text:
Blender 2.8 is going Beta. What now?
Blender 2.8 is getting its Beta status today or tomorrow. Which means that we can expect the interface, workflows etc to be in their final form. Bug fixes, and bringing back of features that were lost during the refactoring will still happen.
I think this version change is big enough to require some consensus about what to do with old and new questions on the site.
I think some things will happen spontaneously and are not going to be controversial:

people answering questions about (unchanged) workflow will probably use Blender 2.80 screenshot in their answers with no harm to their back-compatibility
new answers using shortcuts or commands that have changed will probably include a "please note" to remove ambiguities

Some other things are more dubious, especially the ones regarding old questions.

Should we edit old answers to update the shortcuts, menu placements, etc, mentioned within them? (e.g. did you know we went left click select this week?)
If yes: how should we do that? By starting a campaign that will bump a lot of old questions to the homepage, or by just updating them if we stumble upon them? Should we limit ourselves to 1k+views questions?
If a question has a good, accepted answer that relies on a < 2.79 workflow (e.g. uses layers extensively), or an answer that correctly (for that time) says "Thing X is not possible", should we:

answer the question with a new 2.8-inspired answer and hope that it will get noticed? (but by doing so, we are "stealing" 15 rep from who gave the correct 2.79 answer)
allow duplicate questions, as long as they have tried the 2.79 answer, which didn't work, and are now seeking a post-2.8 answer?
ask duplicate questions ourselves (meaning: established users, without waiting for a "genuine" question) and answer them?

Related: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2513/599

I'm against editing the answers at all because there are people who will keep on using 2.79 for various reasons: they have an efficient workflow and switching to 2.8 would be very disruptive to their work, add-ons or third party program that they use with 2.79 will not work with 2.8, their computer cannot handle 2.8, they do not like the new interface, etc...
Having answers for both versions allows us to be a resource for everyone, so we should either allow semi-duplicate questions for 2.8 or post a new answer to an existing question and label it clearly as a 2.8 answer. And we could just edit the previously accepted answer to add something along the lines of 'This answer works for 2.79' or something like that.

Thanks for your point of view. Just to clarify, when I say "edit the old answers" I mean (only for things that are not radically changing) adding a short note where needed. Like "Recalculate normals (Ctrl+N)" → "Recalculate normals (Ctrl+N up to version 2.79; Shift+N from version 2.80)". Of course I don't suggest removing the 2.79 information

@NicolaSap Thanks for the clarification.

My vote is for handling each on a case-by-case basis, but roughly following something like this:

If a question has a duplicate for < 2.79 which differs significantly from the would-be 2.8 answer, answer it like a new question ("How to do X in 2.8?).
If the < 2.79 question is very highly upvoted/appears high in search results, then add a 2.8 answer on it with a link to the 2.8 question (with sufficient information to stand as an answer on its own; perhaps highlighting the differences between the 2.8 and < 2.79 ways).

If a question has a duplicate for < 2.79 which differs very minimally from the would-be 2.8 answer, either edit an existing answer or post a new answer on the < 2.79 question and close the 2.8 question as a duplicate.
Whether to create a new answer or update an existing one depends on exactly how identical the 2.8 and < 2.79 ways are. If "2.8ifying" a < 2.79 answer makes it unfollowable for 2.79, that's probably a good indicator that a new answer is in order.

Naturally the degree to which the < 2.79 ways and 2.8 ways differ is subjective, and in fact there may be multiple answers to one question which each differ to differing degrees. I'd err on the side of the first way (i.e. answer it as a new question).

I concur, there should also be a wiki post that we can refer users to for breaking changes. We should basically clone this https://developer.blender.org/T55194

It's going to be messy either way, because not only we are dealing with a new Blender version but also with new and advanced ways to customize it. I've  already changed so many things in my 2.8 Setup that it's going to be hard to give a "good" answer to new Blender users, without switching back and forth between it and the default setup.

I don't think editing old answers is a good idea. For the same reasons as @Sava exposed.
But we can think about how we should behave in the next months.
First, we are not sure LCS will remain default (still Beta version). And if it does, it might change through time as it is already being.
Second (and I think it's the most important), if there is one thing that LCS makes clear for sure: we don't know how tomorrow will be for Blender. Maybe in ten years, there won't be RCS anymore, or Industry Standard keymap would have take over the world, or we would have reverted RCS default, or we would have a completely new paradigm like that one making today's concerns completely wiped out.
And it's not even to mention the user's customization.
So, considering that, how do we provide answers being as efficient as possible and through time?
I think that we need to educate ourselves in how we deliver information.
As said William Reynish here:

This is a general thing for tutorials: In Blender you can customize the keymap completely, customize the theme, the layout - everything.
  If you make tutorials I would suggest two things:

Use default settings as much as possible
Try to not refer to features by their hotkey only. Do not call it ‘N-key panel’ or ‘W-menu’, but refer to features by their name, and secondarily (optionally) mention the default hotkey if there is one.

We might finally use Blender's UI vocabulary. Blender has already a precise UI vocabulary, giving us a solid base to precisely indicate any UI part of Blender without being dependent of a language barrier, keymaps, customized themes or UI arrangements, ... On top of that, the UI isn't gonna change that much through years so we're good for a while (and if it does change, old answers wouldn't be any more valid anyway and we would just change with it).
On top of being quite understandable and being more precise through time, it will make the information reliable for more people.
Not to mention that, for a lot of people, a descriptive indication is identified and learned quicker than a bunch of shortcuts or tons of different names for the same thing.
But, for the transition time, I think we will need to actually be polyvalent in our answers. Maybe take the habit for a while to give both keymaps shortcuts. But always start with functions and UI names, the official ones as long as possible.

This stack has more than enough duplicates already, and often it can be hard to find useful information in the sea of dupes. For this reason I much prefer options that stay under the original question, rather than add to this.
My preference would be to edit when its a single line correction e.g:
Note: from 2.8 onwards the shortcut for X is now Y
And a new answer for where the workflow has changed more radically, possibly editing the old answer to indicate it applies to versions prior to 2.8.
Under no circumstances should we be making duplicates, as I feel this will just make stuff harder to find. People generally don't indicate a version when they are searching for answers.


text:
Indirect Blender questions?
I just posted THIS and it got flagged as not Blender related (which it kinda is indirectly ;P) I knew it would get flagged but there are some people that are only on this site that I highly respect their knowledge. I tried Graphic Design exchange and BA but have not got a response back yet. Should I post questions like this on META or am I just out of luck hoping one of my stack exchange heroes can shed some light on things?

Note that cross posting is discouraged. Post where it seems most fit (GD.SE seems like a good start to me) and if it turns out it's better fit somewhere else it'll be migrated (ideally).
If you want to talk to someone here in particular you could try asking around in chat, though if the someone you're looking for isn't there then I'm afraid you're out of luck.

I guess I just feel like breaking rules today. lol Thanks

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Was the 'blender-2.8' tag created intentionally or should we remove it?
A blender-2.8 tag seems to have cropped up recently on the main site. As it seems to have been somewhat discussed that we won't have tags for different versions (or at least, there's no real consensus of what they should be), should this tag be removed from any questions it's on or did I miss the discussion where it was decided it should be created?
(If so, do we edit the questions manually to remove the tag or do the mods have some ability to batch remove?)

Consider these removed and the tag blacklisted, not sure how this slipped by for so long. Let this be the real consensus. It has been discussed time and time again, time to cement it.

The iKlsR has spoken. Version tags are a #sadmess

Without a complete API and implementation I'm surprised anyone is asking any assistance for it since a lot will ultimately change. A lot of the questions will have to specify Alpha/ Beta. But, as a side note Eevee is really really awesome.

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


text:
Can haz "render of the week"?
We've requested a photo.SE style render contest before, but it never received much attention from SE. In light of the site redesigns taking place, now seems like a good time to revisit the idea (again).
For reference, the "photo of the week" on photo.SE operates on a single meta post where entries are submitted as answers:

This contest follows a new perpetual format with continuously-rolling voting. Submit and vote on photos whenever you like. Every Monday (give or take; it's done by hand when site moderators have a spare moment), the top-voted image will be selected as the winner, and:

moved to the Winners' Hall of Fame

featured on the main site header for the next week

Then, the contest will continue with the remaining photos in the thread.

Some additional ideas discussed for our contest in the previous meta posts include:

Themes/prompts (Seems like photo.SE had something like this, at least at one point?).
A minimum reputation requirement.
Timed contests, rather than continuously rolling.

