text:
"a job offer and to a question" typo
Looking at this question, the close statement (shown in the comment) has a little typo:
"This question appears to be off-topic because it is a job offer and to a question."
Should be:
"This question appears to be off-topic because it is a job offer and not a question."

That's not a close notice - it is a custom close reason, which someone made a typo in, and others have selected as well.
The actual notice, now that the question is closed says:

This question does not appear to be about Blender within the scope defined in the help center.

The comment with the typo is there as well.
There is nothing to fix it, except from the typing skill of the original closer that wrote that custom close reason.

Alright thanks, I don't really know how this system works :)


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Can the "New tag confirmation" be turned on?
From Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange

2014-06-10: When moderators or users with the "create new tags" privilege attempt to create one or more new tags either while asking a question or during an edit they are shown a confirmation dialog to reduce risk of tags created by mistake. This feature is enabled on a per-site basis.

Can the New tag confirmation dialog be enabled for the blender exchange? I think that would be helpful, for some of the tag typos that come along. Example question intoface, not interface.

Done! Oded activated it this morning.

thanks that should help

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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What to do about people posting copyrighted material?
So, I've recently come across this question and I noticed that the first image comes from Carlos Ortega's website and is Copyrighted; What should I do?

Quoting from http://stackexchange.com/legal/content-policy

Copyright. Using copyrighted material does not constitute infringement in all cases. In general, however, users should be careful when using copyrighted content without the permission of those who created it. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA").

I would say that the question named if it had a link to the source would not a problem. But to be on the safe side, adding just a link to the picture, and not posting the picture would not violate any copyright.

So, just let it be?

@someonewithpc that question is closed now, so do not worry about that particular instance.

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


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migration rejected closed question any way to edit?
This question https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/13737/best-way-to-model was migrated from game dev with the tag of untaged. Is there any way to retag that question now? On most closed questions there is still the option to edit them, why is this question locked? I would say that this question could be deleted all together, but again for some reason it is locked.

I'm not exactly sure why you can't edit it (I can as a moderator). It's probably because it was migrated then closed (?). Every question needs at least one tag, so what probably happened was that when the moderator from GD.SE migrated it he dubiously selected the untagged tag.
It's a good idea to keep closed questions around. They help show the community what's not accepted here. (Unless if it's spam, etc, of course).
If you want it changed, let me know. I guess the modeling tag would work.

yes, if you think it a good idea to keep the question around, then please do re tag it.


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Why can't I propose a tag synonym on [customization]?
I tried to suggest the synonym user-preferences → customization, but received this confusing error:

I don't see any synonym proposals on user-preferences.. Was a synonym proposed on preferences, which was then synonymized with user-preferences?
What is going on here?

I see you're using your new theme... ;) +1 for that!

@GiantCowFilms Ha :) The normal site looks strange whenever I see it now..

It appears that was the reason. There was a relationship between preferences and user-preferences it seems. I went ahead and made both preferences and user-preferences a synonym of customization and merged all previous questions into that.

Is there a way to view information of a synonymized tag? I tried, but always ended up getting redirected to the parent tag..

@gandalf3 I have access to different tools than you so i'm not sure. In any case the system restricts you, just let a mod know.


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Let's get critical: Aug 2014 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Blender Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

Motion Tracking. What do the graphs represent and how are they useful?

Net Score: 15 (Excellent: 15, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 0)

What causes odd deformations when using Subsurf?

Net Score: 12 (Excellent: 12, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)

Get list of operators in a menu layout

Net Score: 9 (Excellent: 9, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

Is it possible to make a modifier with a python addon?

Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 10, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 2)

Calling Python Function from Console

Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 0)

How do I animate a character with dangling chain

Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)

Create HDR map from render?

Net Score: 7 (Excellent: 9, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)

Create and export bounding boxes for objects

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 2)

Moving a Linked Library

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 9, Needs Improvement: 0)

Child of Constraint creates strange glitch?

Net Score: -8 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 9)

When i try to go to the Site Self-Evaluation review queue, then i get this message:
You need at least 15 reputation to review site self-evaluation.

And when i try to add a comment instead of an answer, then i need 50 reputations.

See http://blender.stackexchange.com/help/privileges. You need a certain amount of reputation on the site to perform certain tasks.

I thought of people who do not have enough reputation to answer the self evaluation, but have enough skills to give answers to the list of questions mentioned above...


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Answering own questions (as a way to share code-snippets)
Recently I was asked about a script I wrote for a project (just a small utility, nothing worth releasing as an addon).
And I figured others may find it useful, so I posted it as a Q&A (here - Render Videos From Marker Ranges?).
Small snippets like this don't really have a good place to go at the moment,
There was a Blending into Python cookbook, so perhaps that can be updated and better maintained.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Blending_Into_Python/Cookbook
So my question is:
If we have useful code-snippets we think others would find useful, either as examples or in their own right. Is it reasonable to post them as Questions, then answer our own questions and include the script?
Again, this is only for small scripts - entire addons better be in version control and linked to.

The question and answer are both valid and useful so I see no problem with this now or in the future. One purpose of this site is to create an archive of useful answers and self contained resources to common problems. As long as it is in our scope it should be fine to post these.

Obscure or irrelevant scripts wont get voted up... so, as long as theres not 100's of zero voted scripts clogging up SE (which seems unlikely), its fine I suppose.

IIRC, the system automatically deletes questions with no votes and low views after a while.


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Shouold picture resources be added to our "Resources for Blender" question
I think seeing as there is a great deal of overlap between textures and pictures, another category should be added to this answer. Something where free stock photos sites can be put. Sites such as morgueFile or stockvault.

As in reference images?


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What to do with questions that include other questions?
I posted a question about replicating the view-port lighting in the render - Is there a way to render an animation that looks like as if it is rendered with the OpenGL lights (View-port lights)?
However, the question is asked in a way that the answerer would have to answer as if he is answering multiple questions, which means in a way that I asked multiple questions with one post. Some of those questions can be -

"How to make objects not to block the lighting (like in the Blender Internal textured view)?"
"When objects are parented to the camera, how to make them not to react on the zooming of the camera?"

For example, one can post a question on - "How to use Blender to create a movie?". However, that involves knowledge about - Modeling, Lighting, Animating, Rendering etc.; that should be asked as separate questions.
What would be appropriate to do with those kind of questions and what do I have to do with the question? I thought of deleting it, but maybe there is another solution. And there is no delete button for the post. What do I do with it?

It looks like you already fixed it yourself :)

Not sure what you mean, but the post at first had other questions in it. I edited it and deleted them, but that doesn't change the fact that the post is a mixture of other questions. Any ideas what to do with it?

Since you removed them from the post, I assumed that you no longer were asking those questions. If you still want to ask those, feel free to create new questions with links to the original question for context if necessary. Though I think the "not block light" question as already been asked and answered here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/8108/599

Thanks for the post. The thing is that, the question I asked about blender is like I'm asking multiple questions in one post, so that an answerer would have to answer as if he is answering multiple questions. I'll make an edit to make this post more clearer.

Just split your questions into multiple posts so that each post has one question each. That said, I think your question is fine as it is currently..

Ok. I don't want to make any violation as a user on the site, but if its fine I'll leave it as it is. I'll just put in the needed "tags".

Questions can have multiple smaller follow-up questions if and only if they are directly related to the main question.
For example: "How do I change the focal length for camera to emulate that of a GoPro?" and in the body there is, "Also, where are the camera presets located? This is perfectly fine. However, asking how to extrude faces and add effect strips to a video are not.
So, as a general answer to your question and not the specific case you mentioned. There are several approaches you could take for questions that ask different questions in their body.

If there is a larger or more prominent question, mention this to the poster and or edit it to be that specific one and answer that question. If all questions are of equal significance, cast a close vote as too broad.
Mention in the comments section to the poster that multiple different questions aren't supposed to be in one post and cast a close vote as too broad.

Either way, always try to alert the original poster and do not attempt to answer several different questions in one post.

Thanks for the answer. The post (about Blender) doesn't have  other questions written into it, however the question is written in a way like I have asked different questions in one post. For example, one can ask how to use Blender, however, that would involve: Lighting, Modeling, Texturing etc. which should be asked separately.


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Assumed off or on topic until proven otherwise?
Blender stack exchange receives allot of "import export problems" questions. Sometimes it is nearly impossible to figure out which software package is responsible. If blender is causing the issue, then it naturally follows that the question is topical, but if that is not the case then it isn't. If no one knows whether it is blender, then know one knows whether it is topical. Should it be closed...?

On a sidenote, we are discussing changes to our close reasons and our scope. Watch meta in the coming week.

@iKlsR Good to know

In either of your cases it should be closed.
If it is too unclear to figure out where the problem lays, close it as unclear.
If the problem is clearly out side of blender, close it as off topic.
Case one:

The obj exported from blender does not display right in my custom built game engine.

Closed as off topic because it is not a problem with blender.
Case two:

Import export trouble between three.js and blender.

Most likely closed as unclear what you are trying to ask.

The question can always be reopened if necessary, so closing "prematurely" is not a problem.

