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Question that seems opinion-based when someone does not know the objective answer
A question in the form of: "Can X be done in game Y?" can be seem opinion based, however If in fact you know that there is a variant of game Y where X has been implemented then the question is no longer opinion based, because the answer is objective: Yes, see X in Y at Z.
I am talking about two questions that were asked today:

Redesign Checkers board to an odd size
Redesign Ludo with more than 4 players

both questions have an objective answer: "Yes, here and there it is implemented."

Just because something "can" be done doesn't mean you won't get multiple different opinions oh how it should be done or if it should be done. In all honesty those do not seem like good questions and at best should be closed as game recommendations which are off topic,

The questions are "Is it possible..." / "Can X in Y...?"  Not if it should.  Therefore there is an objective easy answer: yes, it has been done.

And the answer is obviously yes that it can be done but that doesn't mean that it will make for a good version of the game. There is nothing stopping someone from making a checkers board with a different number of rows/columns and it doesn't even need to end up as a square. Also there is nothing stopping someone from making a ludo board that supports a larger or smaller number of players.

The body text of each of those questions asks whether it is possible to have the game with a particular variation, and as you say, the answer is objectively "yes" (trivially so for checkers, I think). But the title of each question asks for a "redesign", which indicates that they are looking for something more than "yes, you can". Design is inherently an open-ended and opinionated process, so it makes sense that people would interpret the questions as opinion based.

Taken literally, at face value, and out of context, you're right, those aren't necessarily opinion-based. But in context, past face value, they're opinion-based. And either way they're not good questions and closing them is appropriate.
So, yes, both questions are ostensibly answerable as-is. We don't even need to cite an example. Obviously yes you can play checkers with an odd-sized grid: just remove or add a column. It'll play different, but it'll still look like checkers. Obviously you can play Ludo with more than four players: just add more home spaces, the same way the game already does when you're moving from 2 players up to 3 or 4. But it's so trivially answerable it's still a bad question. The answer is plain and obvious and there's not even trivial research effort shown in asking it.
That's all taking it solely at face value which we don't have to do.
Stack Exchange isn't just about writing answers to questions. We are about solving peoples' problems, which means looking deeper at the actual problem someone is experiencing and trying to figure that out. There's only a certain range of questions we accept, and that range represents this mission. If we look past the surface-level question (which, as mentioned, is a bad question) we find the actual problem here is someone's curious about alternative design lenses, but rather than do their own exploration they're asking us a bad subjective question:

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”

The author has no actual apparent problem here, they're just shooting off hypotheticals and asking us about them (“what if checkers had an odd sized grid?”). That's both of these bullet points. The main function of the full list of bullet points is to direct us away from discussion-y conversation starters that's suitable for a forum but doesn't work here, and toward the kind of Q&A that thrives in our system.
We also have to observe the querent was showing they were going to perform a pattern of these questions, a pattern that likely stopped at two because our downvotes and close votes enforced an automatic slowdown or question ban.
So taking in the full context:

The questions showed no actual research effort, and so were not up to our quality bar and were downvoted.
Whether at face value or past face value, the questions were bad subjective and presented no actual problem and were too open-ended for our format, which would require them to be closed as either primarily opinion-based or for more information required because we need them to better define what problem they're actually running into.
This was going to be a series of questions, which we needed to hit the brakes on. Downvoting and especially closing is our brakes.

Downvoting these questions and closing them as primarily opinion-based was appropriate. If it wasn't for POB, they'd be closed as unclear & more information needed to understand their problem. The important thing is they're closed, so opening them to re-close them for a different reason isn't wortwhile.


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Should we create new tag for each game?
What is our tag-policy?
Someone asked a question about a game with no tag, should I make a tag of that game?  He state that no tag exists, so he tagged board-game-geek.
Does the answer change if I suspect that the tag will have just a single question?
For reference: question about Vaults.

Yes, each game receives a tag. It's fine if there's only one entry.
However: make sure you add a tag wiki! This is not just to clarify the tag, but because if a tag has only one question and no tag wiki, the tag will get deleted by the system as and the question may become simply untagged, making the game vanish and nullifying your work creating the tag in the first place. If there's a tag wiki, this automatic removal never happens.
See this Meta.SE feature request for this behaviour: Do not expire single-use tags that have a tag wiki

Over on Arqade single use tags were set to not get auto deleted, so I imagine the same would be possible here.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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XenoShyft Tags (Onslaught, Dreadmire and minor expansions)
I'd like to ask questions about the games XenoShyft Onslaught and XenoShyft Dreadmire, but the tags don't exist.
Could someone create them or should I use a more "generic" tag, such as [deck-building] or [playing-cards]? My question is more precisely about the owner of a card when played in another player "base".
Thanks.

We can't actually create those tags yet because there are no questions about XenoShyft. Tags cannot exist without being attached to questions.
You should ask your questions and use a generic tag, then we'll create the tags on your questions. If you'd like, leave a request for specific tags in a comment or at the end of your question, such as “Could someone tag this [xenoshyft-onslaught]?”.

Thanks for your answer. I asked my question here: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/45419/xenoshyft-onslaught-which-discard-pile-for-instant-items-played-on-another-play

@Thrax - One other note, the tag will be purged over time (90 days?  I forget) unless it is used on at least two questions.  It can always be recreated, but if at all possible, ask a couple questions to get things rolling, thanks!

@PatLudwig Tags are also safe from that purge if they have one use and a tag description or wiki, so this one is safe.

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


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Who can add a new tag ticket-to-ride-nordic-countries?
ticket-to-ride-nordic-countries
Is this the right place to ask to add a new tag?

We can't add a tag until there is a question to add it on. So if you have a question that has been asked that needs the tag provide a link and someone can add the tag to the question if appropriate.

Looks like there are 3 questions that mention Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries.

I've added it and applied it to two of the questions Andrew T. mentioned in comments:

Is there a list of routecards for Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries?
Ferries and Tunnels in Ticket to Ride Expansions

I've left if off this one since although the expansion gets mentioned, it's just about the game in general:

How Unethical Is A Purely "Blocking" Move In Ticket To Ride?


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Create tag full-thrust
Full-Thrust is an awesome spaceship wargame by Ground Zero Games.
I am posting one question regarding it, but I see there is not yet a tag for it.
Should one be created?

I have created the tag

Tags can only be created after a question relating to the tag has been asked. Once you have asked your question a user with enough reputation will create and add the correct tag for you.
One thing to remember is that once the tag is created you can go and create a tag wiki for it so that people have more information about the game and the tag is more likely to stay around.

Shall I add a link to the question in my request?

@MarcoBolis There shouldn't be a need as people will see the question and notice the tags are off and fix it if they can.

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


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Hide specific Questions
Is there a way to hide specific questions?
Merely to hide questions that while still in your interest categories, are but perhaps already answered, or the exact topic doesn't interest you.
This is not the same as hiding entire topics or tags (Discussed here: How do I filter out all the *Magic: the Gathering* questions?)

As far as I know, you cannot do this. The only question hiding functionality is by hiding tags as you mentioned.


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MTG Format Tags?
With the rampancy of MTG threads on the board & cards, should there not be tags to differentiate between the several formats?
MTG-Standard, MTG-Modern, MTG-Commander, MTG-Multiplayer, etc (There is actually one for [MTG-Modern], but none for the rest).
Seems like a lot of tags to add, and some questions simply don't need to distinguish between formats- most card clarification question for example. However there are some sticker questions where the answer would change wildly based on format.

The tags mtg-modern, mtg-commander, and mtg-multiplayer all already exist, along with mtg-drafting and mtg-cube for limited formats, and mtg-two-headed-giant, mtg-frontier, mtg-tiny-leaders, and mtg-archenemy for more niche formats. The tag mtg-homebrew may also fit in this list, depending on how you look at it.
Other tags can be added if and when someone asks questions that need them. If someone created the mtg-standard tag, for example, and added it to questions that are specifically about that format, I'm sure they would not see many objections.

One downside of mtg-standard is that standard rotates, so the questions are less likely to be relevant.

There's no rule prohibiting questions from becoming irrelevant. And that's not a reason not to have a tag like that. We already have questions about standard as a format as a whole, and about standard decks in particular.

Also keep in mind that tags are generally not about explaining the context of the question. If it's important that you're talking about standard, the question itself should note that. Tags are more for organization (searching, browsing, statistics, etc). So the question isn't if the answer would change wildly based on format, it's whether it's useful to be able to look at that particular slice of questions.