I'm not sure if any of these are feasible for SE to implement, but now would be the time to discuss them and other ideas further.

This would be cool. From time to time there are answers with pretty appealing images worthy of recognition

While this could be great, we've tried to do contests in the past (when we had a lot more "avid" users). When the third contest came around, there were hardly any entries.

@X-27 That's one reason to go for a low-profile "rolling exhibit", exactly has photo.SE has; that way entries accumulate over time and never get reset to 0. Plus (as you observantly pointed out earlier) having the results on the main site can only help draw more entries.

When I saw the title I never would of guessed that you were the author.

I've always been against a "image header" contest. I still think it would not work.
This is a Q and A site, period. Adding an art contest deviates from our core mission, which is to be the best possible place to ask and get answers for blender.
Blender artists is a much better place for art contests. It is a forum, it has a whole contest section already, and there is a large active membership there to participate in the contests.
On BSE not so much. You we have lots of users, but that will not translate in to entries for the contest. Our core active users is rather small number of active users (by active users I mean the ones doing the work of the site, answering flagging, voting, editing etc.) Those are the only ones who would enter a contest, and of those we do not know how many would want to enter (I know at the moment I would not).
So with the precarious state BSE is in, I would much rather focus on keeping the site in the best shape we can (and dealing with the deluge of low quality questions), instead of pealing off some of our active users' precious time on the site and having them make pretty pictures for the site.
Essentially if you are going to spend time for BSE I would rather not you spend it making the "render of the week", we have lots of unanswered questions.

A few years ago we had a decent sized community here. (NID/VRM, GCF, Scala, tardis, iKlsR, Gwenn, Gandaf, you, Myself, and probbaly a few others I'm forgetting. Now? GCF is still around, you and gandalf are still are active, I stop in occasionally, but Duarte is really the only active user around now that wasn't them. We still have (and might have more) avid users now, but a much, much smaller community.  Contests are a community event, and we just don't have that many people left :/

I think having a contest/gallery display on the front page would only help to build "community" and interest in the site. We're doing this for fun anyway; I really doubt the existence of a contest would impact normal participation negatively (quite the opposite). That said, our active users actually seem to be on a generally upwards trend. The particular people who hang out in the renderfarm may not be as active recently, but we are by far not the only active users. Who knows who may poke their nose into meta after seeing a pretty picture on the main site and become more involved from there?

Note that with a scheme like photo.se there aren't any deadlines, so no incentive to drop everything and focus solely on making a render. For contests with deadlines and prizes, you're right, there are plenty of better options. As I see it, this would be less of a contest and more of a gallery of the best stuff people here have made, put to good use by spicing up the main page a little (think blendernation headers).

Not just a render showcase, but a BSE-related render showcase
Candidate renders should ideally have originated from a Blender session started to research or to record a screencast for an answer.
The original BSE post should be linked.
It's ok if the original subject of the question is no more evident in the artwork, but the authors are encouraged to explain the link between post and artwork.
Something like:

In this question OP asked how to make equally-spaced random instances of objects from a collection along a curve blah blah blah. I made a minimal scene as an example for my answer (find it here), then I thought it could be made into a nice render by adding some blah blah blah.
Here's the final thing, hope you like it:
(pic)


text:
Is it possible to post .webm videos on the Blender Stack exchange?
I know how to make .gifs but they have no sounds.
I also know how to make .webs which do have sound.
Is it possible to attach a .webm on a post?

It's not possible network-wide. Only images and .gif animations can be uploaded in Stack Exchange Q&A posts.
Speaking of externally hosted multimedia content, included via embed, this is only possible for YouTube videos on four specific stack exchange sites. Blender.StackExchange seems not to be interested in that feature anyway: see this post.

As I said it somewhere before on meta I will say it again now.
We need .webm support! Without sound.
For the sake of:

quality,
bandwidth (!),
comfort - creation and watching (controls),
smooth playback,
lack of glitches,
editing,
and again bandwidth and quality.

This example has around: .gif ~835kB, .apng ~740kB and .webm ~185kB

.webm is around 80% smaller than .gif in this example.

It's something. Right? Considering over bloated internet this is a big thing.
As much as I personally prefer fully written answer, it is undeniable that there are things that you cannot describe, there are ones that are just clearer with animated proof. We have them, we need them, we will still use them. So why not use  nicer, smoother and considerably smaller way?

I am very much in favour of this. Imgur already convert all uploaded gifs to h264 videos, it also support native video uploads. So even if they don't want to support webm, they can easily support mp4s. Why isn't this being considered?

@OmarAhmad I've no idea. It's 2019 and we are still using ~30 years old technology - just because. I cannot find a single positive why gif's are better than short videos.

I am guessing it is to avoid "video only answers" with "lengthy tutorials", or worse questions that are just a dreadfully long video instead explaining an issue succinctly . But I do agree, some times it is very hard to explain something withing the confines of a 2Mb GIF

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos as I said in my post and proved in my answers, I prefer written ones, but. If we have 2Mb .gif, lets switch to 2Mb .webm. There are only pros to this decision and you cannot fit full tutorial in 2Mb, or can you? :D

Probably not, but I can see many newbies posting videos of "look at my issue", how do I solve this? Like I said, I would holehartedly welcome the change, just pointing out the probable reasons why it hasn't been implemented.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos They can do this now by posting numerous .gifs or just pasting links (like they sometimes do). This we cannot avoid. But we can ease life for ourselves.

Nope. We have no video support.
Further I would caution you on how you use a video. Sure you can make a video put it on youtube and link to it. But that whole video should be supplemental to the written answer. If a video helps explain things (and sometimes it does) then in no way am I saying that you should not have a video, just that the video should not be your answer.
And that is why we do not have any kind of video embed support.

Note that this site also supports animated png files:

However, I might be wrong but the support of apng also depends on the browser.

If you ever want to upload videos, but they are in different formats beside gif, you can go to site Ezgif and convert your mp4 videos to gif.
https://ezgif.com
If you have ffmpeg videos, go to this site below.
https://www.online-convert.com
Choose "Video convertor" and select "Convert to MP4." Upload video and hit "Start converson" button. Don't bother with settings below that.
Once you have created MP4 copy, go to Ezgif and convert it to gif.
At Ezgif, you can crop videos, optionally.


text:
2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
To that end, here is how the moderation done here on Blender breaks down by activity over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  2         14
Users destroyed                                  26          0
Users deleted                                    11          0
Users contacted                                   6          0
Tasks reviewed³: Suggested Edit queue           326      2,324
Tasks reviewed³: Reopen Vote queue              103        220
Tasks reviewed³: Low Quality Posts queue        719      2,998
Tasks reviewed³: Late Answer queue              272      1,096
Tasks reviewed³: First Post queue               792      7,222
Tasks reviewed³: Close Votes queue            1,021      6,171
Tag highlight language set                        1          0
Revisions redacted                                5          0
Questions reopened                               35         11
Questions protected                              26         39
Questions migrated                                3          4
Questions flagged⁴                               10        702
Questions closed                                950      1,390
Question flags handled⁴                         210        502
Posts unlocked                                    0          1
Posts undeleted                                  98        148
Posts locked                                      0         41
Posts deleted⁵                                1,239      4,495
Posts bumped                                      0      8,716
Comments undeleted                                4          0
Comments flagged                                  0      1,766
Comments deleted⁶                               745      4,375
Comment flags handled                           329      1,437
Bounties canceled                                 1          0
Answers flagged                                  19      2,929
Answer flags handled                          2,421        527
All comments on a post moved to chat              3          0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Blender without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 3 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 3, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁴ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁵ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁶ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Wishing you all a happy new year...

Nice wrap up post. Is this a new thing you will be doing, or have I just forgotten, or missed it?

I've done it ad-hoc in the past, but never before had the temerity to hit 160 sites at once

I counted 156, some sites were skipped: Monero, iota, Augur...

Should've been 162, but I may have missed something, @user12855. Those three were just last in the queue.

Spanish Language did not get one, for example. Also, you skipped localized SO but posted on the localized Русский язык.

Good eye, @user12855. Removed that one, will do another pass tomorrow & see what else got missed.

For the curious, What is the difference between a deleted user and a “destroyed” user?.

Ok, Spanish is up @user12855. The other two missing ones were Emacs and SFF; I had a bit too liberal a check in place to prevent duplicate posting, so tightening that up allowed the rest to go through.

