text:
Please, don't game the system!
Few minutes after the votes have been refilled at 00:00 UTC all unanswered questions with at least 1 answer got up vote on that answer.
I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or a deliberated action attempting to site gets a good ratio of answered questions.
It's clear to me that we have a strong community here and we can achieve SE goals organically.
Avoid any attempt to game the system.

"after the votes were reloaded?" I'm confused.  What happened?

It's more fun to dig old games out of your garage and answer the unanswered questions :)

@lilserf He probably means when the daily vote limit reset at 00:00 UTC (we get 30 votes per day)

@lilserf: Edited to better understanding. Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker.

To be fair, there were two blog posts recently that strongly encouraged people to vote more often (When Will My Site Graduate? and Vote Early, Vote Often), because most betas have the exact opposite problem -- people don't vote nearly enough. People also have the Suffrage badge to tempt them. It's possible people are gaming the badge by just mass upvoting questions, but if so hopefully that was a one time thing now that they've got the badge

In this case I think it was just to sweep the unanswered questions. Use all 30 votes/day is a good thing but throw them on any random question, it's not.


text:
Public beta has started
According to Area51, we're entering Public Beta in less than a day. Public beta has started!
We should be ready for this, and prepared to take advantage of the increased opportunities for exposure. We should also be careful not to spam other forums too much, or we may irritate people and make them less disposed to be interested in BCG.SE.
I think a good rule of thumb is to try and make sure we only announce the public beta once in any given forum, and perhaps announce it again once it goes out of beta. So please, before posting about BCG.SE in a particular forum, check to see if someone already has; try not to be too spammy.
Beyond that, we should focus on trying to publicize the BCG.SE by providing links to great questions and answers when we see related topics come up in other forums. If you have a rules dispute with a friend, link them to a question on it here. If someone asks a question on BGG, and there's a good answer here, link to that. If you copy the link directly from the "link" that you see under the tags (right click it and choose "Copy Link Address" or something similar), then the number of people you refer will even be counted, and you can get a badge for helping to publicize a question.
An obvious place to mention BCG.SE is BoardGameGeek, and it might be good if you have a personal blog, twitter feed, Facebook account, or the like, to mention that you've been involved in a private beta of a board game Q&A site that is now entering it's public beta. I haven't been as actively involved in the online board gaming community recently, so I'm not sure who all people are reading or listening to these days, but it might be good to see if we can contact Tom Vasel and have him mention BCG.SE on The Dice Tower, as that's pertty popular among gamers. Again, we should try not to be to contact any one person or forum too excessively, but make sure that we get our name out there to a few important places.
Any other thoughts on how we should publicize BCG.SE, without spamming? Thoughts on where we should publicize it?

Anybody have any ins with the guys over at Penny Arcade? :D

As always, we feel the best and easiest way to promote your site is to share links to great questions and answers, like so:
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/a-recipe-to-promote-your-site/

Email.
Other than SO and here, I have absolutely 0 web presence anymore -- no Facebook, no Twitter, no more LJ, nothing.  It makes it a little hard for me to publicize anything :)
That said, while it's not public, I e-mailed a few people about the site when it was in the commitment phase, and I'll be e-mailing them again, plus anyone else I can think of that has any interest in board games, and try to get them over here.
There are roughly 200 users right now -- if each of us e-mailed 10 people we knew, and even only one person per user here signs up as a result, that's still 200 new users, who know other people, who know other people...

This. You stole my answer! :) Everyone knows who their board game savvy friends are and knows them personally, so contacting them is going to be even more effective than a message on a blog or a forum. +1.

Drop a link to the site in your signature in any game related forum you frequent.  Use your flair for bonus points!

If you are a member of a game club, or if you visit game conventions, drop the link as often as possible.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Everybody else has a rep of 101. Why not me ?
I see a lot of people on BCG have a reputation of 101, with no answers, no votes, no questions, and only one badge, the Autobiographer.
I have made answers, I got votes, and I earned the Autobiographer and three other badges ; my rep is still at 81 (at the moment I'm posting this).
Can you explain ?
(Note : I'm not whining, I'm not losing sleep over my rep, I'm just trying to understand if something about the site has eluded me so far. ;))

I'm tempted to lobby for a larger increase if you have one site over, say, 20,000.  I'm not just saying that because I have one account over 20,000!

See Should all linked accounts get the 100 bonus?
You need to earn 200 rep on any SE site, then any other site that you link to that account gets +100 rep.
This is why a lot of people start with 101 rep.  Essentially the system guarantees that if you've become minimally trusted (>200 rep) on any site then you deserve to be advanced past the opening jitters on any new site.

Thanks. I'm just under the 200 mark on SO, so I may get the bonus here sometimes.

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


text:
We need more subjective, spirited, and open ended debate
TL; DR: The culture from stackoverflow.com is mostly useful, but not all parts are a perfect fit for BSG.SE, let's only keep the good parts.
While I love that BSG.SE doesn't devolve into flamewars when people ask newbie-like questions and we can avoid having duplicate conversations, the "close thread to get better question and avoid subjective debate" stuff is out of hand.  This is not a site where there is or should be a definitive technical answer to every question.  Black and white rules questions belong here, certainly, but so do a host of other questions.  "Why do/don't you like Race for the Galaxy" should be a fine question to ask.  It is certainly subjective, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful and informative.  I love reading both positive and negative board game reviews on BGG, especially when they give the profile of the boardgamer and the specific features or design decisions of a game that are liked or hated.
As long as we are respectful of each other, we should encourage subjective discussion.  In not doing so, we are simply throwing away an opportunity to grow the community in a fun and spirited way.
I administer a board game blog devoted to just Dominion, with just 3 top level articles per week, and it gets substantially more traffic than this site (according to the merge or close thread from Jeff Atwood), and a big factor in the traffic is the encouragement of spirited, subjective and opinionated debate among relative experts.  Certainly sometimes I'd like the ad hominem attacks there to not happen, but given the choice of the sterile "close anything very open ended and non-definitive" and the aggresive anything goes but let's at least try to keep it civil and somewhat on-topic style at the DS.com blog, I vastly prefer the latter.

Could you specifically address the "What Questions not to ask?" section of the FAQ.  I really appreciate the feedback but wanted to make sure you were aware of that section and that it is not a part of the FAQ the moderators can change.

Related: http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/412/do-we-want-game-like-questions.

Did you read Good Subjective, Bad Subjective?
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/
Those are the parameters to work within. It is possible to have subjective questions so long as they meet enough of the six criteria.
But, ultimately, it might be unfair to compare apples (a blog) and oranges (a Q&A system). If there's enough author interest, we could have a top level blog at, say, blog.boardgames.se.com where these truly discussiony, chatty topics could be hashed out in blog comments -- and the specific questions related to the blog entries could be directed here.
It has been done, and it is something we support; for example see http://blog.superuser.com

I've had my questions closed when they met (IMO) every criteria set forth in Good Subjective Bad Subjective.  The problem is that people interpret subjectivity quite subjectively.  The users of this site who immediately vote to close anything which doesn't have an obvious black or white answer, as being against the technical manifesto of the site, even when the questions are well-intentioned, good and interesting, drive me up the wall.

@thesun can you provide examples?

@Jeff: Actually, I haven't seen anything in ages that annoyed me... but that's mainly because I've been busy doing other things and the site's been really quiet.  When I first arrived I didn't fully "get" the Stack Exchange philosophy and gleefully posted subjective-ish questions which proved briefly popular but were shot down in flames (see http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/281/on-the-over-enthusiastic-use-of-community-wiki-to-protect-poor-questions).  Since then I've seen a couple of new users falling into the same trap and getting pretty mad. I stuck around, but did they?

I do feel like people arrive on the site, are delighted by it, then post what they think is "a great question" (and on another site, it probably would be)... and then people are rude to them and their question gets closed down.  In some cases I suspect they leave and never come back.  It would be nice to guide people towards the right way to use a Stack site without being so high-handed; I think the virtues of the Stack way are non-obvious, certainly at first, and we should recognize that.  (Of course, eventually I grew to really like how things are done here!)

This guy is an example of someone I recall as turning up on the site, asking a few "inappropriate" questions, and then seeming a bit miffed about them all being closed on him: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2489/are-the-modern-remakes-of-games-better-different-or-worse-then-the-earlier-versi ... Could we maybe recast well-meaning but not very Stack-y questions into a more appropriate form, instead of just killing them?  Easier said than done, I know.

I see now that our interests are not aligned.  I want a community of helpful people discussing issues with boardgames, curating knowledge into a useful form.  You want to own the QA section of that particular market.  I have the choice of a mostly good (perhaps overly hostile, but at least interesting) community with a terrible interface for QA and curation in BGG, or a way too small (but helpul and smart about organizing information and avoided repeat debate).  It's clear to me that BCG.SE will not get adoption without expanding its focus beyond QA, and it's also clear that you only want QA.

@rob it is certainly possible that the subject is too broad or simply incompatible with the engine. Regardless, from day one we didn't set out to satisfy everyone -- the only way to make nobody happy, is to try to blindly make everyone happy.

This is trying to make the StackExchange system into something it isn't. There's no reason why I can't go to forums on BoardGameGeek when I want subjective, spirited, and open-ended debate, and StackExchange when I have a concrete objective question (probably rules-related). Different sites have different purposes.