@someonewithpc very good point.

I don't really agree with this. For example, I once had it rendered it wrong in my custom engine because I had forgotten to triangulate faces.


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Are questions about third party paid addons on topic?
I have been looking into using stackexchange for Q&A about our own addons, However the questions we get so far are mostly related to blender itself and actually we do not get so many questions anyways.
So would it be okay to ask/answer questions related to third party Blender addons in the blender.stackexchange community? And ask users to tag the questions with the addon name?

What exactly about them? Using them? Asking if there is such an addon? Writing them?

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/267/599

I mean questions which raise from the usage of third party addons. In most cases these questions are closely related to blender's usage in general. So i thought maybe it makes sense to answer these questions in the context of blender.stackexchange.

I don't see why not..

well our Addon is "commercial" in the sense of we sell it. That might annoy users. However i believe stackexchange is an awesome way to share knowledge. I thought about setting up our own stackexchange community. But that will most probably fail because of too few users and too few questions.

People are constantly asking questions on the interaction of blender and commercial packages like Unity, 3Dstudio or Maya or AfterFx.

@GaiaClary I can see what you mean because Blender is free but that doesn't mean we have to tie ourself to that regarding this community so its fine. Here on SE there are several sites that are based around a commercial application.

This site is about Blender and anything Blender related as long as it's allowed in our scope, commercial or free though we would more prefer the latter, I don't see why not. So that would include addons such as BlenderCookie's Contour, Unity interactions or even getting VRay configured etc .


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Editing questions to remove "thank you" etc
"Any help would be much appreciated" "Thanks in advance" etc. Should we remove them from questions, or just leave them? I know there are other meta post on this topic Should 'Hi', 'thanks', taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?, What should I keep out of my posts and titles? and all have the same type of sentiment, that this type of extra wordiness is not needed.
What is the blender exchange's feeling towards this, and when is editing a question just to remove it going too far?

I usually only remove them if I'm editing the post for some other reason anyway.

This is mostly done by people new to se and probably have experience with forums or irc and this being a QA site, it seems like clutter. I'd say remove these only if the post requires other needed edits, tags, spelling, wording etc, otherwise just leave it, it isn't adding or detracting anything from the post and it doesn't make sense to edit a post to just remove "hello" or "thank you".

I agree, remove if you add some mark-up anyway or do other changes. Once exception though: if it's an entire paragraph of thank you, please answer and best regards, I would remove that even if no other changes are needed.

The internet is filled with pedantic people, SE being no different. That being said, if it's not a part of the actual problem it's probably not useful. I do say that an edit is usually not worth it but if you do have to tweak the post, might as well strip it. I'm also not sure if "respect" is really applicable here since we are an open community and posts can be edited/improved by anyone as needed. In concluding, it's a trivial problem IMO and one should exercise their judgement. I don't see removing a "Thank you" in a cleanup offensive or detracting from a question.


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Etiquette for asking for files
Often times the easiest way to find the answer to a question is by inspecting the OP's blendfile.
I personally try and ask for a .blend in a way which describes a few possible causes (in case it turns out one of them is the cause, then the need for a .blend is avoided), or just saying something like:

There are many possible reasons this could be happening. The easiest way for us to determine the cause is by inspecting your file.

or sometimes:

Is it possible you could upload your .blend?

Acknowledging that some users might not be able to share their file.
Is this a good idea? Or does it create to much noise?

From my own experience i can tell that in the majority of all cases i could find answers much faster when i had the chance to look at an example blend file. So in the sense of "Help us to let us help you" i believe that a user can be asked to put some effort into creating a simple demo blend file to show the issue. And often while creating the demo the solution steps in automatically. In that case a user could post the problem and the answer in one step :)

I don't really see the point of this question. We've been doing this since the site launched. Could hardly be considered noise if you are discussing the question at hand.

@iKlsR Yeah.. I didn't really phrase it right. I've seen some users asking for a .blend with (imo) overly short comments like "upload blend.", and I felt that we ought to be at least a little bit more polite.. But maybe that's just me making mountains out of molehills.

Blender is a visual tool and explaining errors/undefined behaviour might be tricky especially for new users, so sharing a file is often the best means to communicate what the problem could be. Us experienced users can usually immediate spot what is off rather than reading two paragraphs of text and then assuming what the problem might be so I don't think calling for a file could be called noise.
If op for some reason cannot or doesn't want to share their file, simply ask them for a test blend that reproduces said error. I also don't think that we need to be extra formal, they are here for help after all and should make the effort to communicate what they want, a simple "could you upload your file" should suffice in most instances.


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Excerpt of tag `operator` - incorrect definition?
The following definition sounds incorrect to me:

An operator is a processing unit that is invoked/executed on scene
  data by the window manager.

Are operations only run on scene data? All of the 3D View and interface operators  change properties of Screen data, not Scene for instance. Even blend(lib) data wouldn't be quite right, as you can write operators that only report something and not change anything.

A user action starts by device input of the user and the window manager dispatches these and events and starts operations - so by the window manager is correct. However, this is very technical and rather an implementation detail than a useful information for the end-user.

You can always suggest an edit http://blender.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/74.

True, but I'm not sure how to describe it right... Maybe borrow some lines from http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/Architecture/Operators ?

You're an active dev, up to you. ;)


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Where can I search for my favorite questions?
There was a star button for each question which says "This is a favorite question", I wonder where I can find all the qustions I've ever tagged as favorite? Thanks!

There is a Favorites tab on your main profile next to Badges. Here is yours.

Ah, there it is, never noticed it, thanks!


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Should we downvote first posts?
I often see first posts (or posts from 1 rep users) downvoted.
Presumably 1 rep users are new, and haven't had time yet to learn the workings of the site. They also won't have certain privileges, such as the ability to comment or vote.
Not knowing how the SE platform works, such users might rightfully feel discouraged and leave after their first contribution gets downvoted within minutes.
I personally try to avoid downvoting first posts (I don't always succeed :P), even if it is an answer which should be a comment or a separate question, or a oneliner with just a few words and a link.
Instead I try to leave a comment letting them know how they can improve their post, or what they can do instead (e.g. post a new question).
However I sometimes feel like my efforts are in vain when the post in question gets downvoted anyway.
Should we make an exception to the usual downvote criteria for first posts which  aren't obvious spam?
If yes, should we try and direct them to where they need to go, or places such as the tour or help center?

Ignore reputation for a second and think about why voting exists, it's to separate quality content from poorly worded or vague questions, if after downvoting, the question isn't closed or fixed, you can always retract the vote.

@iKlsR In that case I agree, but I'm not sure the message to new users is as easily ignored. Basically what I'm asking is: Should we go out of our way to make new users feel welcome, even if they have yet to learn the ways of the site, or should we treat them like any other user and hope they don't take it unkindly?

Sure, leave helpful comments where possible and ultimately, it's up to you to decide if a post merits a vote or not. However, adopting a don't downvote posts from new users strategy is a bad idea and in the long run it's our site and stats that will suffer.

As a relatively new user, i could definitely see down-voting as discouraging; however i agree with iKsR that it shouldn't be a permanent policy, as situations vary case by case. You shouldn't restrict yourself by rules that can simply be a case by case situation.

We should be more careful when down voting first posts as questions. When a new user comes to the site with a question, no matter how simple, there should be some degree of welcoming.
Answers are a different proposition entirely. Any low quality answer can and should be down voted. For a new user add a comment explaining what is wrong with their answer; much like what happens with the "Low Quality Posts" review, there is a comment left as to what is wrong.
I personally down vote sparingly, only on posts that really are of no value. So adding a new user exception to when posts are down voted would not change much for me.

I mostly agree with David, but I though I'd add a few more points.
Downvotes are a vital part of the site. Even through they can seem unfriendly, they are important for separating low quality content from useful information.
So in general, I don't think new users should be given any special treatment other than a friendly welcome.
However, I think some consideration should be given where new users have no alternative to posting an answer. For example, I often see downvoted answers-which-should-be-comments posted by low rep users who don't have the privilege to comment yet.
I think this is one kind of post which doesn't really deserve downvotes, as the user has no other way to post a comment. Better to flag it so a mod can convert it if it's a useful comment, or delete it altogether.

Agreed, also just flag these and they will be dealt with accordingly.


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Answering questions and adding screenshots later
I often check the site and see questions that I can answer while I am on the go on my mobile device.  But I (obviously) don't have blender on my tablet, so I can't add any screenshots.  Usually I forgo answering the question and by the time I have access to a computer I have forgotten about it.  Most of the time the question gets answered (which is fine) but sometimes not.
So my question is this, is it acceptable to answer a question without access to blender and post applicable screenshots later?  And if so, should I say something like “I will post a screenshot shortly, when I can” in the answer?

I've run into that situation a few times, I guess the thing to do is to keep the answer as clear and detailed as you can, something that the OP or other readers can actually use, and then clarify it with screen shots later if it's too confusing. Keep in mind that there is quite a few users that get discouraged by a first unclear or incomplete answer and never come back to recheck, or give feedback (let alone mark the answer as accepted).