Shog9 and @user12855 I'll add that there is also some discussion in chat about metas where such post is missing: https://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/1292/2019/1/1 https://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/1292/2019/1/2


text:
Community Promotion Ads — 2019
2019 is here! And with the new year, as usual, comes a new iteration of Community Promotion Ads! Let’s refresh these for the coming year :)
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

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

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

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

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

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

Image requirements

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

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

Does the file size limit double when we make a high DPI image? If not can you use a jpg? (I can not get a good looking png at 150kb)

(Submitted on behalf of the Blender Foundation)

copy/paste from 2018

@GiantCowFilms none of the images on your website seem to render.

@asoftbird I recently upgraded the server to an entirely re-written version of Blend-Exchange. That is probably the cause of the problem. That being said, it seems to me like the image serving is working. Are you still having issues, and if so, can you provide some information about what the response is when you request the image from the servers?

@GiantCowFilms https://i.stack.imgur.com/l2QmD.png This is what I'm seeing; in the source code of your edit you don't actually seem to use the image anywhere as it's commented out.  See this for reference: https://i.stack.imgur.com/o63l2.png
It's not visible on both the current PC and on the one I use at work.
I hope that's enough information.

@asoftbird I did a bunch of checks, and cleared the CDN cache. Everything seems to be normal, and the images are being served correctly by the server. Is it possible you have an add blocker or firewall that blocks cloudflare's CDN?

The topic's about advertising images, though I hadn't considered it might have been the ad blocker just doing it's job. Guess that works well, at least. I'm a dumbass, sorry for wasting your time :)

@asoftbird I just checked with uBlock Origin on and off. It''s the adblocker at work which seems to be picking up "ads" in the URL. This answer,  and Omar's answer are blank, while rest have images with Adblock on.

@asoftbird ankii Thanks for reporting and debugging this issue. I have updated the URLs to ones that won't be blocked by ad blockers.

From 2018.

Just saw this as an ad and noticed it is outdated. Can this be edited to say "Spring, latest open movie?" - since this makes it look like it still hasn't been released.   (I un-upvoted it so the outdated version wouldn't be shown as an ad, but would obviously re-upvote it later)

@X-27 thanks for noticing. (I forgot about it). You already fixed it (ad is not being shown) and I do not think we still need an ad for spring running.

copy/paste from 2018

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


text:
Dubious 'You have reached your question limit' ban leads to counterproductive user behavior
My last two questions were not well accepted, and now I have this ban. But I am trying to make a living out of video editing among other things, so getting my questions answered on time is above any other consideration. Luckily I have no questions for the moment, but if I need something, you bet I will be tempted to do one of the following things (and I bet I am not the first user to think about it)

Registering under another name/address and make my question.
Simply editing one of my older questions, for which I don'g give a s**t any more, and rewriting it with the new question.

Both of them equally counterproductive for the site. Having duplicate profiles / erasing old contents that might be interesting. I have not done any of them for the moment, er, this time, but... I wonder who was the genius that invented this rule. Kudos for him or her. Yes, this is irony. Please change that.

Sorry, but this site is not really a personal help desk, but a repository of high-quality Q&A, and everyone is just a volunteer. So, no one is under obligation to solve your problem within the time constraint. Also, doing any of those could make your account suspended for abusing this platform. Also, Why are questions no longer being accepted from my account?.

Yeah both of your suggestions are exactly what not to do.
Editing an old question into something completely different just does not make sense, and thus is not allowed.
Say you asked about the compositor, got some comments maybe even an answer, but now you need to ask about the VSE. After the editing the compositor question (SE would call that vandalism) none of the comments or answers make any sense anymore.

The more commonly tried loophole is simply to make another account and try again. (PS Did you make a new account in the last few days?)
If that works, because "bans are at a lower level then accounts" you still will get your accounts suspended. Creating a new account to circumvent a question ban is definitely a no-no.
With what not to do out of the way, start by editing your existing questions. (The deleted questions are counting too.) Make then clear, specific, and something that is answerable.
This question is a good one (also happened to be your only positively voted one, voting really does tell you something of the quality...)
This one is not a real question. It is more of a rant with a question mark. We as users have no way of commenting on the distribution of developer's time. "Questions" like this will always be DVed and closed.
Your newest question would be fine with a bit of editing to make it clearer and direct to the point (don't forget the title). I already edited that one for you to give you an idea what I mean.
PS when someone tries to help, gives you advice whether about one of your posts, or in a comment. Don't get an attitude and sarcastically retort. Not only is that counter productive, but it gives other users (like me) a disdain to even try to help you. I was very close to not writing this answer.

Thanks for the good will and the editing. However I think you don't get the purpose of this question (this one, in meta). Not ranting, not attacking, but genuinely pointing out what I consider a counterproductive rule. I appreciate the help, but not the ban, and I am pointing out at how counterproductive it can be. And I know you can identify if I opened another account, but when people really want to circumvent that, they will do it anyway. Just opening the account from the mobile phone network will have a different IP and OS... Again, thanks, but consider my point: that rule is no good.

@Mephisto I get where you are coming from. But think about it from the other side. The reason the question or answer ban is in place is to try to keep some measure of quality on the SE sites. In SE's eye's if you can not make posts that are good, then they don't really want you here. (that is probably over stating it.) They need something to keep quality standers. This is what we have, if you have an alternative then the [meta.se] is the place to suggest it. (be forewarned though, the meta is not a friendly place.)

Unluckily, those somethings designed to keep quality standards, quite often lead to mediocrity. I cannot forget what happened in 2013 with Physics SE. It was brillant. On a daily basis you would have there answers, questions, comments and general interaction of a Nobel Prize, a former Cambridge Professor, research-level scholars and university lecturers, and even some crazy independent maverick genius. But SE started banning and censoring and imposing PC, and in a few weeks all brilliant people went away and since then it is a crappy repository of elementary school questions.


text:
Why I don't get an answer?
I have my two questions pending, don't know why no one is answering. Only comments don't lead to any conclusion! Reading comments and checking if it is right or not and at the end there's no answer, it becomes only a discussion, instead of getting a good answer in Answer Section.
This are my questions:
Rendering without material when executed from command prompt
How to make forced Smoke simulation like spray?
I too answer to the questions which I know... and also expect that when I ask, I will too get an answer from someone. But nothing happens, I am stuck, and I will be stucked for longer time, by finding any other options!

read also What should I do if no one answers my question?

The smoke question shows very little effort, by playing with the settings for smoke simulation you should be able to do this. Include in the question what have you tried that hasn't worked. There are tons of question on smoke.

Hi Yash, have you progressed on your efforts of the second question? Please update it or answer it yourself! This was the valuable advice of the answer you received below. Please help this site grow, by participating and adding not only good questions, but also answer. Even an edit to the question with new findings can help others who are searching for the same solution.

Well maybe nobody knows the answer to your question. You said it yourself, you answer questions that you know the answer to. One of your questions is about rendering using the CLI. There isn't a lot of artists that use the CLI to render, hence the lack of answers. You could try to promote your question by offering a bounty or sharing it through social media. If you still don't get an answer, ask in another forum or IRC and when you find the solution, come back and answer your own question.
As for your second question, let me quote ParallelMayhem's comment to your question:

It probably requires masses of tweaking.

Sometimes the effect you are looking for is achieved by spending a lot of time tweaking and tuning parameters. You have to understand that users won't spend most of their free time trying to achieved the effect you are after. Often you will only be given suggestions and pointers, it is your job to find the setup that replicates the effect based on user's input. And again, when you do, come back and answer your own question.

That's my answer, okay I will look after that.

+1 For the last sentence of each paragraph. I will repeat it again =) Yash, have you progressed in your search, please update your question or add an answer.


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Editing - what's the purpose, where is the limit?
Yesterday I posted an answer to some topic, and someone edited it. Usually, I'm okay with that, sometimes it happens that I write things wrong or destroyed some markdown tags. And as for myself, I did some edits too, in order to correct similar issues in other people's posts, as well as clarifying some newcomers' posts, etc.
But here the edit goes far more away than just correcting issues and giving more precision:

Maybe I'm the only one to see it that way. But to me, this goes too far for an edit.
First, it almost doubles my answer (from 401 characters to 702). If the edit is that massive, either my answer is wrong in the first place, or the editor really has other things in mind. In both cases, maybe the editor should post his own answer with his thoughts.
Second, it doesn't respect my author's intentions: my phrase was "The important hardwares in render times are the CPU and the GPU.". I MEANT to remain concise and clear. The new informations given by the edit are not needed in the first place: the question is only about the effect of RAM on render time. I'm already giving additional stuff which let the OP go further by its own without drowning him into loads of informations. That was my intention.
And now I get back to my title :

What is the purpose of edits?
Where is the limit of what an edit could/should do?

