text:
Borderline question? Self-answer?
Here I'm not sure if it would have been better to post the examples as a self-answer instead of including them in the question.
Actually I'm not sure if that question is an appropriate question at all, since it might or might not have a definite answer. A definite answer might come as in "hey there already are fixed rules for that, here's the link"; however if there aren't (yet) such rules there would probably not be a definitive answer, hence it might be more suited for a CW maybe?
I don't know, that's why I'm asking here.

The question does not meet the guidelines in our new FAQ.
I feel it does not pass the criteria:

avoid asking subjective questions where …

your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ >for ______, what do you use?”
there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”

Deleting your answers would not save it.  I think it should be broken up into discrete problems that can be solved and written with a more neutral POV.  Example:

In Starcraft, the random starting positions can lead to one person sandwiched
between two others while the fourth player has 2 planets to himself.  Has it been your experience that each player still has a roughly equal chance at victory in this situation?
If not, have you tried any house rules to address this?  How did the house rule work out in actual play?

A successful subjective question should deal in facts that can be backed up with a reference or personal experiences.  When asking for house rules, be sure to ask only for rules that people have actually tried!
Asking people to propose anything that tickles their fancy does not lead to quality answers.  Rather, if they have not created/used a house rule for a particular situation, that person should be encouraged to vote/answer as to whether they think a house rule is needed and to "back it up" with actual play experience.
FYI - Community Wiki is not a solution for very many problems.  It should only be used for resources that need to be editing by the community at large.

Ooh, good idea splitting them! I'll definitely do that (sooner or later)

I think the question overall is good, although I would have added what aspect of combat, research, and starting positions you don't like. The argument you advance against them holds against any "house rules" question, and I think those are just about the most interesting questions there are on the site. Yes, they're subjective, but they can definitely be good subjective. Community wiki is only applied to some very specific situations.
To answer your other question, I would personally have preferred self-answers to part-of-the-question answers, but I don't know if the community agrees.


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Answering opinion based questions....
For questions in which the requester is asking for an opinion, such as this one, is it permissible to add your opinion even if it's similar or identical to another answer?

If it's very similar or identical, then no - upvote the relevant answer.

If you think you can write a similar yet better answer, by all means - go for it!  The community will judge the two similar answers over time.  Eventually (after a month+), it might be nice if the owner of the more unpopular answer deleted it, but that isn't necessary.
You can also edit another answer if you think that it just needs a little enhancement.  For example:

Add an explanatory link
Reword an awkward statement
Fix spelling

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

sort: votes


text:
Can we make it standard that question titles or questions actually contain the name of the game?
I frequently read this page using Google Reader. it's fantastic, but there are times where the question doesn't necessarily indicate what game it's referring to.
For instance this question: Is it better to try to reveal a Traitor early, or wait until later in the game? - I clicked through to read because I didn't know if it was about "Are you a Traitor" - a game I'm interested in but I don't know enough to know whether the question applies, or to something else.  I probably wouldn't have clicked through if I had known it was about "Shadows of Camelot".

I sympathise, but there are good reasons not to do this. This was discussed at some length in this general meta question, and applies to all SE sites.
Should questions contain general categories in the title?
With respect to Google Reader, you can follow the RSS feeds of specific tags, i.e. see only the games you are interested in, if this is particularly annoying for you.
Other related discussions:

Best practice for SO titles according to prefixing suffixing technologies
When should we remove pseudo-tags from a title?

A relevant quote here is this, from Jeff Atwood, one of the founders of StackExchange:

To be clear, I think it is fine to duplicate the tags in the title,
  but only when they can be worked into the titles organically and
  conversationally.

A policy to force game names to be present would be artificial, unworkable in practice, and is not something any other site on the SE network feels is necessary or helpful. Tags provide the context, and unfortunately if you can't see the tags, you are losing something of the context.

So narrowing the focus back to this site..
Is it really a well formulated question if it doesn't include the game name when it's regarding a specific game?    I'm not advocating requiring the game name in the title necessarily, just that the guidelines for asking a question include complete sentences that stand on their own without the need to click through and see the tags.
While I understand you can subscribe to specific tags, that doesn't really address the "problem" as I see it.

@Tuxhedoh So, kinda like the "concatenating strings" example in the linked thread?

The principal tag on the question (the one with the most questions having the tag) is always included in the title during Google searches, as in board games - Here is my question?  If you want the name of the game in the title, you can add it organically, as in Here is my question about this particular board game?"  There's no way to enforce this, however.

In your particular example, you can change the title to "Is it better to reveal a traitor early in Shadows of Camelot?"

It seems a compromise solution would be to append the tags onto the end of the question in the RSS feed.

I really question the utility of tags like "strategy" or "rules". Who is subscribing to these tags? They seem so broad as to be virtually useless. I would propose removing those tags first. See my elaborated answer at: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/120009

On a somewhat related note, it should be noted that the HTML <title> element already contains the tag with the highest number of questions against that tag.
However, it seems that because very broad tags are actually of benefit on this site, one of the SE features could be having a detrimental effect on the organic searchability of the site (i.e. Google).
I think that it might be worthwhile to ask for a feature request to indicate on a tag wiki that it shouldn't be included in the title, and the tag with the next highest number of questions against it would be included in the <title> element (unless that tag isn't specified, if none are applicable then it switches back to the tag with the highest number of questions).
With this, you would flag tags like rules and strategy to not be included in the title, and in most cases, the game-specific tag is the next tag in the list to be included in the HTML <title> tag, and it would improve the searchability of the site by Google.
Oh, I already proposed it for all sites on Meta Stack Overflow. =)

As noted in that discussion, there is significant resistance to any sort of SE change with respect to tags ... and Jeff's answer on Gaming to that request suggests that perhaps we are running into the same problems here that he mentions there. If few people ever follow a tag like rules or strategy, then what do we gain by using the tag? We can already filter by rules* to get questions about rules, and we also run the risk of having another type of tag that is inconsistently applied.

@dave indeed, I don't think super broad kitchen sink tags like "strategy" and "rules" are useful at all. I recommend fixing that first, per: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/120009

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


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"Can I X before Y resolves?" Many questions, one answer in A:NR
Would it improve the quality of the site to replace specific instances of this question with a very thorough explanation of paid ability timing in Android: Netrunner?
Examples here and here both boil down to whether a player can trigger some paid ability before the effects of some other ability are resolved. The answer is usually "no", although it might be awesome to have an extensive answer giving examples where it won't work, as well as examples (e.g. Jackson blowing up an iceless server during the paid ability window before the run is successful) where it will work to interesting effect. We can even cross-link the hilarious meme from this thread. As a bonus, we would have a reference point for just pointing future analogous questions to the superthread, and closing them as dupes.
Inspired by a similar discussion about M:tG.

I've seen a mild amount of success proposing a more general title in the comments while suggesting that the specific case being asked about is not exceptional. If the author generalizes the question, then that is a success, and a canonical question is born naturally. If the author explains why the specific case is exceptional, then that is also a success.

The question you're describing has not been asked yet in its full form, so you're free to do so. If you know the answer, even better. I think canonical questions are a great way to keep the site clean.
Of course, as Rainbolt states in his comment, if there is a way to expand on an existing question that would be one less duplicate to sort out. This becomes more difficult the longer a question exists, as specific answers will likely have been upvoted before you generalize the question.
Here's a great take on canonical Q&A from meta: link.

Ooh, thanks for the link, that's super useful.

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


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Are wargame questions welcome?

Are questions about war games—in particular, Advanced Squad Leader—welcome here?

Background:

Rogier created an Area51 proposal, Advanced Squad Leader Rules.
Shortly thereafter, it was closed as a subset of BCG.
Rogier objected to that in an MSO post, Request for arguments/considerations on site proposal rejection.

Yes,
All wargames are welcome!
Our FAQ defines our covered games as

Be playable on or around a table
Have objective rules of play and win conditions
Offer dynamic challenges, either through other players, randomization, or both
Be playable by hand, by human players implementing all of the rules

Advanced Squad Leader fits all the criteria and we welcome the questions.

@Dori - Anytime!  I don't spend a lot of time on area51, I'm checking the links you posted and will speak up there too.  Thanks for the heads up.

The very first question on the entire site was a hard-core wargaming question.
It still doesn't have an answer, by the way...

@Richard: I'm not really sure if your answer speaks for or against the question if B&CG is the place for hard-core wargames :)

I'm still missing a good chunk of rep that I spent trying to get that answered :(  I also pinged my old friends that played a ton of WiF but was unable to get them to respond.  Sorry!

@Rogier - I won't deny we have a bit of a chicken and egg syndrome working against us here.  I believe that if we can get some more interesting questions, the people will follow.

@Pat - Yes, I agree.

@Rogier Neither am I really sure.

@Pat Yep, it's a really hard question.  Came up in a game a friend was playing, and I think it was answered on the WiF-list.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


text:
Why are recommendations about 6 player games fine, but recommendations about 8 player games get closed instantly by mods?
evidently, recommendations for a six player game are fine.
but this question about 8 players games was closed instantly
Here's the explanation that was given:

Hola, need to tighten this up some. An
  8-player game to solve what problem,
  or set of conditions? As written,
  you're looking for everything from
  Advanced Civilization to Texas
  Hold'em. A good question shouldn't
  have an endless number of answers.
  Including a number of potential
  answers in your question makes this
  look more suited to a forum than
  stackexchange.