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Why is my edited answer greyed out?
I undeleted my first posted answer and revised it to take into account the comments.
Now, the answer is just greyed out; someone else's answer to the same question is displayed normally, so there appears something wrong with the editing I did.
Could someone explain it to me please?

Answers with a net score below a certain threshold are grayed out to de-emphasize incorrect or otherwise bad answers. Your post is currently at a score of -4. Your edit did bump the question to the front page, so now people will see it again and may cast new or changed votes on your answer.


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Why was my question put on hold as being unclear?
I asked this question some time ago and just realized that it had been marked as on-hold for being unclear. In what way was my question unclear?

You tagged it lord-of-the-rings while asking about components and mechanisms that don't exist in that game.
It's therefore unclear what you are asking about. Something that does exist which you've mixed up? A different game entirely, and which one?

I checked out the tag wiki as well as Reiner Knizia online. It seems that I am talking about the same game mentioned in the tag usage guide!

It appears there are several versions of the game, with component variations. The pieces you call runes are originally called shields, and were not split between a "silver" and "gold" category. I suggest adding this clarification if you can, then I would support reopening.

Done! I also added an ISBN to clear confusion of versions and stuff...


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Are questions on discussing pros/cons and improvements to a bidding convention too subjective? (Bridge)
I recently made a new? conventional defense to 1NT, and was wondering if asking for opinions on it would fit the site.

I am too new to know if things are on-topic.  But I did want to mention (as far as "new" is concerned) that there are hundreds of defences to 1NT.  This site probably hasn't been updated in a while: https://www.blakjak.org/def_1nt01.htm and only has 9 pages.  If you're interested in "new" or in "variations" on your theme that others have used...

Questions about specifics are probably on topic, sometimes.  Questions about "improving" it, though, aren't; too broad and too opinion based.

I want to play the convention that you lead T from KJT but J from JT against NT, to make it clear which I have. Is this a good idea?

No, it's not on topic.  "Is this a good idea" is an opinion, and too broad. But...

I want to play the convention that you lead T from KJT but J from JT against NT, to make it clear which I have.  What kind of issues would this result in?

That's more on topic.  It might still be too broad if the thing you're asking about is broad, but the example here is at least reasonable.

Why is the standard to lead the J from KJT against notrump?

Yes, that's on topic.  It's specific, it's asking why something is the default; while it's likely to also get a lot of "well, actually" answers, it should be reasonably answerable.

What is the standard lead from KJT against notrump? Why?

Yes, also on topic - similar to the prior question, it's nice and tidy.  "Standard" might vary some, but it's still reasonably limited.

Here is my convention.  Will this work?  [2 pages of dense text]

Obviously, not on topic.  Too broad.
So - I think the answer is, you can ask about particular things and why they're that way; and you probably could ask about a specific thing, but only if you were pretty specific, and perhaps asked about the standard way as a comparison.


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Moderator election #1 on Board & Card Games has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are:

Also, please join me in thanking the following user, who will be stepping down as moderator:

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

Congratulations to all the winners!
Thanks Cascabel for your service as a mod during our beta years and initial time post beta.


text:
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Why was question regarding professional play closed?
Why was this question - my first on this site but far from my first on SE; I certainly don't see how it is overly broad - closed, just when it had begun accruing useful responses? A question requiring broad rather than deep knowledge does not necessarily fail to "focus on one problem only".
What board and card games have full-time professional players?
How ought it to be improved? The point is that I cannot ask a series of questions like, 'Are there any full-time players of Scrabble?', because if I knew which boardgames to ask that question about then in most cases I would already have the answer.
The only logic provided for what I presume was one of the closure votes seems absurd (if one wants to claim there exist 'many games' with full-time professionals that few have ever heard of - when even the most popular games, short of chess/Go/poker, struggle to sustain full-time professionals - the burden of proof for such an odd claim is clearly upon them). No logic whatsoever for the other votes. So nothing to go on to improve the question really.

When a question asks for a list of things that match some criteria, a proper answer is one that provides a list of things matching that criteria, and the best answer is the one that leaves nothing out of the list, and also doesn't include anything incorrectly.
The fundamental problem with questions like this one, that ask "What board and card games [meet some criteria]?" is that the universe we are selecting from, "board and card games", is unbounded and not completely well defined. There is no canonical list of every board and card game ever, and there is sure to be debate about whether some of the edge cases belong on the list at all. The breadth of that universe makes it very difficult both for a potential answerer to examine all of the possibilities, and for anyone evaluating the answer to verify its completeness. That is why we consider questions of this type "too broad".
One common failure mode of this kind of question, which happened on your question too, is that answers don't even attempt to provide a complete list; instead, they provide a single item from that list. These are not really answers, just components of answers: the answer to your question is not "Bridge" or "Magic: the Gathering", it is a list that contains "Bridge" and "Magic: the Gathering" and presumably some number of other games. If a question is looking for answers like that, the "needs more focus" reason applies even more clearly: the corresponding help center entry describes that close reason like this:

if your question has many valid answers (but no way to determine which - if any - are correct), then it probably needs to be more focused to be successful in our format.

If "Bridge" and "Magic: the Gathering" are both valid answers but neither one is more correct than the other, then the question doesn't fit here.

Thanks for going into it. However, the success of this question could well be simply limited by the expertise of those who have seen it so far, which is a limited pool of members on the site. (In other words, I am suggesting that there may be members capable of answering it fully, who will not do so because it is now closed.) Therefore, the fact that two answers so far mentioned just a couple of games does not mean an answer with a full list is impossible (or even 'extremely difficult') - it is a question of needing somewhat broad experience around ludology

The point is 'the universe we are selecting from' in this case is not really all board & card games, only the world's most popular - so is far from unbounded. If one were to ask, 'what games have more than 50 million active players', this question would be acknowledged as pertaining to a bounded list of games (very much in public domain knowledge), though it may have other problems like 'active players' being hard to define. My question is almost like saying 'Ordering the world's games by popularity, where is the cut-off below which games have no full-time professionals?'

@MobeusZoom How many users giving a similar answer is going to be needed before you can accept it?

@JoeW your idea that if a large number of people agree with you, that makes you correct, is mistaken and very deeply so. A fallacious answer is fallacious no matter how many people advance it. I have pointed out the problem with this reasoning twice now and no-one has addressed my point (that the universe of relevant games is not unbounded because only the most popular need be considered). What is "going to be needed" is a response concerning this argument, not a political weighing of support.

@MobeusZoom To be fair you appear to have a single person agreeing with you.

@MobeusZoom I disagree that we would or should accept "what games have more than 50 million active players?" and even if we did, your suggestion about looking for a popularity cutoff is different, because it is examining the a priori unbounded set of "games more popular than some unknown cutoff to be determined in the answer".

Ok thanks for the actual discussion. So (1) what's wrong with the question "what games have more than 50 million active players?" - to me it seems to be very objectively and clearly defined (except, as I pointed out, the vagueness of 'active')? You gloss over this. (2) We do not have to consider the unbounded set a priori, only games that we know of as the world's most popular (since it is possible to go in rank order: does rank #1 have full-time pros? 'Yes' Does rank #2? 'Yes' ... Does rank #10? 'No').

I feel we're getting somewhere so let's consider: would it be feasible for a member on this site to be able to identify the world's N most popular games for small N (say, N=10)? (or come close to doing so, i.e. identify say 70%+ of that set). If the answer is yes for some N greater than the number of games with full-time pros, then the universe of games under consideration by that person in answering my question is not unbounded.

The closure votes may well have arisen from people who felt they could not  identify most of that set of N most popular games, and (probably erroneously) assumed that no-one else could either. Such people ought to have simply steered clear of the question, though, having less research/knowledge on this subject than I have myself and indicated in the OP (e.g., if one reads 'Xiangqi' and thinks 'hmm that didn't occur to me as one of the most popular games in the world; how could anyone possibly know all of these?' they are not an intended answerer of my question).

The question about games with many active players is fundamentally the same kind of question my answer talks about: taking the universe of all games and selecting a subset based on a criteria, and it's problematic for the reasons I already described. As for your popularity cutoff proposal, you don't know ahead of time how many games you have to check to find the cutoff. That's what "unbounded" means. And the way you worded that variation corresponds not to finding the first "No" in that sequence, but finding the last "Yes", which can only be validated by checking every less popular game.

Aha so here's the point: you assume one has to traverse every game to assign each with a 'Yes' or 'No'. That's not the case: the first n will answer 'Yes' and the remainder 'No'. That is the point David Siegel and I have been trying to make. You only need to find the first "No" and you can curtail your search.