I've found this help page about edits and it says:

Some common reasons to edit are:

to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes
to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it
to correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages
to add related resources or hyperlinks

It partially helps me to answer my questions, but the issue is that it's a community here, everyone should be on the same level.

According to the "rules" on Blender.SEs help, that edit should have been another answer or possibly a comment on your answer. The author of the edit must have misinterpreted the intention/content of your answer. If he disagrees with the answer, he/she should downvote it instead. A simple fix you could do right now, would be to roll back the answer before the revision.

Yup I might just to that. Thanks.

From Help > Editing:

Editing is important for keeping questions and answers clear, relevant, and up-to-date. If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.

and

Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it. Common reasons for edits include:

To fix grammar and spelling mistakes
To clarify the meaning of the post (without changing that meaning)
To include additional information only found in comments, so all of the information relevant to the post is contained in one place
To correct minor mistakes or add updates as the post ages
To add related resources or hyperlinks

Generally when edits stray near "changing meaning" territory and/or are compelled to make leaps in an effort to clarify, it's good etiquette to leave a comment (or utilize the edit message) with some explanation of the reasoning behind the edit. That said, it looks to me like this edit falls more within the "additional information" category, albeit skipping the comment step.
If you feel that this (or any) edit degrades your post, you may either roll it back, or submit additional edits. For example you might wish to incorporate the additional information, but in a manner you see fit.
Note the complete revision history is saved (even rollbacks), so there's no need to worry about irrevocably trampling others' work.
Also note that users who have edited a post will be notified by comments containing @<username>, so if you wish you can ask the edit's author for clarification directly.

As the editor of that particular post I used the following logic: To include additional information so all of the information relevant to the post is contained in one place. No need for another answer, when the main information is already there, but it could be enhanced or clarified, or give the users other elements to solve the question.
Many posts in this site have been growing and changing over time with additional contributions or corrections as the software evolves.
Things to consider: Is the additional information contradicting or adversely affecting the original content? Is the new information erroneous, not true, or does it misrepresent the original intention? Will other users find this new information no useful or cunfusing? If so, you shuold roll it back...
This site works like this: All questions and answers can be edited, corrected and made better. It is a site curated mostly by users

The goal is to make this site more useful for others (and maybe learn something along the way).

If you want to contribute to the effort please do so. Moreover, I would invite you to help this site be better, not only by adding your own answers  but by editing those that you know could be better explained, expanded, that could use further links, images, or whatever you deem correct. Let us learn from your experience and knowledge.
The stated mission, as per the tour

Blender Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about blender.


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How to get a link to an old question that was probably deleted for no answer/no votes?
I'd solved a scripting problem and included it as part of a question here a few years ago. I don't see the question and I'm guessing it was deleted for no answers/no activity or similar. I've searched for the script or blend everywhere on my computer and can't find any trace of it.

old = circa 2016,
possibly contains some of: interpolate, interpolation, bend, extrude, tube, snake, pipe

The question was about how to script the creation of extra polygons to regions of a bent tube mesh only where the bending radius was tight, so as not to have too many total polygons. My example script was a bent tube and there may have been a GIF animation included in the question.
Is there any way that I can find questions that were deleted by the Community bot?

You have six deleted questions. Five you deleted, and one (probably the one you are looking for) was deleted by the community bot.
Here you go: How to make these “orbit tubes” with fewer shapes via script?
In case you wanted to see your other deleted answers:

How to draw or illustrate object's paths in space along with cycles rendering?
Is Blender simply the wrong tool to make this kind of 3D representation?
best source of info on how to navigate within blender
3D viewport rendered from this script still unstable
Higher math functions on generated coordinates to control cycles material nodes - Options?

You can always see your posts, OPs don't need 10k rep and the "View deleted posts" privilege to see your own posts. You do however need a link, it will not show up in your list of questions.

This is excellent, thank you for your time tracking all these down! Yes that's the one, and this/these will save me time remembering what I'd done and getting back up to speed again.

As a regular user, no.
Users with access to moderator tools can only see deleted questions within at most 30 days, or search their own deleted posts with deleted:1 search operator. It's still possible for them... to traverse each question posted in 2016 (from ID 44022 to 70222) manually.
For users without that privilege, they can only see their own questions/answers deleted within 60 days.
Moderators might be able to help you since they can search for any deleted posts.

@uhoh oops, bad copy-paste. But, yes, if it's your own deleted posts, then you can use deleted:1 after getting that privilege.

oh! From comments below here you can see that this has been mentioned to me earlier, but I thought something like an SQL script was necessary. Now I understand that one can simply type deleted:1 in the search bar in any site where one has sufficient privileges. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me!


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Can someone clean up these comments?
Not enough reputation to flag them myself out at least don't see that option.
After typing out "win-win for you print it out and send it to your mom so she can put it in her fridge and marvel at the fine man you turned into" I remembered it's a waste of time taking trolls' bait.
Can someone please remove the exchange between batfinger and myself as it adds no  value to the q&a What's the easiest way to draw this complex plane in Blender?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I removed the comments. No hard feelings I hope. I truly expect batFINGER was trying to help, and not being a troll. Thing is some of us kind of get bothered (myself included) when someone says "I searched everywhere" or "spent days looking for this" etc.
I'm not making excuses for that first comment, it was out of place.
You need 15 reputation (which you now have) to flag. Then it is as simple as clicking the red flag icon on the comment.
flag a comment

Thank you. It's really frustrating trying to figure out how to do something simple in a new program that you've done many times in others. I'm grateful to people who volunteer their time and I try to do that myself when I can. When people use terms like that they know what they're asking is simple or basic but for whatever reason they're stuck and they need help. At one point we're all new at something or just have a block and need help. That's what I try to keep in mind when I read things like that.

You wrote [I'm not making excuses for that first comment, it was out of place].  It seems like you are making excuses when I read the [bothered] word.

@atomicbezierslinger Being bothered and showing it (e.g. by being rude) are two different things. This is further complicated by the ability of different people to have wildly different interpretations of what counts as "being rude". Linking to a search engine is one of those things which may very easily to seem like a tactful reminder to one person, and a blatant passive aggressive troll to another.

@gandalf3 I read what you wrote twice.  It did not impact me in any way because I do not see the relevance of what you wrote.  Perhaps you can explain it better or we can leave it in its current state.

@atomicbezierslinger I meant to show how stating "some of us kind of get bothered" isn't excusing rude behavior (with an addendum to the effect that "rude behavior" is not well defined).

@gandalf3 I hope what you wrote is useful for someone.  My original comment stands.  Perhaps David can respond.  Are you the appointed spokesman for David?


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How do I upload a question with a moving gif image?
How do I upload a question with a moving gif image?
It is inconvenient to have to link only the video of YouTube every time.

Use imgur site and use their embed code (forums) here.


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2019 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

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

Blender is scheduled for an election next week, April 15th 2019.In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.
Here's how it'll work:

Until the nomination phase, (so, until April 15th 2019 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.
We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.
If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.
This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at currently.
At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election.
Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, typically containing 10 questions in total.
This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

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

Being the first public announcement about this election I want to say that the current three of us mods are all well and staying on as mods. The site has grown ever so much and we just need the extra help.

Great to hear you are all well. Once voted in are you a moderator for life?

@batFINGER give or take, just be active and want the responsibility.

If elected moderator, how much of a priority would you make it to regularly do reviews, to help solve the problem we currently have where there are several dozen posts in the close vote review queue at any given time?

How much time can you dedicate to moderation tasks?

Rep, badges, flags, candidate score and the like are all measures of your familiarity with BSE. How familiar do you consider yourself with the SE system?

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

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

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

How familiar are you with blender (2.8 and prior)?

Which Blender Open Movie is/was your favorite, and why?

I think we should condense these type of questions into one say rapid-fire type that could be attached at the end to get a quick summary of the candidate.