Does the 6 player question satisfy these criteria? If it does and I'm doing something wrong please help! My second try got closed as a duplicate of the first, even though I'd tried to improve things. :(

I think you missed this qualification from the 6 player question:

Many games can be played by 6 players, but suffer from a loss of pace, and long waits between turns. What games have parallel planning phases, or lots of interaction during turns?

Your question needs to be tightened up, I think, otherwise it's "List every 8 player game ever made!" which is not.. useful.

my first question includes that exact text and the second also lists similar qualifications for an acceptable answer. :D

@crazy I think your question goes in too many directions, so I edited it for brevity and re-opened.

my question goes in just as many directions as the 6-player question, unless I'm missing something. Thanks for the reopen! Lets just hope the other diamond mods loosen up a little so I don't have to ask for close explanations on meta. :P


text:
How can I help this site make it out of beta?
I've seen many topics on meta that continue to say that non-objective less than perfect questions are not allowed. The argument usually back to this quote from the FAQ:

Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

The problem is that this site has no active front page. I have yet to find any page on this entire site, even when only displaying 15 questions, where the last questions isn't at least a week old. Are these week old questions really important enough that they must be kept on the front page? I don't see how dis-allowing some of these 50 closed questions, especially the 21 with upvotes, is making the site any better. The few (less than 10) that have actually been closed the right way by 5 users clearly don't really belong here. The other 30+ that have been closed the wrong way, aka by one moderator, never seem to have gotten a fair chance.
The reason they get closed, is because Stackexchange is supposed to be a place for nothing less than expert advice for expert questions. This is one of the things that makes SE awesome, and I totally agree that's how things should always be.
Sadly, reality has to set in at some point. Almost 10% of the questions have been closed, leaving us with almost 500 after 108 days. This isn't good. The matter at and is that Board & Card games are inherently subjective enough to show that a SE exchange site might not be the right place for them, and users would mostly be better off sacrificing a better UI and site design for a place that actually lets them ask the questions they want.

Am I preaching the doom of this site and saying its terrible?
NO!
All of the problems I listed above hurt me dearly every time I think about them, and I want to make sure we're doing what we can to solve them. We need to put some hustle in so we can be even better if we want to come out of beta. Currently the biggest problem I see is lack of questions, and since most of them never get a fair chance and are closed by 1 mod instead of some of the 50 people who have the privilege cast close votes, this could easily be solved. If they still get closed, the community will have spoken and made the best choice for the site. A mod can never know if they're doing their job right unless they talk to the community, and their actions should always reflect this.
If I thought this site couldn't make it, I wouldn't spend my time on the meta trying to improve it. I want this site to be able to compete so it gets the chance it deserves.
Anyone else have some suggestions to help us become a real boy? Should we continue the current strict laws on questions and hope we get enough, or should we try loosening things up for a few days to see if that improves things? You'll never know until you try. :D

EDIT: I've been convinced that this site should only allow non-subjective questions in 5h3 interest of preserving high quality Q&A. If it can continue that way, it is probably better than any alternative.
The more important part of this question was about how we can help this site succeed. Obviously we can do so by continuing to participate by asking and answering questions, but I'm wondering what else there is we can do. However, if you think my fears that this site will not make it out of beta are unjustified, I will gladly allay them and happily continue to participate with a new spring in my step knowing we will join the proud ranks of the launched sites. :D

This site gets 97% of the questions answered; That's its saving grace.
This site remains of high quality; That's its saving grace.
Lowering that bar for the sake of getting more questions is not a winning formula. I've seen this call for "lowering the bar to get more questions" thousands of times… literally, thousands of times.
Back when Stack Exchange was a for-subscription service, individuals tried to create these sites with little idea of how to draw an audience. When the traffic did not magically appear, most panicked. Sites started soliciting and allowing lower-quality questions under the mistaken belief that "more questions at any cost" was better than nurturing fewer questions with the high quality Stack Exchange users have become accustomed to. The result was almost 3,000 sites shut down with a 99.6% failure rate.
Let's not repeat that mistake. You can't simply lower the quality to attract more questions, thinking that you can somehow just raise the bar later, once the traffic is humming along. It doesn't work that way. The newest questions — the ones that will likely appear on the front page — become and intrinsic part of your design; the purpose of your site and what incoming users will emulate. You have to attract the right type of activity.
To make this site successful, you need a place where people are asking very interesting and challenging questions, not the same questions asked 100 times before on every other discussion site. If you start allowing questions that aren't a step above, it will start to undermine what we believe makes these sites worthwhile in the first place.

You have many good points. Subjective questions doesn't not necessarily mean lower quality, especially in games, but I can see your arguments and I concur. How else do you propose we improve the standing of this site? We still have some jumps to get over and IMHO this site doesn't have enough momentum to draw people away from Board Game Geek, even if it complements them instead of competing. Sorry if this question is stupid, I just want to see this site go somewhere and I can't figure out how to help it. However, if you are confident that this site will succeed, I will stop worrying. :D

@CrazyJugglerDrummer: Don't conflate the issue of subjectivity with quality. There's Good Subjective. I'm talking about letting less-than-excellent questions (which do not belong) slide in the name of maintaining a higher question count.

@CrazyJugglerDrummer: You improve the standing of the site by asking good questions and by publicizing interesting questions. Most of these sites start out with steady traffic going kind of horizontally for a while. Then, at some unpredictable point, POW the site hits a critical mass "tipping point" and the traffic starts climbing inexorably. But to reach that point, the questions have to attract users. Currently, almost 60% of this site's traffic comes from questions people found in Google. But to keep those users and get them asking good questions, the quality has to be there.

I'd rate this answer more highly if it was the lower-quality questions that were being moderated out of existence.  Sadly there seem to be few bars to a low-quality question that fits the "style" of Stack Exchange, and many hurdles for a high-quality but non-Stacky question to surmount, because it's so much easier for moderators to come down hard on the latter.

I think the answer to your question is the same here as it is for sites that are out of beta: to help the site grow and be successful,

ask good questions
provide good answers
vote up good questions and answers you see
suggest edits/edit weak questions and answers that can be improved, depending on your privileges
vote down/flag/otherwise act upon bad questions and answers, depending on privileges

Some users have an unerring ability to a) find the weakest allowable questions currently on the site and b) use them as an argument for the question they've just asked which was just closed as off-topic for the site. As the site grows, the number of attempts at poor questions will grow, and the effort to keep them suppressed will have to increase. Providing good content builds the base of information on which future content should rest and sets more examples for new and inexperienced users.

From what I understand, making it out of beta has several requirements; a large community with a "critical mass" of high reputation members, good, high quality interaction, with a large percentage of answered questions, acceptances, etc.
The BCG site appears to have one "missing" feature. A preference that "mature" sites have an average number of daily questions "closer to 15 than to 5." On a bad day, we don't even have 5. That argues against splitting off bridge, chess, go, none of which appear to have "critical mass." The only "splitting" that might make sense to me is "board games" versus "card games." But right now, it seems that BCG is struggling to make it while "united."

I don't see anything in this post that mentions how to overcome the hurdle described in the question

I was trying to point out that this site seemed to qualify in nearly all respects--except one. Meaning that we should concentrate our efforts on this "one." And that we really shouldn't think about further subdividing the site into component games. More of a "weather report" than anything else.


text:
How does this link sharing work?
Recently when upvoting questions I frequently get this small pop-up offering me to share the link to get a badge. That's all nice and good but how and where do I do this? All I got is an url like this: When you King's Court a King's Court, when must you pick the three target cards?

The 174 is your user ID, the 936 the question ID.
If you are using this link, the traffic generated with it counts to the announcer, booster and publicist badges.
You can use the link on another site to draw attention to a certain question or answer.

it was discussed in this blog post, too: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/a-recipe-to-promote-your-site/


text:
Why was this question on playing defensively in chess closed?
I'd like to request that this question be reopened.
It was closed because some people are confused about what "defensive" means in chess - I meant to clear that up in an answer, but the question was closed before I could.  It does however have definite meaning, and this question has a definite answer (in the sense that all masters would agree) - in fact @Shannon provided a pretty good answer, though its lack of examples may be why some people are still confused.

(For the curious:  playing defensive in chess means playing reactively, and usually allowing your pieces to be tied up in defense - that is, giving your opponent the initiative.  This is usually considered a bad thing, but it may be the right idea if you believe you are gaining a more important imbalance - for instance, you give your opponent the initiative in return for material, because you believe you can ward off his attack.  However, there are times where playing defensively is akin to suicide ex. rook endgames.  I intend to make this more clear with specific examples)

I join Blue Raja to support the reopening of this question, and the incorporation of Blue Raja's excellent answer. I so voted on the original post (by Chandresh). Shannon John Clark also verbally supported the re-opening of the question as well (although technically his reputation is less than 500, so it is a moral support). Blue Raja's answer goes into the "psychology" of the game, a tag that has a definition provided today by yours truly.

well as of a few days ago my reputation is now over 500 so my verbal support can now be more than just verbal - just not sure what to do next

If a question is closed, the StackExchange method of dealing with that is to edit it and lobby for it to reopen.  That went a little awry here.
The question pointed to contains this

(Note: This is similar to a question that was closed.
When we should go for "Defensive" ..?)
I'm asking it again in a (hopefully) more acceptable way. If this is accepted, I would like to give the "props" to Chandra, the original author.)