@cegaton so would it be proper to say "I will add a screenshot shortly", or something to that effect?

If you can reasonably answer a question without images, then my all means answer away. Take my answer to this question, I felt it was clear enough with out images. However a user asked for pictures, so 2 days after answering I added them.
I would caution you to not answer a question that really should have a picture, and say "image coming soon". As stated in the comments, incomplete answers can do more harm then good.
If for instance, you explain a modeling process. Giving the keyboard shortcuts and process, images may not be needed to convey a clear meaning of the answer.
Gandalf frequently answers a question, then shortly (after he finishes recording a video of the process) will updates his answer with a gif.

In accordance with David's answer, as long as you provide a decent worded answer, this shouldn't be a problem. What you should avoid however is slapping a few lines together in order to be the first to answer (as I've seen several times). Not only does this deter others from possibly adding other answers but your finished answer later might not even be correct or sufficient. So I say, answer if and only if you can get your point across in words, images can come later.


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Would prepared statements and questions and requests be useful?
I like this site.
All of this may be wishful thinking.
Prepared statements are often more neutral and more accepted.
I have noticed some questions being put on hold for other new members.  I understand the desire for high signal to noise ratio.  Some new members, for valid reasons, are being put on hold. In the current manner, I could understand a new member feeling quite alienated. I find the yellow hold box a bit frigid.  I get a penalty impression from it.
I think that prepared statement could be more welcoming.
I know stack already has prepared statements and actions.
I understand questions may be edited.
Sometimes I think it might be useful for users to click on UI elements or
or have some suggested copy and paste or insert items or icons.
You can pick better wording. Delete or Add items.  This is just to have some standard comments for standard situations.

I rate myself beginner, intermediate, advanced on this topic. Possible icon 3 bar position.
I rate myself beginner, intermediate, advanced on Blender in general
Please feel free to rephrase my question if that would expedite the answer process.
Please feel free to point me to a tutorial for a very general question.
I think I need a general tutorial.
I am a newbie, and I am really making an effort, so be nice to me.  Or an Icon.

I think some newbies on Blender with general multiple topic questions could be more careful with their question. Everyone can be more careful.  I wonder if that does some harm. I do welcome newbies.  Most newbies can have a clear question.
All optional. Many for comment section only.  Not answer section.

Could you provide a blender file?
We suggest you search this site again. This question occurs frequently. Remember to vote a match up if it helps you.
We understand your are a newbie, we can help.
We have a tutorial to suggest to you on the general topic.
This is not a beginner video tutorial site. We do not promote specific video sites.  Please see a video tutorial or other tutorial information of your choice and come back with specific a question.  We welcome your specific question.
Please try to focus primarily on one topic. You will get more focused help.
Please provide a screen image.  Click this link for more detail.
Please be more clear and provide more detail
The question is unclear so please rewrite.  You get more attention with a new question which is clear.

Removing some potential discomfort for those questions. Suggestions might be more neutral and kindly worded by consensus.

You did not answer the question posed
Blender does not offer that feature.  We have an alternative suggestion for you to consider.
If we knew the larger technical picture of what you are doing we may be able to give alternative suggestions.
This is not a direct answer to your question but we believe this information will be helpful.

I would be okay with clicking on 3 check boxes before submitting a question.

I searched this site and could not find a great match
I will check back within 24 hours to see if I have an answer
I will show interest in my question by accepting an answer within 72 hours, or clicking the "I am still waiting for my perfect answer" button.

I understand Stack has some deletion policy.

As far as the search idea goes, stackexchange already searches based on the title of the new question. As far as the pre-written responses go, IMO it's better to write response which are specific to each question, perhaps explaining why it's off topic or where else they can look for answers. SE already has a few pre-written close reasons (which can be customized), see http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/296/599.


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Should we expand our scope to allow simple howtos?
Should we expand the scope of this site to allow some simple "how to" questions?
This question was a recent example of the kind of question that could be allowed.
To give another example of this on stackexchange, GD seems to allow these sorts of questions, they even have a tag.
I've noticed that a lot of questions which get asked now tend to be duplicates, as most of the comment problem questions like "what are these dark spots on my model" have been answered already.
Allowing these kinds of questions would potentially:

Increase the number of "possible questions", giving the site purpose even after most problem questions have been answered.

Likely attract more answers per question, as there would most likely be many possible ways of answered such a question. This would help our answer ratio.

We already have some questions of a similar scope which have attracted many answers, such as How would I go about creating a spiralled dome?.

If we do decide to expand our scope, some further questions:

Should we do this retroactively? (reopening and answering closed questions, such as the one mentioned at the beginning of this post?)

Should we have a tag for this kind of question (GD style)?

What should the new scope be?
How do we go about defining the fine line of what is still off-topic? E.g. if simple howtos are okay, but full blown tutorials are not, how do we differentiate between a howto and a tutorial?

I believe it's a good idea to do so, because we tend to not have many new questions anyway; And those we do have, most times, have only one answer.

Yes, this would make the site more valuable and could attract more users. Finally our poor answer ratio would be improved.

As someone who has seen almost all the questions that get asked daily, I would think this is implicitly allowed and done even though we wanted to keep the site tutorial free. Also these questions can be easily answered as opposed to how do I model a car or more complicated things.

@iKlsR I've seen it as more mixed, for example the spiraled dome question and the zipper question seem pretty much the same scope to me.

So does this mean we should reopen the zipper question?

Before we make we make a "go ahead" decision, shouldn't we also weigh the cons?

@RolandiXor By all means, write an answer listing the cons :)

@gandalf3 honestly I'd rather let others weigh in (not that I'm lazy, but I've been away for a little while).

Yes!
I think letting people ask about how to make/do simple things is a good idea for several reasons.
1. These kinds of questions can be incredibly valuable.  Take this question for example, even though I may never make a city (then again, I might want to sometime and I am sure there are lots of people who do) I have learned about a ton of features and addons from it, and evidently lots of other people found it helpful as well considering the 18 votes and 19 favorites it has received.  The spiral dome is another good example of a very helpful, super well received question.
2. That's what CG is about.  When we restrict how-tos we basically just get, as iKlsR said in the comments, a bunch of duplicates of the same few questions, and bug reports (which are off topic as well for good reason).  Plus, most questions really are how-tos anyhow.  What is the difference between asking how to make a zipper and how to create diffraction, or how to make a hologram (or, for that matter, any other question on the site).  The last two are just how-tos for materials as opposed to modeling.  So if we really don't want how-tos we should really be closing most questions.
3. It is beneficial to the site.  These kinds of questions get lots of good answers and, as stacker mentioned in the comments, our answers-per-question ratio is pretty pathetic.  The very fact that SE expects many answers per question signifies that they want more than straight questions with a single cut-and-dried answer.  These types of questions are also often asked by new users, so being too zealous with the close option just for asking how to get started on a project can scare people, not only away from the SE, but away from Blender as well.
A note on broadness.
Now, I think we definitely should make a distinction between “how to make a zipper” and “how to model, sculpt, rig, and material a dragon” (the second example is hypothetical).  I think a good deal of this should be left to the asker's discretion, say something like “one question at a time, nothing overly complex or super specific”.  Keep in mind, for more complex questions we don't necessarily need to provide a full step-by-step process, in many cases I think the asker would be happy with a few (well constructed) pointers.  This would definitely have to be debated and discussed further though.


text:
Should we downvote questions which are overly simple?
Sometimes questions which seem overly simple are downvoted, such as How do I select an object in the 3D viewport? and How to retrieve the objects of a group.
While answers to these questions can most likely be found very easily if the OP knew where to look, or knew what keywords to put in a search engine, I don't really see why these questions are "bad".
After all, search results for these kinds of questions often come from sites like this one.
Are these questions "bad"? If so, why?

IMO questions that are related to blender and have an answer should be answered, regardless of how basic it might seem to experienced users. We all started somewhere and having a resource like the stack exchange makes learning easier.
Yes there is documentation available but, well is sometimes old, poorly written or does not apply to current versions. Video tutorials? Don't get me started on how bad most of them are.
Some other posters will never read a manual no matter what... well that is beyond the scope of this site... Granted some of the questions show amazing laziness, but if the idea is to have this site be a solid reference we should embrace all levels and encourage participation. Hopefully those asking basic questions will come back with more interesting ones as they learn, and teach us something along the way...
Down voting a question discourages participation and makes the site unfriendly. Newcomers feel judged and might look elsewhere for help. The very nature of Blender is about inclusiveness.
What questions should be voted down? Offensive ones, Non questions (like people complaining or venting issues), questions completely unrelated to blender.
It you feel that you absolutely must vote down a question, don't do it without leaving a comment. For all other issues there are tools that seem to work well like closing, marking as duplicate, or asking for clarification.
You don't like the question? It's too obvious for you? Why waste your time on it? Then leave it for someone else to answer. Maybe a newbee can answer newbee questions and get reputation (and courage to ask in turn...)

well stated, agree with you on every point.

