting from January I should have more time. Sorry if that's not the answer you hoped for.


text:
Candidate score
When an election rolls around the nominees are assigned a candidate score. A  maximum possible score of 40, constructed fifty fifty from reputation and selected badge achievements.
Reputation
1 point for each 1000 of rep, capped at 20,
Badges
A point per having any of
Moderation Badges.
'Civic Duty',
'Cleanup',
'Deputy',
'Electorate',
'Marshal',
'Sportsmanship',
'Reviewer',
'Steward'
Participation
'Constituent',
'Convention',
'Enthusiast',
'Investor',
'Quorum',
'Yearling'
Editing
'Organizer',
'Copy Editor',
'Explainer',
'Refiner',
'Tag Editor',
'Strunk & White'
Some example scores. Note: I've chosen by league table, & activity. If you are on here and don't want to be edit yourself out, or conversely not on here, and want to be edit yourself in.  Please include your score in any answers
UserIds 15543, 19307, 74827, 31447, 19156, 34531, 3710, 35559, 41069, 60759, 15924, 78972, 86891, 241, 30849, 29586, 599, 92768, 2217, 7777
User Link                Total CappedRep BadgeCount ModBadges EditingBadges ParticipationBadges

------------------------ ----- --------- ---------- --------- ------------- -------------------

David                    40    20        20         8         6             6
Ray Mairlot              38    20        18         7         6             5
Duarte Farrajota Ramos   38    20        18         8         6             4
batFINGER                38    20        18         7         6             5
gandalf3                 38    20        18         6         6             6
Leander                  34    20        14         5         4             5
Robin Betts              32    20        12         4         3             5
lemon                    31    20        11         3         3             5
Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny 31    20        11         3         3             5
p2or                     28    12        16         7         5             4
Rich Sedman              28    20        8          2         2             4
Jachym Michal            27    17        10         3         3             4
Robert Gützkow           27    18        9          3         3             3
moonboots                25    20        5          1         2             2
Martynas Žiemys          23    12        11         4         3             4
Timaroberts              19    7         12         5         4             3
brockmann                17    6         11         5         3             3
susu                     15    6         9          3         3             3
Gorgious                 13    8         5          2         2             1
Grimm                    13    1         12         5         3             4

Too Reputation-centric
IMO this is way too reputation centric. In sport the best player doesn't necessarily make the best captain, and often affects their playing if capped. The addict that hovers over the questions, often duplicates, answering first to get their "fix" is not going to fit the bill either.
How about base 10  log(rep) - 2 capped at 0 to 6, (A hundred is 0, a thousand 1 and a million 6)?.
Badges
Drop rep and simply Order the table above by badges either total or in a badge category order , or weighted more to some than others..?
A review queue badge is obtained by doing so many reviews. All of which may have been rejected, or gone the other way. In the heady days of trying to beat @David at the review sweep, many times I didn't pass when undecided. Made the decision to cease review for a category once I hit 1000, get the medal, tour of duty over.  Others have gone way and beyond.  This should count for something.
What skill badges to the incumbents have? Do we add some weight to mixing up the skill set of the moderation team. Something using our score for the  most popular tags?
Voting.
One of my soapbox issues on BSE is the lack of voting. Do blender users have particularly high standards?  Could a penalty be incurred for not voting at all?, for each time vertice or vertexes is used in a post or comment?. ... starting a question with "So, I need..."  Posting "It doesn't work in 2.9" comments on posts pre 2014.... oops got onto penalties and digressed..
Voting is important. And is well covered via  "Civic Duty", "Electorate", "Enthusiast", "Sportsmanship" badges.  Still way outweighed by rep.
Interesting queries on Data Explorer
The question
What criteria would you use to determine a candidate score.
Be both OTT and sensible, ruthless and fair. Most importantly please add those one percenters (up or down), that count to you.
For "consistency sake"  cap score + bonuses - penalties to 0, 40.
.

You got me with vertexes :). I'd agree that reputation points aren't a reliable measure of moderating qualities (look at mine :). Rep doesn't matter to me, as long as the mod knows what he's doing.