Work with the original question, do not reopen the 2nd question while asking to give "props" (reputation I assume?) to someone else.  That isn't possible.  I am going to delete the 2nd question.
If you think the first question has merit, edit it and then lobby for votes.

Fair enough. I meant to say, "port" my changes to the original. I'll try that, even though I don't have enough reputation to edit (at least on my own). I had even less when I did what I did. That's why I used a process that "went a little awry."

Somewhat to my surprise, the editorial changes I proposed were accepted on the original version. I have asked Lance Roberts to review them, and make any further changes he deems necessary.

While I voted to close, I would never have voted to delete this post.  The questions should have been at least merged with the first, so that the answers were not lost.  Duplicate questions shouldn't be deleted they should be closed, at most merged.
See SO Meta posts: here and here.

I agree. In general, I think that there is a certain amount of merging that needs to be done on the site. THEN delete the extra version. But not before, because you lose information.

roberts: My understanding is that moderators can undelete questions. Why don't we ask Pat Ludwig to undelete the second version, "port" the answers over to the original, and the re-delete the second version if necessary. It's possible that you (Lance) have this privilege, with a reputation of just over 2000 (view moderators tools).

@Tom, no, you have to be a mod to undelete a question a mod has deleted, and to merge questions.  Pat has our input, he can choose what he wants to do now.

Would you/have you voted to undelete the edited question? I invite you to make any further changes you need to feel comfortable with voting this way.

@Tom, they've changed the SE sites, so that if a moderator deletes a post, users can no longer vote to undelete.  You can only vote to undelete a post that was closed by the poster himself, or closed by votes of the other users. See this meta post and upvote it if you'd like that to change.


text:
identify-this-game that might exist (but probably doesn't)
This question is asking us to name a game based on a picture of a tentacled creature playing said game.  A commenter has stated that unless we can "prove" that the game doesn't exist, it should be left open, even though the OP has said "there is no reason to assume this is a real game".  This seems like an extremely broad interpretation of the identify-this-game topic. I could create a question saying "I had a dream about a game that was played on a six-sided board with a grid on it.  What is the name of that game?" and it would be essentially equivalent.  Is my close vote appropriate, or should I just downvote because I think it is not a useful question?

I think it should be closed and the asker should consult Anime & Manga Stack Exchange instead. We can't really help them very effectively.
It's worth noting that media regularly makes up games completely: Firefly features a card game where the actors have said in interviews they were just given cards and told to improvise; Battlestar Galactica features an equally nonexistent poker-like game. It's just really convenient making up games when they're not all that important, rather than having to learn and execute the rules properly.
The thing is: we aren't expected to have that expertise. It isn't our domain. We are board and card game nerds/experts. We aren't the film & tv or science fiction & fantasy nerds/experts with the community who've watched all the cast interviews and stuff; I only know these things because I'm coincidentally also one of those nerds.
If they asked on Anime & Manga, chances are high they'd get someone responding:

It's totally made up, the artist said so. This one character mentions the name of it on page 36 of...

We don't have the manga expertise to determine that though, we just have endless people who'll open the question, go "oh I don't recognise that game", and move on. It looks like go or shōgi of course but it isn't either of those, and it probably isn't anything.
In principle, questions are not off topic just because they could be asked elsewhere. But they are on topic when they draw on expertise relevant to what our site offers. We can't help them with our expertise; they need expertise from somewhere else.
So in this scenario: game from media with no obvious resemblance to anything that has an extremely high chance of being completely made up? It's off topic here because our expertise isn't what will solve this; there is another extant Stack Exchange site which they can and should look to for a solution. They will be likely to find it there, and not likely to find it here at all.

Why not try migrating the question to Anime.SE?  That's part of why the functionality exists.

Of note, it's also not all that unusual for fictional in-universe games to have clear rules and be playable on or around a table as part of the actual worldbuilding, or to eventually be developed into a full game over time.

As an example of what @goldPseudo is saying, Star Wars has a game called Sabaac, first mentioned in the novels. The roleplaying game then created rules for it as a standalone card game. Although questions about those rules might be better for RPG.SE.

Essentially you are asked to prove a negative before closing the question (which, incidentally, would also answer the question).  Too high a bar for a questionable question.

This type of question isn't really an identify-this-game question; it's an is-this-even-a-game question posing as an identify-this-game question.
See, if it is a legit game, which is to say it has clear rules and is playable on or around a table, then it would become an identify-this-game question and would be clearly on-topic here. We're totally qualified to handle this sort of question and many of us would love to do so; the game having had an origin in fiction or not is irrelevant.
If, however, it's not a legit game, the best anyone here would be able to do is say "No, that's not a game." which is…a pretty crappy answer. They the answerer would then be stuck with the unenviable task of proving the negative, which is just ugh. And, since it's not a legit game, they'd not only be stuck putting all that work into the answer in order for it to be useful, they'd be stuck putting all that work into the answer in order for it to be useful to a question that is explicitly off-topic.
The problem is, there's no effective way for the questioner to know this coming in (or else they'd not be asking the question in the first place). Even if the game in question is clearly fictional in origin (e.g. described in a novel or displayed in a comic or tv show or whatever), there's plenty of precedent of such games actually being (or becoming) legit games. There's also plenty of precedent of such games just being wholly unplayable and completely made up for the story because they needed something that looked recreational. It could totally go either way.
This is something that we as a community can totally help with, since we know games including, for the most part, what is or is not actually a game, and not all such questions have a convenient other site (Anime.SE in this case) they can also ask at. However, this sort of question really sucks under the Stack Exchange model because it's not particularly answerable in a good half of the cases: We're the right community, just the wrong model. Chat would be a great place for this; the main site, not so much.
Before asking their question on the main site, expecting the questioner to put due effort into determining that the game in question is, in fact, a game (as defined by our scope) rather than just artistic license or even just a random thing-that-might-be-a-game is completely reasonable, and it probably should be closed as off-topic unless there is a good reason to believe that it is, well, on-topic.
(Of note, the reason I didn't personally vote to close that post as off-topic was because, frankly, I had no way of knowing one way or the other; it might've been a game, but then again it mightn't've. After due consideration, voting to close was probably the right course of action exactly because of that ambiguity.)
Judging what is "likely to be a real game" would probably need to be taken on a case-by-case basis; a random card game in a TV show set in modern times for example is far more likely to be legit than a random card game set in the far-flung space-faring future. Similarly, it's probably reasonable to believe that an author who has a history of presenting fully-developed and playable games (Nobuyuki Fukumoto's mahjong variants come to mind) has done the same in their other works, whereas a first work by an unestablished author wouldn't be given the same benefit-of-doubt.
Either way, I wouldn't downvote the question; it's still useful — I, for example, would love to know if the Houseki no Kuni boardgame is a real thing — it's just a question of whether it belongs here or somewhere else, and how best to ask it. Even if the only "response" they get is an off-topic close and a comment-discussion that this is probably not a real game, even that is still useful to future visitors who also want to know the same thing.


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Do we want to have an end-game tag?
It looks like a new tag has been created for end-game, and it has been added to a bunch of existing questions about a variety of games.  Is this a tag we want?  In general I think we avoid these "meta-tags" that can't stand on their own, and I can't imagine anyone wanting to see all questions about end games regardless of the game involved.  We do have an openings tag as well, but it hasn't been used in a year.
Related:
Meta tags 'R Us!

I've actually been rejecting the [tag:end-game] tag edits I've seen going through. In my opinion, this is not really helpful in organizing the site. In most cases, the title and question should be enough to tell what phase of the game the question is asking about.

@SocioMatt: That the title and question suffice to tell us the phase of the game is not of itself sufficient reason to reject a tag. The question should be if the tag improves our chances of finding questions that concern us. That scarcely anyone wants to know about end games in many different games sounds eminently plausible, but [end-game] together with a game-specific tag is an easy way round that.

@SocioMatt: P.S. This answer to a sub-tags question also advocates the use of pairs of tags.

@PJTraill That question was posed more than four years ago, and I think tagging on this site has evolved since then. Truthfully, I'm more on Jeff Atwood's side of this argument; one tag should be sufficient for each question. I see tags as having two main purposes: (1) to organize the site for querying, and (2) to flag question on the home page so users know what the question is referring to. I don't think the [tag:end-game] tag helps with either of these things. In my view, it adds a partially ambiguous tag that moderators need to ensure is being used appropriately.

Feels like a meta-tag to me. From The Death of Meta-tags:

How can you tell you're using a meta-tag? It's easier than you might
think.

If the tag can't work as the only tag on a question, it's probably a meta-tag.
If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it's probably a meta-tag.

end-game can't be the only tag on a question. It's useless as a differentiator on its own. And it means different things in different contexts.
Let's zap it.