The problem is that a large community begets good answers, and I don't think you'll get a large community with the site designed as is.  Even though the software is better here, and we have some good "community DNA" in terms of kindness/aversion to duplication, I don't think it's enough to grow the community to the point were the average even objective question will be answered better here than on BGG.  Given that we don't want to inject BGG to BCG.SE, Perhaps I should try harder to inject some BCG.SE into BGG.

the ideal world would be if BGG integrated StackOverflow software into their site and took over this thing. I agree that it's a pretty rough uphill battle to try to get this site to have a comparable community to BGG. Solution: integrate this into BGG and give GG rewards for reputation.

I personally think it'd be ok to have review questions, where one game is the question, and each answer a review.  Then the reviews that get agreed with the most can float to the top, but the big problem with discussion on Stack Exchange sites is that the format doesn't work well for discussion.  It was designed for Q&A and objective questions, and trying to squeeze discussion around the one answer per user format just doesn't work very well.  Most of the discussion ends up in very limiting comments, and it's hard to follow the flow if it get's too involved or is edited too much.
I don't think this cancels out a limited debate, where a specific question is asked, and then differing viewpoints are put out in the answers.  You can reference the strategy questions for when to use certain dominion cards and see that it works at that level.

+1'd, as I don't see the problem with a carefully-moderated, one answer-per-user boardgame review format at all.  It would add a LOT of value and interest to the site.  Literally the only problem I can see with it is that it goes against the Stack philosophy of "objective answers to simple questions only" - which is a huge problem or not a problem at all, depending on your particular point of view!

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


text:
Why are game recommendation questions off-topic?
This is one of the reasons questions get closed on the site - why? How can I find answers to these questions if not here?
Note: this is a canonical question, for linking when questions are closed. If you want to discuss anything about the policy, please look through the older questions on the topic and/or ask a new one.

Thanks for doing this. The game recommendations close reason now points to this question.

What is a game recommendation question?
Anything where you're asking for answers providing a (set of) games meeting the criteria in the question. It doesn't matter if you ask for the best ones or just any/all of them.
Why no recommendation questions?
Mainly because they attract too many answers (they're polls).
There was extended discussion on the Board and Card Games Meta site regarding whether or not to support/tolerate/allow recommendation questions. This culminated in a comprehensive ban. You can read the final decision and discussion thereof here, and searching the meta site for "recommendation" will let you catch up on the history. See also Q&A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping.
Some recommendation questions can be shaped into good, allowable questions.
In the comments on the meta discussion linked above, someone asked about the question "What games can I play with my blind son and my seeing son?" As is, this is a recommendation question that we'd rather not have. One of the issues about answers to recommendation questions is that voting is more of a popularity contest than a measure of quality, which would be an issue here. However, reworked as "How can I play games with both my seeing children and blind son?" it becomes a question where more ideas could be shared, often with specific examples to back them up. There's a strong possibility of more helpful, creative answers that could be voted on somewhat objectively. That said, if you're just interested in finding more deck-building games like Dominion, try some of the resources below.
Where should I go for game recommendations?

The Board and Card Games Chat is a great place to ask for recommendations, or to just shoot the breeze with other board gamers. Don't be discouraged if no one's there, just leave a message and people will tag you in responses so you get notified.
BoardGameGeek has lists and reviews, lets you search games by categories such as number of players, game mechanic, and appropriate age, and forums where you can ask for all the opinions you want. Most online retailers selling games have reviews and can help you find games similar to others that you like.
Your Friendly Local Game Store: Do a search, you might be surprised at how many there are. Other customers and the staff are great people to talk to about what you like, and they can usually help you find something and even let you try it out before buying.

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


text:
Rename [combinatorial-games] to [combinatorial-game-theory]
The combinatorial-games tag should be renamed to combinatorial-games-theory, because that is what it is about and what it is used for. The tag wiki says this, emphasis added by me:

Use for questions relating to Combinatorial Game Theory, terminology and concepts, particularly in regard to the mathematical properties of abstract board and card games, and game solving and solved games.

All questions in this tag follow suit in being about combinatorial game theory (optimal strategies, game solving, etc).
If we left this as “combinatorial games” it reads like it is a tag to apply to any question about a game that happens to be combinatorial in some sense. It is like having “card games” for a tag, except the name “combinatorial games” is obscure enough to protect it from being overused generically.
This came up in a separate meta and I agree enough I'm requesting it distinctly.

Done. Unclear to me whether it makes sense to have this tagged separately from other forms of game theory, but this can be done either way.

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


text:
Two Headed Giant has two tags that need merging
We have mtg-two-headed-giant (x1 question) and two-headed-giant (x16 questions). These tags both refer to the same two-on-two MTG format and we should merge them.
Is there a particular way around we should merge them?

Given all the other MTG tags are namedspaced into mtg-something, we should keep mtg-two-headed-giant as the primary tag and make two-headed-giant a synonym. (And drop the synonym if an independent non-MTG game called "two-headed giant" comes along.)

Merge done. I tweaked the tag wiki while I was at it (the two had different descriptions).

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


text:
Expanding tags to 35 characters
In the past, we've had a number of tags that have been limited by the site's 25 character tag limit. Thanks to that limit being increased to 35 characters, we can now fix a number of these tags.
Mods have the ability to rename tags, and create tag synonyms to the old tags if necessary. So to ease their workload, we'll put this all in one place.

Summary:

assorted games renamed to full names (from this answer)
Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror prefixes added to all expansion tags (from this answer)
mtg-thg renamed to mtg-two-headed-giant (from this answer)

All of them have synonyms created as well, so no new questions should appear with the old tags.
For the suggestions about changing the mtg- prefix in this answer, I've done nothing. I don't think it's likely that people will ever need the synonyms - if they did, we would be seeing questions mistagged as magic-the-gathering-foo) but we can create them as needed.

If we have more renames, do you want for us to create a new answer on this question or create a separate question?

Separate questions, so folks will see them. Mods get extra notifications for all meta questions, so it's really handy. For one-off trivial things (e.g. renaming a single tag from a shortened name to the full name of a game) you can also just custom flag a question that has that tag.

Hooray! Thank you for carrying out this work.

Tags that don't need much discussion
This is a community wiki answer and can be modified by anyone
If a tag or tag group needs more discussion, it can be brought up in a separate answer.

agricola-fotm → agricola-farmers-of-the-moor (28)
betrayal-at-house-on-hill → betrayal-at-house-on-the-hill (29)
catan-traders-barbarians → catan-traders-and-barbarians (28)
dc-comics-db-crisis → dc-comics-deckbuilding-crisis (29)
expansion-adrift → the-captain-is-dead-adrift (26)
imperial-assault → star-wars-imperial-assault (26)
lord-of-the-rings-lcg → the-lord-of-the-rings-lcg (26)
oregon-trail → the-oregon-trail-card-game (26)
pandemic-state-of-emerg → pandemic-state-of-emergency (27)
penny-arcade-gamersvsevil → penny-arcade-gamers-vs-evil (27)
sentinels-multiverse → sentinels-of-the-multiverse (27)
t2r-alvin-and-dexter → ticket-to-ride-alvin-and-dexter (31)
witcher-adventure-game → the-witcher-adventure-game (26)

I will take care of all of these, since there's been no concerns raised.

Okay, all done. Let me know if anything doesn't look right (though there's some amount of caching so if you find weird inconsistencies just wait a few minutes).

Arkham Horror/Eldritch Horror tags
Previously, there was a meta discussion asking What naming convention should be used for tags about Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror expansions?. The result was that we decided that the games ought to have Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror as a prefix, just like Catan, Dominion, Magic, and other games.
However, this was never actually performed, likely due to the 25 character limit being too restrictive to already long titles and the fact that even Stack Exchange acknowledges that the synonym suggestion system is completely ineffective.
Now would be a good time to get these renamed, which is more helpful with the greater character limit.
Arkham Horror

ah-innsmouth-horror → arkham-horror-innsmouth-horror (30)
ah-king-in-yellow → arkham-horror-the-king-in-yellow (32)
ah-miskatonic-horror → arkham-horror-miskatonic-horror (31)
curse-of-the-dark-pharaoh → arkham-horror-curse-of-dark-pharaoh (35)

arkham-horror-curse-of-the-dark-pharaoh is too long at 39 characters

dunwich-horror → arkham-horror-dunwich-horror (28)
kingsport-horror → arkham-horror-kingsport-horror (30)

Eldritch Horror

mountains-of-madness → eldritch-horror-mountains-madness (33)

eldritch-horror-mountains-of-madness is too long at 36 characters

forsaken-lore → eldritch-horror-forsaken-lore (29)
under-the-pyramids → eldritch-horror-under-the-pyramids (34)
strange-remnants → eldritch-horror-strange-remnants (32)
signs-of-carcosa → eldritch-horror-signs-of-carcosa (32)
the-dreamlands → eldritch-horror-the-dreamlands (30)
cities-in-ruin → eldritch-horror-cities-in-ruin (30)

(As an aside, because the current tags lack an eldritch-horror- prefix, I had to look up the expansion names on another site to see if our site even had any tags for this game!)

These are done too, same deal as the general no-discussion post.

status-completed
mtg-thg should be renamed to mtg-two-headed-giant. In fact that's only 20 characters, so it could've been that way all along!
This was part of Thunderforge's original MTG suggestions. Ikegami pointed out it was a good idea, and I agree, so I don't want it to get lost. :)

Done, thanks for separating it.