Vertexes isn't necessarily wrong, depending on how strict you are. I'd rather have penalties for using "Plz Help" or writing the words "Question" or "Doubt" in the title. XD

Anyway nice post, I gather this all came from Stack Data site. Your scoring system seems more reasonable.@batfinger your score is right up there at the top. What are you doing here playing with numbers, instead of running as candidate? :D

David added the query as a link to election page for me at your election.  I cannot resist any chance to post that vertices meta link. Someone took it just a  weeeeeee bit too seriously.   And like the election prior  there are already some very good candidates who have put their hand up. There is one potential candidate who is also a high rep  member of "Seasoned Advice" SE that would make a great mod whom has expressed interest in the future... My advice:  "The future is now!"

I knew I couldn't be the only one who noticed @batFINGER :). Having high rep on "Seasoned Advice" tells you so much about a person... "The future is now!"

What about helpful flags as a metric too?

@marcellothearcane sure. The question then is how much  for how many.. eg 1 pt bonus for >= one per month of users lifespan?


text:
2020 Community Moderator Election Results
Blender's third moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied and the new moderator is:

They'll be joining the existing crew shortly—please thank them for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes!
Following additional moderator need, we called on the runner-up of the election and have a new moderator, please welcome:

For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here, or view a summary report online.

Hey Robert, congratulations on winning, and welcome aboard

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos In Stack Exchange tradition I'm not going to reply with a "Thank you", but I very much appreciate the warm welcome!

Congratulations! Well qualified, for this job.

@RobertGützkow I agree with them. ;-) Congratulations.

Very cool :). Congrats.


text:
What to do about fluid-simulation and smoke-simulation, fire tags?
Since 2.82 some of the physics systems have undergone some major changes, specifically Fluid (when mantaflow was added). As such, for the site it seems to creates a bit of a mess with some tags because they overlap.

fluid-simulationexcerpt as of this writing:

Questions about the Fluid simulation systems in blender. Blender has
two systems for simulating liquids, a SPH (Smoothed Particle Dynamics)
system integrated with the particle system, and a Lattice Boltzmann
method which can be used create a variety of simulations.

smoke-simulation is actually an old wiki link as of writing this question, which is how this question came up in the first place.
fire   no tag wiki
For a user that reads the tag wiki, this would be misleading, so the information should probably be updated.
Per current documentation, fluid simulation includes smoke/ fire and liquid, so wouldn't be surprised if users unknowingly begin to misuse fluid-simulation for both causing future disorganization of questions as time goes on.
Examples of questions that was asked are Both my fire emitter and my domain became 'wireframe', can't see them in render view
The OP is asking about fire, but tagged the question fluid-simulation as well as fire
also,
Cold smoke simulation
The OP is asking about smoke but has tagged the question fluid-simulation and smoke-simulation
Finally, these two tag search results here and here show that it is already becoming quite disorganized.

The questionHow should these tags be organized? The given information needs to be updated. So while at it, is it a good idea to create a new tag, liquid-simulation  and use that for questions specifically about liquid, and use smoke-simulation for specific smoke questions, and then use fluid-simulation or create mantaflow for both of these?

Perhaps we could include a notice that the old tags are now deprecated and reference which new tag should be used instead. I'm not sure how often questions about mantaflow are asked, it may make sense to have specific tags for simulation types for mantaflow (e.g. mantaflow-fluid, mantaflow-fire, mantaflow-smoke)

@RobertGützkow perhaps, at a glance it seems that [tag:smoke-simulation] has had 15 questions this month, [tag:fluid-simulation] 31, and [tag:fire] has had 7. At the same time, I know there are users that still use old versions because of their hardware, so still may run into questions for now...