I agree with this as well. I've also seen people telling new users to google their problem. This should be the site that comes up when someone googles something so please don't do that, there is no question too simple for this site. As long as it falls in our scope, it's fine.

I reviewed both questions and couldn't find anything bad. I remember that I was also confused during the first hours with Blender on how the 3D cursor works.
Answers like that are useful for beginners especially when they are listed at the first place of a google search.
The 2nd one requires basic python knowledge plus Blender API which can't be taken for granted.
IMO Whether or not a question appears as easy depends on experience, we all had no experience when we started. I also noticed that some of the 'easy' ones get the most views (few hundreds at the first day, while other very specific questions have very little views).

"Simple" questions are not bad at all. From a blender user's perspective having a question here makes it easy to find the answer quickly, high google ranking and such. Everybody needs to learn at some point, and this site is and can be a good start.
From a site user's perspective, simple questions are great. They get answered quickly, which helps the unanswered numbers. In some cases they get upvoted a lot. They drive more blender users to this site.
To the point of "laziness" there is no doubt that in some cases the answer can be found else where. However I still find the blender API rather confusing, a new user can't be excepted to know how to dig through the API. Or they do not know the correct term to find the answer.
I see no down side to "simple" questions.

As long as such questions are not duplicates, I think it's to everyone's benefit to have them answered here, because once they are, we probably won't have to answer them ever again (they are likely to be the top search result).

Agree in general that simple questions are OK,
But with Python API questions, there is potential for a lot of duplication.
The API has 1000's of members, and we have 1500+ operators.
If we accept questions like:
"How do I change the stamp color"

The answer is almost the same as...
"How do I change the stamp font size"

In these cases we can assume the person asking the question is a software developer (even if they are just starting out and learning scripting) and that they could at least check API docs.
I think we should encourage asking questions which are more generalized.
For example: How do I change stamp settings such as font size and color

Instead of down-voting we could see them as redundant / overly specific questions and close them as duplicates.

There used to be such generalized questions "asked" on tex.se as community wiki by site moderators or high rep users for further reference. New users or beginners were linked to those questions rather than being downvoted.

@cjorssen, agree - added note


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How to add the boxes around the keyboard buttons?
When I posted an answer for someones question:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/posts/16530/revisions
It got edited and these key box's were added.
They look nifty, but because I'm new, I don't know how to add them.
Could someone clarify please?

I'm not sure what you are asking, your original post was a bit untidy and it was formatted properly by other users. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/help/editing

I agree whole-heatedly that I was sloppy. If you look in the areas where I had put key notations (ex. 'N') they were replaced by some sort of icon in the edit. how does one use those icons to avoid future 'mistakes'?

And with my most recent answer to my own question. How did you do that? Pretty cool. Maybe i just need a course on formatting in this site.

That was done using markdown, when writing a post, look at the top of the edit field to the right and you will see a help button (a gold question mark). See http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/250/guidelines-on-the-usage-of-stackexchange-markup-and-style. You can also drop by our chatroom and ask for assistance, you will get used to the site in no time. :)

Also here's a quick and basic guide to using markdown and html within SE posts: http://blender.stackexchange.com/help/formatting. The formatting in question is key. If you get tired of typing , there is a userscript which adds a button to insert them automatically: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/388/599

cool. thankyou.

Those are simply kbd tags, defined in the html spec, and styled as such on SE.
Here is an example usage:

When you really messed up, press AA then DeleteEnter.

This is how the sage advice looks in code view:
When you really messed up, press AA then DeleteEnter.
For more detail on how to format the kbd tags see this answer.
There are also user created scripts to make adding the  tags easier.

It's sooo annoying to type those kbd tags though. If one is on Windows, one can use a simple AHK script:
#NoEnv
SendMode Input
#K::
a := Clipboard
send ^c
ClipWait
sleep 100
StringReplace, Clipboard, Clipboard, + , %A_Space% + %A_Space%, ReplaceAll
StringReplace, Clipboard, Clipboard, -> , %A_Space% -> %A_Space%, ReplaceAll
StringUpper, Clipboard, Clipboard, T
Clipboard = %A_Space%%Clipboard%%A_Space%
sleep 100
Send ^v
sleep 200
Clipboard := a
return

So if that AHK script(text file with .ahk exxtension) is in shell:startup(one could copy-paste that to Windows Run menu( Winlogo  +  R )) folder and starts with Windows, one can simply select some text like "a->ctrl+b" and hit  Winlogo  +  K  to get " A  ->  Ctrl  +  B "
AHK needs to be installed.

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


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How specific should our tags be?
Many of our tags are aimed at covering broad, general categories, rather than  using more, specific tags of limited scope.
For example, we have

modifiers instead of array-modifier, mirror-modifier subsurf-modifier, etc.
file-format instead of obj, fbx, collada, etc.

Is this good or bad?
Would it be more useful to have smaller, more specific tags (e.g. knife-tool)? Or is there current strategy better? And if so, why?
If smaller tags are more useful, how specific should they be?

As an example on another SE site, GD has many specific tags referring to a kind of tool or file format.
I couldn't find a good way to search for "specific tags", but if you poke around you'll see tags like jpg and pen-tool.

With regards to your point about GD's tags, those tags aren't as vague as ours and are actually needed IMO, for example, the pen tool is a major part of an image app as opposed to the knife tool for us which can fall under modeling and knowing what image format you are exporting to is also good when looking at filesize or quality etc as opposed to having exr or obj for us which is basically useless.

http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/17705/parenting-to-an-array-end-cap, just interesting timing for that new tag (modifier-array) to pop up.

i think its more friendly to new users if the tags are general.

Related http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/286/how-should-we-deal-with-tags-about-other-software/289#289


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Should repeated downvotes without cause be treated as bullying?
Today we had repeated downvotes on one anwer to this question How to lock object face a certain distance away from another object face?
Do we have a way to avoid this?
If I remember right this: The NEW new "Be Nice" Policy ("Code of Conduct") — Updated with your feedback appeared on Blender.SE in the 'Hot Meta Posts' box. Should users link to this posts and flag the post when this pattern appears again?.

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/473/599 BTW, that proposal has been replaced by this one: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/240839/238438

I believe they should. Unfortunately, we have no way to see if they were without cause. In the case brought up here JuhaW's answer was inadequate for the question, but the OP's receiving it acted unfairly. Rather than down-voting (thanks for the glares guys, it wasn't me) constructive comments should be added to alert that the answer or comment didn't reach criteria.

Note that the same user can't downvote repeatedly. Multiple downvotes means that multiple people all thought that the post was downvote worthy.

I'm not sure where all the concern over this is coming from all of a sudden, as we've had lots of posts with downvotes before.. And this is nothing compared to big sites like SO.

Voting (even downvoting) is a core part of the site, and is part of what makes SE what it is. Voting is important to separate the useful answers from the others.
What makes a "good", useful answer?
This is obviously pretty subjective, and depends a lot on the type of question, context, and apparent skill level of the OP.
Users will vote based on their own opinions.
Obviously it's important that the answer has a explanation/solution which answers the OP's question, but aside from that, IMO it's also important that the answer communicates the solution (and how to implement it) effectively, especially if the OP is new.
A really nice answer might include instructions on how to do the various steps required, and perhaps an explanation of why it works (including this will help get upvotes too, as it gives users a good indication that the solution actually works, without having to test it themselves).
These aren't supposed to be requirements or anything, just my own opinions of how a ideal answer might look.

When is it reasonable to downvote?
From the help center:

Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add
comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong. Provide better
answers of your own. Last but not least, edit and improve the existing
questions and answers! By doing these things, you are helping keep
Stack Exchange a great place to share knowledge of our craft.

And:

Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy,
no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps
dangerously incorrect.

Answers which don't satisfactorily answer or communicate an answer to the question (in some users opinion) will most likely be downvoted. This isn't meant to be some sort of rude insult, but an  impersonal indication that your answer could be improved.
Simply put, don't take downvotes personally.

Indeed, downvotes should absolutely never be used for insulting/being rude to a user.
If you see any rude/insulting comments, flag them.
However, in the case of the post linked in the question, I don't see any evidence of this being the case.
Also remember that a single user cannot downvote a post multiple times, so even if a malicious user downvoted a post without good reason, it wouldn't amount to much. (a downvote is -2, compared to an upvote which is +10).

For more, meta.se has loads of content on this (predictably ;))
Writing detailed answers is time consuming. Keep it friendly, and don't take the votes too seriously

Full disclosure: I was one of the downvoters on the post in question. I downvoted because I felt that the answer did not clearly explain how or why their answer worked.
I didn't write a comment, which was a failing on my part. I'll try to be more prompt with this in the future.
I've since retracted my vote, as the post was later edited to include more detail.

I disagree with your assumption that repeated down votes is bullying. Down voting is SE's way to filter content and bring the best answers up to the main view. There is no way that one person can down vote a answer multiple times. So I do not see how you can be calling it "bullying." If I or any other regular user wrote a bad answer, and it got down voted surely you would not call that bullying. As I said here

For a new user add a comment explaining what is wrong with their answer.