Thanks for that!! :)

Magic the Gathering tags
I figured that Magic the Gathering tags should be discussed separately. We have a number of tags that are mtg-*. Should we expand these as well, leaving the old ones as synonyms?

mtg-archenemy → magic-the-gathering-archenemy (29)
mtg-color-identity → magic-the-gathering-color-identity (34)
mtg-commander → magic-the-gathering-commander (29)
mtg-competitive-rel → magic-the-gathering-competitive-rel (35)
mtg-cube → magic-the-gathering-cube (24)
mtg-drafting → magic-the-gathering-drafting (28)
mtg-emblems → magic-the-gathering-emblems (27)
mtg-frontier → magic-the-gathering-frontier (28)
mtg-history → magic-the-gathering-history (27)
mtg-homebrew → magic-the-gathering-homebrew (28)
mtg-joke-cards → magic-the-gathering-joke-cards (30)
mtg-manabase → magic-the-gathering-manabase (28)
mtg-modern → magic-the-gathering-modern (26)
mtg-multiplayer → magic-the-gathering-multiplayer (31)
mtg-online → magic-the-gathering-online (26)
mtg-regular-rel → magic-the-gathering-regular-rel (31)

Unfortunately, there are a few that are still too long.

mtg-commander-damage → magic-the-gathering-commander-damage (36)
mtg-double-faced-cards → magic-the-gathering-double-faced-cards (38)
mtg-thg → mtg-two-headed-giant (20) → magic-the-gathering-two-headed-giant (36)

Despite the capacity to rename many of these, I'd personally prefer to keep the shorter "mtg-" prefix. Otherwise more than 50% of the tag is prefix "noise", i.e., not the important bit! SEO tends to do just fine with search engines understanding "mtg" = "magic the gathering".

Yeah, I think if we wanted a name that wasn't a slightly informal abbreviation, I'd prefer "magic" rather than "mtg". Wizards refers to it as Magic all the time; I don't really see us needing to spell it out.

I agree the prefix should be either mtg or magic, magic-the-gathering is far too long. I don't really have a preference either was as to which it is.

We could always do both (or all three), with the longer name as a synonym pointing to the shorter name. I think that would be useful, so that this list shows up when you type "magic" into the question tag box.

I like the synonym idea, and second the motion to use "mtg" as the prefix for the synonym target, e.g. [magic-the-gathering-modern] points to [mtg-modern].

I agree that the "mtg" prefix is probably best.

The suggestion to expand [tag:mtg-thg] to [tag:mtg-two-headed-giant] is a good one, though.


text:
Go boards fail to render on mobile
As described in How do we enter Go Boards on this site?, it is possible to create a graphical representation of a Go board on this site. However, it displays differently on different devices.
When I look at this question on my Mac (Safari, Firefox, Chrome), it appears like this:

But on my iPhone (Safari), it appears like this:

I have also been able to reproduce the bottom behavior by spoofing my user agent to a mobile device in both Safari and Firefox. I assume it would also render this way if I tried it on a real Android device. Cascabel reports that it renders correctly with Chrome on an Android device, so it may be limited to Apple devices.
Could we have this fixed so that Go boards are properly rendered on both desktop and mobile?

It works fine in Chrome on Android. https://i.sstatic.net/p7G5M.png

@Cascabel What sized device are you using? I just tried on an iPad and it rendered correctly.

Pixel 2. I actually reproduced the issue earlier with mobile emulation in Chrome on Linux (I think set to Nexus 5X) but I can't seem to anymore. I do see the underlying text representation for a flash on refresh; I wonder if the rendering code was just failing to load previously?

@Cascabel Still fails on my iPhone SE, so if they are working on fixing it, it doesn’t seem complete yet.

I didn't meant to suggest that SE (or really anyone) was working on fixing anything, just that it could be an intermittent bug or just trouble loading some script somewhere.

This is still broken @cascabel of we want it fixed, it's it better to ask a new question?

It looks like this isn't even just about mobile devices: it's just about the site mobile layout missing whatever functionality makes Go boards work.

Head to that question (Is this a correct formal heuristic for invalid moves due to Ko?) and note how all the Go boards work.
Scroll all the way to the bottom, and click the bottom-left-most link, Mobile, to switch to the mobile layout. Your cursor won't treat it like a link, but it will work.

Now that we're in the mobile layout, notice how all the Go boards are just code blocks.
Scroll all the way to the bottom again and click the last link in the footer, full site, to return to the full site:

We'll be back on the desktop site and all of the Go boards are working.

You can do the same in reverse for any mobile device to witness all the Go boards working just fine as long as you're in full site mode.


text:
Reputation earned in migrated answers
So, I recently answered a question in regular Board & Card Games. I got a lot of upvotes, and thus a lot of reputation.
Unfortunately, I woke up this morning to find that the question had been migrated to Meta. This has caused all the reputation I earned from my answer to disappear into the ether, since reputation which is "earned in Meta" does not count.
Since the reputation was actually earned in the regular forum, is there any way I can get the reputation back?

This is the site working as intended. If a question belongs on meta, then main-site reputation should not be awarded for it or its answers, regardless of where it was originally posted.
That said, I'm a bit baffled by the specific situation. Presumably it's this one (you've only answered one question here on meta), and that question doesn't appear to be a question for meta. The other close reason originally used was that it was a game recommendation question, but that also doesn't apply. So I've undone the migration and reopened it. It's possible for it to still be off-topic, but it's not obviously off-topic to me, so I don't think it's appropriate for me to unilaterally close it.
So, if nothing changes, I believe you will get reputation back, but to be very clear, this is not because you answered while it was on the main site. Reputation should always be awarded based on where the question belongs, not where it was posted.
As a final note, there are only three upvotes on your answer there. You can get that much reputation very easily, so I wouldn't regard this as a substantial loss, no matter what ultimately happens.

Thanks. It was more about the principle than the actual reputation. I apreciate your help.

I see - well, in principle, we should expect not to keep reputation if we answer questions that are migrated or deleted. Think of it as incentive to consider whether the question actually belongs before answering :)

I totally agree, I just wanted to establish a precedent one way or the other.


text:
Why do "chapter and verse" answers get the most upvotes?
I'm not really complaining about this phenomenon, as I've certainly benefited from it on a few occasions now, but...
It seems to me that a question in the form "I can't be bothered to read my copy of the rules.  Does card x work in way y, or not?", which is answered inside of five seconds by a passing diehard ("It certainly does, as it clearly says on P13 - I've c&p'd the relevant paragraph here") will before long earn the answerer an easy three figures of reputation, as everyone else who looks at the question goes into an upvote-clicking frenzy.
Far be it from me to say there is no value to an objectively correct answer!  But I'm wondering if I'm approaching things in the wrong way.  Here's how I do things.  If I ask a question and I get a brief, but obviously correct answer, I bestow upon that answer a green tick.  If I get an answer that goes above and beyond, is interesting, or makes me laugh, I may also upvote.
If I see a correct answer, I don't auto-upvote it (unless there's some controversy in the answers, and a wrong answer is in danger of gaining supremacy!).  Should I?  I guess it's valid to say that an answer that's correct looks more obviously correct if it's been upvoted a dozen times, which could reduce confusion.
At the risk of a glib analogy, suppose on the Mathematics stack exchange someone asks "What is the answer to 1 + 1?"  Within three seconds someone has answered "2".  Should this earn ten thousand points of reputation over the years because it's (under most reasonable circumstances) correct, while the person who cracked Fermat's Last Theorem only earns a few points, because no one has the time to wade through the hundreds of pages of proofs that made up their answer.
My philosophy is this: upvote more questions that aren't basic and more answers that aren't obvious.  That green tick is reward enough for people (like me, quite often) who are just on the site all the time with nothing better to do, and who can find the appropriate paragraph in a rulebook!  Or have I got the wrong end of the Stack entirely?

I've been very surprised that there are some "Your answer is on page X" answers that have gotten 10-15 votes -- IMHO, they really don't warrant more than a few votes.  I guess they get upvoted because they're fairly easy to validate, as in "Let me crack out my copy of the rules - yup, there it is".  It probably isn't good to hear a mod say this, but I've been fairly stingy with my votes lately for the reasons you've listed -- I'm waiting for good answers.  There was an AWESOME answer in the History of Fluxx, though, that deserves far more upvotes.

@LittleBobby - agreed about that answer, it was clear that he really put some effort in, above and beyond the minimum required to "get the points"!