I think [tag:fluid-simulation] and [tag:smoke-simulation] should be kept system agnostic as tags respectively pertaining to fluid and smoke, regardless of the underlying system.
The fact that it now uses Mantaflow library or that both use the same system under the hood seems irrelevant and should probably not be reflected in our tags.
Having additional liquid-simulation or mantaflow tags will probably only add to the confusion. Incorrectly tagged questions should be fixed of course.


text:
"Blender Crashes when..." Questions
There are many, many questions, concerning a situation: "Blender crashes when..."

Just a few examples from the last 2 months...
 Blender GPU compute render preview crash,
Blender crashes when entering viewport rendered mode,
Blender crashes several times and lags,
Blender crashes when entering rendered view,
Blender crashes with GPU installed,
Windows 10 crashes using blender,
How can I avoid crash when adding subdivision modifier?,
Blender render extremely slow on Linux (+ crashes),
Ubuntu. Blender crashes when opens Shader Editor,
Always crash when I enter the rendered view in blender 2.90,
Crashing during particle bake (not from memory),
Blender crashing when using material preview or using eevee on Pop os 20.04,
Blender crashes when using any kind of normal map,
Blender won't see my nVidia GPU and 2.90 crashes but 2.91 doesn't,
Cycles rendering mode crashes the entire program AMD OpenCL,
Blender crashes when rendering cycles although using good settings,
Blender crashes when rendering cycles although using good settings,
Import STL crashes Blender
Blender 2.9 instantly crashes when I try to render in Cycles
Rendering (CPU+GPU) crash almost every time
Blender Crashes When I Open A File,
Blender crashes when I use volume absorption,
Normal maps baking crashes blender 2.90. Exact same blender file as in blender 2.83 where bake doesn't crash,
Exception Access Violation error,
Blender crashes after rendering one frame,
Cycles crashing on gpu compute (RX 5700 with XT bios)

Most don't have any answers, since the possible reasons are hard to pinpoint through Q&A format.

Should we have one dedicated Q&A post with possible reasons listed, for users to try?
Like:

Update your GPU drivers
Check if your HW meets the requirements
Make sure your HW can handle the scene
Try a different version
Pray to Blender Gods... :)
and so on...

Why it's a good idea:

It will be faster and more helpful for those asking for help (that's the point here, right?)
It will help protect our moderators' sanity :)
It will save time so people can focus on answering other questions

What do you think?

The issue I have with crash related questions is that most often are off topic here. It is either a hardware problem, an issue with drivers, operating system, or just general poor computer health; all of which are unrelated and off topic here. Some times it is actually caused by a bug, but questions are so sparse in info that I'm reticent to send people to the bugtracker for fear of just burdening the developers even more. For graphics cards related issues it is probably a good idea to have a canonical answer covering usual steps, like checking for hardware compatibility, updating drivers etc.

There are two types of issues that users commonly ask about:

Operating system crashes while using Blender
Blender crashes or glitches

The former is off-topic, since it's unrelated to Blender. The actual issue is with the drivers, hardware or operating system. While Blender may trigger the exact circumstances that makes the system crash, a user space application shouldn't be able to. Therefore, this is not something we can help with on Blender's Stack Exchange nor on the official bug tracker.
A question about the latter might be on-topic, if it is about finding a workaround for a suspected bug that could be relevant to other users. Other types of questions will likely be off-topic, however that doesn't automatically mean that it's a bug and should be reported on the bug tracker. In order to help rule out common causes of issues and to improve the report quality from users that we redirect to the bug tracker, I've written a little guide. If users follow it, then they should either be able to resolve the issue themselves or have a well written bug report at the end, that allows developers to identify the source of the issue.

Oh, that's exactly what I had in mind :). Should I then flag those "Blender crash..." questions as duplicates of this Bug report Q&A? I'm just looking for the most 'helping' way to handle these situations :).

@JachymMichal I'd say ask questions in the comments first to check if the user has considered/checked likely causes, if it isn't clear from the question. If I think that it could be a bug, I would leave a comment and recommend them to go through the guide linked above and report it on the bug tracker. Next I'd vote to close the question using a community-specific reason and choose the option that says it should be reported on the bug tracker.

Okay, and if the user doesn't react, or it isn't reportable as a bug? What's the best action then? Because that is the case in most of the aforementioned questions :).