Not to mention that answers would change over time as games grow or shrink in popularity and it would be hard to have a final answer.

@JoeW I doubt that (but you may produce a counterexample, e.g. a game which has suddenly produced full-time professionals in the last year but not before that): unlike video games, the most popular board & card games in the world do not show such volatility. How long have chess, go, poker, Shogi, Xiangqi been at the top of the list? (4 of the 5 have sustained full-time pros for 150+ years)

I keep coming back to the following point as the crux of the resistance: whether it is straightforward to order the world's games by popularity and pinpoint the top N, defining popularity as amount of patronage (which can be determined by the size and activity of the community playing it). I suspect there is a clear answer for say the top 15 (just as I pointed out 5 members of probably the top 5-6) and there should be ludologists who know it. As for Joe's concern about volatility, it's a priori valid but empirically not valid here as the produced examples are highly stable

@MobeusZoom I wasn't referring to your question about professional players but your example question about popularity. Say for example the MTG is in the list of most popular games but they make a sudden announcement that they are going to stop all production and sanctioned play and release a new game. What would happen to the popularity of MTG and the new game? It could invalidate all existing answers on the question as they are really only valid for a point in time.

@JoeW I don't know much about MTG, but I checked and it seems to have been the world's most popular trading card game for 20+ years and sustained full-time professionals since at least 1996. So you've proved further my point about the stability of the top rankings. There is no need for SE answers to be robust to changes that occur once every ~30 years. (Have you been on StackOverflow? The majority of answers cease to be valid within 30 months as packages, languages, operating systems change.)

It's becoming increasingly clear that games (board & card games) only start having enough patronage to support full-time professionals once they've proved extremely high popularity for a number of decades. Remember such professionals are also taking an enormous risk, dedicating themselves full-time to this game with little outside employment record; they would not do so if  it were really feasible for the game to just disappear tomorrow. That's why they all have 25+ year track records - this gives those professionals the necessary confidence (that they won't need other jobs) to go full-time

@MobeusZoom "You only need to find the first "No" and you can curtail your search." That required an ordered and complete list - this does not exist. I may believe that MTG is the most popular T/CCG, but I couldn't name much further down that list. I would think that YGO and Pokémon are next, but that's because I see them played locally, there could be some game played only by everyone in China that eclipses the rest of the world's popularity of Pokémon TCG. Without checking everything we can't be 100% sure of accurate answers on an unbound list question.

cont. The same is true of board games. I personally know Go and Mahjong exist, I know they are probably pretty heavily played in Asia, but not where they'd fit into say a top 100 games by number of players. The whole exercise would be sorting that unbound list by popularity and then putting in your cut-off.

I voted to close it because it is a never ending list. There is an endless amount of possibilities that can be considered having professional players and deciding what game has one and doesn't can get very tricky especially when you consider people who review/stream/play games in general for a living.
This question is likely to just attract answers that add a single game to the ongoing list and the fact that it already received two answers that did just that before it was closed. To me this gives an indication that it will just receive a lot of similar answers and never get a proper answer that contains it all.

This is just blatantly wrong, and you do not seem to address my argument - also now fronted by David Seigel - for why this reasoning is obviously wrong. It is NOT a "never-ending list". Very few games will have full-time professionals. The objective of the question is to determine the few that do. As for your point about review/stream/play, it's equally moot because I clearly defined full-time professionals to be those who make the majority of their income from competitive play and teaching.

@MobeusZoom I wasn't the only one to think it was off topic 4 others also voted to close and there is also another answer on this question supporting what I said so there are at least 5 others who support that it was off topic.

ultimately SE is meant to be an objective space: opinion-based closure is no more acceptable than opinion-based questions or answers. It is likely that the other voters followed your lead, but whether or not they did, no reasoning was provided from anyone but you and yours is fallacious. The point is a closure must have a defensible justification, not 'well, a few other people agreed'. This leaves a question of whether my post was closed mainly because of my new contributor badge, and because it was perceived as unanswerable by you even if it is not generally so.

@MobeusZoom No need to get upset at the messenger. You asked a question and I explained why I cast my close vote and as I have already pointed out I was not the only one who believed that it should be closed. This site doesn't have an issue with people voting to close questions just because someone else has already voted to do it.

List questions are frowned upon in most SE sites.
Similarly most sites have meta discussions as to whether they should be permitted.  This site has one...
At what point does a question become a list, and are lists really that bad?
There is little you could do to make it on-topic.

There is nothing on that thread which suggests this is a 'list question' as defined there. In particular, the closest it comes is If the answer a question needs is a list, then the list should fit in one answer. - my question meets this criterion.

I think this is likely to be a sharply limited list, and should not be closed.  Only a few games will have professional players as defined in the question, and fewer can be documented as having such players. I have voted to reopen this question, and i urge those who voted to close to retract their votes or vote to reopen.
I also find the rollback of the edits to be improper, and I will flag that for moderator attention. Apparently there is policy on this, and while I disagree with it, The rollback was not out of line by current policy.

A question is not supposed to be updated to include answers that are given which is why it was rolled back.

@Joe I can't find any policy post on this meta saying anything of the sort, please cite a source for this assertion.

The basic principle here is that questions belong in the question section and answers belong in the answer section. And there are meta posts about this if you know where to look. This network meta post, for example, says "Editing an answer directly into the body of the question is never acceptable."

@murgatroid99 though I didn't have strong feelings about the rollback, it seems like a borderline case because that part of the answer only confirmed a small part of the question which sought that particular confirmation. What are your thoughts on the broader issue this thread brings up? Perhaps the fact an active contributor (David Siegel) already vocally agrees with me, and that those who voted to close self-professedly do not have clear justification for doing so, warrants a weigh-in from a diamond moderator...

@Mobeus Zoom other close voters may not have posted defending  their votes, but they are not required to, and one has posted to this meta discussion besides Joe. The other close voters have not "self-professed" the lack of a "clear justification". They haven't said what their justification might be. They may not even have seen this meta thread yet, or may not have chosen to comment.

@DavidSiegel true: only one has provided any sort of justification, but when no clear guidance precluding this thread was discovered, he fell back to an appeal to popularity. In my opinion closure should have to have a clear justification, not 'guilty until proven innocent', and if it does then that justification should be provided actively.

@MobeusZoom Your question is in the reopen queue and if there are others who agree that it should be reopened that will happen. Continuing to complain about it being closed because you don't agree with the close reason will not change that.

@Mobeus Zoom That might be a better way to run things, but it would not, I suspect, work well on busy parts of SE. Current policy is those with enough rep may vote to close for any reasons.. If this is challenged and a convincing justification is not provided, there may be a reopen vote. But it cannot be presumed that voters who do not post separate justifications do not have them, they may simply agree with one posted, in this case the one by Joe, and not every user is on a site every day, much less every hour, so it is not safe to assume that anyone has yet actively declined to respond.


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Can we get standard suit symbol markup for playing cards?
I see this question from a number of years ago, but apart from all the questions raised in the answer, poker style "full card" shows degrade badly for games with large hands such as spades, hearts, and especially bridge.  Seeing 13 cards with all that fuss would make it harder to read than either of the standard methods (AKTxx Q xxxx KTx or in a 4-line stack).
But it would be nice frequently just to have a suit symbol. the [he]8, for instance, or "with [sp]AKJxx, he would have led the K".  Would it be possible to have some standard markup that translates into the suit symbol?
Just this addition would solve a lot of the issues in the original question, at least for bridge:

by standard convention, [cl]2 is a card, 2[cl] is a bid.  You don't have that weird card frame somewhere for bids.
[he]AKQT solves the "repeated heart symbol" which is never used in other documentation.  (Note that for Poker, HA HK CJ H7 is necessary to understanding timing; bridge or spades hands would never be reported that way).  Also, the "correct" way to show the example hand above in one-line is [sp]AKTxx [he]Q [di]xxxx [cl]KTx.
The concept of "a spot card unnecessary to specify" [di]x, while discouraged in style guides, becomes possible and obvious.
Without this easily available, people revert to the pre-graphic SHDC, which has confused questioners in the past.
Further support for bridge - one of the most discussed games on this site that uses regular playing cards - such as full-hand, full-deal, and auction markup would all use the suit symbol markup in their creation.  Given that currently the easiest way to present a full hand is a screenshot, this would be beneficial, and this is a very good first step.