The statement in your title is not correct.  That will link you to everything with 15+ votes
I categorize them as follows (based on their question):

Recommendation 17
Strategy 7
House rules 1
Directly from rulebook 4
Deeper Rules 1
Other 10

That gives us 4/40 high scoring answers that come directly from the rulebook.  10%.  FYI, 3 of those 4 come from one question about how to calculate the longest road in Catan.  Would you categorize those 40 answers significantly differently than I have?
I think your concern of someone getting 10,000 rep from one quick answer is way overblown.  Stackoverflow has a mere 10 answers with 1000 votes.  Every single one is Community Wiki (IE - haven't given anyone any rep for some time). They're getting around 150k answers/month and I think it's safe to say we aren't going to get there for a while. :)
This is a site for questions and answers.
Our FAQ states that "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face."
We should encourage rules questions that legitimately stymie people regardless of whether the answer is written directly in the rulebook.
Boardgame rulebooks are not usually known for their clarity and ease of use!  I think it's safe to say that most of us have spent more than one occasion pouring through a rulebook for the 4th time looking for an answer that you know you read before but can no longer locate.
This site should be a welcome alternative to those searches!  It is very demeaning to say those people "can't be bothered to read my copy of the rules".
This site needs to be better than BoardGameGeek at answering questions
To have a short, succinct, properly cited answer to a question is also worthy of praise.   This site is a welcome alternative to the previous best choice of going to Boardgamegeek.  We should not be discouraging knowledgable people "who can find the appropriate paragraph in a rulebook" and are "just on the site all the time with nothing better to do"
I won't tell you how to vote, but I think your assumption that these questions are "stupid" and "obvious" is wrong, and not at all helpful to the growth of this site.
That catan road question is one of the more popular search terms for people to use to find this site.  Do you want to consign people to BoardGameGeek to read 5 threads?  Let's give them a clear, best answer here on B&CG!

truly fantastic answer, but one caveat to bear in mind: http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/197/should-trivially-easy-to-find-be-a-benchmark-for-moderating-the-site

Thanks @Jeff, I tried to address that concern with my "legitimately stymie" note above.  I'm happy to help out most anyone who has an "easy" problem or two.  On the other hand, if someone kept asking such questions without learning from our citations (that implicitly demonstrate that searching online rulebooks is an efficient means to answer questions) then I would be more OK with addressing that problem.

I don't think the questions are stupid!  I think the upvoting of simple answers just to say "I agree" is questionable.  Yes, sometimes it's hard to find the answer to a rules question even after a couple of passes through a rulebook (some games have very complex rulebooks).  But when the answer comes within two minutes of the question being posted, I have a hard time believing it's worthy of 10 upvotes.  I should stress that I'm only saying this because my answers to (what to me are) very simple to answer Dominion rules questions are pretty much my highest rated answers!

(Back from walking the dog...) I don't want to diminish the value of what you (and sometimes I) do in providing speedy, accurate answers on rules points that have been making people scratch their heads. I guess I'm looking for clarification on how I should be upvoting. Do I upvote any answer that I agree 100% is correct? Or one that I think went above and beyond the call of duty in some way? Do I upvote all questions that people should know the answer to, if they don't already? Or just especially insightful or hard ones? If you and Bobby (vaguely) disagree... is there any party line?

@the - I apologize if I misunderstood your question.  The last paragraph contains your philosophy, "upvote more questions that aren't stupid and more answers that aren't obvious."  To me, that reads that the questions are stupid.

@the - as for what upvotes mean.  The tooltips are the only "party line"  useful and clear for questions and useful for answers.  What that means for each person is up to them to decide and I'm not going to tell anyone how they should vote on any particular question.  What does concern me, is that if everyone took your approach and voted less than once/day then nobody would have much reputation and the most useful answers would have a much harder time standing out.

@Pat - logic is on your side, I think.  I've slapped myself on the wrist and changed it to "more questions that aren't basic", which is hopefully less inflammatory!  As for the second bit: maybe I should upvote more? I guess I'm worried that upvoting almost everything might be as bad as upvoting almost nothing, in terms of getting good answers to stand out?  I do try to upvote lots of answers that I think are sweet, I promise!

@the - vote what is useful to you.  I really don't want to tell any one person how to vote.  Vote the answer down if you find it not useful.  What my answer was more directed to was that I took your question to be asking other people to not vote for answers that they found useful just because you felt that the question and/or answer was too simplistic.  Again, if you choose not to vote in those situations, that's cool.  Trying to implement a policy to that effect or even discourage other voters, not so cool (IMHO)

Okay, the "useful" tag clarifies things a lot. I don't have to vote for something just because it's right if (I think) it's obvious, or should be obvious to other people. But I will definitely be voting for questions that I don't know (and would like to know) the answers to, and answers that increase my knowledge and understanding of boardgames, probably more than I was.  Upvote early and often!


text:
Is it bad form to repeatedly edit?
I usually make minor wording changes multiple times after I post something. Is this in bad form?
I don't do repeated-edits to get my post more attention --- I'm just mildly obsessive about wording and rarely get it right the first time.

Too much editing can turn a post into a Community Wiki post.  Here are the current criteria, taken from here:

The body of the post has been edited by at least five (5) different users.
The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.

What are "Community Wiki" posts?
If you get to 5+ edits, you may want to restrict yourself from making trivial edits, or at least work on the post via a different editor for a bit and save here at the end.
Note - there has to be a limit as some people wrote bots to repeatedly edit their questions to ensure they remained on the front page of StackOverflow.

Yet again the wrong "solution" to a problem. The real fix would have been simply not re-post into the main page edited questions, or at least use some criteria to decide weather to do it or not.

@Lo'oris - how would you determine algorithmically whether or not an edit was "worthy" of a bump?

@warren: amount of lines changed, amount of time passed before the previous edit, amount of edits done by the same person, etc. etc. And these are just the first things that came to my mind.

@Lo'oris - I know I've made myriad edits to questions inside the grace period .. and sometimes again during a new grace period (ie, make a change, then make 3 or 7 fixes in 5 minutes)

@warren: yes, and there's no reason to bump posts more than once during a single period.

@Lo'oris - but when is it right to bump, then? certainly some (perhaps even most) edits are worthy of bringing the question back to the notice of users...

@warren - editing is encouraged!  Just be aware of the community wiki edit targets noted in my answer.  It would be rare for normal editing to be confused with an attempt to game the system by fishing for votes on the front page.

@warren: did you even read what I said? Your last post suggests otherwise, since I've already answered exactly that question.

@Lo'oris please remember to be nice.  I didn't understand your comment until I'd pondered it for a bit either.

No, there's a five-minute window where your edit doesn't even show as one.  I end up doing lots of edits also.  Be warned, if you do 6 or more outside of those windows, the post will move into Community Wiki mode.


text:
What is with the Electorate badge, why does it have a different vote count than Civic Duty?
When I look at my progress under the review tab, I see the following numbers (will include a picture if requested)
Progress (Graphic Bar) Badge Name

788 ------ 300 Civic Duty
321 ------ 600 Electorate

Where did the other 457 votes go towards earning the Electorate Badge? Shouldn't both badges show the same progress, or was their some point (the new review process) that restarted the count?
(Note: Reviewer and Copy Editor also differ in count.

Electorate only measures question votes whereas Civic Duty measures votes on all posts.
You can consult this excellent List of all badges with full descriptions for all the gory details on badges.  There are several reasons why the totals between Reviewer and Copy Editor could (and probably will) differ.

Doh. There goes my reading comprehension.


text:
Hey! Where did all the Go questions come from? And why aren't there any gorrible puns in this title?
I've just migrated 26 questions from The Game of Go. That site (still in private beta) will be shutting down soon. However, there were some excellent questions asked there, and since Go is also on-topic here, it seemed a shame to lose them.
One thing you might notice are the board diagrams... There's a proper renderer for these on the way, but until then they'll continue to be displayed as text.

Looking forward to board diagrams!

Some of the answers contain links to other questions.  Those links should be updated to point at the questions here, rather than on the Go site.

Good point, @bwarner - I've updated several of them, will check again later.

Why not "migrate" ALL (or nearly all) of them. (OK, if it's 26 questions out of 28 or 29, that's "nearly all.") Or are you doing it, say, 13 at a time?

@Tom There was indeed a discussion about this. Since there were close to 100 questions on GoSE, general consensus was to move only the most interesting. This also avoids flooding this site :)

Thanks Shog for your work. The questions seemed to have been moved fine, and the board excellent renderer is working too!
I'll have a look at the question in the next few days and try to make sure they fit properly on BGSE (caption, tags, ...)

If there's anything else we can do to help with the integration, don't hesitate to ping me (here or via email). BTW: You should've gotten an email from someone on the Community team on a related topic; don't know if you've had a chance to look it over yet, but please do when you get time.

@Shog9 Thanks, I will :)


text:
Can the Magic card auto link feature be improved?
Some Cards Generate Multiple Results
If the entire name is contained within the name of another card, then linking the former card will return a result with both cards.  An example can be seen with Circle of Protection: Art, which returns a list of both the specified card, as well as Circle of Protection: Artifacts.
Some Characters Produce Invalid Links
Certain characters being included in a card name (the ones I have discovered are detailed below). return invalid results.
The Apostrophe
Changed to %27 per HTML URL Encoding, which is then dropped by Gatherer altogether when the query is built.  See: Ranger's Guile, which becomes a query for "rangers guile", and thus returns no results.
The Ampersand
Also generates an invalid result.  See: R&D's Secret Lair[1]...  Currently, only two cards contain an ampersand character, and both of those cards also contain an apostrophe, so if the apostrophe issue can be fixed, then those two cards will still result in broken links unless the ampersand issue is also corrected.
Most Other Characters Seem To Work OK
I have sampled other cards with special characters in the name, and discovered no other issues so far.  Examples:
Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon"
Question Elemental?
B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster)
Alive (Alive/Well) (This one does return two results, however; one for each half of the split card, as opposed to linking to the card itself, which should work like this instead: Alive (Alive/Well)
It looks to me like the apostrophe is problematic for Gatherer's query engine because they are most likely not correctly escaping the character in their SQL strings.
Is This Within Our Means To Fix?
These issues seem to be a problem with Wizards of the Coast's API, and may not even be something that we can fix on our end, but if there is something that can be done about it, what might that be?
The only sure way (presently) to generate a link to the exact card intended seems to be using a traditional link to the card's multiverse-ID-based page, for example:
[Ranger's Guile](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=370803)

Notes
[1] Interestingly enough, the symbol that you see in this link was typed in the editor as "&", but seems to be automatically changed, appending "and;" to the "&".  Might there be a way to have this kind of thing formatted to show just the ampersand and not the encoded version?  If the link actually uses an "&", it would produce a query of simply "r" (cutting off the ampersand itself and all following characters).  But if the link uses the concatenated "&" + "amp;" that the auto-linker changes this to, Gatherer produces "rampds secret lair" as the query, which is also invalid.