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2023: a year in moderation

It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.
So as we say goodbye to 2023 (and January 2024… ahem) and move into 2024, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Blender over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community User¹
Community²

All comments on a post moved to chat
16
0
0

Answer flags handled
1,233
244
0

Answers flagged
28
704
744

Bounties canceled
0
0
0

Comment flags handled
244
65
10

Comments deleted⁸
1,411
28
2,599

Comments flagged
3
1
315

Comments undeleted
54
0
0

Escalations to the Community Manager team
2
0
0

Posts bumped
0
8,199
0

Posts deleted⁷
1,185
4,542
1,736

Posts locked
0
76
0

Posts undeleted
32
0
172

Posts unlocked
0
0
0

Question flags handled⁶
251
175
0

Questions closed
2,583
42
2

Questions flagged⁶
73
12
381

Questions merged
0
0
0

Questions migrated
3
0
0

Questions protected
5
29
0

Questions reopened
185
0
1

Questions unprotected
0
0
0

Revisions redacted
0
0
0

Tag highlight language set
0
0
0

Tag synonyms created
3
0
0

Tag synonyms proposed
2
0
0

Tags merged
1
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue
2,484
0
1,065

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue
816
0
1,064

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue
3,310
0
4,055

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue
293
0
693

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts" queue
314
0
319

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue
165
0
103

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue
431
85
389

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue
0
0
0

User banned from review
0
0
0

User review-bans lifted early
0
0
0

User suspensions lifted early
0
0
0

Users contacted
0
0
0

Users deleted
1
0
0

Users destroyed⁴
927
0
0

Users suspended³
1
41
0

Footnotes
¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² This refers to the membership of Blender without diamonds next to their names.
³ The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
⁴ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁵ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2022: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2024! ^_^

Wow, there really were 927 spam accounts that had to be destroyed ;-)

@quellenform That really shows the burden you've been silently carrying all this time. Great work, thanks for the commitment

I was gonna say the same. that's like 2.5 per day. not massive, but not tame either.


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How to rotated individual instance objects in geo nodes
I would like the skateboards to rotate as seen in the two images. However, I want them to rotate one after the other. In the image with the value, you can see that they all have the same rotation value. Here, I would like the second board to start rotating only when the first board has completed 10% of its 360-degree rotation. I have tried using GeoNodes, but I have not achieved the desired result.
Thank you in advance for your help.

Hello and Welcome. The Meta site is for questions about this site, the network, moderation, rules and how they work. For regular questions about Blender usage please use Main instead.


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Are questions about Sheepit on topic? We do have a tag for it, after all
We, myself included, just closed this question about SheepIt because it's off topic, but I think that was a mistake.  Before I propose reopening, I want to discuss why I think it should be, to see what the sense of the community is.
The problem with Sheepit, is that we have a tag for it, and there are existing answered questions that weren't closed as out of bounds.  For that reason, I think it fits the rules about being on topic.
If it's off topic, then how should we deal with the existing questions?  If they're on topic, than shouldn't this one also be?

As far as I'm concerned I'm fine with questions about third party addons or services even commercial ones,  as long as they related to Blender and the question is about regular operation or learning how to employ them. If it is trouble shooting issues, broken functionality, bugs, service outages or any type of malfunction that is clearly unintentional, then I'm of the opinion that it is the job of the authors to give support. Especially if it is a commercial addon or subscription service the user is paying for, then support from the creators is to be expected.

I'm promoting the answer in the comments to what I believe should be the general rule about whether add-ons are on topic. Duarte Farrajota Ramos commented from their personal viewpoint, but I think the answer is a good general answer.  I've paraphrased a bit to make it so.
Questions about third party addons or services even commercial ones, are on topic as long as

they are related to Blender; and
the question is about regular operation or learning how to employ them.

If the question involves

trouble shooting issues,
broken functionality,
bugs in the addon,
service outages, or
any type of malfunction that is clearly unintentional,

it is the job of the authors to give support. (and thus off-topic here.) Especially if it is a commercial addon or subscription service the user is paying for, then support from the creators is to be expected.


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Workflow question: How to specify other StackExchange when closing because the question is on the wrong exchange?
I just tried to vote to close a question because it needs to be migrated to another site.  I got as far as this popup:

but the question belongs on the Python stackexchange, not blender.meta.
Is there some way to specify other sites in the popup, or are we limited to "not a blender question"?

As far as I know only moderators and site admins get to pick a different community to migrate questions to.
The dialog I started seeing after becoming a moderator changed, presenting a search box with actual listing of Stack network sites we can pick from.

From my freshly made research on the subject this has already been proven to be troublesome, with many sites being overwhelmed by incoming questions rejected from other sites and becoming an easy bin for sweeping away unwanted or poorly formed questions.
I can see this being abused and quickly becoming a pass the buck game, where we shove questions away to unsuspecting target sites without much thought, potentially flooding them with off topic questions.
I speculate the list was once populated with other sites relevant for our frequent off topic reasons, but is now featuring only meta; probably because our site is specific to using Blender the 3D software package, and no other "tangentially related" topics with a valid relevant network site were deemed worthy of being permanently featured in that list.
Of course one can argue that sites like,  Game Development,  Stack Overflow, or even  Graphic Design are sometimes relevant, but this was probably abused in the past.
This may also prove an unwelcoming experience to the inexperienced OP which unexpectedly "travels through a magic portal" and quickly finds his question migrated to a completely different "hostile world" where an innocent question gets massively downvoted on a dedicated site where beginner questions are poorly received.
Since I'm also often not that familiar with the rules and valid topics of other communities, I prefer to point the OP to other sites through comments, rather that do it automatically.


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Unupvote after many days, no edits were made in the meantime
I've just been dinged for an upvote reverse on this question as witnessed by this summary

Earlier, the downvote showed in the time line and I've had the points deducted from my reputation but now it's not:

Does anybody know what happened / is happening?

I don't have an answer for this, only maybe an admin will know. My only possible explanation is that either the rep recalc happened at a later time then the unupvote, or the vote was not yet locked for some unknown reason

Both the vote reversal and the rep recalculation happened yesterday, more than month after the last edit.  Can you confirm that the vote should have been locked after that much time?  (I'm suspecting that this is a bug somehow, and I want to be very sure before I take it to meta.)

"Can you confirm that the vote should have been locked after that much time?" No, I can't confirm that. It is supposed to be in the order of minutes as far as I know, but I don't know how many, nor if there are other circumstances where it can be extended for one reason or another

Thanks.  I guess I'll just report it on meta as a bug and see what happens.

I don't think it is a bug, but let me know what comes of it. Or share a link so I can follow it, I'm curious as well.

I posted this on Meta as a question and the answer is that

The vote disappearing from the answer's timeline display is not a bug, but

It might be confusing but I guess it's status-bydesign.

From a comment on the accepted answer, paraphrased, votes are unlocked by an edit and never relocked until they are changed again.

So the conclusion is "not a bug".


text:
How do you propose an edit that changes a tag from a synonym to a separate tag?
I've come across edit-mode. It is similar to object-mode, but rather than being a separate tag, it is currently a synonym for editing.  since Edit Mode is a specific mode that Objects can be in, it's no really the same as editing, which can cover editing topics other than those applying to objects.
We can discuss whether it's too late to change the tag from a synonym, and perhaps I should ask a question specifically to do that; but for this question, I'm focusing on the general case of editing synonyms.
EDIT: clarification in response to an answer.
So the question is, "in general, if one wanted to edit a tag that is already a synonym for an existing tag, is it possible to modify the tag wiki so they are no longer synonyms, and if it is, what is the process for the Blender StackExchange?"

The answer to your general question is that only mods can swap/delete synonym relationships. Relevant MSE post: What are tag synonyms and merged tags? How do they work?

I've reversed the tag synonym between edit and edit-mode.
Reason being edit tag sounds like a meta tag to me, it is generic and tells little about what a post may be about, since technically everything you do in Blender may be considered "editing" in some form, including everything ranging from video-editing, to editing a mesh object, encompassing editing a material, texture or a node tree.
The edit-mode tag on the other hand has its purpose and a specific concise meaning in this context. Being an actual mode in Blender you can be in, and one only certain objects can be put in, gives us an actual scope for questions relating to that mode, that may have specific key combinations, available tools, operators, or techniques.
As for editing synonym tags, I don't think you can, being synonyms and all it means that whatever you describe the target of the synonym with, should also apply seamlessly to the source, if they don't its is probably not a good synonym relationship.
If the tags were merged after creating the synonym definition then there should be no questions tagged with the synonym tag anymore, otherwise if the two coexist and there are questions with both tags, then you should be able to edit them independently, as far as I know.

Is it possible to make it so neither is a synonym of the other?  I've had an edit accepted to the [tag:object-mode] tag to make it reflect the manual and if I offer such an edit for [tag:edit-mode] now, to make it consistent, [tag:edit] would lose it's general meaning.