Could the tag stand alone if the question involves end-game strategy not tied to one particular game? The question that inspired me to ask this is When is it ok to king-make?. Out of the 10-15 questions with the end-game tag, that one is the only one that feels appropriate to me.

As a Go player, I want to be able to drill down to a specific aspect of the game, so tagging a question as "life and death" or "endgame" (rather than end-game) is definitely useful.
If we don't want a meta-tag, we could use go-specific jargon, and talk about fuseki, tsumego or yose. The issue here is that it creates a barrier for beginners, who are not yet aware of these terms.
Another practice is to allow tag hierarchies. For example have opening and endgame as sub-tags of the Go tag. AFAIK stackexchange doesn't have this capabilitty. So in my opinion having an "endgame" tag is the next best thing, as a workaround if not as a best practice.

It might make more sense for go questions to include their temporal jargon in the question rather than relying on tags

@Wolfkin: I take it that by “temporal jargon” you mean terminology referring to the phase of play? Currently the tag-pair usage (game + phase) seems popular and effective. I think that such tags make it easier to find duplicate questions / questions with the answer one wants / questions of interest. And searching for pairs works fine.


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Questions about skill vs. luck
We already have a great general question about how to think about the ratio of skill vs. luck in a game.  Heck, we even have multiple ones.
So do we really need to have a question that asks for a specific game whether there is a "considerable" amount of skill (where considerable is undefined)?  The question was closed and then re-opened apparently because people wanted to discuss the specifics of that game, but most of the answers boil down to "there is some skill".  Whether it is considerable or not is very fuzzy, and ultimately it seems like the existing questions do a much better job of helping people come to their own conclusion about what is always going to be a subjective.  Do we want to encourage people to ask this kind of question about individual games, whether they are famous or not?

The question is poorly fleshed out, but there is an answerable question in there. The asker honestly wanted to know whether there was an element of skill to Monopoly, and the answers pointed out the specific parts of Monopoly that were skill-based. At the moment, it's fairly opinion-based, because the asker didn't give us any criteria to judge by. With a little work, it could be a much better question.
For the record, the Monopoly question should not have been closed as duplicate (and I'm glad to see it was re-opened later; duplicate is definitely the wrong close reason). It was similar to the general "how to measure luck" questions, but the answers from the general question are not proper answers for the Monopoly-specific question. The "duplicate question" close reason should only be applied in cases where the questions are such close matches that the answers to one will be appropriate for the other, and vice versa. I believe the question was re-opened because it should not have been closed as a duplicate, and because the question, even in its current form, is answerable. (It's still a pretty poor-quality question, though. There's a reason that neither it nor the answers have many upvotes; it isn't entirely opinion-based, but it's definitely getting in that direction.)
We should not be aggressively trying to close these questions. Each question still has to get past our usual requirements to be a good question, and the question of how much luck matters in [Game X] is still a useful one.

Based on this meta question question and answer, I improved the answer to the Monopoly question by first rephrasing the question so that it was more precisely phrased and had criteria. I think it should cause at least some objections to be addressed.

@Joe I guess that is better.  "Classic dice games popular with children" is still a bit hard to quantify.  Yahtzee and Parcheesi would both seem to meet that, and arguably both have more skill involved than Monopoly.

@Joe So if I asked "Does Risk have more skill than classic dice games played by children?" would you also consider that a good question?

@bwarner I do agree that the question is not worded well, though I think the intended question is good. This isn't the first time I've salvaged a poorly worded question with an answer that reworks the question. I think the intent of the question was clear in this case because I've been asked the question in person several times in my life. The person who asked it is new to the site and rather than scare them away despite having a good question (that was badly worded), I'd rather welcome them with a good answer and hopefully educate them about how to better word questions in the future.


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How should we tag the Warhammer Conquest LCG?
This question is about the Warhammer 40K LCG, but we don't currently have a tag for that, and I wasn't sure how we wanted the tag to look.  Should it just be warhammer-40k-conquest or do people have other ideas that might work better?  I'm a little concerned that is too easy to confuse with normal Warhammer 40K.

I recommend warhammer-40k-conquest to match the proper name of the game. To my knowledge, no other Warhammer 40K product has a name that is close to it, so the chance of false tags is unlikely. We can create a tag synonym warhammer-40k-lcg if desired to match the format of star-wars-lcg and the tags for other Fantasy Flight Living Card Games, but I think that the full name tag should be the primary one.
Also, we ought to make sure that any new tags include a tag excerpt to say that it is an LCG, rather than leaving it blank. That way, users typing in the tag will see that this refers to the LCG and hopefully pick a different tag if they didn't intend for it. I suggest the following:

A Living Card Game (LCG) produced by Fantasy Flight Games set in the Warhammer 40K universe.

I concur with Thunderforge on having warhammer-40k-conquest as the proper name, although I suppose technically it should instead be warhammer-40000-conquest, and warhammer-40k-lcg as a tag synonym.
Please note that as of the writing of this answer, there is a tag currently in use for Warhammer 40,000: Conquest; it is conquest-lcg. (Not what I would have created, mind you, but there it is.)

I'm the one that created the conquest-lcg tag for my own question.
I was trying to follow the format of the other FFG LCG games on here, such as star-wars-lcg and call-of-cthulhu-lcg.
I am not married to this tag, but I also don't think it needs to be renamed as, at this stage, there is not much else it can be confused with.


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Do we have an official position on the meta-tag question?
There was a lot of discussion and disagreement about meta-tags here, but it doesn't seem like a consensus was reached.
A recent question of mine just had the board-games tag added. My preference is not to use that tag as I don't think it really adds value, as it will be used so much. My gut reaction was to remove it, but obviously that person thinks it should be there. They have no way to know I deliberately chose not to use that tag. I could just remove it, but I don't want to start a retagging battle either (not that it would be likely to happen).
So, should we be using tags like board-games and rules, or not?

Note that part of this discussion is moot now, as board-games and card-games have been blacklisted.

I don't think we've reached enough critical mass yet to definitely answer many questions like this.  The few people talking on meta do not always well represent the full user base IMHO.
My preference would be to let the site organically develop and see what proves useful over time to most users.
That said, you should feel free to rollback the tag change if you do not agree/like it.  FWIW, I do not tag my questions with either board-games or rules

I pretty much agree with your opinion in the question, and with Pat's answer.  I wanted to add that I think there is some merit in the board-games/card-games tags provided they are used sparingly for questions that aren't about particular games, but which are asking about board games and not card games (or vice versa).


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When is it acceptable to answer one's own question?
When I asked this question, I initially provided a few answers of my own. Rather than mention some games that we play in the question itself, I decided to post them as answers. I think referring to specific games in the question would discourage people from providing those answers; however, I thought those games were good options and should be voted on.  This was questioned so I decided to remove my answers pending further discussion.
I'm not sure if my question should be made community wiki or not. It seems to me like it probably should, but I find the CW criteria pretty vague now. However, that's not what I want to focus on here. The debate over subjective questions and CW has been had elsewhere. I'd like this to focus on answering one's own question.
I agree with the general sentiments expressed here in that I generally don't ask questions I know the answer to and, if I do, I wait a while before providing my own answer. However, that is my personal preference and I don't know if I would want to make that a rule. I think every member of the community has the right to answer any question, even questions they asked. In general, it may not be advisable to do so right away in that it may discourage others from answering and may result in the question and answer not being upvoted much, but that's at the discretion of the questioner, IMO. However, I think that mostly goes for objective questions. I'm not sure it's as much an issue for subjective ones.
So, is answering one's own question right away discouraged? Or, is it just a bad idea from the standpoint of earning rep? Does it make a difference if the question is subjective?

I think you are right in that recommendation questions are a different situation than the previously linked meta question.  As such, I'm going to defer trying to answer this until we sort out how to address recommendation questions in general

Concur with Pat; recommendation questions are a completely different case to all-other-questions.  Answers to this should treat them as two separate cases until we've figured out what to do about recommendation questions.

I would make one observation: This community has a "self-learned" badge for anyone that answers their own question with three upvotes of more. That suggests to me that answering one's own question is allowed, if not encouraged. As long as one is genuinely learning (and perhaps educating others), it seems okay.
I have answered my own question from time to time. It's not something I like to do, because I'm here to learn things from others or to become more clear on a point. In one case, I started an answer to my own question as a "prompt" to provoke answers from others. But usually, it means I'm dissatisfied with the answers I've received. Thus, it indicates something like "hey, I think that I can do better." But as a former boss would say, "That's even if better isn't very good."
That's not a preferred option. But it (probably) ought to be an option.


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Is Cornhole on-topic?
Prompted by: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/186/variation-on-rules-for-cornhole-which-involves-two-boards
If cornhole is on-topic, then what about games like shuffleboard, horseshoes or bowling? However if cornhole is off-topic, what about games like crokinole or PitchCar?

I'm inclined to say cornhole is off-topic; I would not consider it to be a board game. I would say crokinole and PitchCar are on-topic, though it's certainly getting into a gray area and I'm not sure where I would draw the line.

I would agree -- technically cornhole is a game played with boards, but it's not a board game to me.  If you can't sit down at a table and play it, it's not a board or card game.

+1 Pitchcar is border line, but still just in. Like the 'If you can't sit down at a table and play it, it's not a board or card game.'