Some how thinking that down voting posts is bad goes against the very heart of SE and why this site works so well.
Why is voting important
Don't misunderstand me, I did not down vote the answer in question. Nor do I have a vendetta against any of the users mentioned. I am simply trying to state that we can not take away down votes and have SE function as it is meant to.

To add my two cents, there has been a lot of traffic (more than the usual) around here lately so naturally, there will also be an increase in question views and votes.

I've noticed a lot of new traffic, too, and I'm concerned that "noobs" misunderstand the meaning of the downvote and take it as an insult, rather than a critique. Unrelated to the post in question, I have to admit, it's pretty frustrating when I've written what I believe to be a thorough, helpful answer, and I get a downvote with no comment. I don't mind the downvote so much as I mind not knowing how to improve.

@Matt very good point, and well said. I'm sure I will link to your comment at some point in the future.

Someone can go into your profile and down vote all your answers for no reason.

@LetTheWritersWrite While someone "can" go and rage DV all my posts, the votes would get reversed. SE can detect such things and all the votes would get changed by the next UTC 0000. But aside from all that, this was talking about mutipal vote on one post, not multiple vote from one person on many posts. That is a very big difference.

Someone dv three of my answers. It was obvious it was out of a grudge because they all happened back to back and yet SE wasn't smart enough to detect it.

Well, there are many sites that are out-right-haywire-bonkers and for things to work well a site like this; it would have to be like an oasis away from the rest of the attitude seen elsewhere.
Otherwise it's contributing to the rest.  Everything is cumulative even if it's just a small thing like a down-vote.
(i) Someone may have just been called names and ridiculed by half a dozen people on game-dev.net.  People who never even bother to contribute at all, they just log in and cause trouble.
(ii) So this stressed out person now heads over to BA.org and see one of the moderators is again calling someone names and generally being rude to people and that many other people are also imitating this behavior so that most of the site is a verbal war-zone.
(iii) Next the person heads over here and sees multiple downvotes to an answer that he intended to be helpful but didn't realize that it fell short of help and actually look more like a hint.
I think a simple comment is far more helpful and since Up-votes leave incomplete answers at the bottom regardless.  Downvote's serve little functional benefit.
To sum up:
A: I feel DV's add to other problems people may encounter elsewhere and can easily be misinterpreted even if people are not supposed to take things personally.
A person can only take so much trouble online or at work;  Staying 100% stress-free is difficult even for the best of us.  Why should we add to that?
B: Up-votes filter the answers anyways so down-votes have no functional use.
A downside to downvotes-> It's too easy for down-votes to be misused as a substitute for rude gestures.
People often like to follow the crowd.
If there is down-voting taking place, then other people will follow along because they believe that this is the appropriate way to behave but do not understand WHY it is being used so they misuse it based on inexperience and likely grouchiness.
Just look at how many inexperienced people refer to themselves as 'Noobs', they are imitating each other.
To me it seems best to not give the crowds any behavior ideas that will catch on and be used in a context that we never intended.
We can certainly influence the masses of people into making down-voting a habitual behavior but we cannot control when and why they decide to down-vote,

Regarding point B, I don't agree. I think of votes with three possibilities: 1. upvote if the post is complete, understandable, answers question (if it's an answer). 2. don't vote if the post is incomplete or is somewhat unclear, but otherwise is promising (i.e. clearly had some effort put into it) 3. downvote if the post is incorrect or hard to parse, and has no apparent effort put into it. They also give users a way to reduce score on highly upvoted posts, that may not deserve it (in the user's opinion).

I was going to mention that downvotes can be used to keep a confusing or misleading post at zero.  I forgot.

Point B was a response to something David said about down-votes bringing bad answers to the bottom of the stack.  Upvotes do this anyways so down-votes are nor necessary for this to work.


text:
What is our standard for spelling?
I have edited many questions and answers to change spelling. Do we have a standard about how words are to be spelled, that are differently in different parts of the world?
Example: Color and Colour (and many more I can't think of now.)
I ask because if we allow multiple spellings of a word, then there will be some answers lost in a search.

This is completely optional, even for tags, whichever comes first, we usually just go with that. However, I find that more people opt for the American spelling, color over the British colour and modeling over modelling etc. If we were to try and uphold a standard, I'd say the former (which is what I see around here anyway based on our demographic).
Also, see Micro Editing, does everything need to be perfect?, these are rather trivial and you shouldn't edit a post just for the difference in spelling.

I would not edit a post just to change colour, but when already editing a post I should change colour to be color. Is that right?

@David Rather trivial IMO but should be fine. Again, see the post I linked to, everything doesn't need to be perfect, just understandable.

the blender code standard is to use American spelling.


text:
Confusion of “baking” and “texture-baking” tags
I have noticed several questions lately about texture baking that have used the [baking] tag instead of [texture-baking].  The tag wikis make sufficient difference between the two:
Baking tag wiki:

Baking is the act of pre-computing something in order to speed up some other process later down the line. Use this tag for baking any physics simulations.

Texture-Baking tag wiki:

Questions about blender's Bake feature under the Render panel, such baked images as normal maps, AO maps, and displacement maps, and texture maps.

But unfortunately a lot of people don't actually seem read the wikis.
So I am wondering if there is anything that can be done about this confusion (albeit this isn't exactly super important).  Can the [baking] tag's name be changed to something like [physics-baking]?  Or if this isn't a problem, should the [baking] tag always be used along with [texture-baking]?
I am aware of this meta question, but it seems that the “Use this tag for baking any physics simulations.” has been added since then.  I do think it is a good idea to have two separate tags since baking physics and textures are quite different procedures.
A couple of examples of the confusion are textures bake transparency as white and how to improve ambient occlusion in cycles..., I have suggested edits on these types of questions before.

When you find a question like the two you linked to, edit them and change the tags. There were many old questions that confused the two tags before we made a distinction. We had a discussion a while back in the chat about baking and texture-baking. Both of the question you linked are over a month old, I have not seen many recent questions with the wrong baking use. At this point I do not think it is needed to re name the tag, just fix the missed tagged question when you find them.


text:
Should questions that don't directly relate to blender, but are about general artistic topics like composition be on or off topic?
For example, this question: How to use the golden spiral composition rule.
These are already allowed for general CG/modeling questions. One could argue that composition is a part of CG, but on the other hand composition also applies to lots of non-CG art forms too.
Are these kinds of questions on or off topic?

Again, related - http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/a/59/12. General CG is fine to a certain point but the flat theory is a bit borderline IMO. This question would probably be better off on photography.se.

Searching photo.se also turned up this What is the 'Golden Ratio' and why is it better than the 'Rule of Thirds?'.


text:
Proposed tag changes
Change #1
I have come across many questions that deal with units, the latest one here. I propose we change blender-units to be units. It would fit a broader spectrum of questions, and some that are already  tagged as blender-units are really not about blender-units.
We should also synonymize measurement with the new units tag. All ten measurement questions would fit well under units.
Change #2
We delete actuators in favor of logic-bricks. I feel there is no need to Synonymize actuators as there are only four question tagged with Actuators. Just four little retags and that is taken care of. Not a big change, but I was posting here anyway.

Change #3
Synonymize node-editor → nodes. These tags seem to be used interchangeably and sometimes both are used on the same post. IMO nodes sounds like it has a larger scope which would contain node-editor, which is why I suggest that they be merged in that way.

By Blender-Units do you mean the default setup? ie: -1.0, 0.0, 10.0, 20.0, etc. (no cm., mm, inches)
If so, this should definitely be changed.  By adding 'Blender' to 'Units' it gives the impression that there is something Blender-related going on with these numbers when they are just the standard numbers used by people all around the world in every field where numbers are used.

@MarcClintDion The tag description reads "Basic measuring unit of blender. Acronymed BU. It can generally be held as relative to any unit. Physics engine regards 1BU as 1m." Yes I'm suggesting that we go to just plain units.

They all look good to me

Good suggestions, we will try and add a few more to the list and get this done.

@gandalf3 if this post is going to be continually updated, should we mark the completed tasks as "done"?

I don't know. Maybe the should be separate answers? I don't know..


text:
Which tag needs to have 5 score?
I tried to suggest a synonym, but I still need 5 score on a tag.

Which tag needs to have more score? units or blender-units?
Perhaps the phrasing of this error could be clarified to specify which tag doesn't meet the requirements?

I checked my profile, and as I have 9 score on blender-units, it appears to be the tag which you are proposing as the master/parent tag (in this case, units).
I still feel like I shouldn't have to check my profile though.. What if I didn't have > 5 score in either? There would be no way to tell which I need to improve.

I went ahead and made the changes.


text:
Can you ask too many Questions?
My question is if someone can ask to many questions on this site or are they allowed to ask as many questions as they want?

My opinion is that - everyone can ask as many questions as they want, as long as they are good and contribute to the site.

If your question has been answered accept the proper answer as such

See Is there a limit on how many questions I can ask?.

A user may ask only...