That was the intended outcome, the edit tag should not exist on its own, and is for all intents and purposes a synonym of edit-mode. That is my opinion at least, not sure what the rest of the community has to say about it. If someone disagrees please do voice your opinions as another answer

To be clear the edit tag doesn't really exist at the moment as a standalone tag, nor should it. It has been replaced by edit-mode, and has been merged with it, so the two are effectively one tag and edit tag can't be created again.


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Proposal to finish cleaning up the "Modes" tags - completed
Final Version as implemented.
Proposal
I've gone through the various tags related to 3D Viewport Object Modes and with help, the object-mode and edit-mode tag wiki entries are consistent with each other and with the manual.  As of 2.93 there are 7 other modes, and I'd like to propose making tags consistent for each of them.  Here's my first take on this.  I'd like feedback.

Sculpt: currently has sculpt with no tag wiki entry.  I propose changing that to sculpt-mode if possible and making the entry consistent.
Vertex-Paint: currently has vertex-paint with no tag wiki entry. I propose changing that to vertex-paint-mode if possible and making the entry consistent.
Weight paint: currently has no mode tag.  I propose adding weight-paint-mode and making the entry consistent.
Texture paint: currently has textures as a synonym for texturing.  I propose adding texture-paint-mode and making the entry consistent.
Particle edit: currently has no tag.  I propose adding particle-edit-mode and making the entry consistent.  (Note: particle edit mode is about things like combing hair and isn't a general particle meta topic.)
Pose: currently has pose-mode.  I propose no change, but I've submitted an edit to make the full entry consistent.
Draw: currently has drawmodes.  This one is problematic, because it is being used for a wide range of drawing topic, but draw-mode is specific to grease pencil.  I propose adding draw-mode and making the entry consistent. Clarification:  As part of the overhaul of Grease Pencil, newer versions of Blender no longer rely on grease pencil tools in other modes but now has a separate mode (that I would have called grease pencil) that the developers decided to call draw mode.  This is like Pose mode in that it is specific to one subset of Blender things, in this case Grease Pencil.

By "making the entry consistent" I mean using boilerplate text for both the user guidance and long description, along the lines of

Use this tags for questions about operations performed on objects when they are in MODENAME-mode, rather than any of the other modes, such as edit, sculpt and weight painting.

for the user guidance (replacing 'sculpt' or 'weight painting' in their cases)
and

Blender has different tools available for manipulating objects in the 3D Viewport editor, depending on what mode the object is in.  One of these is MODENAME mode. The manual describes MODENAME mode as

[insert the manual entry for MODENAME]

This tag should be used for questions that are specifically about the operations that can be performed on an object when it is in object mode.

Thanks for all the recent efforts cleaning up all the tags and writing up wikis. Looks like your picking up Ray Mairlot's work

You're welcome.  I wouldn't say 'picking up', as much as 'helping', at least I hope it's helpful.  I have a certain amount of time / day for Blender Stack Exchange.  If I can't find questions to answer, I spend it trying to be helpful in small ways.

Something helpful, great!

Some of these I'm fine with others I have doubts because they are not areas of Blender I'm very familiar with.

Sculpt: as far as I know all sculpting in Blender is made in sculpt-mode so I suppose this one is fine to make a synonym from sculpt to sculpt-mode

Vertex-Paint: Since we have vertex-colors for non paint mode questions I suppose it is fine as well.

Weight paint: There are more ways to interact with vertex weights than through paint, live vertex groups or modifier. Are all Weight paint questions really related to Weight paint mode, do we really want to do this? Not disagreeing, just an area I'm not so familiar with.

Texture paint: This one I disagree, texture may have many meanings in Blender, from image textures, procedural textures, texture nodes, modifier/particle legacy textures, texture painting. Not only should texture-paint coexist with texture, since they are not necessarily synonyms, texture painting may also happen through the image editor, and as far as I know that doesn't require being in paint mode, or does it?

Particle edit: this one is fine I think

Draw: Draw is another meta-tag I think, it is very ambiguous on its own. Is it pertaining to drawing with grease pencil, or the annotation tool? Bezier curve drawing? Programming lingo GPU drawing, perhaps viewport shading modes? Currently we only have drawmodes, I think the tag draw should not exist at all, and drawmodes should probably be renamed and turned into a synonym of something along the lines of viewport-shading. Either we make draw a synonym of draw-mode, or grease-pencil or annotation.

Let us know what the rest of the community thinks.

About 3: It seems to me that the other ways to interact with vertex weights aren't usually thought of as 'painting', and, as far as I know, the only way to 'paint' vertex modes is in weight paint mode.  About 6: I should clarify the proposal.  As part of the great grease pencil overhaul, instead of relying on tools in other modes to do grease pencil drawing there's now a mode dedicated specifically to it.

Regarding 6, should we make draw a synonym for grease-pencil?, or should it be for drawing-mode? Then have a separate tag for annotation tool and rename drawmodes to viewport-shading?


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I suddenly appear unable to suggest tag entry edits. Does anyone know why?
According to this question there are three reasons to ban someone from making tag edit suggestions and two of them definitely don't apply:

because a large number of recent suggested edits by you were rejected  - Doesn't apply; I haven't had any suggestions rejected at all.

you triggered the anonymous insta-ban filter - All of my edits have been logged in. None are anonymous.

That only leaves

a moderator manually banned you

or the possibility that there's a 4th reason not given in that answer.  Does anyone know why I can't propose edits?

I believe there is a limit (5) to how many proposed tag/ tag wiki edits can be pending before the system blocks further edits. I've approved them, you should be able to continue editing now.

Ah, thanks for the info and the approvals.  I was sure there was an option 4, but I thought I only had two pending.

Relevant MSE post: Rate limit suggested edits

That's slightly misleading, in that if you are at 4 and submit an edit for both a summary and its tag wiki at the same time you end up with 6.

This answer is from Timaroberts in the comments:

I believe there is a limit (5) to how many proposed tag/ tag wiki edits can be pending before the system blocks further edits.


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Massive issue with moderators
I had originally decided to drop this and just not come back to these forums after the way I was treated, but something badly needs to be done. I tried asking the same question multiple times in different ways. Every time I gave all information in detail about the issue I was happening. No matter what I wrote, the moderators kept closing my question. They even went as far as telling me that I wouldn't receive any help with my question if I asked it elsewhere. I asked on other forums and received an answer within the hour. Meanwhile the same moderators keep allowing completely irrelevant questions like "does all water return to the ocean", which has absolutely nothing to do with blender. They also allow question with so many misspelled words that it is barely legible. I asked another question about another problem I was having which was also immediately closed. The response was to report it as a bug. The question was not even given a chance. There was a good chance that it was something I was doing wrong, and it turned out it was. It was something I was doing, and had nothing to do with a bug, but because they closed my question, it took me 4 days to figure out what was going on. I tried getting help for these problems and received canned messages from the contact form. I tried asking for help on here and was harassed and lied to by moderators. This completely defeats the purpose of these forums.

hello, could you link the original questions you are talking about?

Please link the questions you posted here so we can see what you wrote. I also was very angry about some moderators here…don’t be angry. They are not worth your anger. There are a lot of „good“ people here, but I can completely understand your feelings.

Maybe there are some „good“ moderators who start checking what „some“ moderators are doing here and how they „poison“ this forum.

Don't take it personally; first of all you need to know that stack sites are not regular discussion forum but question and answer one.
For this sites it is require every new thread to be started with a question and every response to that question to be an attempt at answering it. As stated HERE
Because of that, the questions needs to be clear and thoroughly explained, this is not only for the description but also for the attached images and files. Sometimes you could make an good description but it could be hard to imagine your workflow without images to support the description, other times it is hard even with the images and descriptions, and you might need to add a Blend file that contains the issue, and it is always recommended to keep all those thing until you get an answer (if someone has it) because it could be hard for you to test that answer if you don't have the original files.
When a question is closed it's based on a vote system made by other users with enough reputation to do that and it's nothing personal. Some people could vote to close your question and post a comment on why they think the question should be closed. There are a lot of questions here and sometimes also happens that misleading questions are still open because probably no user saw them at the moment and moderators with the power to close those question probably did not notice all of them (Human error, nothing personal), this is why it is important to report those if you see one.
And there is something else and the reason for me to say is not personal, internet is an anonymous place and as we all know, there are a lot of people that can't express themselves in a polite way or they don't want to because no one can't see them.
Yes, this site is very strict compare to other sites but I think it's just to keep the web as a question and answer without much discussions in order for future users to get the answer that they need.
Happens to all of us, but don't let that experience make you think the entire site is full of the same people.