@JachymMichal Right, in that case it would still be off-topic and I think it should be closed using a community-specific reason > Other - Add comment, where you give a (very) short explanation why it's off-topic. For instance you could write: "I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about a crashing operating system. Blender is not the source of the issue, this may be caused by an error in the graphics driver, operating system or hardware."

@JachymMichal on side note, when closing a question as Closing > A community specific reason > Bug it already links to the guide by robert

@Duarte Yeah I noticed just yesterday when going through review queue :).

@Robert Yes, that's what I was going to do :). When I voted to close this old one I added a link to your little guide so the OP knows what to do next :). Okay like this?

@JachymMichal Yes, I think so.

Great, thanks for your time :)


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Accept an answer that answers the general question but didn't help in specific case
So I asked this question yesterday about what I thought was my problem. I didn't provide any screenshots or blendfiles as I thought my problem was more general.
I got exactly the answer I was looking for but unfortunately it didn't solve my problem. BUT if another user searches BSE for the same answer, it may be exactly what they need. Should I accept the answer for this case even though it didn't help my sepecific problem but would have helped if I had the problem I thought I have and answered the question I asked?

Hi. If the answer didn't really solve your issue you'd be invited to answer it yourself stating what did. Nevertheless if the user helped you you can still upvote his answer for gratitude, despite not solving your issue directly. Having a positive score on his answer will likely help search engines direct future users towards the post, even it is not the accepted one.

If the answer didn't work for you, you don't have to accept it, let the uses who answered know why it didn't. But if any of the answers allowed you to discover what the problem was, you should update the question with the new findings or additional information, to make it more specific and useful.
If you found a solution by yourself, be kind enough to share it. Write an answer to your own question, so that other users can learn from you.


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Need help finding my deleted question which had a link to a helpful question/answer
This needs to go on meta I think but as I don't have enough rep for that I'm just gonna ask that if you can, please migrate this to meta. Also the tag was just randomly chosen so this could be posted, sorry bout that.
I asked a question a long while ago, which is now deleted. It's not in the recently deleted, and it was about putting blender on a raspberry pi 4. It was closed for being a duplicate of another question that had steps for installing blender on a pi. It's the only question I've asked so far so if you can see deleted questions just check my question page please and then answer with the question it was called a duplicate of. Thanks!

You have 101 rep on main site, I would expect to carry onto meta as the 101 is the association rep from the network. I would expect you should be able to post on meta without migrating the post, but either way, this will end up migrated eventually.

Your deleted questions show up in your user profile under Questions.
I assume you mean https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/193193/will-blender-run-well-on-my-raspberry-pi

yes thank you. for whatever reason, it does not show up on my question page tho which is weird.

At the bottom of your questions page is "Recently Deleted Questions" link. It will show any of your questions deleted in the last 60 (IIRC) days.


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Should We Have a [workbench-render-engine] Tag?
We currently have a tag for cycles-render-engine , eevee-render-engine and blender-internal-render-engine but not an active tag for workbench-render-engine
I created the tag on an edit to a question recently when I noticed this, but it seems that the system has deleted the tag as an orphan.
As of this writing, we have roughly 24 questions referring to Workbench, so while it may not be the most popular engine, it may help organization in the long run.
Thoughts?

I have no objections.

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party. I don't mind if there is a tag for Workbench, I'm usually not using the engine but others do. At the moment I'm more concerned about the blender-internal-render-engine because I see it used quite often recently, although many of those users are using versions 2.8x / 2.9x and therefore Cycles or Eevee. I guess they confuse "internal render engine" with some "external render engine" like LuxCoreRender, Octane etc.

Yes, definitely. As a default builtin render engine it deserves a place among other more popular entries.
It belongs in out tag system along with all other render-engines tags cycles-render-engine, blender-internal-render-engine, eevee-render-engine ,luxrender-render-engine, renderman-render-engine, octane-render-engine and radeon-prorender-render-engine.
I'll tag those questions with it so the system doesn't delete the tag.