50 questions over any 30-day period
six questions over any 24-hour period
one question over any 30-second period
users with less than 125 reputation can only post questions every 20 minutes

The 30-day limit was introduced on 29 April 2011, and at the moment of
  writing it only applies to Stack Overflow, Server Fault and Super
  User. Beware that deleting existing questions will probably not
  circumvent this limit, and may actually make things
  worse.
The 30-second and "only post questions every 20 minutes" limits are
  anti-spam/bot measures.

So in accordance with this, you can ask as many questions as you want, as long as they are all about blender and not off-topic.
It's better to have several unique questions as opposed to a single post containing many. The idea is to keep it simple and organized so others can easily find information down the line.


text:
Should duplicates be closed to the oldest question or the "best" question?
If a "better" version of a old question, in which direction should they be closed?
Should the newer question be closed as a duplicate of the older question (and perhaps the older question should be edited)? Or
should the older question be closed as a duplicate of the newer question?
For example, these two questions:
Using alpha channel of generated images for cycles
uv image editor alpha?
Which should be closed as a duplicate of which?

I would say the first should be kept. It just seems to have more info and have it better explained. I think that if there are duplicates then the better one should be left open.

Wasn't something like this raised on a previous post?

@iKlsR I thought it was, but couldn't find it.

@gandalf3 I understand where you're coming from but the duplicate is a copy of the first and also to prevent confusion regardless of quality, newer questions should be marked as duplicates of older ones. I can vaguely remember a similar meta post, will link if I can find it.

Related: Should I flag a question as duplicate if it has received better answers?

Ultimately, you should always point users the "best" possible information you have. The wiki nature of Stack Exchange exists so you can constantly improve your content. Ideally, you would have caught the duplicate post before it split the conversation, but if a better (duplicate) question went on long enough to attract demonstrably better answers, you should make that THE canonical source of that information.
But remember that you have a lot more tools are your disposal that simply closing one question or the other. If both threads contain great information, you can also consider merging the answers. And if the new question was simply clearer, consider editing the original to incorporate the qualities of whatever you found more intriguing in the second post.
Recall also that  we changed the [closed as duplicate] description to say, "this question already has an answer elsewhere…" rather than focusing on the question itself. Closing a question as duplicate provides another entry point help folks searching for that information, but we're here to help people find the best possible answer rather than worrying about who asked the question first. You should always look at the entire thread to decide which should be the canonical source of that information. Sure, if the quality of both questions happens to be a dead heat, you should stick to the original thread… but generally speaking, you should always point them to the best possible information you have.
Essentially, you should never favor the lesser-quality thread because it was "posted first."

thank you dropping by and shedding some light on this. Out of curiosity, what would you do in the specific case mentioned in the question?

@David (I'm not familiar enough with the subject to say for certain but...) On the surface, it appears the 2nd post from yesterday should simply be closed. The answer(s) provided don't add meaningfully to the information already provided in the original thread, and the author is confusing the issue by 'answering' with "Wait, nevermind..." I updated my post above to clarify the actual remedies you can use in these situations. Hope that helps.


text:
Are "theme identification" questions on-topic?
Are questions asking for a specific theme or type of theme on-topic?
For example, this question: What is this grey theme seen on the gooseberry website?
GD.SE has font-identification questions which are similar, but they probably get more font identification questions than we ever will get in theme-identification questions..
Should these kinds of questions be on-topic?

I would consider this off topic.
Font's are an essential part of graphic design, where as themes are pretty much tweaking application for your own personal preference.
You can always ask on other sites (non SE), and probably get an answer.


text:
Is it okay to embed screenshots hosted on 3rd party sites?
Often new users will upload screenshots to e.g. dropbox, instead of embedding in the post.
If embedded in the post via the button in the toolbar, SE will upload the image from the existing host to the default imgur host. This takes the image out of the OP's control, e.g. they can no longer delete it from the internet if they wish (as they could if it were solely on dropbox).
On the other hand, if embedded via manually entered markdown as a hotlink, e.g.
![some description](http://somehost/someimage.png)

Then the screenshot will disappear from the post if it's deleted or the host stops hosting it.
Which is preferable? Is there any legal issue here? (uploading OP's image to SE's imgur host without their permission?)

It's "okay" to use a screenshot if you have permission to use that image or the content is licensed for reuse. If you do not have permission to use the image, you are infringing on their Copyright. The issue of whether you are storing that image elsewhere or simply "embedding" their content from the original site has no bearing on Copyright.
The reason we automatically upload all images to 'imgur' is precisely as you stated: We do not want the screenshot to disappear or change if the image is changed on the original host. But if you have permission to use that image, there are no legal issues at all. "Embedding" an image instead of downloading it is not a workaround to Copyright law.
I would also note that, in the US, there are exceptions to Copyright law called "Fair Use" which allows for limited use of copyrighted material… but that is outside the scope of this post.

So does this mean it's not okay to upload an OP's images to imgur via SE without asking them first? How should this be handled?


text:
Where to see the reason for deleted answer?
I've asked a question and I've received an answer, but then the author deleted the answer. Can I see the reason for deletion?

Looking at the answer in question, I think it's because the answerer didn't notice that you wanted to rotate the plane in the BGE.

Removing an answer is up to the author for whatever reason they choose, no notification or message is shown and you cannot see deleted posts unless you have the privilege (unlocked at 2000+ reputation).


text:
Where did the helpful comments to my question go?
My question was marked as [duplicate] by several users, and there were some helpful comments, and I've edited it to help clarify what I need to understand beyond the answer to the related question. However now the original comments are not visible to me. Are they gone? Thanks!

They look pretty gone. Unfortunately AFAIK comments are one of the few things which can be permanently and irrevocably deleted on SE..

OK, thanks. They appear to have been automatically deleted when I edited the question, at least I didn't do any explicit deleting that I'm aware of.

That's odd.. AFAIK only the author and moderators can delete comments. Not sure what is going on here..

I have edited the question. When I log in, I can see my edits. When I am not logged in, it shows only the related question which is proposed to be the answer, and not my revised question with edits/clarification. I do not know what OTHER people see. Are my edits visible to others when they are logged in? If not, it seems like following the directions to edit the question does not actually do anything useful. Thanks!

These were removed automatically by Community (a background process) since both links were the same as the post marked as a duplicate so nothing missed.


text:
Add contests on blender exchange
In light of our recent event aiming to improve our answer ratio. I think it would be a good idea to consider adding contests to blender.stackexchange.com. The stackexchange site Code golf has a 9.5 answer ratio. That answer ratio is more attainable, we already have more daily visits then that site does.
Contests in the blender community seem to generate a lot of activity such as "Weekend Contest: Default Cube." I feel that it would benefit this site in many ways to add a contest following something along the lines of Bart's Weekend Contests.
A new contests tag would be used for the contests. We could follow the same type of guidelines as code golf does for its contests. I have other ideas for the contests, and if the community thinks it a good thing to add to the site, then I shall share them.
I know that contests were talked about for the meta: "Are contests appropriate for meta?", but I think this is different enough to warnte another post.

+10! :D Would love to see what people would do if we had a [tag:default-cubism] tag.. ;)

That's an amazing idea!

I'm all for it! if we can get our mods and power users to vouch for this, then I don't think anyone will cause trouble. :)

Maybe a contest idea to start with can be something along the lines of "Who can do the best job of porting a specific 'Yo Frankie' game level to modern Blender 2.7x."  If Campbell Barton and Dalai Felinto agree to review and judge; the contest will have the benefit of also contributing directly to Blender Foundation Development.

@MarcClintDion That sounds like a very big project.. I got the sense these would be more like small "weekend contests" like you see on blendernation. Plus it would be hard for the community to vote on, as the results would visually be more or less the same.. (Not sure if having developers judge contests is a better use of their time than coding..)

It saves them from having to do it themselves and that leaves them free to code.

The Yo Frankie levels all load more or less properly.  It's the logic bricks that seem to need repairing.  That's pretty small since a person would just have to use the old version as reference and add the modern bricks that work with 2.72

Here is a mini level .blend from Yo Frankie that I drag and dropped into 2.72. So the idea would be that whoever does the best job of repairing it will be the winner. It's a given that different people will have skill in repairing different areas so many people will all end up with partial solutions to the whole problem and this leaves the core devs free to work on the big stuff without having to do several weeks of chores. The students do the rough work instead. ;) http://www.pasteall.org/pic/79628

I think this is a great idea!

Sorry to be the grump here but this isn't going to happen. Code golf was intended to be used like that, we have a stricter scope and I don't think contests should mingle with serious questions on the main site much less introducing new tags for these, as for helping the answer ratio, these would just be superfluous and in poor taste.
On the other hand, I for one wouldn't mind overseeing this on meta (seeing how many people are interested) in a manner similar to what Anime.se had but it won't happen on the main site.

Contests like this held on Meta could possibly generate a lot of activity on the main site because we would then see many questions like the following.  http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/18683/how-do-i-fix-the-texface-conversion-problem-message-when-importing-yo-frankie/18684#18684

@MarcClintDion Yes, we would most likely have an event to go along with the contest and these will show up on the bulletin board.


text:
Should questions mostly aimed at the devs be on topic?
For example:

Why the blender browser plugin is not updated?
Why blender is not saving used Images

These questions ask things about the design choices and decisions involved in making blender to which probably only the developers can give a complete answer.
I know that this probably is out of our current scope:

The Blender Stack Exchange site is for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games.