The freeform nature of simply having support for suit symbols so the writer can just write seems like a minimum of fuss for a huge benefit.
Objection
The standard objection I can see with this is that we already have access to suit symbols, either in Unicode or certain fonts.  However:

unlike stored graphics, user's fonts may not have those unicode points.
using a symbol font or coding style has the issues that caused unicode in the first place.
having markup allows us to degrade or customize:

black diamonds and hearts are really easy to misread.  players are so used to black suits and red suits (or the 4-colour suit set that most bidding boxes now use).
a graphic with an alt tag allows screen readers to convert to "HAKQx" which, while still awful, at least has the same problems as everywhere else.
There is flexibility in presentation.  Even if this site decides to convert the markup into the unicode symbol, people would get cleaner questions and answers "for free".  And if a different support method was preferred in the future, current question and answers get updated, also "for free".

the suit symbols aren't on the keyboard, forcing people to find it or cut/paste it from somewhere.  A markup that translates will both be standard and accessible (if logged).

Note that I'm using as an example (and suggested code) the default Bridge Base Forums code for suits: eg. [cl].  Another, used on many sites, is !C .  But it doesn't matter, as long as it's available and documented.

Currently the suit symbols are available as HTML entities without you having to copy-paste them from somewhere. That is, to get this:
♦ ♥ ♣ ♠
You write this:
♦ ♥ ♣ ♠

This looks weird, but it's basically referencing a unicode character by a short name, beginning with & and ending in ;. Think of those two symbols as like opening and closing quotes.
This means in a normal post I can write 2♠ as 2♠. This is accessible and screenreader-friendly: my screenreader, NVDA, reads this out as “two spades”. As an author I just have to stick the name of the suit between & and ;, and remember that “diamonds” was truncated to “diams”.

Regarding the points you're looking for:

The diamonds and hearts aren't red. This seems to be the one thing a Markdown feature could do that we wouldn't already be able to do with this markup.
These are screen reader accessible as noted.
HTML entities, Unicode, and the use of UTF-8 as the lingua franca for web programming, are all standardised to the point that “doesn't have this unicode character” is not a very likely scenario for someone using a device made this century.

This is not to suggest your feature request shouldn't be a thing, but that we already 90% have it using standardised tools. If I understood correctly, it sounds like you just want easy access to the suit symbols and specifically not Poker.SE's specialised rendering—and here it is. The only thing really missing that we'd additionally need from a Markdown feature would be for two of these symbols to be red.


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Are 'what cards can I get that do X' questions allowed?
Are questions that ask for cards that do [thing] on topic? I feel like this is probably a list question and therefore off-topic, but I figured I'd check before leaving.
Ex: In MTG, what cards let me have infinite hand size/scry 5 or more/make X tokens/other function

Yes, those questions are allowed. This kind of question is different from "list questions" because the possible answers are drawn from a specific known list, so it is possible to verify that an answer is comprehensive.

Related, "list questions" is commonly misunderstood by our modern usage. They are not questions that will likely receive an answer containing a bulleted list. Instead, they are unbounded discussiony questions that result in an endless list of answers where we can't consider any to be better or more correct. We figured out better verbiage for these questions in 2010-ish, but the "list questions" shorthand stuck around for some reason. They're covered in our "don't ask" guidelines nowadays and fall into one or more of our close reasons.


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Is this our chance to "graduate"? Is this something we want?
Just today I stumbled upon this post: Experimenting with Pro Tempore elections, which seems to be a chance to the ever-lasting situation of still being "beta", and all the pros (and cons?) of "graduating".
Extracting parts from it, emphasis mine (still I suggest you read it):

Last spring, I ran an election on Parenting for a new moderator pro tempore. It went pretty well, so this fall we are going to extend the program to sites that have been in "beta" for years. [...]
We're reaching out to moderator teams to see if they would be interested in participating. Priority will go to sites with the longest history or that we've identified as having an urgent need. If you are a moderator who would like to nominate your site for an election, feel free to reach out to me. The ultimate goal is to have elections for all sites. [...]
Current moderators will not be required to nominate themselves—they will continue as moderators unless they ask to step down. [...]
The long-term goal here is to increase democratic participation in all of our sites, break down the barriers between beta and graduated sites and eliminate one community manager task. [...]

So, with this in mind, and regarding the other things mentioned in that post, I would like to ask you what do you think about this? What pros and cons can you think of asking to be considered?

Edit: Seems that Jon clarified in a comment that:

Yes. On graduation, all moderators must stand for re-election if they wish to continue in the role. There will be on no difference between moderators who ran for an election during beta and moderates we appoint

This changes things a bit. As I get it now, after the new pro-temp mods come about, and the site "graduates", then all mods will have to be re-elected. This makes sense because it will enable users to get a feel on each mod before "officially" (re) electing them.

As far as I understand, this will not impact us significantly. The existing moderators, Pat Ludwig, Cascabel, and I, were asked about the current state of moderation on the site, and we all said that we did not want to step down and that we do not need more moderators. Because of that, it is my understanding that elections will not be held at all.
More generally, my understanding is that this new election procedure is being put in place to help moderate beta sites, but it will not actually impact how or when those sites graduate.

I see. I think that you and the other mods are really good. But we also know that we have been seeking to leave beta for a while, so perhaps there is a point in the middle that could fit our needs.

So, you think this is more oriented towards moderating Beta sites (which IMHO is already done here), and less about the graduation part, is that right?

Right. I don't believe that this is related to graduation, except that it makes the procedure for choosing moderators for beta sites more similar to the procedure for graduated sites.

@DarkCygnus Elections are a thing that always was part of graduation. For some sites, they were one of the more important aspects of graduation, so this is a change to allow them to get what they wanted more easily, without waiting for full graduation. But since it's not connected to any of the other original parts of graduation, if it's not what B&CG wanted out of graduation, then it doesn't mean much.

@Cascabel I see. Seems that it's more about the elections than getting out of Beta, contrary to what I though and what it seemed to be. Thanks for the discussion :)


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Got achievement notification before reaching the milestone
When I logged in today my Achievements listed that I just reached the 1K milestone (edits, etc.), when I actually have 993 reps:

Doing some further tests, if I attempt to edit it indicates that it will be placed on a review queue, suggesting that the privileges have not been given yet.
Any ideas why this behavior appears?
I have not visibly lost any rep recently (as to fall below the milestone again).

Possible duplicate of Incorrectly informed of gaining a privilege, Reputation/Privileges Inconsistencies, Privilege banner buggy? Or am I just confused?, and Bug in rep calculation when displaying privileges banner?

To summarize the linked posts: There are actions that affect your reputation but do not appear in your history. By design, the system generates an alert when you gain a privilege, but generates no alert when you lose one. In every case I found where a developer stepped in to investigate, the developer declared that indeed reputation was lost and the behavior was by design.

Look at your reputation history, it is likely that you had the reputation and then lost 7 rep. If you try to edit a question at this point it would be a suggested edit. One quick way to test that is to try and edit a post on meta as it does not allow suggested edits.
I looked at your profile and it shows the next privilege you are going to get is the edit questions and answers so I am guessing you got the rep for the privilege and then lost the rep.

Like I said in the post, I have not lost any rep recently. Also, losing 7 reps exactly is unlikely, as Downvotes take 2 (can't reach -7, unless if I downvoted which is -1).

Yes you have and this issue has been reported many times on other stack exchange sites and it always turns out that reputation was lost after the privilege was earned. Also did you check your profile to see what the next privilege you will gain is?

It is possible to lose rep when a post or user is deleted, and that loss is not reported in the rep tracker. And you wouldn't have had to lose exactly 7 rep to reach the point you see. You might have lost 10 for example, which would be accounted for by a vote or two.

@murgatroid99 actually when a user is deleted you get the -X indicator saying "User was deleted"... what I suspect is that I got an UV and then the caster undid the UV, perhaps creating this bug (somewhere I had 1003 but really had 993)

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


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Are questions about balancing mechanics on topic?
This question about balancing a momentum mechanic was referred over to GDSE. Is it not on topic here? Why or why not?

I'm curious as to where the asker of that question was told to go to GeamDev.SE. They have never asked a question here (unless one was deleted), and I don't remember anyone in chat saying something like that.

That question looks fine for this site. We do accept board game design questions (see the game-design tag), and that looks like a decent one. I'm pretty sure we'd accept a migration of that question to this site.


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Are questions about how to Navigate/Use Online MTG retailers considered on-topic?
I came across this question while browsing the magic-the-gathering tag:
Can I look up a large list of cards on MagicCardMarket.eu?