A question about the apostrophe was already asked and deffered.http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1029/how-do-we-create-an-autocard-link-to-a-card-with-an-apostrophe-in-the-name?rq=1

Thank you for linking me there, which also linked me to this version of essentially the same question: http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/794/some-autocard-names-dont-execute-correctly

The consensus seems to be that this is Wizards' bug and there's nothing we can do about it. But we do have the option to use magiccards.info instead, which I think is a vastly superior alternative.  Queries there solve all issues referenced in my question: only cards with the exact name will be returned, and it can handle all characters without error.  It is also a faster-loading website, which is nice, however it does have the drawback of being down more often than Gatherer, though it is still infrequent.
Any reason we can't switch the API to magiccards.info for a better experience?

@MichaelStum Card names with apostrophes appear to be broken again (see the revisions in this question).

Never mind. False alarm. The card name was written incorrectly.

@murgatroid99 Apostrophes, the biggest enemies in the English language :) I wish Wizards had a real public API,

@MichaelStum Actually, now there is a real breakage. It looks like the current auto links don't work for any card in this list. You can see an example in this chat message. And I'm sure of the spelling this time.

We can fix the apostrophes! Pretty trivially!
I messed around some based on previous research we've done here on Meta. In fact, it turns out that it can be improved pretty trivially!
Right now, if I do Sphinx's Revelation, I get this:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=Sphinx's Revelation
http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=Sphinx%27s%20Revelation

Instead, we should have it convert to this:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+[Sphinx's Revelation]
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%20%5BSphinx%27s%20Revelation%5D

Check it out, it also fixes the Sun Titan problem:

Before: Sun Titan.
After: Sun Titan.

This is actually the search format used by WotC's own Gatherer search browser plugin.

Looks great to me!  Thanks for finding this.  Hopefully we can get the API implemented as such and we'll be good to go.

I tried implementing your suggestion as a user script; alas, it seems to break for Circle of Protection: Art and Alive (Alive/Well), which turn into http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%20%5BCircle%20of%20Protection%3a%20Art%5D and http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%20%5BAlive%20&%20Well%5D respectively. :-(

...um, that should be http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%20%5BAlive%20(Alive%2fWell)%5D of course; I was experimenting with different search strings to see if I could find one that worked, and accidentally copied the wrong one. Alas, none of the variants I tried seem to work for that card.

Update: It seems that linking to http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Card+Name+Here works perfectly for all the cards mentioned here, except for Alive/Well -- and for that card, either http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Alive or http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Well alone does the trick.

@IlmariKaronen Hmm... I guess now the big question is: would making people type [mtg:Alive]/[mtg:Well] be a big imposition?

I just pushed an improvement to the Autocard feature. Note that existing posts won't be retroactively corrected, but any edit will update it.
There are a few edge cases (e.g., linking directly to the Alive/Well part of Alive // Well) because the Wizards website is a bit ambigous when to display search results, and I want to go directly to the card whenever possible (e.g., Black Lotus) without adding special logic for individual cards. Ghazbán Ogress works if written as Ghazban Ogress (no accent on the a), while El-Hajjâj works as written (with the accent).

Black Lotus
Sphinx's Revelation
R&D's Secret Lair
Alive//Well
B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster)
Erase (Not the Urza's Legacy One)
Ghazban Ogress
El-Hajjâj
Ring of Ma'rûf
_____

Cool! Now how about getting the links to work in the editor preview too? (Feel free to steal my code if it's of any use; it's all CC-Zero.)

I have written an improved reimplementation of the mtg.js script that currently handles the pop-up window creation for [mtg:...] card links.  This reimplementation includes the following features:

A client-side Markdown extension to parse [mtg:...] links in the edit preview window.  (Based on the SE [tag:...] link parser, seems to closely match the server-side implementation.)
A delegated click event handler (to open the popup window) that works also in preview and for posts loaded via AJAX.
Scrollable and resizeable pop-up windows (because a lot of card pages are taller than 890 pixels).
A customizable link URL, defaulting to http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=... as proposed in my earlier post.
A client-side hotfix to make any server-side generated MtG card links use the new URL, and to fix the double-escaping bug described in the question above.
May be used as a drop-in replacement for the existing mtg.js script, or installed as a Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey user script in the browser for immediate testing.  (Note: Scrollable popup windows may not work for all card links when installed as a user script.)

I've released the code into the public domain, and would be very happy if the SE devs were to use it as a replacement of the existing mtg.js script.
(I'd be even happier if they also fixed the server-side code to use the new URL and to get rid of the double-escaping bug, which would allow the hotfix portion of the client-side code to be removed.)
Update: As of June 26, a version of this improved MtG card link script is now included in the Stack Overflow Unofficial Patch v1.16.  Users with SOUP installed should get the improved card links automatically.

A few more cards with unusual characters in their names, mostly from Unglued / Unhinged, just for testing to see if these sissues would be fixed by linking directly to http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Card+Name.
These work fine already (and also with the fix):

"Ach! Hans, Run!"
Framed!
Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental
Sauté
Who/What/When/Where/Why (does not seem to be treated as a real split card by Gatherer)
Yet Another Æther Vortex
The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service
Chicken à la King
Junún Efreet

These are currently broken, but would be fixed by the suggested change:

Erase (Not the Urza's Legacy One)
Ghazbán Ogress
El-Hajjâj
Ring of Ma'rûf
_____ (note: needs to be entered as [mtg:\_\_\_\_\_]; typing just [mtg:_____] gives _____ due to broken Markdown parsing)

Links to split cards with a slash in the name, like Trial / Error and Alive / Well, sort of work now, but would break with the suggested fix; linking to the individual halves, as in Trial / Error or Alive / Well, would work with the fix, though.

Ps. Another problem I've noticed, affecting both my solution and the one proposed by Alex P, is that some people have apparently taken to working around the apostrophe problem by just dropping the 's from card names, e.g. writing Pharika Mender instead of Pharika's Mender.  Currently, the mangled card names produce working links — but if the auto-linking feature is changed as proposed in this thread, they'll stop working, even as the correct card names will start to work.
This is not a major issue if this change is done in the SE codebase, since we can just go and edit any such links to make them work again.  However, it kind of an obstacle to my plans to include this as a client-side fix in the SOUP user script, since there seems to be no way to write such links that would work both for users with and without the script. :-(
(Also, wouldn't it be really nice if we could actually have these links working in the post preview...)
Testing a card name with < funny > characters, Nested [mtg:card links]


text:
Is there a site users guide that describes the meaning of the various color schemes and other info encoding methods?
I've noticed there are tons of brilliantly subtle ways the site encodes information. For example: if an answer's been accepted the number of answers on the main screen is colored green, or if you've voted up a question a question contains one of your interesting tags, the entire row goes blue.
Is there a description of all these little UI Easter Eggs, either on the main StackExchange site, in the FAQ or on the meta page? I've looked and cannot find anything, but this is also the only StackExchange site I use. If such a description existed, I think I'd be able to use the site more efficiently, as would others--especially newbies.
So I'm opening this question in case such a thing already exists. If it does I think we should link to it from the B&CG FAQ and if not we should add this info to the FAQ directly.

Through the StackExchange FAQ link that Pat posted I found a question specifically about the color scheme for StackOverflow. It doesn't seem exhaustive and their scheme is a little different than here, but this is a more direct reference to the answer to my specific question.

Welcome to the site and I hope you find it useful.
While not a direct answer, I believe most of the answers you seek are contained within the StackExchange FAQ.
A lot of things are exposed as your reputation increases so you will see more and more as time goes on.
In general, questions about how a stackexchange site works (that aren't specific to us here at B&CG) are better directed at meta.stackexchange.com  There are also a lot of knowledgable people over there willing to answer questions about how things work.
Correction to your question - The row turns blue if it is tagged with one of your favorites.  There is no easy way to see which questions you have upvoted, which is the source of some dissension.  :)


text:
Board and Card Games mentioned on the SE podcast #6. Does anyone know what they were talking about?
Jeff and Joel mentioned the Board and Card Games stack exchange site several times in the new SE podcast (#6) (first mention at 51:30).
The site came up because they were talking about chaos money and their new evangelism team; evidently there is a question on our meta that worked as a good example of what this new team would be doing, but I couldn't tell what question they were talking about. Does anyone know?
One topic seemed to be about introducing new games to the community and another perhaps about meet-ups, but I'm not sure (hence this question).

Ah, I was thinking of RPG:
https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/978/buying-the-community-books-to-generate-questions
But a similar initiative could work well here, too, I think.

I haven't been able to listen to the podcast yet.  Are you sure it was B&CG and not Gaming?
It really sounds like what they are doing over there.