But we do have some developers who are pretty active on the site, in particular ideasman42♦ and brecht. Not to mention the many community developers who develop blender in their free time.
Since in the past these kinds of questions seem to be asked in places like the mailing list and IRC, it's hard to find existing answers.
If these questions were allowed on SE, they could stick around and not be buried in some long lost mailing list thread.
Should we expand our scope to allow more development oriented questions?
What do the developer users think of this?

I see no problem allowing question like those. If it turns out that these types of questions don't get much activity, then we can at a later time come back and look at our position.

@David As far as activity goes, here's another one. I agree, and this seems to go with the whole "open development" thing. There are probably lots of questions in this category that can be answered by anyone after a look at the tracker or code, without needing to be a official blender foundation developer.

Stack Exchange works really well for technical support, as long as you're not trying to outsource your entire customer support channel to Stack Exchange. Customer support includes things like feature requests and bug reporting (for Blender), or up-and-coming product release discussions. That doesn't belong here.
But if the internal team is here to answer your deeper-workings or development-centric questions that help you get your work done, then yes… I think that would be a good addition to this site.


text:
Must every question formulation be so formal?
Isn't there a bit of bringing your own personality into the question?
I mean is it really that important to have cold not individual question formulations?
Revision because of grammar is okay but removing a have a good day and calling it "deleting the extra stuff" seems a bit too harsh in my eyes.

Sorry, I probably should have mentioned this when I edited.. It's not some much "formal" as just reducing clutter. A paragraph saying "I hope you can help me, have a good day, thanks :)" doesn't add any new information to the post, as it's kindof a given that the OP hopes someone can help them (given that they are posting a question).. See http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/466/599

I agree with the "I hope you can help me" it's pointless.  I think "Have a good day, thanks" is really just polite behavior and it's really not something people should drop for the sake of "rules"  If that's what's being pushed then the rules are very wrong or being used in a way that was never intended.  After all we are not robots and being curt when typing messages online tends to sound bossy and rude.

@MarcClintDion It can come out that way, but I think here on SE this is pretty much accepted as the norm without seeming bossy. At least in my mind, I think a lot of the tone is conveyed by the phrasing of the useful information, without the need for extraneous phrases that take up an extra few seconds to read without really providing any information. Also these aren't really hard rules per se, more like conventions that most SE users seem to follow. Usually I don't edit out this sort of stuff unless I'm already editing for another reason, but I made an exception in this case due to the amount

@MarcClintDion I seem to have pretty much the same philosophy as CoDEmanX.

I agree with that.  If there is a whole bunch of dialogue with a bit of standard courtesy it can just be easier to erase the whole paragraph than to pick through it all to clean up.  I was thinking that the standard behaviour that is expected of people at a public library seems appropriate.  Yammering on and on is discouraged but if you bump into someone it is polite to excuse yourself.  Thank someone if they help you except in this case the 'upvote' button is the thank you.

Exactly. I'm still frumious at Ray Mairlot for REPEATEDLY removing the engaging titles that I use as hooks to get views and hopefully answers. Examples in point: (Lightning Strikes! The Problem with Emitters) was turned into (Are particle emitters a good starting point for creating lightning?) and (Portal Majjicks in Blender's Render) became (How can I create a portal?) and (Cube Confusion: Creating a d8 in Blender from One Object) became (How do I create an 8 sided die from one object?) I'll admit to having changed the title on one of my own questions myself... twice...

There are lots of question on this topic, such as:
Editing questions to remove "thank you" etc
Should 'Hi', 'thanks', taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?
What should I keep out of my posts and titles?
Editing for Brevity?
Are taglines & signatures disallowed?
What is the policy on signatures and links in answers?
Here and else where on the Stack Exchange network, it commonly accepted to keep extraneous text out of questions and answers. It is not about formal vs informal writing, but rather concisely conveying the relevant information.
While salutations seem harmless, and they are; they also do not add value to the question, and as such are should not be there.
I read a reason something like this once.

If it add no value to the question, but takes time for everybody who reads the question, why not edit out this extraneous text.

let's discuss :)
The mere fact that someone uses the site to ask a question implies that they 'hope we can help'. The site is really about exchanging information, and though it may seem cold, distant and impersonal when we cut out the pleasantries, all we really want to do is stream-line the information, and make it consistent with how questions are presented across the Stack Exchange network.
If you feel the need to see a less formal side of the site join us in the chatroom RenderFarm, and you might get a better understanding of the separation between the familiar and the matter of fact


text:
Suzanize it! - Challenge #1
If you haven't already, read this Uncyclopedia article about Blender.
Contest: The Level One Beginner
Just about everyone has been there - the Level One Beginner; And if you haven't you probably know about someone who has. There was a time at the start, when you first opened Blender, probably, when you would praise the Suzanne deity. It's time to go back to that; Not quite, but still...
Objective:
Create an artwork whose main subject is the default Suzanne.
You can use any method you want, as long as you use only Blender, and keep at least something that resembles the default Suzanne.
Rules:

Only new and original work
Blender only, non commercial add-ons are allowed
Keep it nice, nothing you wouldn't want to show to a five year old.
Include .blend file, so we can be sure it is yours (use pasteall.org)
The competition runs for a week, you can edit/change your submission at anytime
Late entries will be disqualified
Only one entry per person
Downvotes will not be considered when picking the winner

Voting guide:
(Going beyond the simple visual appeal)

Meets objective, not missing anything
No rules were broken
Artistically sound:

Good composition
Good use of color
Solid design

Humor:

Makes you laugh
has clever Easter eggs/references

Well Executed

Technically impressive
Quality of execution meets artistic goals.

Winning criteria:
Submission with the most upvotes as of November 23th 2014. The submission must to be posted before the deadline.
Deadline: November 21st 2014 at UTC +0000
And most importantly, have fun!
Final Results:

X-27
gandalf3 (First place for animation)
stacker
David
someonewithpc

Seeing how many people commented on the other post asking for this, I hope as many are willing to get involved and take this seriously. Good luck to all participating. For any discussions or to share ideas, use the room Events.

Regarding the "voting guidelines", I think I must have a different definition of "subjective".. See my comments in the chat

Please ask others one Events before making edits... Especially later into the competition.

My entree. Behold the flying fortress of total monkey awesomeness.
click on it for higher resolution

That is pretty sweet!

You now get to pick the next Contest's theme!

You can't really see it from that picture, but there are duel missile pods on the top that fire misses that can easily cross the ocean.<--(C#16)

The Endless Cycle of Suzanne

(click for a nice html5 video version)

A very unique approach!

Wow, I love this, would have been awesome if the entire thing were Suzannes, leaves etc. ;)

@iKlsR Haha, thanks. That is an interesting idea.. Though Suzanne isn't very leaf-shaped :P The orange part of the flower is made entirely of Suzannes (just in case they are too small to see in the render..). I also tried to do a subtle blender logo reference, I'd be curious to know if anyone spots it ;)

@gandalf3 I saw, I was thinking of this image when I commented http://www.artstation.com/artwork/morning-snow. The snow is made from monkeys.

@iKlsR Wow, that is some realistic snow. I think I could mistake that for a photograph :)

NOTICE: To late to qualify
The Fruit of the Noob: The Suzanne Apple.
(Old cult of noob theme tie in)

Fast fact, monkey fruit trees are a real thing.
Eating the Suzanne Apple is believed to give the power of rembering keyboard shortcuts, not that it helps since they are random.

especially as keys can change function depending on where the mouse is, what platform you are running it on, the day of the week, and the random movements of a quark someplace in the center of the Universe.
  - Blender page on Uncyclopedia

Behold- I have brought forth a monkey!   :-)

Missing nose

.blend

I like the concept! Not so much the composition though...

Behold, the Suzanne deity!! :D

A LEGO monkey, named Suzanne
click for full resolution (it really does have the LEGO bumps)

Wow, that is detailed! Interesting choice of background/lighting though..

Excellent detail! I would be extremely interested in knowing how to do that! +1

@NoviceInDisguise remesh set to bricks, then replace every brick with a block..

@RadishoftheOpera that is not how I did it. I have said in chat before, but if you would like to know I will be happy to tell you.

Link???????????


text:
placing .gifs in text
I have read how to post gifs on this site, but I can't get that to work for me. I tried using Gfycat and everytime I try and upload the images I get an error saying This isn't an animated gif, so I am wondering. How do you all out there record and save them? As I recorded it, used Premiere Pro to convert to Gif and tried that.

I use licecap running in wine.

@gandalf3 what is wine?

It's an environment for running windows programs on linux.

On gfycat, click the paperclip icon and you should see 4 textareas, the second one has the actual .gif and not the special webm or mp4 format they display by default.

@gandalf3 worked great! Mind putting that as an answer?