MagicCardMarket.eu is apparently the go-to store for buying Magic cards in Europe, and I'm using it for the first time. I've a list of cards I'd like to buy to finalise a deck, and I can't find any way to search for them except one by one. Is there some way I can input a "want list" or something like that into MagicCardMarket.eu so that I can pick out the cards I need from sellers a bunch at a time?

I have not seen any similar questions before, and the online-stores tag it uses, only has the linked question.
Are these types of questions considered on-topic for Board & Card Games, or should the questions be more about the actual games themselves?

related: https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1194/409

There's a precedent of sorts: One a couple of occasions, we've helped people looking to identify a MTG card they had previously seen by teaching them how to use the available search engines rather than just giving the answer.

Re "the [tag:online-stores] tag it uses, only has the linked question", This means it will cease to exist unless someone create a wiki for it.

I think they're on topic. Different Stack sites have different ways to examine topicality, but I'll examine it using some rules of thumb that are usually pretty relevant:

Is it substantially related to our topic? Yes. Buying, selling and trading is an integral part of playing Magic: the Gathering. Online marketplaces are a major way to do that nowadays, so asking how to perform fundamental operations on the major marketplaces is relevant to our topic.
Are we the people to ask about this stuff? Is this within our users' topical domain of expertise or experience? Our community of MTG players almost certainly has collective experience in a number of marketplaces through the course of their gameplay. Our community can be considered experts on these.
Are people going to expect to look here for this stuff? If we're helping people handle the game itself, yes.

I'll note that we accept many types of questions that take place at a meta level above/outside the game itself:

We accept flavor questions: Are questions about flavor acceptable?
And tournament behaviours: Are questions about tournament play/behaviour on topic? (but not super-generic questions that could be related to any tournament or any event ever)
And pricing and value questions: Are pricing and value questions on topic?
And we accept guidance on how to handle the basics of selling: Where can I sell my Magic: The Gathering cards?

I'm primarily active on RPG Stack Exchange, where people use various toolsets (such as the online virtual tabletop web app Roll20) to run their games and we facilitate questions on usage of those toolsets. I think this is the same kind of thing.

I agree not only about this but about the general idea of game-adjacent questions. (Feels awkward calling them "meta" given that this is meta?) I know we can't handle everything (recommendations too broad, etc) but insofar as the questions fit the format, I think we should handle as much about board/card games as we can, and only consider making things off-topic if we discover that they cause issues.

I would think they would be off topic as it would be the case of any site used for buying and selling of games and gaming components. It is hard to see how the use of a commerce website falls into the realm of this site.


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About probability - understanding the scope for a future question
I was reading the info about probability tag, which I quote:

Questions about probabilistic game mechanics and how to calculate and estimate random events, as well as how probability affects games and gameplay.

I'm wondering if I can make a question focused on the highlighted text above.
What I would try question is:
How can I calculate the probability for get all cards of Exodia, the Forbidden One taken from my Deck at Draw phase - Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG
All some of you may know, but my question is focused according to draw cards from my Deck without using another ways for get these cards.

By the way, I made my question here in Meta for get feedback about if my question could add value to Board & Card Games site (and, of course, if my question could be on-topic, after read days ago these answers in Meta).

If you're unsure whether a question is allowed, just ask it. In the worst case, it gets closed, and nothing bad happens. And in this case, if there's a tag specifically about the kind of question you want to ask, it's a good bet that you are allowed to ask it.

Go ahead and ask, we've got several similar questions already.
In general, the advice murgatroid gave is perfect.  Ask whatever question you want on the main site.  If a question gets closed, and you don't understand why, then taking it to meta is a good way to go.

Thank you @@Pat Ludwig and @@murgattroid99. I posted my question and I share the link in this comment because maybe my question would need some edit about sintaxis. Thanks.


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What are the unwritten rules of BCG.SE MtG Questions and Answers?
Following some comment bits on "If a card is cloned...," I am curious as to any remaining style guidance, or norms, that a new arrival would want to be aware of? At the link, it was noted that it is the norm to only autocard the first appearance of a Card in the Answer/question combination. Justification was separately provided by highlighting the wikipedia style guide.
If a style guide doesn't exist for questions and answers here on bcg.se, with specific relation to things posted under the Magic the Gathering tag, what are the community norms?

Your situation's just a styling thing us in the MTG section have picked up (largely inspired by Wikipedia, as I see Jefromi noted), but you seem to be asking about all of our unwritten rules, or norms, across the whole site, without any particular scope (not just MTG questions, not just editing). That's a really big question, and not one I'm sure we could even have a satisfactory answer for - there's lots of siloed communities on this site who don't really know or care what people do in other tags, let alone understand half the material in them for lack of having played the game in question.

@doppelgreener Fair point; I'm use to adhering to the style guide on wikipedia, the AP style guide, and Systems Engineering style guide. If there isn't a broad style guide, lets narrow it to just Magic the Gathering tag. Edited.

I think that what you are asking for here is almost by definition unanswerable. Norms and unwritten rules are generally convention and generalizations of behavior. Usually, people don't have a list of norms ready in their mind, but they notice when someone does not follow them, as I did in the comment you're referring to. Basically, I think that if you had asked this question yesterday, I wouldn't have thought to mention that you only link to each thing once, either in the context of MTG or in general.

I have updated the tag wiki, here's a shortcut to the revision history. I added a new paragraph under "Linking to Card Images and Text". If anyone wants to edit it further, be my guest.

When an unwritten rule is identified and largely agreed upon, perhaps it should be written down?
In this case, adding one sentence to the existing tag description would suffice.

This was my initial expectation; I checked the tag info, prior to posting this question, for communal guidance relating to this tag.

@DrunkCynic - sounds great!  We can't be perfect, but should strive to continually improve.

This is great advice, but it does not appear to answer the question, "What are the unwritten rules?" I would upvote if it were a comment.


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Why are all my "not an answer" flags being declined?
I've made three "not an answer" (NAA) flags recently, which have all been declined as "a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it". Why are these flags being declined?
I've read ire_and_curses' post on NAA and I still believe that two out of these three flags were correct.

This answer on deck randomizers in Dominion says "don't use deck randomizers, use this website instead". While that might have been an acceptable answer to "How do I use deck randomizers?", the actual question was "Why are there Curse, Copper, Silver, Gold, and victory point cards in the randomizer deck?". I therefore flagged it as NAA because it does not attempt to answer the question.
This "answer" on shooting the moon in hearts is a response to a comment, and is clearly a comment, but could not be posted as a comment because the user didn't have enough reputation. The question is about the probability of shooting the moon, not asking for stories about people doing it!
This answer on the longest road in Settlers of Catan is clearly by someone who misunderstood (i.e. didn't read) the question. Following ire_and_curses' meta post, I now (just about) understand why this one should be downvoted rather than NAA.

Looks like me for all three.
For the past couple years every time I've declined a flag, I've had to select a reason from a short list.  You do get that feedback, right?
The short answer to each one is that immediate feedback.
The longer answer is that what you think requires a moderator's attention is not in tune with mine.
In most cases that I've seen lately where someone has flagged for "Not an answer" no moderator was needed.  Downvoting, voting to delete and commenting are sufficient.
When I get the flag, it is presented to me as just the flag and the answer.  There are no comments, and most importantly, I don't see the question.  Yes, I could click thru and get it, sometimes I do, but I'm not required to in order to make the decision.
Therefore, it has to be really cut and dried.  Spam, and self-promotion are the two things that come to mind when I think about "Not an answer" flags that I've approved recently.
The flag is "Not an answer", it isn't "Not the answer".  When I respond to the flag, I'm asking myself if what I see could be an answer.  If it is, I let it go.
The community is downvoting and deleting answers all the time, it isn't necessary to involve moderators unless the answer is actively harming the site.  Additionally, the community can also undelete answers, unless it was a moderator who deleted it.  One more reason for me not to perform this particular function except in very clear cut cases.
For more info, more concisely worded, see How do I properly use the "Not an Answer" flag?

That is what should be remembered, the flag isn't for judging the quality of the answer.

Many thanks Pat. I didn't realise that NAA was exclusively for posts that couldn't be an answer to any question. Yep, I get feedback. It says "a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it" which tells me nothing about why. As to the other options - I always understood downvoting to be for answers you disagreed with, rather than answers that didn't answer the question; I never knew there was such a thing as "vote to delete" - clearly I don't yet have enough rep on any SE website for that. And thanks for the link - that's a good explanation.

@AndyT - no problem, coming to meta to clarify when things get confusing/frustrating is the way to go.  As you participate more the privileges will build.  The difference between a moderator and someone with 5k rep isn't too large.