I just entered the time hack. Jeff specifically mentions board games, and that the proposal was to get new board games into the hands of members, but looking at your link it's possible he was talking about the (computer) gaming site and got it confused with this one, although only a couple of minutes later Joel mentioned that the gaming site had a similar idea to the board game site (i.e. getting games into the hands of members, so I think that proposal is the one you linked to.


text:
Would it be useful to have a list of your badges appear when you hovered over the totals in the header?
When I hover over my name I get a super-helpful box with all sorts of statistics about my recent activity on the site and links to the dedicated pages for those metrics. But when I hover over the badge count it only shows the number and color of badges (i.e. the 15 bronze badges hover text the picture below), which I can obviously already see.

How is this hover text helpful? It's telling me the exact same thing as what I'm hovering over: a picture of a bronze badge and the number 15.
I think it would be more useful to have the existing hover text replaced with a pop-up box showing the list of badges you've earned. New badges could even be highlighted.
I see this as having two major advantages over the prominent badges link at the top of the page:

it's a hover pop-up not a new page that you have to click-through to or open in another tab
it's a consolidated list of badges you have actually earned, not a list of all badges available with check marks next to the ones you've earned.

What do others think?

I feel that content that appears on hover should be a summary rather than a list. Also, for a number of users, a list of all the badges they've earned would take up a significant portion of the page, and in some cases, it simply wouldn't fit. (It would also increase the size of the page, significantly in certain cases, like with users who have lots of badges and choose to display fewer questions per page.)
Now, if hovering over badges could produce something similar to hovering over your name, I could support that idea. Maybe a list of badges earned in the last week, or the five most recent badges you earned and the dates on which you earned them ...

That's pretty much exactly what I was thinking. The interface when you're not hovering would stay exactly as it is, but when you hover would show different information. Agreed that a comprehensive list is probably neither helpful nor feasible, especially for folks with lots of badges, but some filter of the most recent ones, and the date they were earned would more interesting than repeating information already on the screen.

I think a list of badges would be useful. One could "navigate" to get them, but it's helpful to have everything in one place.

You mean this link that's on the front page?  http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/badges

@little bobby tables: You may have a point that this process may be logistically complicated. But I was echoing a point made by another member. Perhaps we can work out a reasonable compromise solution like setting up a link to the page with the badges. That would satisfy my definition of "everything in one place."

I don't follow you at all.  I didn't say anything about the process being logistically complicated; I pointed out that there is already a list of badges on the front page.  How does this not satisfy "a list of badges" that one could "navigate" to?

@littlebobbytables: actually you have a point. The point that I believe Adam was trying to make was that there was some "white space" next to the biographical information, where you could put badges, certainly a convenience. On the other hand, your counter-argument, which I earlier accepted, was that there was a link to the badges on the front page.

@littlebobbytables not at all what I was thinking about. I've updated the question to be more clear. If this helps I'd be interested in if you think it would be an improvement over the status quo. I did know about the badges page you mention.

I support Adam's updated proposal.


text:
My boardgame account is missing in the account overview
When I take a look at my profile page, I see all my accounts listed on the different sites of the stackexchange network, except for my account on Board and Card Games. The site is in public beta so it should show up. Can anyone confirm this behavior with his/her account? Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

I cleared your account associations and then reset them.  For future reference, you can do this using the buttons at the bottom of your accounts tab in your profile.

Thx, works like a charm!


text:
How to draw users from Board Game Geek: can we copy questions?
'As someone who often uses Board Game Geek (BGG) for asking (and answering) game related questions, I'm very much drawn to the SE format. SE creates an excellent architecture for asking and answering questions, and for keeping both the questions and the answers on track, focused, useful, accurate, and easy to find. BGG, though it has many other unique benefits (notably its huge database of game images and general game data) is a very inefficient and frustrating place to seek (or answer) questions: the signal-to-noise ratio is extremely low there, and there is an enormous about of false or inaccurate information, and finding things is a chore.
This site, however, lacks the critical mass of content it needs to reach its potential as the primary place for game related questions. One approach to remedying this is of course is to try to directly recruit users, but it's hard to imagine that users will show up without the content to draw them here.
Can we copy (suitably edited) questions from BGG, along with the best, accurate answers (as CW, if that's the right approach) as a way of populating the site? Can users undertake this as a large scale, explicit project, of dozens or even hundreds of questions? I'd much rather use SE as a reference for rules questions, than BGG, and I'd much rather "store" existing, already answered questions on BGG here.

I should add, that the goal is not to draw away from BGG, but to get BGG users to contribute questions and answers here so that they can take advantage of this site's better quality control and organization. Done right, this should actually increase BGG traffic, as the posts here should have links back to BGG, especially where they paraphrase, summarize, or expand on posts there.

Is there someone at BGG who can answer this question authoritatively? It would be nice to have an official answer from them if it's possible to get one. (It might also serve as an example itself!)

I think this is a great question, and I agree that this idea has the potential to be a great boon for the community of boardgamers online. But I see that this question was posted quite some time ago and not much seems to have developed in the intervening years. @Alderon (or anyone else) do you still have interest in pursuing this idea?

Dicey.
Board Game Geek Terms of service:

5. Geekdo Use: Permissions and Restrictions
Geekdo hereby grants you permission to access and make personal use of the Website as set forth in these Terms of Service, but not to download or modify the Website or any portion of the Website except with express written consent, provided that:

…snip…

D. You shall not use the Website for any commercial purposes without the prior written authorization of Geekdo. Prohibited commercial uses include without limitation any of the following actions taken without Geekdo's express written approval: (i) sale of access to the Website or its related services, such as any website extensions; (ii) use of the Website or its related services, such as any website extensions, for the primary purpose of gaining advertising or subscription revenue; (iii) the sale of advertising, on the Geekdo website or any third-party website, targeted to the content of specific User Submissions or Geekdo content; and (iv) any use of the Website that Geekdo finds, in its sole discretion, to use Geekdo's resources or User Submissions with the effect of competing with or displacing the market for Geekdo, Geekdo content, or its User Submissions. Prohibited commercial uses do not include the sale of products such as board games, role-playing games, and video games, through the Marketplace or GeekList functionality, so long as you pay a three percent commission to Geekdo on the gross amount of each such sale generated via the Website. Geekdo reserves the right to terminate any such sales if they are deemed to be "spam" or fraudulent in Geekdo's sole discretion.
E. You shall not engage in the use, copying, or distribution of any of the User Submissions other than expressly permitted herein, including any use, copying, or distribution of User Submissions of third parties obtained through the Website for any commercial purposes. You shall not circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with security-related features of Geekdo or features that prevent or restrict use or copying of any User Submissions or enforce limitations on use of Geekdo or the User Submissions therein.

I would have no problem with asking a same/similar question to one on BoardGameGeek (in your own words, of course) and then seeing what our users come up with.

Yes, the ToS create quite a gray area. After all a question asked here and a question asked there are likely to be roughly the same, as is the (correct) answer. But, done carefully, it might actually drive traffic to BGG. Asking, as you say, the same or similar question here, and then fishing the correct answer out the BGG threads, summarising or paraphrasing it here, and then linking to the answer on BGG, could be the best of both worlds. Also, as "User Submissions" remain the property of those submitting them, one could ought to be able to repost one's own BGG contributions here.

The best solution for the gamers community, in my opinion, is BGG adding a Q&A forum that linked to S.E Questions with the name of the game as caption.  BGG for every game this list of forums, my suggestion is to add to that list Q&A - linked to S.E.

BGG was here first, this is the reason for having bigger comunity, while S.E format is much better for finding the right answer to a question

BGG and this site are owned by different organizations and serve different purposes so merging them is not feasible or desirable.

Serve different purposes? Can you further explain? because I think they serve the same purposes

BGG serves several purposes. One is that it allows a lot fo chit-chat about whatever in a very much old-school internet kind of way: very very low information content, low signal/noise ration — but, many members of the BGG community value that. That purpose would be poorly served by the features of an SE. It is also a games database, something also not supported by SE. But BGG also tries to be a place to get questions answered. It does that very badly: the noise tends to overwhelm things, answer quality is poor, and contributes are poorly rewarded. SE is perfect for the last function.

@Cohensius BGG is a repository for information about games in general. It includes links to rules, where to purchase (both new and used), pictures of games and other things. Sections to discuss making home brew expansions for the game. Sections for general discussions about games. Rankings for games for many different categories. In general there are a lot of things that BGG does that will not fit into the Stack Exchange model

@JoeW, BGG is also the main place to find answers to game's questions at the moment, dissipate S.E has a better system of Q&A, BGG has bigger community. (Except maybe Magic the gathering and some card games)

That doesn't mean that they should merge and the best you can hope for is to convince BGG to send users over here for questions.

Your recent edit of including forums is a good reason to not merge. Reviews, Sessions, News, Crowdfunding and Play By Forum are all things that would be very off topic on this site but are important for BGG.

Now that I had a chance to better read your recent edits I have to say that this is absolutely the wrong place to post this as it appears you are suggesting a change to the BGG site which has no affiliation with this one. Also I would point out since they have a lot of restrictions on what unregistered users can do on the site I find it highly unlikely that they will do anything to redirect traffic away from BGG

@JoeW: I don't think you're listening to the spirit of Cohensius's suggestion: that some way might be found for BGG to take advantage of the SE model and perhaps even infrastructure to replace its antiquated rules and information forums. That part of BGG is simply not fit for purpose, and basically needs all of the features that SE has implemented here. BGG, mostly as it is, but with the informational forums replaced by a Games SE would be far superior to BGG as it is.