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Approve/reject edits on scripts
When I am reviewing posts for suggested edits, I frequently see edits which are attempting to edit scripts which other users have posted either as part of their question, or as an answer.
Should moderating/reviewing users be more inclined to reject or accept these edits, as small parts of changed scripts may not function as the user originally intended after another user has edited it?
If these edits are not ever going to be helpful, then should we add an info box somewhere on the website's info page warning against editing other user's scripts?

Most of these edits from what I have see are attempts at updating older scripts to 2.8+ versions of Blender I suspect. My view on this is that these edits should be made into a separate script, instead of entirely replacing the original one. Not only they may conflict with the authors original intent, there may be other adverse effects, like some users still using older versions prior to 2.8 expecting the answers to still work.

I think especially in questions it would be best to leave them as they are. Sometimes the problem for what the author tries to find a solution is caused by issues in his script, so editing that it works should rather be given as an answer, not an edit - for it would make the question obsolete. But if it's a scripting mistake others might also run into as well it would help them if they would find the answer.

Leave it up to the author
Most of the suggested code edits are actually quite useful. However, programming is all about detail, so even if the suggested edit is an improvement to some extent or the edit makes the script even work in newer versions of Blender, the author may dislike the changes for some minor reason e.g. coding style.
I'd recommend to  the review if you have no idea whether it is actually a good or bad suggestion, because the author will be notified as well and can decide in the last resort.
See What are the guidelines for reviewing?

If you aren't able to ascertain if the post is better or worse after the edit, click Skip.

... if you are not sure, skip the edit and leave it for someone who knows.


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question closed unfairly
The question is this and the reason for closing is

I’m voting to close this question because it is not about Blender

, but it is a question about blender data, blender is explicitly referenced:

The problem with many sites is, that they don't support blender models
directly

So blender data is off-limits? I was looking for a site supporting blender data.

The closing of the question was correct for multiple reasons.

The goal of your original post with its current wording was a bit unclear. Are you trying to find an existing service that provides this functionality, are you asking how to build this yourself or did you want someone else build this for you?
1.1. If you are trying to find an existing service, as your post seems to indicate, then this is not a question about Blender and thus off-topic.
1.2. If you want to build this yourself, the question could be on-topic with several modifications. For instance you could ask how to generate, access and extract thumbnails from .blend files or how to script the automatic rendering of a .blend file to create a final image.
1.3. If you want someone else to build a web-service for you, this would be off-topic. Building web-applications is not the topic of this Stack Exchange website. Additionally, questions on Stack Exchange need to have a limited scope that can be clearly answered and are potentially useful for other people. Stack Exchange is a Q&A website, we do not provide a service to develop complete applications for free.

My personal opinion is, that a blender user grows together with his gallery. No gallery, no skill advancement. My goal was 1.1 and highly relevant for a beginner like me. I can't fathom there's no place for a question like this on the blender stackexchange site.

@user1095108 Blender files need to be rendered to create the final high resolution image that can be presented. This means that .blend files are not like your average image format. Most (digital) artists, regardless of the particular medium or software they use for their art, would create a portfolio of their work either on their own website or on an image hosting website targeted at artists. For instance artstation.com is fairly popular. If you want to share your project files with other people there are a large number of data sharing services and you could put a link in the description.

Blender files can store thumbnails, but those would only be suitable as a preview, not as a final presentation of the work. You may also want to create several renders of multiple scenes within the project which a single thumbnail obviously cannot capture. Additionally, the artists may want to take the render and perform color grading or other editing tasks in other application before the final image is done. Thus your proposed approach would not be suitable as a portfolio presentation.

To summarize: You're essentially looking for an image hosting website that has the feature to create private galleries. Since none of this is specific to Blender or uses Blender, it is off-topic.

Rendering .blend files online is easier than you think three.js supports loading blender models. Sure, the quality isn't great, but it works, kind of.