Off-topic. I would say the essential differentiating characteristic is that all of these games are purely about physical skills, and to me this site is about games that have a substantial strategy or thinking component.
So to me, shuffleboard, horseshoes, bowling, cornhole, and even crokinole are all out. I'm not sure how PitchCar works exactly - I looked it up on boardgamegeek but that didn't help. So I'll reserve judgement there.

I'm guessing there won't be much dissent about Cornhole being off-topic. However, crokinole and PitchCar are more controversial. We might need a question specifically about them.

See the comments on this answer by Brian Campbell to a different question for a slightly more nuanced point of view in this discussion.


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Enough with the MtG Comp Rules
Early on, we decided that the Magic Comprehensive Rules were the preferred authority for rules questions about MtG. I have no complaint about this for questions which are complicated, where the asker appears to be familiar with the game, but I really thing that it's overkill for questions from beginners. We have three such questions on the front page at the moment:
If an opponent unsummons my Goblin, does it spoil my Goblin Grenade?
If they counter my Goblin Grenade, do I still lose my goblin?
Can Dismember kill my Gloryscale Viashino after I cast Armadillo Cloak?
All three of these have answers which reference the comprehensive rules, and I don't think this is actually a good thing. The comp rules are deliberately written in dense Magic-specific legalese, and dumping that on a newbie's head seems like a sure way to turn them off from the game (and the site).

Upvoted because I agree with you, JS - I don't like answers that launch into seven-paragraph citations of chapter and verse in the Comp Rules, when a simple explanation of how the game works would be just as accurate and a lot less intimidating. Having said that, I also agree with AlexP that nothing is broken here: I've taken to upvoting answers in plain English rather than the Comp Rules labyrinths. Just because Magic has a really legalistic ruleset doesn't mean that we are compelled to vote for answers that reference it to excess...

I'm not sure anything's broken here.
I agree that the comp rules aren't the best for new players. However, those aren't highest-ranked answers right now.
So, right now these answers are extra stuff you can read after you've read the (hopefully friendlier) non-comp-rules explanations that currently have more votes. If the rules question later turns into a rules argument (e.g. you tell your friends the answer you got and they don't believe you), I think it's useful to have the official rules to cite.

References to the comprehensive rules are best for everyone, new players included.
Imagine that the scenario where a new player is told by his gaming group that "at the end of the phase they take mana burn." The new player comes here and asks, "Do you take mana burn at the end of a phase? Lets assume for the moment that the highest voted answer is the correct answer that explains that,

No. You no longer take mana burn at the end of a phase. This is change in the rules.

The new player goes back to their group and says, "I ask about mana burn on the internet, and the highest voted answer says that it doesn't exist anymore." Their group might just reply, "So What! Lots of people on the internet say lots of things." This might be exacerbated further if the group contains a rules lawyer, or DCI Judge. What if that DCI Judge or rules lawyer has it wrong? (example: Prateor's Grasp - Can Opponent Determine Taken Card Before Shuffle). In general, a good answer will contain all the necessary information for the question within the non-quoted portion. The quoted comprehensive rules need only be read to confirm that what is stated by the answerer is correct. If someone is only interested in the correct answer, they can ignore the gray quoted blocks.
The Comprehensive Rules are the ultimate authority.
Even if a the rules will be going over their head, they can print out the rules quoted in the answer, and show it to whomever doubts them.
If we don't quote the Comprehensive Rules, the next official source of rules would be the M:tG Basic Rulebook. I am not sure that answers quoting that source would be much better. Examples below (titles linked to OP for comparison). If you ask me, it isn't much better, but we will see how many votes they get in comparison. With out any ultimate authority, who is to know if quoting the Basic Rules or the Comprehensive Rules is better, people on the internet will have to decide.

I upvoted all your basic rules answers, because I thought they were useful in their own ways. :) I still agree that each rules question should have at least one comp-rules answer to provide the ultimate-authority citation.

@AlexP, so do I. I am only doing this as a thought experiment. As I said, quoting from some authority is necessary. If we aren't going to use the Comprehensive Rules because they are too pedantic (my god that is pretentious), we will have to quote the Basic Rulebook. I personally don't see much of a difference in the brevity or complexity. If a new player isn't going to understand the CR, I don't think the Basic Rules will be any easier. They are just an easier read from cover to cover.

My general take on this is that there is a balance that needs to be struck in the best answer to a question, and this gets born out via voting. The best answer for any given MtG question will have the appropriate "citations" to support what is being said, which, depending on the "level" of the question, may be a rather substantial number of rules citations, or may be none at all.
So, for a rather beginner-level question, there may be no citation needed, since it is likely to get too deep, but it it's a beginner question that is often problematic and tends to trip people up due to being unintuitive, then the rules citation might help.
In the end, it all boils down to putting the most relevant and useful information into the answer for the particular question at hand, and it's probably better to err on the side of too much information rather than too little.


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

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

New Moderators!
/me does the happy dance.
Welcome aboard!

Thanks. Looking forward to it. :)

Thanks! Let's try our best :)

Congrats on the lil' diamond, guys (or gals - whatever)


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Tag usefulness/removal
For my recent question about cupboard sizes (https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/posts/2383/revisions) I added the tags boxes and furniture, which were both removed.  The other tags board-games and storage, were left.

Storage has six other posts, all about storing games/pieces in boxes.  This question is about storing boxes in cupboards, so it's not a perfect fit here.
Board-games has lots of questions, half of which seem to be generic board game questions, and half of which seem to be questions about a specific board game.  Personally I think the tag should be used for general questions about board-games.
Boxes seems to me to be a reasonable topic for board game questions, I could imagine questions about box sizes or cover art that might be grouped under a "boxes" tag.  Maybe they would fit better under "storage" and (something like) "artwork" tags though?
Furniture is hopefully not going to be a common topic, but I think there is value in a furniture tag.  As an example, this question might also be a candidate: What's a good table-topping material for tile-based games?

I guess the reason I'm starting this topic is because I've had several tags removed from questions now, and I don't understand the logic behind the removals.  I have added tags that I thought might be useful classifications of my questions, and they've not been removed in the most constructive of manners.

My thoughts on your questions:

storage - A tag's current usage does not always set the parameters for all future usage.  The tag should probably be renamed game-storage to better set boundaries and be less generic.
board-games - I dislike this tag, along with card-games.  I have a hard time imaging folks only caring about one of the two groups.  Those tags are contained within the name of the site, we already know we are here to discuss them :)
Boxes - There isn't any reason to create a tag to anticipate potential future usage.  A question about artwork and a question about how best to store game boxes does not have any overlap of interest necessitating a tag.
Furniture - I don't think we are going to have too many subject matter experts on furniture here.  Why would a grouping of the two questions noted be beneficial to a SME?  The on site search is useful to find questions for anyone who needs to find them.

In general, I'm pessimistic about new tags.  It doesn't mean that all new tags are bad, however the majority of tags that I think we need probably need to be hashed out on meta first.  A better set of game classification tags would be great, for an example.
If a tag is created with an anticipated usage of 1-2 questions, and that tag doesn't stand on its own then I don't think there is value in that tag.  An argument can be made that the value is negative in that someone may later choose to only use that new tag on a question thereby limiting the audience for that question.

bear in mind that extremly low use (only ever seen 1 question) tags are auto-culled after about 4 months, under the assumption that they are not really useful.

I agree with you that in general I feel tag control on this site is a little heavy-handed. It is particularly annoying when someone else removes a tag you thought through and decided was positive. I think there is a general question of etiquette there which has not been addressed on any stack exchange site I am aware of.
While I understand the desire to avoid useless tags, I think that attempting to predict tag usage in advance is essentially a waste of time, and contrary to the natural evolution of a folksonomy.
I explained my opinion about specific tags in detail on a different site meta, some time ago. Please have a read and see what you think.
https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119/game-specific-tags/


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Is this puzzle on topic?
Is this chess related question on topic?
How far can a knight travel without visiting the same square twice?

Check the FAQ

I think chess puzzles are off topic, myself. At least one other such "hypothetical" was closed as off-topic.

Well, I think chess problems are ok to ask, especially if it's a question about a problem (and not just "what is the solution?").  However, this is just a puzzle that's related to chess, so I think it's borderline - I won't vote to close, but I'd understand if it was closed.

A puzzle is not a game. No element of competition...

so cooperative games are no games because they have no competition?

@lo' Argument in absurd extremes does you no justice... you obviously haven't played enough to realize the competition level most of them have. (Most are in fact many vs 1, and the few that aren't are usually randomized so that the challenge is vs the game itself, thus preserving replayability. Chess puzzles (and shogi puzzles, math puzzles, riddles, etc, lack replayability.

Oh, and in this case, the answer is a general search lookup... there's no room for multiple answers.


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Are tags mysteriously disappearing?
In the light of Pat's competition to improve the site, I've been reading, editing and voting on some of the older questions.  I've recently come across two that already had edits saying they were adding a tag, but the tag wasn't on the question:
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/posts/1497/revisions
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/posts/1466/revisions
Has anyone else been noticing this, or did ire_and_curses and I make a mistake the first time we edited these questions?