@Aldaron This is something that would require a partnership between SE and BGG and a plan on how to best utilize the strengths of both platforms to help each other. What I see here is just a suggestion to provide a link from BGG to SE with nothing about how it could benefit both sites other then it might attract more users here. A partnership between the two sites could be beneficial but that would be best purposed under a new question rather then a 7 year old question about copying questions from BGG to this site.

@JoeW If you’re issue with this is simply that it’s more of a new suggestion than an answer, then why not simply say so? I’d agree with that.

@Aldaron The original answer to this old question was to merge the sites and the answer has been edited to change that since it was posted and I first commented. The fact remains that the purpose both sites serve is different and what was suggested is not a good answer to a 7 year old question.

@JoeW You should make up your mind: are you satisfied saying that this is not a good answer, or do you want to argue about whether it is a good idea.

@Aldaron It is a bad answer because it started out about merging the two sites and morphed into BGG becoming a portal to SE. However that being said it might be a good idea to propose some suggestions for BGG and SE to work together on both sites to improve the quality but that doesn't change the quality of this answer. If you want to discuss this further head to chat and we can discuss it there.

I think the three of us agree that a cooperation between S.E and BGG will benefit both sites and the board gamers community.


text:
Please add support for the Magic AutoCard window
This was discussed and dismissed previously because no official API was provided, but an API does exist for automatic hover over images and links. The Wizards published API service called AutoCard Window would be a great start.  Here is a quote that would seem to answer any questions about legality.  (My emphasis)

Keep in mind that moving these images anywhere off of our servers is still a violation however, by having us host the images and using our function to access them, you are in the clear.

This functionality should not auto-link the terms but rather be used by specific syntax or markup.  With so many Magic cards in existence, a lot of common terms would get linked accidentally if it were automatic.
Btw, ghoppe pointed this out

Really interesting question Jim. I am afraid that the jsfiddle link is broken, FYI.

@DarkCygnus Guess it expired. It was 4 years old. I removed it from the question.

I'll hack something together, hopefully in the next week or so.
We're thinking syntax* like
[mtg:The Cheese Stands Alone]

but we'll have to play with it a little bit.
Do note that the AutoCard feature only seems to document opening new windows, that nifty hover affect is something else.  I'll do some digging to see if that is documented anywhere, but if not we can't copy that particular behavior.
Whelp, in theory this is done.
Take a gander:  The Cheese Stands Alone
*Draw3Cards syntax is a little too "global" for a game-specific syntax I feel.

The syntax works for me. Looking forward to the feature. The AutoCard page seems to indicate it it supports the hover image. Also the jsfiddle by ghoppe provides the hover affect too, so take a look at that.

@Jim - No, the hover image is using an OpenTip function which is not documented there.  It looks like a later addition, that article is just talking about opening a window when you click a link.  This question's linked jsfiddle seems to have lifted that function out of http://wizards.com/Assets/scripts/miscellaneous.js .  Note that it's using /Handlers/Image.ashx, which isn't mentioned in that post.

Ah, you are correct, but it looks like that still meets their requirements of keeping the images on their server.

Thanks @KevinMontrose!

Thanks for the card links. As the guy who whipped up the jsfiddle, I admit I lifted the tooltip function (which is open source) to speed the creation of the popup. But there is an API to retrieve just the images from gatherer — any popup script could be used. e.g. The Cheese Stands Alone I completely understand the stance of not wanting to use undocumented APIs, so I'll take what we can get. ;)

Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Would have liked to have tool tip, but this is great. Thanks!

New feature, hurray! This helps a lot when you've got 30 links in a post.
Some slight issues:

The preview view doesn't seem to parse [mtg:Cardname], even when it is handled correctly in the finished product.
Plurals or shortened names are likely to be a problem (I've already had to change a bunch of [mtg:Pyroclasms] to [mtg:Pyroclasm]s. Is there a possibility for a Wikipedia-like [mtg:Cardname|Linkname] syntax?

Can you ask these as questions so they don't get lost in here?  I'd call the first one a [tag:bug] and the second one a [tag:feature-request]

The second is likely not going to be possible - plurals are too nasty (see Triumph of the Hordes, etc.), and unless we're going to resolve URLs before autolinking, I doubt it'll happen. We (I) just need to be careful with the amazing new feature! :)

@IanPugsley Well, hence my suggestion of having you figure out what the right singular is. :)

Kevin Montrose's answer in that question provides all the reasons an image hotlink is not legally or technologically a good idea. Yes, it is frustrating that everybody and their brother has an autocard feature. An homegrown hotlink system will likely never happen, for the reasons he provided.
EDIT: However, the Wizards-official AutoCard feature you suggest means that Kevin's answer should be reevaluated - given that it's an official API, it should alleviate all of their concerns.
Secondarily, if it is decided (for whatever reason) that the AutoCard definitely won't work (meaning we can't use the official API, and we almost certainly can't use image hotlinking for the reasons previously provided), I don't believe we've heard anything yet about my suggestion. It's been revised some since the last time we discussed all this. It does unfortunately share some of the technological hiccups - we'd be autogenerating a search link for Gatherer, and if Gatherer ever changes, it's possible for our links to go kerblooey. However, it does mitigate the legal issues somewhat, and given that we aren't hotlinking to a specific ID-based page or anything (just a search), it seems a bit less risky to me.
TL;DR - AutoCard please!

I'd like to see that status-declined reveiwed again.  We did not have the link to the published api of Autocard Windows at that time.  That was one of the major sticking points.

The AutoCard API is published by Wizards specifically to be allowed under their TOC.

@JimMcKeeth I'd love for official AutoCard - my suggestion is merely a "if we can't have that, can we at least have this?"

I voted for you in both places.  I'd still suggest putting it as a feature request on its own, instead of an answer on another.

@JimMcKeeth I'll certainly do that if it ever comes time, but for the moment I don't want to distract anyone from this particular feature request. I now realize I say that in a comment on an answer which is possibly distracting...

There's a browser extension that does exactly this - automatically recognises card names on any page you visit (even those without support on their end, such as this one) and links automatically, with popup images. It's called AutocardAnywhere and is available here: http://www.pwpoints.com/extensions

Also, it has options that allow you to control which cards it links and where to avoid the cancel issue highlighted above.

The advantage of the AutoCard API is it only turns tagged card names into rollover links. Also it gives the enhanced MTG support experience to all visitors, not just those with the extension loaded.

I'd say that's a disadvantage as then you have to rely on the person posting the message correctly tagging all the cards they mention. There are thousands of forum threads all over the net started by someone who doesn't bother using the card tags, immediately followed by half a dozen comments from people complaining that they haven't used tags.

@user2692 Luckily, B&CG SE isn't a forum. It's pretty easy for another user to edit in the card tags if the OP didn't. Much easier than having to manually add Gatherer links, which is what happens a lot anyway right now!

Hopefully there will be hints on how to add the special tags by the edit window, and someone else can easily edit the questions and answers to add tags, just as @AlexP  suggested.

I tried that extension.  On my mac with Firefox, it showed strong evidence of a large memory leak.  The highlighting was also not completely reliable, in addition to popping up where I didn't want it to.  I won't doubt that I probably could have spent time to make it work better for me, but it was a lot easier to uninstall.

Furthermore, we want to aim the site at the 80%+ that visit from Google.  Giving them a good experience shouldn't involve asking everyone to install a browser extension.

Works perfectly for me in Chrome on Windows, and fixes the problem everywhere - random forums, chatting on Facebook or Twitter etc, etc.


text:
2019: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

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

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
And what could be more festive than a big pile of numbers?
So here is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Board & Card Games over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  0          5
Users destroyed³                                  6          0
Users deleted                                     1          0
Users contacted                                   2          0
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue            14      1,064
Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue                0        200
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue          2        725
Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue                1        304
Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue                 1      1,173
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue                3      1,046
Tags merged                                       6          0
Tag synonyms proposed                             5          0
Tag synonyms created                              5          0
Questions reopened                                6         21
Questions protected                               2         38
Questions migrated                                0          1
Questions flagged⁵                                4        521
Questions closed                                 10        282
Question flags handled⁵                          68        456
Posts unlocked                                    0          1
Posts undeleted                                   2         32
Posts locked                                      2        100
Posts deleted⁶                                   40        599
Posts bumped                                      0        109
Comments undeleted                                1          0
Comments flagged                                  0        421
Comments deleted⁷                               344        808
Comment flags handled                           192        223
Bounties canceled                                 1          0
Answers flagged                                  12        887
Answer flags handled                            187        709
All comments on a post moved to chat              2          0

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

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? I posted a similar report here last year: 2018: a year in moderation...
You can also check out this report on other sites
Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing you all a happy new year...

"Users destroyed:  6"....
Note to self, never argue with a mod.

I know you're joking, but in reality user destruction is reserved mainly for users who post spam or nonsense and nothing else.

It's nice to see the community doing more than the moderation team! It shows who the main power here has - us! ☭

@murgatroid99 yup but I couldn't resist.