I generally agree with everything you said, but one part sounds a little odd. "Downvoting, voting to delete and commenting are sufficient." "The community is downvoting and deleting answers all the time..." -- it takes a lot of attention for something to get community-deleted, since it's a high-rep privilege and community members aren't seeing that "not an answer" flag like you do. Maybe if you think something should be deleted, and you think the community would agree (but take a while to do it), it's reasonable to just delete it?

@AndyT "NAA was exclusively for posts that couldn't be an answer to any question" -- well, it's for posts that can't be even a partial answer to the current question, in any form. If someone answers "who goes first in Pandemic" with "white always moves first", that's not an answer.

@Jefromi - I can't think of an instance where I thought an answer should be deleted and I didn't delete it.  There isn't always enough information to make that determination within the mod tools so for those I generally let the community handle it.

Well, moderate as you see fit, but for what it's worth, on Cooking (which I believe has a higher flag volume than here) we typically do take the time to click through to the post if there's not enough information in the mod tools to make a good decision. And there's UI affordance when you do (flag summary at the bottom of the page, arrows for browsing between flags), so I think it's something that the devs expect us to do sometimes.

@PatLudwig According to what you say, it looks like NAA's description of "does not attempt to answer the question" is misleading. It's not "does not attempt to answer a question".

First, I agree with your flag on the second answer you linked to, and it looks like it has since been deleted.
I think the most relevant point in the answer you linked is the last sentence:

If an answer is technically inaccurate, wrong, or just doesn't answer the question, downvote it.

Even though the first answer you linked doesn't actually answer its question, it does answer a question, and it looks like a real attempt to solve the problem in the original question. Therefore, a Not An Answer flag is not appropriate.
The third one is similar: it doesn't actually answer the question, but it looks like an attempt at answering at least a related question.
The theme here is that both of these "answers" have an answer-like structure and have keywords that make them appear. That makes them answers from the point of view of that flag, and it's up to experts in the domain (Settlers of Catan in this case) to determine whether the answer is relevant and correct, and vote accordingly.

People do not always ask the question that they really need the answer for. I cannot tell you how many times I have ignored a question and instead addressed what I considered to be the real problem. Consider this made up example:

How can I sacrifice my mana?

I might respond with:

Land and Mana are two different things. You can sacrifice Land to cards like Aggressive Mining.

I did not answer the question, and yet I think I solved the problem. The author of the Dominion answer probably thinks the same thing - he found a way to solve the problem that does not involve directly answering the question that was asked. You may not agree that the solution is good, and you should vote accordingly.
The answer on shooting the moon in Hearts (now deleted) truly does not address the question. I think that flag should have been accepted.
The answer on longest road in Catan is a wrong answer. Wrong answers have value, because they highlight a mistake that others could make. For more about the value of wrong answers, read this answer on Meta (and check out the comments too).

I understand the concept of answering the question that should have been asked, and I'm fine with that in general. But the Dominion answer solves a problem that is not directly related to the question. The question is equivalent to "There are Type A1 card and Type A2 cards. I understand how to use Type A1 cards, but Type A2 cards appear superfluous. Is there some way I am supposed to use Type A2 cards?". The answer is then equivalent to "Don't use Type A1 cards at all." That has no relevance to the question! The question is about Type A2 cards.

I suspect you have a different definition of "wrong" to me. To me "wrong" is the opposite of "right". So in a question, such as the Catan question, which is "Is A or B correct in situation XYZ", a right answer might be "A" and a wrong answer might be "B". An answer "In situation UVW, C is correct" is not wrong it is plain and simple not related. It is not "a mistake that others could make", it's a lack of being able to read and comprehend a simple question.

@AndyT You did the right thing by flagging an answer that you feel is unrelated to the question. The moderator who declined your flag disagreed with your assessment. No harm done. As for your second comment, I can see where you are coming from. The answer is so far off from the question that it looks like the author did not even read the question. It's an extreme example of misunderstanding, and probably worth deleting.


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New Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
As some of you may have read, one of the current moderators, mafu, is going to step down from their position as Pro Tem moderator. Since we still don't have a prediction for when this site will be fully graduated and able to host its first elections, a replacement for the position left open was in order. Let's all thank mafu for the time and effort they've put into this community!
And I am pleased to announce that murgatroid99 has stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed, and to continue to help the site grow into a huge success.

Please welcome murgatroid99 for the hard work and time they contribute.
You can read about the Pro-Tem Moderator program here: Moderators Pro Tempore.
Did I overlook anyone?
Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone is in no way a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why there'll be elections once the site has graduated.
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.

Welcome @murgatroid99!

Thank you @murgatroid99, best wishes!

welcome on board @murgatroid99

Good to have you aboard @murgatroid99. :)


text:
Accepting nominations for a replacement moderator!
One of the current moderators, mafu, is going to step down from their position as Pro Tem moderator. As a result, it falls upon the Community Team to pick a replacement for them. However, we decided we'd let users express interest in taking up the position and their peers show their support and/or concerns on each user's nomination, and take that into consideration when making our decision. Note that the decision will ultimately be made by the Community Team, and votes may or may not be a proxy for who gets chosen — we'll take them into consideration, but this is not an election.
I believe a week should be enough time, so on Wednesday, May 4th, the nominations will be closed, and we'll analyse the results and reach out to the person who seems like the best fit for us.

Please express your interest in taking up the position if you feel you would make an excellent moderator.
Here are some basic guidelines:

Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to your profile (parent and meta) so we can see your activity.
Optionally you can write something about yourself, and why you think you'd make a good candidate.

Here is what we are looking for in a Moderator...
We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:

Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.
Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.
Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.
Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.

Bonus points for:

Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).
Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.
Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community.

I would like to nominate myself (parent profile, meta profile).
I have participated in community moderation of this site and of Arqade (main profile, meta profile) for several years. I am an active participant in our chat room, and from my experience in the Arqade chat room, I believe that can improve both the speed and quality of site moderation.
I am among the most active users on this site, both on the main site and meta, and I believe that my average question and answer scores speaks to the quality of my contributions to both.

Not that it's necessarily an issue, but do you have any activity outside Magic? Seems like it's possible to get slightly skewed ideas of scope and such if you're too focused.

You're right, I have very little activity that's not Magic related. And I'll admit that that is a point against me, but I think that it doesn't take much experience in a tag to moderate it at the level of a diamond moderator handling flags seems to be a generally tag-agnostic activity.

Yeah, it's not such a big deal in flags as it is in binding close/reopen votes (mods are sometimes helpful to speed things along). No worries, still think you'd be a good mod, just wondering how you see it!

Yeah, I already have a little experience with binding close votes: I have a gold [tag:magic-the-gathering] badge. So I wait for a number of other people to vote before I cast the binding vote based on how confident I am in the vote, and I think the same strategy would work with binding mod votes.

Having MTG expertise on the mod team is a huge plus, IMHO.

@ire_and_curses Definitely agree, probably should've said even more strongly it wasn't an issue. Really just wanted to gauge views, since I know I've seen some meta-concern about MTG's relative dominance on the site.

I would like to nominate myself. (Parent Profile, Meta Profile)
Currently I am active on the site on a daily basis and I am the top all time reviewer in 3 queues, 4th in 2 more and slowing doing more in another.
I also frequently check the meta site and have contributed to that in the past and will continue to do so.
I think overall I can help contribute to the moderation of the site and work in the direction that the community chooses to go.


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New Moderator Pro Tem Announcement 2017
As some of you may have read, ire_and_curses has stepped down from their position as Pro Tem moderator. Since we still don't have an estimate for when this site will be fully graduated and able to host its first elections, a replacement for the position left open was in order. Let's all thank ire_and_curses for the time (over 5 years!) and effort they've put into this community!
And I am pleased to announce that Jefromi has stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed, and to continue to help the site grow into a huge success.

Please welcome Jefromi for the hard work and time they contribute.
You can read about the Pro-Tem Moderator program here: Moderators Pro Tempore.
Did I overlook anyone?
Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone is in no way a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why there'll be elections once the site has graduated.
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.

Very happy to be here to help out! And that "their" and "they" made my day, thank you :)

Congratulations Jefromi. The site is in capable hands. :)

"There'll be elections once the site has graduated". So that will be, what, another 6 years? At any rate, glad that Jefromi is stepping up in the mean time!

@Thunderforge I suppose if we want graduation, we can all do our part by playing more games and asking more questions!