I assume the error was coming from gfycat, but I'm not sure, as they do allow non-gif uploads (they will convert to a gif automatically).
That said, I normally use peek to capture gifs. I've also used LICEcap and gifcam running under wine (wine is not needed if you are on windows).
If the file is < 2MB, uploading directly via the image button or ⎈ CtrlG should work fine. If not, try gfycat :)

perfect! Thanks again

about licecap on linux (with wine), I have to add that I can't record mouse pointer, though (works on windows), and others too, apparently (http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?s=c55575985c70a79e987a0a5fd0ed8bb6&t=181959). Recently I just found key-mon (https://github.com/critiqjo/key-mon), it seems quite useful for tutorial-like screen recording, although that means adding another separate tool...

@m.ardito Indeed. I've recently discovered peek, a licecap-like gif recorder with native linux support (and mouse-capturing abilities).

@gandalf3 yes, I've already seen that, I'll try that on linux, but it seems that it doesn't support it natively...  <<How can I capture mouse clicks and/or key strokes? Peek does not support this natively. But you could install an external tool like key-mon >> that is where I found about key-mon, in fact... :)

@m.ardito Ah, it doesn't capture clicks, but it does capture the cursor. There's an X utility someone on unix.se made which can be made to do mouse click highlighting, and screenkey can show keystrokes. My experience with key-mon was rather buggy, but I've yet to find a really satisfying alternative.


text:
What case should letters inside <kbd> tags be?
What case should letters inside <kbd> tags be?
e.g.

⎈ ctrlr
⎈ CtrlR
⎈ CTRLR

Any there any advantages or disadvantages to different styles? Should we try to maintain a consistent style across the site, in keeping with the wiki nature of SE?

I am not sure how important this is in the grand scheme of things (actually I think it really isn't) but I am a detail-oriented freak :).  So I think if everybody read this and followed it would be great!

A trivial problem at most, I don't see many people using all caps and having the first letter capitalized is optional, either way, it's optional at most. I can also say that most of the time, these are in the second form that you showed.

@iKlsR Most of the time.. But more than once I have found myself editing posts with lower case single key shortcuts, and I decided to write a meta to make sure I was doing the right thing by capitalizing them.

I capitalize the one letter keys, and F1 through F12. I specify the NumPad as such:

Press NumPad 1 to switch to front view.

The modifiers, I capitalize just the first letter such as Tab Ctrl Alt Shift. However I find that a lowercase space looks better.

This how I personally do it, and it seems to be consistent with other sources as well.

I vote for ⎈ CtrlR. This is the way it appears on the keyboard (at least on my keyboard), and as the formatting seems to be designed to represent a physical key, it might as well have the same case as a key.
I don't see any reason to use lower case instead of upper case. The only case I can think of is to differentiate between shortcuts using ⇧ Shift and those not using ⇧ Shift. However, I think just using <kbd>⇧ Shift</kbd> is a lot clearer, see the following example:

Using case to indicate the usage of ⇧ Shift:

Press g, then G

Using ⇧ Shift to indicate the usage of ⇧ Shift:

Press G, then ⇧ ShiftG

As far as maintaining this consistently across site, I think it would be nice if posts were styled consistently, but I'm not sure how realistic of a goal that is.

On many windows keyboards it is actually not displayed that way. The windows key defaults to the windows start menu, and the Control key just has Ctrl on it.

@NoviceInDisguiseGraphics I'm not sure what you mean by "windows keyboard", but granted, this probably does vary widely between different keyboards. For instance, my keyboard does have a ⎈ on the Ctrl key. And as the other modifier keys commonly seem to have their own "icon", I figured it would be consistent to include it with Ctrl too. I'm not sure I see the relevance of your second point though. Who said anything about the windows/OS logo key?

Sorry about that, the graphic on the Ctrl key is a simplified windows symbol.

@NoviceInDisguiseGraphics Hm.. Not for me, that might be another problem. It should be this, which is done in the above post with the Unicode character ⎈.

Very interesting! I looked up control key on the web ( https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&authuser=0&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1920&bih=941&q=ctrl+key&oq=Ctrl+&gs_l=img.3.1.0l10.1845.5049.0.6988.5.5.0.0.0.0.122.576.0j5.5.0....0...1ac.1.58.img..0.5.575.fSGWiqLj-TA#imgdii=_ ), I can not find one with the graphic. Is your keyboard moderately new? EDIT: Just found one ( http://xahlee.info/kbd/i2/Microsoft_keyboard_control_windows_alt_keys.jpg ). Since it seems to be so obscure, do you think it is necessary?

I agree 100% with the layout you suggested for the Shift key, BTW.

@NoviceInDisguiseGraphics Huh, that's interesting indeed! It's not really very new, no.  Just your average somewhat-old-but-not-really-ancient microsoft keyboard. Here's a picture of a similar one (doesn't look like mine, but the Ctrl key is the same)

I am having a very hard time finding examples using the graphic. It seems to have been discontinued. Let me do some research . . .

It almost looks like the symbol is a replacement for the plain-text version: "Also, there is a standardized keyboard symbol (to be used when Latin lettering is not preferred) . . ." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_key  Notice that all of their abbreviations are Ctrl + _

To create an appearance of consistency, someone could add a little css rule for <kbd>.
kbd {
    text-transform: capitalize;
}

With text-transform: capitalize, regardless of the actual capitalization, the first letter of each word would always display capitalized. Therefore either ctrlr or CtrlR would always appear as CtrlR. Unfortunately capitalize would not produce complete uniformity since only the first letter of each word is transformed. Completely capitalize words, such as CTRLR would remain entirely capitalize.


text:
Is there a way to encourage people to tag the render engine they are using?
I have noticed that one of the most common first comments on a question is something like “What render engine are you using?”.  My question is simply this, is there anyway to remind people to put the render engine in the tags?
Some kind of note like “Please be sure that if your question has anything to do with rendering (materials, rendering, etc.) that you include in the tags what render engine you are using.”  I myself have just forgotten to specify render engine occasionally since I always use cycles.  So I think this would be beneficial to everyone, askers and answerers, new and experienced users.
Is it possible to implement something like Greg Zaal's Idea, so users would get a message like "Please make sure you tag what render engine your are using." if they use the rendering or materials or other similar tags?

This would be a great notice to have on the "ask a question" page.. +1

I agree, another one would be to attach photos or a .blend. Seems like I am constantly asking for those.

Is there perhaps a way of forcing them to choose the render engine if they have added the rendering tag?

@GregZaal or the [tag:materials] tag.


text:
Do we want hats 2014 edition?
For those new to the site. StackExchange has a little winter themed event in December for sites to participate in called Winter Bash (2014 link).

Basically, users earned "hats" for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (similar to badges).
Certain actions would trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar could then "wear". For example, editing a post would yield an editor-themed hat (fedora with pen) to the editor.
From previous years:

Users had their entire hat collection on http://winterbash2013.stackexchange.com.
Individual users who didn’t want to participate, didn’t want to see hats, and/or are generally anti-hat had an "I hate hats" option available..
The only visual change to the site itself was the presence of the hats and the "I hate hats" button in the footer.
If we choose to accept, the event will run from 15 December 2014 to 4 January 2015. After the time period, all the hats go away into Last Year's Hat Bin.
We need to decide if we want hats by December 1

This is totally optional so do we want them?
For those who don't want to participate, there will be an option  in the site footer to disable these.

Update:
I submitted a reply, we will have hats.

sure, hats wold be great! as long as I get one that shoots blue lasers. and can melt through other people's reputation

Sounds great to me!

Let's do it! As long as people can disable it, I don't see why not!

One question, will we be able to see what hats are available and how to get them when the event starts?

@NoviceInDisguise yep. There are also mystery hats that you might need a certain activity, login date etc to unlock. FUn stuff, you will see in a few days.

To elaborate on GiantCowFilms's answer, I see no down side to running the event. It is stressed that there is a opt out button, so this is just for blender.se addicts to have a little more fun.
Lets have a great winter / Christmas / New year season, and collect lots of hats.

I totally agree!

Yes, I Want Hats!!!!!!! Please please please... :)

I think that this activity would help promote active participation by all members.
Since people can disable the display and participation in the event, I do not see any issue with continuing. Judging from the overwhelmingly positive response from multiple members, I would strongly recommend hosting the event.

I want one like this, and I want it NOW:
http://www.litekul.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/kung-kanin.jpg
(And that person, by the way, is the Swedish king being the victim of somebody's creativity).

Am not especially a fan of hats, a few times I've noticed people attempting to game the system - eg: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/563/why-do-my-posts-never-get-downvoted (yes, I know SE is about gamification to some extent... but this can get in the way)
Its fine to have, just don't really take much interest in them and if users are messing around with answers to get hats rather than help people (too much), I would rather not have them.

I agree but the site is run by the community and as an optional SE event, the majority opted for it. It's just for a couple weeks and on the plus side, there are more avid users about the site and spammy content quickly gets flagged. I'm on the lookout for such content and I and some users with the privilege have already deleted several posts that weren't deemed useful. Warnings issued as well.