I don't have the original question because I went though and deleted all of my content and deleted my account. I don't plan on returning until this situation is fixed.
"Because of that, the questions needs to be clear and thoroughly explained"

As previously stated, my question was well written and included all details.

"When a question is closed it's base on a vote system made by other users with enough reputation to do that and it's nothing personal. Some people could vote to close your question and post a comment on why they think the question should be closed"

There were no votes on my question at any time. There were however 2 comments by people trying to help. I also did ask my question on other forums and received an answer within the hour.

"There are a lot of questions here and sometimes also happens that misleading questions are still open because probably no user saw them at the moment and moderators with the power to close those question probably did not notice all of them (Human error, nothing personal), this is why it is important to report those if you see one."

There were responses to the question I saw "does all water return to the ocean", which means it was seen enough for it to be closed, if not deleted.

You keep saying "Don't take it personal" and said "Happens to all of us, but don't let that experience make you think the entire site is full of the same people."

I didn't take it personal. I saw a major issue and I made a statement about it, that was not unfounded and not without valid reason. This site has too many of the same kind of people or this would not have happened. As I said before, something badly needs to be done. This issue defeats the purpose of this site.

@JustMe: Do not let other people frustrate you. There are always a small percentage of people who will annoy or will try to annoy you. Maybe it is intentionally maybe it is because that kind of people have no self reflection. The problem is: if the "good" people give up here, the "bad" ones will take over and the forum will be quickly dead. It's like that: If all live like "the wiser gives in" then we will be ruled by idiots.


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Let's add a tag for [metaballs]
Why is there no tag for metaballs? Metaballs are a matter of discussion like anything else, and a very distinctive topic.

Added: Why does Blender convert ALL of the metaballs to mesh and not only the selected object?

While you couldn't yet create your own tags, I thought it would be useful to point out that there is a privilege earned at 1500 reputation Create New Tags.
Anyone who has 1500+ reputation can create a tag simply by

Enter[ing] a new tag with your question and it will be created. When creating your new tag, bear in mind that tags ...

must be no longer than 35 characters
must use the character set a-z 0-9 + # - .
on some sites, new tags will be automatically culled and removed from the system if they are not used by at least 1 other question in a 6 month period.
meta tags, tags that cannot stand alone as the only tag on a question, are not allowed.

In addition to creating a tag, you will create a tag wiki entry that is initially blank.  Anyone can propose an edit to a tag wiki, but you have to have a reputation of 20,000 or more to approve such an edit.
This answer contains a good discussion on how to edit a tag wiki entry.

Oh thank you! Now wondering why somebody downvoted my question. Poor frustrated people...


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Way to set dark mode for https://blender.stackexchange.com/?
Is there a way to set the web interface to dark mode for https://blender.stackexchange.com/? I don't see that option in Edit Profile > Preferences. Thanks.

No, I don't think there is a dark theme for this site. Since we are using a "custom style", one would have to be handcrafted, I suppose

For questions about this site and how it works, please use https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com instead

As far I am aware there is not, some info on main meta here: Plans for dark mode for all Stack Exchange sites

The only option available so far is to use custom style sheets via addons like Stylus or alike, there're even styles written specifically for SE to be used with addon. This is probably going to be the only option for a while


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How do I ask a question about the effects that a modifier will have on geometry without answers being "opinion based"?
How do I modify a question that asks about the effects of applying modifiers so that the answer will be "fact" based rather than "opinion" based.
I'm uncertain how a question that asks what effect something has isn't fact based when it's an observable and repeatable process.

To make any question objective and based on facts give a us specific use case, with an objective scenario and an concrete example.
If necessary illustrate it with images and state your end goal.
Also avoid phrasing questions with "Whats the best (...)?", "Should I (...)?" or "How would you (...)?".
Preferred phrasing is "For specific purpose X would A or B give more adequate results?" or "What are the advantages or disadvantages of method A versus method B?"

I tried that, solidifying a model for 3D printing, or creating a prop with no moving parts. Both create fixed geometry in accordance with an algorithm. But for reasons that I don't fully understand this is considered opinion rather than fact even though it's a machine doing it. I think that maybe somebody is using a bot to do edits rather than doing it manually, and it's just picking up on key words. I've had this before a couple of times.

Looking back at your question queue there seems to be a history of vague questions without any specific examples or concrete end goals. Quoting JeffUK in https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/240845 "I don't think there is a specific answer to this question, it depends on the model (...)" or see my comment at https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/241349 .

Since no further details have been provided in the meantime your questions remain on hold until more details allow answering objectively. You can always edit your posts to get them reopened, see https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions and https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions

This is typical, even when I ask for guidance on how to modify a question all I get is the same vague non-answers. How much clearers can "for 3D printing" be, do I need to specify the exact model of 3D printer?

@AaarghZombies In cases like this, it always helps to provide a specific example you have in mind that is representative of the problem you're trying to solve. This helps to get specific answers.

@AaarghZombies: Although i also don't like if questions are closed too quickly i have to admit that your question doesn't have much information at all. They don't ask only for the model of the printer but for the model/character/thing you want to print. And you just referring here to the model of the printer. So try to answer or make clear what you mean (just because it is obvious for you does not mean it is obvious for everybody else) and if you got comments like this (from those who want to help you) you should answer them or improve/edit your question.

@AaarghZombies: and asking " what is the most effective order" is opinion based. Why? because everybody has a different knowledge level. If a guy is e.g. familiar with animation nodes an animation nodes solution with 3 nodes would need 1 minute for that. If you never heard of animation nodes you might already fail just to install animation nodes....

@Chris. There are objective standards by which topology can be judged, so by definition it's not opinion based unless you specifically ask for it to be.


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Blend-Exchange not accepting v3.x files
I tried to upload a 3.0 version blend file into blend-exchange and got the message "All uploaded files must be in the blend file format".   It appears to not recognize post 2.93 file formats.

You should probably ask in Blender Meta

@Emir I'm guessing that Meta is some insider-known website of which I'm not familiar.  Do you have a link where I can Q&A my problem ?

@Emir thanks for your help on this !

@Timaroberts -- suggest to try again after cache cleaning perhaps. What "cache" are you referring to?  Cookies?  I just tried again with a simple 3.0 file and still no love.

What happens if you try with another Browser?

Great ... I thought I'm the only one :) https://github.com/GiantCowFilms/Blend-Exchange/issues/56#issuecomment-1030765447

I've disabled blend file validation for now, resolving this issue. See https://github.com/GiantCowFilms/Blend-Exchange/issues/56 for details.
If someone is handy with PHP and wants to take a crack at handling the new blend file format changes, I'd love a community contribution. It will probably be a little while before I can do this work myself.

Yet again today, it was not accepting my files :-(

I just encountered this error when trying to upload a compressed file from the question Geonodes: when creating an instance, get index from instancer
Turning off compression solved the issue.
Just tried again with the compressed file:

compressed as by an external program like winzip?  has that ever worked?

@MartyFouts compressed as in the setting in the save dialog, which I always used to save space on the server: https://i.imgur.com/EchlR84.png

The developers changed the compression algorithm for 3.0  blend-exchange needs an update to be able to handle the new compression algorithm.  Perhaps @GiantCowFilms is already working on it.

Thanks for info! I am going to try and get a fix out for this as soon as I can (my life is pretty hectic right now). If someone wants to take a shot at this I am also happy to accept a pull request.

Thanks Markus ... great to know :)

@GiantCowFilms Thank you for looking into this once you are able to. Blend-Exchange is indispensable to us. :-)

As of this afternoon, I was able to upload a 3.0 file, using Chrome on Windows 10. I then went to the Blend-Exchange github repository and verified that there was no change made.  Glancing at the source, it looks like Blend-Exchange does very minimal checking to see if a file is really a blend file; so I suspect you ran into a server internal glitch that got reported incorrectly.
Are you still having the problem?  If so, I recommend filling out their Help request.

Thanks Marty am going to enter a request.  Can upload only pre-3.0 files, same in Firefox and Chrome on Win-10.

Okay while filing a request I just got "There was an error trying to send your message. Please try again later.".  I'm chucking and not going to pull my hair out.  Ah it worked the second time I tried.  Whew!

That's very weird.  Basically all they do is look at the header to see if it looks like a blender file, so I don't know why you're getting errors.

It just started working for 3.0 files for me now, perhaps about 30 minutes after I posted the problem report.  Perhaps coincidental -- don't know .