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What happened in this edit log?
This question received two edits by user T G. Those edits made no improvements to the answer.
Why did these edits go through? Should I revert them?
Possibly related, this user (T G) seems to own the domain that this answer links to via URL (based on the image in the top right corner of that site).

TG's edit description explains that he is rebranding. Common rebranding tactics include leaving the old website up for 72 hours or longer (so that the bots have time to fetch your new site). After some time has passed, it is possible that the old website will cease to exist, at which point the usefulness of TG's edit will become clear: he preemptively saved us from link rot.
It is also possible that TG is not who he says he is, in which case his edit is probably useless.
I think that we should trust that TG's edit description is accurate and leave it alone. If the new link rots, then we can fix it later.

Thanks! I was worried that maybe this new site didn't belong to the same person as the old one, and this was a way of stealing traffic. Didn't see the rebranding explanation.


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M:tG Unglued/Unhinged tag?
A question about an Unhinged card was posted today, and caused some confusion among voters.
I attempted to add an mtg-unhinged tag to make the joke more obvious, then I remembered that there's also Unglued so now I'm confused about how to name the tag.

Do we need a separate tag for these expansions?
If so, then what should it be?

EDIT: Not a lot of response, but no one was really against the tag so I went with mtg-joke-cards and added it to a couple relevant questions.

I don't think a tag is the right way to show this. Would someone ever want to look for all questions about Un-cards? It's possible, sure, but it doesn't seem like a common enough and useful enough scenario to warrant a tag. I think it'd be better for questions to manually note that any Un-cards they reference are such. It could be done with just a few words added.
That being said, this tag idea isn't really that bad. I'm not really opposed to the tag, it just doesn't seem necessary.
If the tag is to stick around, I suggest mtg-un-sets. Unglued and Unhinged and any future set of that nature are often called Un-sets.
An alternative, which would be more clear to those not familiar with the sets, would be mtg-joke-cards.

I agree with [mtg-joke-cards] because there are joke cards that are not in the Un-sets. If we're going to have a tag for this, we should include those too.

@murgatroid99 Which joke cards are you thinking of? Would that include the Christmas ones like Gifts Given?

Yes, the Happy Holidays cards are exactly what I was thinking of.

I agree with David Z (and a commenter on that answer) that mtg-joke-cards is an appropriate tag. Currently we have about five questions that could use the tag (four that mention Unhinged or Unglued by name, and this new one). A new tag would be useful for identifying duplicates, which is what I primarily use the search function for.

I'm one of the close voters, and I am not "confused" by the question. I understand that it's about a joke card. Serious questions about joke cards are totally fine.
I voted to close the question because I think the question itself is a joke.
A well written answer that mentioned both Pig Latin and Unhinged was posted first. Fifteen minutes later, a brief answer that mentioned neither of those things was posted and accepted within minutes. I posted a comment to that effect, and the OP immediately changed the accepted answer. Sounds fishy to me.

After reading your answer I removed part of my question. Sorry if I was accusive in any way, my focus point was the tag.

@freekvd I already moved the part about the tag to the top of the answer and separated it from my little rant with a horizontal bar. Your edited question, unfortunately, still accuses close voters of being confused. I would love to remove the second half of my answer altogether.

I do not see how an answer can be a valid close reason for a question.

@freekvd I can help you with that. Here's the text for the Primarily Opinion Based close reason: "Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise."

@freekvd And in case I totally misunderstood your comment, I never said, "An answer is a valid close reason for a question." I did say "The OP took actions that were suspect, and those actions involved an answer."

I considered myself a close voter, I voted 'leave open', and would argue that you and I have some confusion between us. I wasn't even aware who initiated the close vote so please don't take it personally.

@freekvd You voted 'leave open', and yet consider yourself a close voter?  I guess I have to agree with you. I am confused.


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Per game approaches on broad/subjective close voting
The Magic: the Gathering question category is probably one of the pillars that this SE was built on. As a frantic board/card game player who doesn't play M:tG, I've always experienced a bit of a culture shock here at B&CG between myself and those who do play Magic.
Magic is so complex that non-rules (strategy etc) questions about Magic tend to be too broad and/or subjective by default. Anyone regularly dealing with these questions could assume that the same would go for any other game. I would like to make a statement that this does not always apply for 'easier' games, more 'casual' games (note the quotes, these terms are obviously subjective).
I tried to gather a few examples of cases where I feel we could have left the questions open, rather than close them:

This question about Risk strategies comes from an obvious beginner. The answer that came in before the lock, points to a 9 part youtube guide (typical 'book required' kind of answer) but comes with a short summary that answers the essence of the question.
General question question about how to learn a new game if no one knows the rules, tagged as Game of Thrones (as it's a relatively new, complicated game with a large set of rules). There are maybe 3 ways to go about this, and each of those could get a spot as an answer.

That's all I could find (all in the past 30 days) so maybe I'm overreacting a bit. Still I think these could be properly answered. Maybe not everyone would agree with every answer, but I don't think that's a requirement.
So, do you think these kinds of questions are okay for this site (or not)? And more importantly, why (not)?

What's the actual question?

@TimLymington "Am I touching on a site issue, or am I just exaggerating? I'd like to get some feedback on this."

Do you have any examples of questions that have been closed that you feel shouldn't have been?

I voted to close this question as unclear, but I retracted my close vote after I found the question that incited this meta post. Now that I have context, I understand where the OP is coming from. I strongly recommend editing the question to include concrete examples (plural).

@Rainbolt Yea I did get triggered by that particular question, but I didn't want to include only one question as a case example. I'll sit down and find some more, but that will have to wait until after the weekend.

I would like to emphasize that my primary issue is that I can't properly express (or quantify) this problem, hence the discussion tag.

Well, that type of discussion is leading because it assumes there is a problem. I hope you keep an open mind if someone tells you otherwise.

@Rainbolt don't worry I'm not here to pick a fight :)

Obligatory: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. But that's just for the subjective part, not the broad part. (Sometimes the lines do get blurred: broad questions where it's hard to figure out what's best can end up with subjective answers.)

It took me a bit to understand what Magic has to do with this. If I understand right, you're saying that the issue is that Magic is so complex that non-rules (strategy etc) questions about Magic tend to be too broad and/or subjective, and then that same thing gets applied to other games where strategy questions might actually be okay?

@Jefromi exactly. And to everyone else, sorry for just dropping this half-finished question onto the site, I couldn't shake this feeling without writing at least part of it down.

@freekvd I think providing extra examples is going to be really important. It will help us define policy better, and it'll also avoid answers that are based entirely on that one most recent question. (Even if that one is clearly close-worthy, others may not be.)

I just want to point out that of the five people who closed the question that triggered this post, only two have [magic-the-gathering] as their primary tag, and two of the others don't seem to have any significant MTG activity here. So, that wasn't just Magic players applying their norms to other games; it was a group of people who collectively focus on four different games agreeing on how to handle a question.

The people who closed the second question you linked follow a similar distribution as those on the first: only two are primarily active in Magic, and the other three are primarily active in three different games. So, while we can't outright dismiss the possibility of a general problem with over-zealously closing questions, the examples you gave are significant evidence that such a problem would not be related by any game-specific subcommunity imposing its norms on the whole site.

I added a comment to the Risk question, citing the meta on which I based my close vote: Should we close question that are just “what are good strategy tips for such-and-such game”? The verdict was: yes.

Also, whilst I play Magic, and it's the area of this site I'm most active in, I do play other games! My site activity is not totally correlated to my gaming habits. I will take moderation action on games I play or understand that I've never asked or answered questions on. Separately, I'll also take moderation action games I don't play, when I understand the question well enough and how it relates to our site principles. (A lot of games and questions fall under the not understood well enough category, though.)

Consider this question:

Good Risk strategy suggestion?

The question was closed as Too Broad. You commented, "Risk is a well-established game, there are only a few good answers to this question." Then, you voted to reopen and posted here.
You know what else is a well-established game? Chess. Thousands of books are written about Chess strategy. It is definitely not the case that just because a game is well-established that it has only a few easily documented strategies. In fact, it seems to me that the more well established a game is, the more strategy material there exists.
I agree with the close reason. You obviously disagree. That doesn't necessarily indicate a problem, just a difference of opinion. It happens on every site because the close reasons are subjective.
To answer to your more general question: I reviewed ten of the most recently closed questions. I identified one question that I feel deserves to be reopened, and I cast my vote. I understand why some feel that it deserves to be closed - it is one of those borderline questions. Most importantly, I observed no widespread epidemic of Magic players unfairly closing questions.
Although I was critical at first, I appreciate the feedback in the comments, which prompted me to perform a more thorough review of recently closed questions.