By the way, thanks for all the reading/editing/voting!

Across the SE network tags that are only used once are auto-purged after 6 months or so by design.
This is kind of a pain for us, but we have to deal with it.  Arqade also deals with this on a regular basis.
When I ask a question about a new game I make an attempt to ask two questions about it.  Usually the second question is a bit more lame, but it will keep the tag hanging around.

Thanks - this is almost certainly the answer.  I'll add another Blokus question, and try and find out a bit more about the Pillars of the Earth!

I've seen this here too -- a question should almost always have a game-specific tag, so when it doesn't that's a hint.  BH has been having the same problem and one of the mods there came up with a clever idea to address it.

@MonicaCellio - looks like a good idea!

We recently got auto tag deletion turned off on Arqade.

As of last summer (or winter if you are on the other side of the equator from me), tags with wikis are preserved.  So if you tag a question with game that doesn't have any more questions, you may:

Write up a tag wiki, or
Ask another question.

Either will preserve the tag.


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2500 rep for suggesting tag synonyms?
I've recently gone over 2500 rep, and according to the privileges page, have enough rep to suggest tag synonyms. Since we've had a discussion about the clue vs. cluedo tags, and decided that a synonym is probably the best way to deal with it, I tried creating a clue synonym for the cluedo tag. However, when I did so, I received an error message: "You are not allowed to propose a tag synonym!"; on the same page, it says "Users with more than 2500 reputation and a total answer score of 10 or more on the tag, can suggest and vote on tag synonyms."
Is this a bug? Why can't I create this synonym?

Just to be sure: do you have a total answer score of 10 or more on either or both of the tags?

@Erik Oops, missed that half of the sentence. I figured that synonyms would be a moderation type cleanup feature that anyone with enough rep could do, not just those with a high enough rep in the given tag. Too bad I can't also tag this question as status-bydesign.

The assumption is if you have enough score or are ranked high enough in the tag, you probably know enough about it to be editing the tag wiki

this used to be true, but we had some very high profile tag merge screwups in the past, and there is no real undo path for those.


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Do we need to close bad questions?
Ever since the private beta, we seem to be a bit wary of bad questions, and quick on the "close" trigger. We've had several threads discussing what questions are good and bad, such as simple Googleable questions or questions soliciting reviews. Now, these questions may not be the best, as we're probably not going to be contributing much good content in response to them; however, we still can help people answer their questions, by linking them to resources which already exist.
Should we be quick to close questions which are bad, but not exactly off topic, argumentative, or the like? For example, this question soliciting reviews; we can't exactly provide an answer for it directly, but linking the user to several existing reviews may be helpful if they didn't know where to look beforehand. Is this something that should be closed, as there is not enough information to provide useful answers, or is it OK to leave questions open if just pointing the user to better places to look is a sufficient answer?

I think there is a world of difference between:

Can anyone give a review of the Eurogame “Stronghold”? which is a completely subjective easily googleable question.

and

Catan “longest road” clarification which is an easily googleable question with a definitive answer.

The post in question fails to satisfy your own top ranked answer for how to ask review questions here.  The problem with the Stronghold question is that it is subjective, not that it is easily googleable.

I agree; it's subjective, and I said that it probably isn't a good use of the site in my answer about review questions. I'm wondering if it needs to be closed. Obviously off-topic questions, unanswerable questions that keep popping up to the front page, argumentative questions that cause a lot of debate with no good way to objectively decide who's right, those should be closed. I'm concerned that we're getting a little too eager to close for questions which, while not great, can still be answered adequately; but I ask since I'm not certain and want to know what others think.

@Brian - it takes 5 votes to close so it isn't like only one person can close. (Until mods show up anyways)  Closed questions can always be reopened as well if 5 votes can be found.  I think people should be encouraged to interact with the site.  That means that shaky questions should be encouraged, and also close votes should be encouraged.  Over time, the mores of the group will arise.  Trying to enforce any version of "correct" behavior beyond the most simple (don't spam and the like) before that will only drive folks mad IMHO.


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"What is [x term] in [y game]?" questions
We've already had a bit of a problem with these formulaic questions about poker. Now we're getting some similar questions (though not the same volume) about bridge: "What is a Jacoby Transfer?".
What do we think of these questions? Are they on-topic for BCG.SE? Or if they are on-topic, are they a good fit for the SE format?

I would say that simple definitional questions are not appropriate for a StackExchange site. Either you have one question for each term you want defined, and thus have them scattered all over and hard to find, or you have one big question for all terms in a particular game. In the latter case, you either do a "one term per answer", in which voting isn't particularly useful, or you ask for a single complete answer, in which case that one answer is essentially equivalent to a wiki page out of its native habitat.
Simply defining terms is best left for a wiki (in the case of the specific question referred to above, Wikipedia seems to have a great article on it), or some sort of glossary of terms for that game, but not well suited to a question and answer site.
A question and answer site is for answering questions that aren't adequately answered by an obvious Google search, or referring to a reference work for the topic in question. It's for situations that aren't covered by existing references, or are covered but the information might be hard to find or expressed unclearly. A question and answer site is good for clarifying a concept, or learning how it applies to a particular situation, not simply defining it.
edit to add This doesn't mean that I think we should close every easily Googlable question. But I think that we should try and avoid creating lots of "What is [x term] in [y game]" questions, or questions on basic strategy that are already well covered elsewhere, especially during the beta, as StackExchange doesn't make a very good glossary or comprehensive strategy guide.

I answered a similarly short formulaic question here.
The answer can be found elsewhere, but buried away in horrible forums covered in advertising (remember life before SE?!). Perhaps there is something to be said for having them in a clearer format here. Moreover, it's possibly useful to see them suggested when writing related questions, or in the related sidebar.
Also I'm not sure people are trying the game the system, these type of questions never generate a lot of rep for the OP.
Lastly, these questions could be useful in bringing in search traffic.
The poor quality of the, usually short, questions is an issue though.
Either way, perhaps we should watch for down-votes and see what the community thinks?

As mentioned in my other comment, I was going to agree (I even upvoted that question and answer), but I just did a Google search for "three card poker" and the top hit answered the question clearly and without excessive ads http://wizardofodds.com/threecardpoker. Remember that SE sites actually have a lot more ads on them if you're not logged in; I'm not sure that they would be a better result to get for the random searcher. And if we're trying to bring in more search traffic just by duplicating existing content, that seems a bit like blogspam.

Is 'It's easily available on Google' a reason for a question not to be asked then?

I think easily Googlable questions are OK. I think we should avoid asking a lot of them in the early beta; we're not trying to turn this site into a definition list of every game related term. So, I'm fine with the question and answer that you link to, but we should try not to do too much of that.


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"Games for [some kind of player]"/"Games with [some kind of property]" questioins
There's a certain type of question that isn't quite a recommendation question, which have been discussed, but which are instead soliciting a list of games with a certain property or set of properties. I've asked a few of these questions myself, as have other people. For example:

Good games for playing in a bar
Deepest games in the past century
Other “network building” style games, like Hackers and Illuminati?
Games with features like Battlestar Galactica's “Traitor” Mechanic?

Even though I've asked a few of these, I'm starting to wonder if they're a good fit for BCG.SE. I think I started asking them out of an old habit from when I contributed to BoardGameGeek, as these questions are good starting points for a GeekList. The question is, do these list type questions fit here too, or should they stay on BGG?
When voting on games in these sorts of lists, are you voting on how much you like the game, or how well the game fits the theme of the list? Does it ever make sense to accept an answer in this sort of list? Should people be doing one game per answer, or trying to do one comprehensive answer like my answer to the “Traitor” question?
It's also hard to say how you would categorize these, if they're not appropriate. They aren't exactly subjective; if the criteria are clear, it can be quite clear cut which games fit and which ones don't. They aren't off-topic; they're definitely about board games. They are real questions; when I ask these, it's because I want to know the answer, I want to know which games fit. So according to those criteria, these should be fine, but there's still a certain way in which they don't quite seem to fit, as they're asking for a list of answers, not a single answer.

I think these questions CAN be valuable, and shouldn't be prohibited up front.  I'd guess some of them will not be valuable and will get closed, as well.
I view an upvote on one of these lists as "Yes, I like this game and it fits in this list".  Maybe that's not what everyone intended but that's how I've been reading it.
For that reason, I think one-game-per-answer works pretty well also.
I'm not sure how to keep them from running out of control (if you will) but for now I support these questions.

I agree that a one-game-per-answer system would work well. And, I think that questions like these should be community questions.

While I have answered a few of these (such as "Board Games for Two People"), they're extremely subjective and difficult to answer.  I know all of my downvotes have come from my answer in that one thread, for what I thought was a good answer.
I feel that they certainly have value, though, and are great questions for the community (emphasis on community) -- they would be best suited as community wiki questions.  Now if only they hadn't made community wikis a moderator-only feature...


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New Beta Theme Launched
Your site looks a bit different today. Yes, we are getting rid of the 'Sketchy' look and replacing it with a more-polished and finished design for sites in beta.
You can read more about the redesign of our Beta theme on our blog entry.
Please note: This will not affect your "graduation" status in any way. When your site is due for graduation, it will get its final(real) site design and branding.
If you're still seeing the old favicon, please do a hard browser refresh. (Although sometimes it may take Chrome a while to load the new image).
If you see any CSS or styling issues, please report it in this post I created on Meta Stack Overflow. It will be easier for me to track all the bug reports there.