@james_t Were you able to successfully upload the file? I'm guessing this may have been a temporary issue (The 26mb file size might have been a bit much for my server). When I have some free time I will take a look and see if I can figure out what went wrong.

@GiantCowFilms -- thanks for maintaining this for us!   I had also tried with an almost empty startup file 0.1 Mb and had failures.   Thankfully it cleared for me.  Its very useful.

The 3.0 upload error has re-appeared since yesterday. @GiantCowFilms

@GiantCowFilms  I keep intermittently running into this problem; again today I got the same error message.   Why does this keep happening?

Today's error du jour is:

@GiantCowFilms -- yet more issues.


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Anyone in favour of adding an asset-browser tag?
Granted the asset browser is not the shiniest addition to 3.0 but it's definitely shaping up to be really nice in 3.1, and I predict a bunch of questions arising in the few coming months.
There is a tag for pretty much every single editor so I don't see why we couldn't add this one. I know I can go ahead and create it myself but I wanted to test the waters before doing so.
There is an asset tag but I feel it's not generic enough for the asset browser, since it also involves managing catalogs, libraries, etc.

Definitely worth it. I've tagged a bunch of existing questions with [tag:asset-browser] so it should already be available and show up in suggestions. Feel free to tag any relevant posts with it. A wiki and description is also welcome.

Great ! Thanks for the feedback :)

tag wiki updated

Thanks of @MartyFouts the tag keeper

Needs a 'status-completed' tag?  Unsurprisingly, only moderates can add that tag.


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Add version tags
Can tags be added for major releases of blender? For example version2 and version3. There are different features and some questions are only relevant in one and some questions have different answers depending on the version.

"Some questions are only relevant in one" That is incorrect, question are always relevant (save for new features), it is answers that may get outdated, in which case they should either be edited into current versions, or an entirely new answer should be posted. This has been brought up quite few times already https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-should-be-the-version-tags https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2696/argument-for-allowing-the-2-8-tag https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2565/was-2-8-tag-created-intentionally-or-should-we-remove-it

This has been brought up quite a few times before, and comes up again every now and then. There has been lots of discussions and back and forth about it, and there seems to be a lack of consensus about whether to have version tags or not. Some moderators are against it some in favor and nothing decisive ever comes out of it.
This should be a community decision along with other moderators and I won't offer any resistance if we decide by majority in favor of having version tags.
I'll start by saying that I can totally see how these are useful for someone looking for answers for the shiny-newly-released-version, or how someone else stuck with older hardware can be looking for solutions specifically for Blender-of-Yore version 1.XX.
I oppose version tags however for the following reasons, mostly related to potentially alienating good content and maintenance burden with little benefit.

Outdated answers should be updated rather than discarded, if significant changes happened that warrant an entirely new solution then new answers should be posted, rather than post a new question, which leads us to:
Version tags will worsen information scattering. A user searching for solutions will have to visit 2, 3 maybe 10 questions all trying to solve the same issue, rather than visit a single comprehensive post with all solutions in a single place.
Maintenance wise, for moderators and community members helping with review queues, it also will be harder to gather a collection of memorable easy to find "canonical posts" with comprehensive answers covering all possible solutions and high vote count to close questions as duplicates of.
The way the site works we tag questions not answers, and questions should ideally be timeless and remain always valid regardless of version. This can have many adverse implications like:
Limiting the scope of the answers. There may be relevant answers that still address your issue and are not version exclusive.
No one stops you from post an (updated) answer for say 2.8 on an older post, nor posting a solution that also works in older versions (exclusively or mutually) in a post for a new version. Now the question tags are misleading, or alienating.
Blender changes rapidly but many question for older versions still apply today, hiding away potentially relevant content for users filtering by tags. Some times updating a single keyboard shortcut or menu entry will suffice.
Planned obsolescence: By version tagging a post we are intentionally labeling an expiry date on answers. Say shiny new Blender 3.0 is out everyone wants relevant answers for new Geometry nodes. Questions tagged 3.0 now are highly desirable, but tomorrow 3.1 will be out and in two years when 4.XX series are the shiny new toy there may be many things about Geometry Nodes or Asset Libraries that haven't really changed all that much, but since no one searches for obsolete 3.0 tag anymore there may be high quality content being ignored because of unnecessary tags.
Some propose major version tags only, for bigger development jumps like from 2.49 to 2.5, or 2.79 to 2.8 or 2.93 to 3.0. I'd say it may some times be fuzzy where major versions are really relevant. From 2.93 to 3.0 a lot changed for say Geometry Nodes for example, but for most other areas answers are still valid. I bet barely anyone still searches for 2.8 tags these days, let alone pre-2.5. Version tags are most useful in the short-ish period after a major release, and become mostly irrelevant months after when the dust settles and new answers crop up; again exacerbating the maintenance burden for a limited benefit.
For all other cases of newly introduced features that didn't exist before, or for the case where users may be searching for solutions relevant to newer versions only, I suppose mentioning the version number or the name of a new feature in the body of the question will suffice. I bet there aren't any questions tagged Geometry Nodes for version 2.8 now.

Don't take my words has written in stone though, again I'd be entirely open to allowing version tags if the rest of the community makes a convincing case backed with strong arguments for it.
I'd definitely like to see what take on this other current moderators have, and I'd encourage every other community member to post answers pro and con so we can make a solid decision.
Vote away, may the amount of points on the answers be the deciding factor.

I agree with respect to question tags; but I wonder what you think about the possibility of answer tags, if StackExchange every implemented such a thing as described in Version labels for answers.  Besides adding work for moderators  and volunteers what other objections would there be to such a system?

I see those much more positively, because they are actually applied to answers, not questions. They may still have undesirable effects for untagged answers, or misused version tags, but other than the maintenance overhead answer tags do have the potential of better informing users. I can see those being useful if they ever see the day of light.

Independent of the consensus now, I think we should wait for "Version labels for answer" to propagate, if it does, before we do anything specific about version numbers.  I don't think it's a good idea to introduce version tags if version labels are forthcoming, as having both will be confusing.
If version labels propagate then we should discuss how they would be most useful on blender stackexchange.

Ooh nice. Of course it'll add to the overhead of the community and moderators work, but it might help reduce data duplication ? Provided newcomers learn to use the feature (which I'm not very hopeful for...) or if it's really trivial in its use (which I'm not so sure about either :p), so wait & see I guess

I think it's not a good idea for BSE. They would only complicate edits, and further confuse new users who do not know how to use tags in the first place. I know that I have lost count of how many times I have seen questions tagged with something akin to  blender-id blender-internal-render-engine blender-osm because the user assumed that was how to ask a question about blender.
I think that continuing to use workflow related tags make more sense, as they  inform answerers of the problem and potential solution as well as which version is most likely being used.
As of this writing, there are 89,605  questions, and only 389 of them have 3.0 in the search results, so I have hard time seeing the benefit of version-3.0 or version-2.7x orversion-2.8+ or similar tags
All of that said, I'm interested to hear what the rest of the community has to say on the matter.

fair point but blender 3 did just get released this month.


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How do I create a Prosthetics?
I posted How do I de-construct a model created by someone else? two days ago.  That post was closed.  I edited the original post to explain that this was for a prosthetic finger.  That post remains closed.
Prosthetics are important to those who have lost part of a limb.
Is there a way to have a post re-opened?

The .stl and .blend files can be downloaded from https://temp.foxping.com/

what did you mean by "how do I remove the internals"? Are there some inner vertices in the mesh? is it the problem you are trying to fix? Maybe share your file

Hi ttom "Is there a way to have a post re-opened?" Certainly, post are reopened when the original close reasons are solved. Could you please clarify in detail what your issue is, and what you are trying to achieve, possibly supported by some accompanying screenshots with the [edit] button above the question. Don't post as a comment or ask a new question, editing will automatically put it up for review so it can be reopened.

The preferred way, I believe, to share files is to post them on blend-exchange. (How to add a blend file)

Hi, the url Blend-Exchange is asking for is your original question, which once edited and made more clear as requested will be put up for review to be reopened.

I've posted the same question about prosthetics two times. It has been closed / migrated both times. Should I post a third time?  If so, where should I post it?  Uploading a file has no value as both post have been closed.

Please just edit the original question on the main site. As has already been said, "closed "is not a permanent state so long as edits are made that make a question answerable and clear (or on-topic in other cases) Reposting will only create a duplicate which may get closed again, which would not be helpful for you.

I don't know what to change. The intent is to create a prosthetic. What else is needed?