It seems like you're taking a bit of a leap from the Risk question being bad to all broad/subjective closed questions being bad and correctly closed. It's also maybe not the most helpful thing to say that it's just a difference of opinion. Yes, almost everything on meta ends up being at least partially opinion-based. But that just means it's hard to figure out what's best, not that we should just leave everything exactly as it currently is.

@Jefromi I did not say the Risk question was bad, nor I did even imply that all broad/subjective questions are bad and correctly closed. That is an outrageously far-fetched interpretation of what I have written here. The entire point of my post was that there is no correct side. I'm not trying to keep things the same just for the sake of keeping them the same. When I see room for the community to evolve, I speak up. I advocated leaving explanatory comments when one user had an issue with closed questions.

All of that said, if the community decides that my definition of too broad is overly aggressive, then I'll happily adjust my voting patterns. I hope that doesn't happen, because I feel that my definition of too broad is right where it needs to be.

Okay, when I said "bad" it was shorthand for "deserved to be closed", which your answer absolutely does say. Please don't get too caught up in my use of a single word in a comment which by design has to be short.

And yes, you didn't actually say that all broad/subjective questions should be closed. However, you strongly implied by your last paragraph that you think the current state (pretty close to all closed) is fine. If that was deliberate, then that's what I was referring to: you think things are fine now, and the support for it is this one Risk question and it's just your opinion. My point was that's not a strongly supported argument. If you didn't mean to imply that, okay, that's fine - but it means you didn't exactly address the general question.

@Jefromi My direct answer to the general question is that there is, to put it bluntly, no widespread epidemic of Magic players closing questions unfairly. It goes without saying that a handful of questions do get closed unfairly - no amount of policy is going to fix that so long as humans are involved. I am open to suggestions as to how I can communicate my position more clearly, so long as none of your suggestions make it sound like I am acknowledging the existence of a widespread problem that needs to be fixed. I am of the opinion that the level of closure is right where it needs to be.

Okay, so I did read correctly, and my comment stands: given that all you've done in the answer is discuss that one question, it's a bit of a leap to your general answer.

I started by discussing the specific question, and finished with a more general answer to the question. Would you have me turn my answer upside down, so that my example comes after my conclusion? Is your problem solely with the organization, or did you just completely miss the last paragraph? It would help if you would be more specific.

I saw the last paragraph. It doesn't support your view, though. It just says, as far as I can tell, "it's my opinion, and it's a problem if we argue a lot about it."

@Jefromi Where did I mention that we argue about it a lot? Can you provide a direct quote?

Gladly: "It becomes a problem when two parts of the community are constantly battling over close and reopen votes..."

@Jefromi "It becomes a problem when" is not the same as "It is a problem." With that sentence, I was trying to point out what the real problem would look like if it were a problem. I was not saying that is is currently, as of right now, a problem.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@Jefromi I edited the answer per our discussion in chat. I realize that it's probably not exactly how you wanted it, but I hope it's at least closer.

It's a lot better like this, thank you! I appreciate that you took the time to look at some questions, and that the answer now focuses on a real sample, rather than just a statement of opinion. Much easier to see why you had that opinion now.

I totally understand this perspective, and appreciate the effort that went into your answer. I too tried to find examples and came short, so I guess my sentiment was misplaced. That's a good thing to know.

It's definitely an issue if we're unnecessarily closing questions. From looking at your examples and several other more recently closed questions, I think we're being a little more aggressive than I'd like, but not insanely so: we could try to close questions slightly less often. However, this is a very small number of questions: we don't close that many in the first place, and most closures are boring and obvious. So no matter what, I don't think we should think of it as a severe site culture problem.
I would try to avoid making this about Magic, though. It's possible that there's some interaction there due to the difficulty of asking good subjective questions about Magic, but it's just as possible that we're being overly aggressive about closing those questions - not all non-factual Magic questions are impossible to write good answers to either. And bottom line, it's always going to be hard to tell whether the issue is Magic or not: StackExchange users in general are pretty skeptical of potentially broad or subjective questions, and the Magic community here is large, so the two are going to overlap whether or not there's a causal connection.

I think this issue is best addressed by examples. You've provided two, and I'm happy to try to address others too.
Risk strategies. For now, I'm a little skeptical - it doesn't seem very narrowed down, the existing answer seems to show that it might be a bit of a rabbit hole, with a lot of small pieces required to provide a real answer. But I suspect there are other examples of strategy questions that might not be so potentially problematic. This particular one might also be salvageable, but I have no idea - I don't really play Risk so I don't know how to narrow it down.
Learning a complex new game. I think is one that we should try to improve and reopen. It's a totally reasonable, practical question that a lot of people will face: a game is difficult and time-consuming to learn, so how do I address this, get over that initial hump, and actually end up playing? There are definitely multiple approaches, and probably some approaches will work better for some people than others, but it seems like exactly the kind of experience-based good subjective question we should try to help people with. If https://rpg.stackexchange.com/ can exist, surely we can manage something like this.

In general, with the aim of closing a few less questions (ones that right now are more borderline), what should we do? A few things I try to keep in mind when looking at questions:

Hard questions are not always bad. Yes, it's hard to say what the best strategy is for a game or situation, but you can still say some pretty useful things. To look at it another way, even if you don't know the answer and think you'd have to write a book to figure it out, someone else may be able to do a decent job in an answer.
Answers do not have to address every detail. It may be true that if you take the question literally and attempt to answer it exhaustively, you could write a book about it. That doesn't make it impossible to write a useful high-level answer. And again, even if you don't know how to find those important high-level points, someone else may be able to.
The possibility of subjectivity is not inherently bad. It's very easy to say "it'll be impossible to prove answers, so it's all just opinion." That's not a constructive way of looking at things. The issue is whether answers will be completely dominated by opinions, or whether there's room for some reasoned arguments and experiences to back things up.
We don't always have to do something right away. It's easy to find yourself searching for something to do on the site, and trying to always close questions before anything bad happens. But it's also okay to let things go for a bit; we can always close a question later if it gets plenty of bad answers and no good answers.
Read the whole question. Don't get caught up in specific phrasing, or in the title. Read the whole body. One bit of phrasing might sound subjective, but the question overall might be fine. If there is some non-ideal phrasing, this leads us to...
Questions can be improved. Often when asking a question, the OP doesn't realize how broad or subjective it is, but others with more knowledge of the subject will be able to help refine it to attract more useful answers - possibly just by editing. Obviously we can't always have time to fix everything, but it's helpful for your first thought to be "can we fix this?" rather than "do we have to close this?"

I think we should keep those points in mind when looking at new questions before voting to close, and also when looking back at old questions. Let's let some slightly subjective, slightly broad questions (perhaps about strategy) get answered. In many cases, we'll probably find that nothing bad happens, and the site will be better for having those questions.
Of course, I should also be clear: many strategic questions really are too broad or subjective. If there's nothing in the question to help narrow it down, just a wide-open "how should I play this game?" it probably won't work well. But not all questions are like that.


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Is Pair Solitaire on topic?
Just saw this question, which got me Googling. Apparently:

"Pair Solitaire is a new kind of solitaire, designed for mobile."

I'm a bit confused about this game. My question would be:

is this a computer adaptation of a card game, or
is this a computer game that happens to use playing cards?

Because if it's the latter, the question should be closed as off-topic.

I would say that it is not on topic as it is designed as a computer (mobile in this case) and not as a physical card game. While it should be possible to play it as a physical card game it seems that most of the mechanics (especially the one in the question) are all designed around the mobile gaming part of this. It seems that it would be a better question on Arcade but seeing how it is a bad question it should just be closed and not migrated.

I think the people at Arqade are most suited to judge the quality of the question. I can't pretend to know anything about this game so I can't tell if it's obvious to a player what this question is about.

@freekvd generally if a question has been closed on one site it isn't reopened and migrated to another site,

That's not what I meant. This question has been closed for being 'unclear'. I suspect the voters didn't understand the question because it's about computer gaming. The game has built-in challenges to unlock and they're hidden behind a question mark. This person is asking what's behind the last question mark. You need to know this to understand the question, let alone answer it.

@freekvd First you should give the voters here more credit, second there is nothing stopping the person who asked the question from asking it again on Arcade, third if you feel strongly about this why not cast a reopen vote so the process to reopen and migrate it can get started

Sorry I guess I am a bit frustrated. I did feel strongly about this, and I did vote to migrate to Arqade which started the close vote. Others then rounded up that vote using other reasons.