@user1095108 You're heavily moving the goal post now. That would be an interactive visualization of the 3D model in the browser, like Sketchfab does. The reason this would also be off-topic, is that you can export many different formats from Blender for which there may or may not exists such a service. We generally do not provide recommendations for commercial products or services just because Blender happens to support the data format used by that service.

Who says the service needed to be commercial? Anyway, some kind of a gallery is a must for every beginner, I believe. Not to show off, you don't have anything to show off at the start. But to track your progress for yourself and I think this topic is not dealt with sufficiently anywhere or I wouldn't have asked my question.

@user1095108 If you want to discuss how artists can manage a gallery or portfolio for themselves and what kind of software solutions exists for this purpose (pro & cons), you may want to ask about this on https://blenderartists.org/. Stack Exchange is a Q&A website and not well suited for open ended discussions as it is not a forum.


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Questions related to rigging
Most Questions related to rigging are too personal and mostly falls into private session like helps. how do we approach these?

There is no obligation to answer if that's what you mean. In general I think that as long as the question is not a dupe, is on topic, is clear enough to be answered (or can be edited to made clear enough to answer), and can be of use to future users then it's no issue. If you don't feel like spending time on these, by all means, feel free to pass them up. We all volunteer our time when answering, editing, etc. Is this what you mean?

I was wondering if we should down vote such questions that are basically do my job for me questions or just ignore them cause line between them are quit blurry for me.
But I guess just ignoring them seems fair.

Well, re: voting, I feel should vote regardless up or down on most everything. The help explains in more detail, here are some helpful pages to read through on that...https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote  and https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-up  also,https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down also this meta Do you have a specific example of a Q in mind that would help users understand your meaning also?

You can and should always cast whatever vote you feel is adequate for a post. If you feel it is too localized you can and should also flag it for being too localized. The community will then arbitrate on your vote and decide. If enough people agree with you it will then get closed otherwise it might remain open, no harm done.

"Do my job for me questions" are intended to be closed.  There is a specific reason for that in the close vote dialog (IIRC, as a sub-dialog of "community specific reason.")  It doesn't matter if they're looking for paid work or volunteer work, both are reasons for closing a question.  Of course, there's a very fuzzy line between looking to understand and looking to get somebody to do it for you; it is very easy for two users to disagree on where to draw the line.


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Do we want specific tags for GPU types?
I noticed that there is now a amd tag presumably due to the influx of driver issues and problems users are coming to the site asking for help with.
A few years ago, we had a similar problem with nividia hardware that caused extreme lag with affected hardware. No nvidia tag was created then.

So the question is, do we want or need GPU specific tags?

I am against hardware related tags for a few reasons.
Hardware tags are often a strong sign of an off-topic question.

Either it is a blatant question about hardware which is off topic
A case of unsupported hardware
It is an issue with hardware which should be resolved and is out of scope here
It is an issue with drivers which basically always boils down to either update to latest version, or roll back to last known good configuration
It is a bug and should be reported in the official channels, as such doesn't belong here

Other than that Blender should ideally run well on all supported hardware, as long as it is officially approved. If it doesn't then it should be reported.
For the narrow cases of asymmetrical feature parity (like different feature support for GPU rendering between CUDA, OpenCL or Optix) where hardware is actually relevant, I supposed a simple descriptions in the body of the post should suffice.
As for the current issues we are experiencing due to a bug in recent AMD drivers, I don't think the amd tag would help much, since most users are new comers and aren't well versed in our tag system, or aren't aware of the source of their issue, so they probably wouldn't tag their question properly anyway.
The current AMD tag should probably be eliminated

I fully agree. While the current issues with the AMD drivers are quite unfortunate, they are also an example how a) we can't really help here beyond saying which driver version does work or what workarounds could be used b) all answers to such question will likely soon be obsolete c) not even the Blender developers can do much besides implementing workarounds for buggy graphics drivers. None of this would warrant hardware specific tags and most question about hardware will fall into the off-topic categories listed in your answer.