Looks nice, thanks!

The highlighting of favorite tag questions is horrible. Light yellow on white? Indiscernible.

Can I say I don't actually like the new look much?  Then again this could just be "shock of the new" style carping and I won't even remember why I didn't like it in a week or so.  Longtime Facebook users will surely know the feeling :)

It's got visual appeal, but it's a bit... low-contrast in places. I guess it's mostly the various slightly-off-white backgrounds that throw me off; the favorite tag thing mentioned above being an obvious example.

Now it is much improved! The blue is light and airy but much more readily visible. I have a similar low-contrast complaint about the "Didn't find what you're looking for? Browse other questions..." box at the bottom of the questions (on the main site, not meta). :)


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Site design ideas
I'm Jin. I work on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase.
Overall look and feel
I'm in an early brainstorming phase of the site design for this community. As for the visual design direction, I'm thinking about something visually rich, so it'd be familiar and relatable to board and card game players. Visuals I'm thinking of: textured mapp-ish background, hexagon grids, earth toned color scheme, serif typefaces etc.
Header image
I plan to approach the site design the same way I did for our Role-playing Games site. The header imagery should be representative of site's topics. For the RPG.se site, their community wanted the header to be inclusive of all genres of RPG games, not just D&D so it'd attract more newcomers. So when I commissioned a talented artist to draw the header, I told him exactly what to put in there, including the composition.
So my question for you is, what would you like to see in the header for B&CG?
Logo
Would a Meeple make a good logo? My goal for our SE sites' logo design is to reflect sites' niche topics, but at the same time to give each community its own brand identity.
I look forward to your suggestions!

Chess pieces / boards and Playing card suits would be great... How does one get permission to work on such a thing? That sounds fun!

Just curious, how's the design process going?

So, has there been any progress?

For overall look and feel, I would try to include a "tabletop" motif (the first criteria for on-topicness here is "Be playable on or around a table", after all).  Using a rich dark wood for borders (e.g. mahogany, dark cherry) like one would find on the lip/surface of a good-quality gaming table, and a lighter wood (my mind keeps going toward kaya or tsuge, as used in go and shogi boards) as a background texture.  Casino-style green felt could also be included, but strikes me as a bit cliche.
For a logo, I'd say that the two images that really scream "board games" to me would be either a Sorry-style pawn (as per wax eagle's suggestion) or a D6; even though neither are actually used for most (good) games these days, they are quite firmly ingrained as board gaming icons in general.  Meeples also work, but could be lost on anyone who isn't familiar with Euro-style games (I don't know how much, if any, of our intended audience that would entail).
Probably too complex for a logo, but I do like the idea of a fanned hand of cards, with each card printed with a representative board-gaming icon (e.g. Sorry-style pawn, D6, chess knight, meeple).  This would probably tie the "board" and "card" gaming aspects of the site together nicely.
For badges, the only thing that's preventing me from suggesting poker chips is that we already have poker.SE in beta.  But if that other site didn't already exist, I would totally make that suggestion right here right now.  Just sayin'.
The whimsical part of me also really wants to have snakes and ladders as downvoting/upvoting icons, but the practical part of me can't think of any way to make them look remotely good.

Fanned set of cards is excellent; if you hadn't already mentioned it I was going to. I love the Snakes and Ladders idea also, though a practical way to incorporate that  remains beyond my horizon at the moment.

I like the Snakes and Ladders too. Would probably work with a ladder icon if all the rungs were bent so that they looked a like upward arrow-heads (kind of like chevrons with a bar on each side), and a sinuous line with a downward arrow-head would probably be enough to look stylistically like a snake. Even if the ladder/snake styling is lost on the user, they should still look enough like "up" and "down" to avoid confusion (which is obviously crucial). Worth consideration? Here's an awful example

I like everything, especially that table top part, but highly suggest snakes and ladders not be the up/down votes because, well, snakes and ladders is not a game - there are no decisions to make.

@shujaa I've heard there's a lot of felt coming cheap on the market from Cupertino...

What about just a simple pawn for a logo? Either a standard chess pawn or a stylized version of the Sorry pawn. It's a bit old school for the new game revolution, but it's a shape that is clearly identified with board games.
For badges something like the Dominion coin shape, chess pieces or card suits would be perfect.
Finding a design that will unite the old school playing card/monopoly/chess/domino/etc crowd and the new school Dominion/Catan/Munchkin/MT:G crowd is very important. Having style elements from classic old games and new games should be a priority. Representing a wide variety of games might be hard, but something like what Hoyle did with this video game cover might get the right tone

I would avoid using a meeple without permission. Trademarks require that a company to defend their trademark, unlike copyright and patents. Some say that no trademark is claimed on the shape in the first place, so their is no need to get permission. I would just avoid the whole issue since Meeples don't scream board gaming to me. If you wanted to use a meeple shape, just make sure it is "similar and yet legally distinct" like Gigazaur is from Godzilla (I have no idea if this link will fast forward you to minute 7:10, my browser is interrupted by the AD and does not.)
I think it is vitally important that the logo include cards (it is already missing from the URL for brevity, and should remain that way). Maybe some legally distinct green, yellow, gray, and purple cards channelling Dominion. A light hexagonal background would probably be nice, and would be suggestive of war-games.
I don't have the artistic talent to suggest fonts (I have heard Comic Sans is despised, and Helevitica is overused)

thank you. these are helpful. I promise I won't use Comic Sans :)

I definitely agree that there should be a strong reference to card-based games. The top three games on the site are Magic, Dominion and Bridge.

What, no Comic Sans?! :P

I'd guess, if asked nicely Hans im Glück will give permission to use the meeple shape.

I'd like to see something that looks a bit more "modern" than RPG.SE. I think their style works for them (because many RPG books self-consciously adopt similar trapping), but it would feel a bit outdated for B&CGs. Most board games I can recall have pretty bright, not-too-saturated colors, so that's my preference for site design.
(And honestly I guess I'm just attached to the fairly "clean" and bright color scheme of the beta).

The table is an important idea.  That's what it's all about.
I dig the idea of a subtle earth-toned hex background.
Cards are a good idea - I'd expect to see not the standard Hoyle-style playing cards but also Magic and Dominion cards, or something with an equivalent design.
So are D6s.  Another answer states that no good games use D6s, but I disagree. Arkham Horror, Catan, Zombicide and even Munchkin use D6s.  I'd certainly expect to see 3 or more D6s rather than just one.
A colored pawn player indicator is good.  Also consider featuring the tiny colorful wood cubes from Revolution or Pandemic.
Another common element in board games is the victory point track along the outside of the board - ala Ticket to Ride or Revolution.

I like the victory point track idea!

Perhaps something that looks like a tabletop, in foreground, with a games cupboard of some sort in the background. I would go for the more classical games rather then the newer ones, as one never knows when the newer ones will fall out of fashion. Additionally, most of the older classical games are long beyond copyright.
Some specific ideas are:
- Playing cards
- Snakes and Ladders
- Backgammon
- Crockinole
- Rummoli / Michigan Rummy
- Fanned card hands of 13 cards(bridge, hearts, spades)
- Fanned card hands of 5 cards (poker).
- Fanned hands of Pinochle or Euchre (also 5 cards, nothing below a 7).

+1 for a games shelf background. This is an immediately recognisable part of the hobby, as far as I'm concerned.

Card shuffling is about as close to universal as you can get in board/card games. It wouldn't make a good logo, but devoting a small portion of the header to it might work with the "If you do this, this site is for you!" mentality that is important in SE headers.


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Should we close question that are just "what are good strategy tips for such-and-such game"?
I've seen a series of question posted on strategy tips for various kinds of poker:

Description of Poker 7-Card Stud Hi/Lo Strategies?
Description of Poker Omaha Strategies?
Description of Poker Texas Hold'em - No Limit Strategies?
Description of Poker Texas Hold'em - Fixed Limit Strategies?

These questions are formulaic and very broad. You could fit any game in there, and get a new question. They don't provide much information on what is being asked about; whole books have been written on poker strategy, so you're not going to be able to fit anything useful into an answer, other than perhaps referring to a book. They don't give a very good picture of where the questioner is coming from; is he an experienced player who wants to learn tips for a new variant, or a beginner who wants know where to start?
These types of questions could be much better answered by someone simply writing strategy guides for these games, either as books or online. I think they are too broad and without enough specific information to provide a good answer.
Should we close all of this type of question? What if someone asked such a question for a more obscure game, which didn't necessarily have good resources available yet?
edit to add: Here's an example of the same type of question for a more niche game. Still seems a bit broad, though this one I'm less sure on:

What are good standard tactics for Dominion?

I don't have an opinion about it yet but the problem is not about lack of good resources. Impossible questions are bad, but hard to answer questions is good. BCG.SE will be great if it has the unique answer available to question.