Good point obsolescence is also a valid concern. White the current situation is indeed aggravating it will be over eventually and those questions will quickly become irrelevant and useless, just like the NVidia issue a few years back

There are only three possible GPUs
AMD
INTEL
NVIDIA
Each one of them is very specific in the way it is used by blender, and each one of them creates unique problems. Those problems are not interchangeable, and can be addressed in a very targeted way. If a tag is not useful for that then what is it good for?
And who uses tags anyway? I created the label for easier search for the answers in a sea of poorly titled questions, and no way to find the info otherwise...


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How to deal with the "AMD breaks Blender" questions?
You've probably noticed the huge influx of questions, where (often very new) users encounter glitches in Blender (maybe?) caused by the AMD driver issues.
The problem with these questions is that while I definitely have no idea how to address them (since I do not know what exactly causes these problems) I am also not comfortable flagging them as duplicates or off-topic (since I do not know what causes them).
I'm also not happy with just ignoring them since they clutter the website and the people who write these questions seem to be genuinely looking for help.
Any advice on how to deal with these kinds of questions?

I would suggest you mark them as duplicate of this answer, if it is the same problem. Should it be a different one then vote to close with a "community-specific reason" and select that it should be reported on the bug tracker.

The problem is that some of the screenshots look vastly different from the one in the question you've linked. Example: (https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/206219/red-purple-light-in-rendered-mode). So while I suspect your answer would be fitting, I do not know for sure.
Also is it smart to suggest that such incidents should be reported on the Blender bug tracker? Is there anything the Blender-devs can do about this issue?

To figure out whether or not devs can do something about it requires triage on the bug tracker. In this particular case the GPU is below the minimum requirements and thus not officially supported. Graphics glitches or even crashes can occur due to issue with the graphics drivers. Reporting this on the bug tracker would not be helpful. Hence I've written a guide here  that is also linked when a bug report gets closed with "report on the bug tracker".

Totally concur. There are currently 67 questions linked to the dupe QA . https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/204297?lq=1   To reinforce answer above When they are obviously a duplicate (only an outline in material view) please get the ball rolling and vote to close as dupe ASAP , rather than commenting. (or worse answering..)  using info from dupe answers.

https://youtu.be/Nlqjfj1lL5A?t=2209  potential update on this?

@AllenSimpson It is a workaround for the issues (see T82856).


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Why is this website designed so horribly?
I could literally go on for days about the problems with this specific forum website and its inability to provide even a modicum of helpful answers, so instead of being specific lets be general. Why is this website so garbage. It doesn't seem to ever offer any useful help that hasn't already been done better on YouTube, and when people do offer advice it's usually not even addressing the issue the original questioner asked. Then to top it off you can't even rate these garbage answers from idiots unless you trudge through the aforementioned swamp of awful answers posted up by people who don't know what they're talking about.

The search here is pretty awful.  What it IS good at is getting into google search results, for better or for worse.  As an intermediate user there was a lot of good information here, and it was frequently surfaced when I needed it.

Could you please cite some examples? it's a participative website, so everyone responds in the limits of their competence, plus you're free to come and help

Without concrete examples, this rant is useless and will not help make the site any better.

First of all, if you have a question about using Blender as defined in the help center, then please ask a question.
Please be on topic, there is a comprehensive list of things that are off topic that should be avoided here.
Make every effort to be as clear as you can be, and do your very best to communicate exactly what your problem is and what your goals are. Include images, explanatory text of what have tried, what you want to accomplish, what isn't working, and anything else you can think of that would help someone provide the best quality answer you would hope to receive.
Understand that if someone reading doesn't understand, they may prod for more information, and at times someone may edit your post in an effort to make things more readable, or help with site organization (if it's a wall of text, or has many misspellings, has incorrect tags for the question, etc). It's normal, and shouldn't be taken badly. (You can always revert an edit if you strongly disagree with it, although most are done in the spirit of making improvements).

As you have noticed by now, this site is much different than most others out there, but it has benefits to the way that it works.
This site is intended to be focused on Q&A, not to cater to conversational wading through pages of unrelated topics to a question before maybe reaching a clue to the answer.
Understand this regarding those who answer questions..
Everyone here who answers a question is volunteering their own free time to try to help other users such as you.

So, keeping this in mind, understand that the quality of a question also depends on you, the asker in many cases.

Are you able or making an effort to communicate your problem?
Are you responding to questions asked in the comments if more information is needed in order to answer (editing to add more information if requested, things like that)?
Are you sharing the information we need to answer the question?
Is your problem an XY problem?

To your immediate question,
Is the site perfect in design? No. Are all the thousands of answers correct? Probably not, but try giving people the benefit of the doubt. We all miss one or two.
In practice however, it's generally faster to get an answer here than wasting time reading about things unrelated to the original topic as tends to happen in many forums.
This never happens here...

To summarize, instead of complaining about what you don't like about the site,
Help improve it.
Ask good questions and write good answers.

First of all this site is not, and has never been, a forum, but a question and answers site, run by people who volunteer their time and experience.
There are many users with different levels of expertise, from varied age groups, cultures, economies, and educational backgrounds. The beauty of this site is that everybody is welcome to contribute, and we can all learn from each other.
Some users might better communicators than others, but keep in mind that dealing with language, math, geometry, time, space, and other abstract and complex notions is not something all of us can do easily. Being patient, understanding and excercising empathy and respect is the only way to help each other out.
Some of us are actual humans, and as such prone to make mistakes.
It is clear that pleasing everyone is not possible, some users might find this site useful, others clearly won't. If you are among the second group, you don't have to use the site and are free to find one that fulfills your needs.
If you decide to stay, help us make things better.


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Suggestion: Tend towards Merge instead of Close As Duplicate
I'll make it quick.
Problems:  Correct documentation for Blender is a moving target, moreso nowadays.  It is desirable for old answers to get updated to reflect the new UI, new parameter names, etc.  We get some questions that get closed as duplicates with links to old answers.
Suggestion:  If we identify a question that has an old duplicate we more or less leave it alone for a while, suggesting any old duplicates as merge targets in the comments.  Let the new question gather answers, and merge good answers into whatever is the better formed question.
Maybe there are limits to the merge system I don't understand, but I look forward to discussion.
It would also go some way towards reducing friction with new users.

https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2660/should-questions-that-need-a-new-answer-for-2-8-be-flagged-somehow

The idea is to reduce information scattering. By "allowing new questions to gather answers" for newer versions instead of updating "cannonical questions" or adding new answers to them, we start having related information about the same issue scattered all over the place making it harder to find and follow. Closing as a duplicate of a well know answers makes them gather votes and become "more familiar" and easier to find in the future.

There are already  plenty of very detailed,  we'll thought out,  and clearly explained answers that show the solutions on outdated interfaces, but that can, and should be updated. Accumulating  new redundant (and mostly incomplete) answers instead, will make this site less valuable as a resource. The fact that answers are editable, and therefore updatable, is this site's greatest asset, in my opinion.

Duplicates are not a "bad" thing. Blender changes quickly now, and it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future Let the dupes be dupes, and send users to the ones that are useful. Don't edit old 2.7X questions just to change the answers, write your own if it's really needed. New users come and go, most won't care to learn how the site works. The ones who do will contribute something worthwhile.

@Timaroberts I agree with most of what you wrote except the "don't edit" part. Plenty of answers can be made better and can be updated while being still useful for those who still use the older versions, or don't have the hardware to run to newer ones. Most functions have not changed, they are just in different coordinates of the interface or have no keyboard shortcut.

Ok.  To be clear I'm not saying "always this, never that", I more just want to open up a third possibility.  It may be that we find some questions once in a while that it would be better to merge new answers into, I'm just throwing the idea out there.  We should at least have a rough idea of how it could work.
Here's a good post I read the other day.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158066/what-is-a-merged-question

@susu I understand, I should say don't edit to change the answer but if needed to add supplemental information where it makes to, use sound judgement. Looking at a few of my own old answers, it would make more sense to say "now this is here..." instead of of an entire rewrite of the answer.