You only mean broad questions like "what's the best strategy for game X", not "what's the best strategy for doing X at point Y in game Z", right? I suspect we're going to have quite a lot of the latter, based on the gaming SE

@bigown Do you really think that these questions are answerable in the context of StackExchange? I don't think it's a matter of lack of resources, I think it's a question of whether the medium is appropriate for this type of question. Especially given this whole set of questions; for describing poker strategies, it's likely to be good to describe strategies that apply to all games, and then call out differences in individual variants, but with these separate questions you can't really do that.

@Michael Absolutely. "What's the best strategy for doing X at point Y in game Z" is just the right level of specificity, and a great question for this SE. I'm just talking about "what are the best strategies for this entire game" questions.

I don't know, community will decide this, I have arguments to both sides. Some of these questions has a pretty consensus about what is good. I am above the fence yet. I will wait for more opinions. We have a good discussion here.

These questions are too broad.  "What are some strategies for this entire game" just isn't going to result in a worthwhile answer.  Questions about specific strategies "What's the best strategy for doing X at point Y in game Z" are great (thank you Brian Campbell).

Argh, that Dominion one is so borderline.  There are general deck strategies that you can learn and use regardless of set, but the question is still so broad... I'm torn.

I have only downvoted 4 or so posts on all stackexchange sites period. And I even have the gold electorate badge on stackoverflow. Sorry, I just disagree with this enough to downvote it.

The only exception I'd have to this is a question like "what grand strategy do you prefer in [game X]?" - for example where [game X] is a monster wargame like World in Flames.  I suppose even there, the question should be "what grand strategy do you recommend when playing Germany in World in Flames" (incidentally, my answer for that would be Gib/Med/Barb'42 to use the conventional syntax amongst wiffers).

I would say that is more specific than "what are the strategies for [Game X]?", especially if you specify which position you're playing. In games with a substantial meta-game aspect (which overall strategy you choose depending on which your opponents are likely to choose), asking about large-scale strategies might be reasonable and not too broad. For wargames specifically, I think (though I don't do much wargamming myself) it's relatively common for an entire game or scenario to count as a specific situation than for a more abstract game like Poker.

Based on the answers coming up, I think this is what the Dominion question is becoming. I like it, and find it useful. How can we encourage more of that?

Instead of asking if you should vote to close, go ahead and vote to close topics that you think don't belong.
Perhaps 4 people will agree with you.  Over time, this will build a consensus better than what can be determined here on meta I think.
If we repeatedly get questions closed and then reopened, then a more detailed discussion about the question on meta is warranted IMHO.
From the subjects, those all sound closable to me.  Checking 'em out individually now.

I did in fact vote to close those, and added a brief comment why; but then I decided it might be good to have a meta-thread for discussing that kind of question, so we have something to refer to when it comes up in the future, and so I can give a longer explanation for why I voted to close than can fit into a comment.

@Brian - works for me.  They have 2 votes each now :)

I think it would depend on the answerability of the question. If it's vague/opinion-based (such as the "what are good strategy tips" example), then no. But if it's, say, "Which of these two cards would be more effective in this situation", then there is probably a clearly definable answer.

NO, we should allow strategy questions, as that is a major part of boardgames.  This site should be the place that people come to look for strategies for their favorite games.  If we aren't going to allow strategies, we might as well rename the site Board and Card Game Rules, since that will be the only topic left.

This question was not about whether we should allow strategy questions in general. It was whether we should allow broad questions like "what are some good strategy tips for X game". Such questions are not a good fit for StackExchange's Q&A format, where it is expected that questions cover a single answerable topic and there is some way to determine if an answer is right. So, questions like "What move should I make in this position?" may be appropriate, or "in what circumstance would you use this card", but a general question asking about strategy tips for an entire game would be inappropriate.

Excellent point. Frankly, disturbing that it was downvoted at all. Broad descriptions of general strategies are still a long ways from the actual implementation details for any game worth playing. They are simply the beginning of a road to greater understanding of the game.


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Texas Hold'Em Shotgun Questions
These questions are individually better than the previous set (which seem to have been deleted), but asking a long series of formulaic questions about particular strategic questions in a single game feels like spamming, or at least flooding (posting rapid-fire content that fills up a discussion board or chat room at the expense of everyone else's content). It's overwhelming the front page, and it's not likely that any of these will get good answers in a timely manner.
What's the appropriate action here? Flag these questions? Vote to close? Just vote them down? Individually, they would probably be OK, but as a group, flooding the front page, they seem quite out of place.

https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/408/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-how-to-play-a-tournament
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/409/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-how-to-play-before-the-flop
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/410/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-how-to-play-after-the-flop
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/411/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-raise-sizes-in-different-blind-levels
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/412/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-bet-sizing-how-much-do-you-bet-and-why
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/413/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-odds-and-outs-how-should-you-play-draws
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/414/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-advanced-strategies-for-postflop-play
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/415/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-four-standard-charts-for-the-push-or-fold-stage
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/417/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-how-do-you-play-speculative-hands
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/418/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-the-perfect-introduction-to-multi-tabling
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/419/poker-texas-holdem-sit-and-go-nl-tournament-your-opponents-hand-ranges

I tried flagging these for moderator attention, and I actually ran out of flagging opportunities; apparently, you can only flag 10 posts in one day.

I just came here to post the same thing.  The entire front page of questions is Texas Hold 'em questions.

@Brian: To clarify, you are complain about the questions or the flood?

There is also a bit of a problem in that I imagine this may lower our ratio of answered questions artificially, since the interest among the current user group seems to be somewhat lower (currently, five out of the oldest eight questions tagged "poker" have at least one answer, and the remaining eighteen questions have no answers). However, that should hopefully clear up once the beta goes open.

My main problem with these posts is that they don't seem genuine.  Looks to me like someone is looking to pad their Rep., not get an actual answer.  The questions are very vague, and if I were a mod, I'd probably throw around a warning or two.
As it is, I'll just be voting to close them (all).

@bigown The flood. Each question is individually OK (though, perhaps would be better for the proposed poker SE http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3425/poker, but as this one exists and that doesn't, it's OK here for now).

Why is it even possible to ask 20 questions in a space of 30 minutes? You'd expect that this problem has come up before on SE and has been fixed.

@Erik: This is not a big problem. It's clear to me that we go high here.

@Egg: Close is not the solution to everything. In Beta, specially in private we need help users to improve the experience on site. We can comment, discuss here on meta and even down vote if the OP doesn't wanna edit the question. Close is last resource. Just my opinion.

@Brian: Agreed.

I've now run out of close votes, flags, and downvotes for the day on these questions... and he's still asking them. I think I need to escalate to the SE staff.

Look at his profile -- 37 questions for card-games and poker-texas-holdem... I'm pretty sure he's spamming for the Taxonomist badge.

@Brian Campell AMEN.  This is ridiculous.  I'm surprised there isn't a limit to how many questions you can ask in a given time period.  Perhaps he hasn't just hit it yet.

team@stackoverflow.com :-)

Posted on meta.so: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68180/how-to-deal-with-flooding-on-a-beta-se I will wait to see if I get a response here or there before contacting team@stackoverflow.com, since I've already done so much flagging, and I don't want to flood the admins with this problem (since all of the SO/SE employees seem to be admins here, they should see the flagging that I've already done, if I understand correctly how it works).

... and suspended.

RobertCartaino is coming to deal with.

Looks like everything is better now. There appear to have been some comments on this thread that I see snippets of in my inbox, but don't see here; have a few people deleted comments?

@Brian: I edited my last comment :-)

They're not real, honest, questions, since it's basically copy-and-paste work, so I'm voting to close them as such.

I personally think this feels like spamming and that they are candidates for being closed.  They're very short and all have the same style of how they address people.  I think my frustration, and most peoples frustration with these, is they were all posted at exactly the same time in a flood.  Without knowing poker, I'm not sure which ones are closely related to which other ones.

Would it be possible to merge them all into an uber-strategy thread?

An uber-strategy thread doesn't really work well on SE. Each question should be relatively specific, and answerable in a single answer (there are also some question that work OK as a poll, listing various options and voting up the best, but even that isn't very good for a strategy thread). A long, detailed discussion of the strategy of a given game probably isn't appropriate for SE; that's better done on a wiki, or a blog, or a book. SE is for specific questions, which may be too specific to cover in a general strategy article or book, but which can be answered and accepted.

It did feel like spam to me when they first appeared and flooded the homepage.
But then, this site is only starting and getting lots of questions in seems like a good idea, even at the price of some occasional "discomfort". Maybe poker players feel that this site is being flooded with Dominion questions. :-)
So I'd vote to keep them... For now! Let the up/down voting on each question do its natural work and we can decide near the end of the beta if this type of rapid-firing will be allowed after the beta.

Well, this problem has been dealt with now. This is not just a bit of discomfort; this is a crucial point in the development of the community, when we're trying to "prime" it with good content. A flood of copy-paste questions is pretty much guaranteed to wind up with bad content. If the questions are so formulaic, and the answers are simply filling in well-known strategy, than SE is probably not a good forum. And any time one user floods and takes over a community, it's bad for everyone else, beta or not. It stops being a community and just starts being theirs alone.

This is exactly the garbage I was afraid of when I posted my question about whether poker was on-topic or not. I really wish this hadn't happened.

I don't think poker is not on topic, SPAM is not on topic!