@AnatolyWein hey, we're part of the community too, just with some extra tools the rest of the community doesn't have to handle exceptional situations.


text:
Gained a privilege... except not
Earlier today I received a notification that I'd gained the privileges associated with 1,000 rep... except my rep has been 989 for several days.
I'm not sure what to make of the situation. Any ideas what's going on?

Most likely you were voted up twice, then the voter(s) changed their mind and removed the vote again. See e.g. Notification for moderator tools went off too early.

Or maybe one person accepted an answer temporarily?

@tttppp - Good thinking. That sounds highly likely.


text:
I would be interested in reading about (blank) in a Community Blog!
Please upvote the question if you would read a community blog.
Upvote an answer or add your own answer indicating your interest in a particular topic.

In-Depth Strategy - A deep analysis of strategy for a particular game.

Product Review - If you suffer from the disease of the cult of the new, you might want to have  access to product reviews. It wouldn't have to be games that are brand new, although this is probably the most useful for other users. If we could produce work half as good as EndersGame, we should be lucky.

Game Design - This might just be wishful thinking, but I hope there are enough game designer enthusiasts that are willing to share their thought process in designing a game.

Session Reports - A weekly or bi-weekly report about how a game turned out. Perhaps with pictures or video of the game play to help people follow it. Either described from the point of view of a all knowing being, or from the perspective of a single player.

Best of Board and Card Games - Take the most thought provoking and/or popular Q&A and transform the best few answers into blog posts. For example, a strategy question that results in separate strategies for an answer spread across 4 good answers could have all the 4 answers blended into a single blog post.

Isn't this a sign that the answers ought to be refined into a more authoritative one?

@AlexP Sometimes the answers need to be refined more as you say. But sometimes there's simply a diversity of answers. Here's an example where there's not only diverse answers, but IMO the "wisdom of the crowd" was flat out wrong and could use the helpful commentary of an experienced player to lend more perspective to the answers: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1018/how-to-start-in-catan-games

Game Theory/Game Tech - Discussions about game mechanics, or general game theory concepts. For an idea of what this might look like, see Ludology - Geoff Engelstein. He has a running segment on The Dice Tower where he discusses Game Theory.


text:
I would be interested in writing (blank) Community Blog articles!
Please upvote this post if you are interested in WRITING content for a Community Blog. This would require at a minimum a commitment to write articles at least once every 2 weeks.
Please upvote individual answers if that is the content that you would be most interested in writing. Feel free to add your own answers.

Best of Board and Card Games - Take the most thought provoking and/or popular Q&A and transform the best few answers into blog posts. For example, a strategy question that results in separate strategies for an answer spread across 4 good answers could have all the 4 answers blended into a single blog post.
NOTE: It would be fairly easy to write posts for this blog given that it's just a matter of rearranging and lightly editing already high quality material.

Session Reports - A weekly or bi-weekly report about how a game turned out. Perhaps with pictures or video of the game play to help people follow it. Either described from the point of view of a all knowing being, or from the perspective of a single player.

Product Review - If you suffer from the disease of the cult of the new, you might want to have access to product reviews.

Game Design - This might just be wishful thinking, but I hope there are enough game designer enthusiasts that are willing to share their thought process in designing a game.

In-Depth Strategy - A deep analysis of strategy for a particular game.

Game Theory/Game Tech - Discussions about game mechanics, or general game theory concepts.


text:
Why do chess and poker have separate sites even though they are clearly "board and card games?"
Chess gets less than 300 visits a day. Poker less than 200. As regards the number of questions, the issue is whether they are above or below 1.0 per day (No kidding.) They also have "too few" users.
BCG is "almost" ready to get out of beta. The one main weakness is the number of questions (especially on a per day basis). Adding chess and poker to the mix would certainly help.
Could we move closer to getting out of beta by "repatriating" chess and poker, as we did with go?

Just for the record: I for one would strongly advocate against merging BCG with RPG. The communities overlap (and used to share a mod) but the two are wholly distinct entities now.

@Aarthi: If that's your feeling, it's even MORE necessary to "repatriate" chess and poker to BCG.

See my answer here for some of the background to the current situation.

Tom: I don't understand how my desire to keep established and functional communities discrete makes it more imperative that Poker and Chess (also functional communities of passionate players) be "brought back into the fold" so to speak. I'd need you to go into more detail.

@Aarthi: My interest in Chess and Poker is NOT "discrete" from my interesst in BCG. (Whereas you could have said that my interest in BCG is "discrete" from my interest, or lack thereof, in RPG.) I feel that having to visit three sites dilutes my interest in all three. And I a minority in this regard

@Aarthi I'm glad this question was changed to remove the BCG merge with RPG idea, I am strongly against it as well.

@ire_and_curses hey, that's my question, yay!!

The task of how to scope sites — whether to split or combine subjects — has been one of the more difficult philosophies to flesh out. We constantly make adjustments as we learn exactly what makes a site "work" and what causes them to falter.
At the most basic-basic level, Chess and Poker became sites — or at least they became eligible for further consideration — because they rallied the enthusiasm and resources required by  Area 51 to give them a shot. But it takes more than sheer numbers and a definition move from proposal to site. We do a thorough review of leading proposals to evaluate whether they have a good chance of working well with our existing network based on a large variety of considerations.
If you read through the blog post:
Unix and Ubuntu: Why Both?
…there's an underlying concept that a site is not much good to a group of users if they will not show up. It was generally thought (I'm not going to debate this point here) that perhaps Chess was a subject unto itself — that there was potentially a substantial group of users who wouldn't identify themselves as a "board game enthusiast" and this site would be of no use to them. The same basic premise for Poker.
Whether that turns out to be true or not is still a part of this trial by fire. They initially earned the right to try through Area 51. They've since navigated successfully through a private beta to, essentially, where they are right now.
To date, neither of these sites have made substantial inroads into the massive chess and poker communities respectively. But then again, the Board & Card Games site hasn't had  much success attracting these audiences either. So for the time being, we're watching to see if their ideas (i.e. their premise for having a separate site) pans out.
There's no indication that the existence of either of these sites has substantively held back your progress — nor is there any indication that combining their audiences here will substantially create any sort of additional network effects to move the needle much either way. But subsuming those sites is a disruptive change to those community that goes against the precepts of
Does this site have a chance of succeeding?
Whether you agree with their existence or not, they've earned the right to continue to make a go of it.

MTG had excitement and enthusiasm, but that was closed out. Now in hind sight, I actually agree that it wouldn't have stood on its own (in the same way that chess and poker are struggling, although I think it would have to less of an extent). But it was pretty clearly denied the right to take its trial.

I've fought to keep all related sites within B&CG.  Some I've won, other times it hasn't gone my way. :)
Lately I've become more zen about it.  StackExchange will do what they think is best, it isn't worth worrying about it for me.

(1) I'm glad you're more zen about it, I know how intensely you campaigned to keep them "in house" as it were. (2) In our view, those communities weren't being served as well as they could be by this site. It's not a failing of this site; rather it's a preference by that community of users. We've made deliberate choices with other communities (Magic: The Gathering comes to mind) in the opposite.

@Aarthi:Even in this context, I see a difference between Poker and Chess. Poker has only 12 users with over 500 rep, and six of these are also on BCG (including yours truly). Chess has 45 users with over 500 rep, and most of them are NOT cross-listed on BGC. (I used 500 as the cutoff because that's what's needed to cast close and reopen votes.)

@TomAu I tried to address the underlying philosophy of why we allowed separate sites in my answer here, and why they're allowed to continue.

@RobertCartaino: Thanks for your reply.


text:
Could a "not constructive" question be otherwise described as "incomplete?
For instance, the question, "How do I play England in Diplomacy?" is not a good question, because it's broad and open-ended.
"When playing Diplomacy as England, how do I choose where to try get a foothold on the Continent, and which enemy to fight?" is a more focused question.
Can it be said, that the second question is a "more complete" version of the first, and that a "not constructive" question can often be improved by making it "more complete?"

I wouldn't call that question "Not constructive".  I would call it overly broad, which is listed under the definition for "Not a real question".  "Incomplete" questions as you call them seem to be a subset of "Not a real question" then, and obviously they can be improved by making the question less broad or vague.


text:
Is one distinguishing feature between two questions sufficient to make the second question NOT a duplicate of the first?
This is the question and it comes from Catan. The first question under discussion was the relative merits of trading goods with severe restrictions at a 2 to 1 ratio, versus with fewer restrictions at a 3 to 1 ratio.
The second question, was about the relative merits of trading goods freely at a 4 to 1 ratio versus "severe restrictions" at the 2 to 1 ratio. What makes this question different from the previous one is that you can trade goods "straight up" at the 4 to 1 ratio, whereas you need to build a harbor settlement to trade at either the 3 to 1 or 2 to 1 ratios. Building a harbor settlement is a non-trivial task, and it is this requirement (lack thereof actually), that distinguishes the otherwise unfavorable 4 to 1 ratio from the two others.
So is this a sufficient distinction to make the second question NOT a duplicate of the first? Because the first question didn't address the lack of a port requirement for the 4 to 1 ratio.
In chart form, the questions might look like this:

Ratio
Favorability of Terms?
How Many Goods Traded?
Needs port?

2 to 1
Most favorable
Just one good traded
Needs port

3 to 1
Less favorable
All goods are traded
Needs port

4 to 1
Least favorable
All goods are traded
No port needed

Question 1 asked for a comparison of 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 (rows 1 and 2). Question 2 asked for a comparison of 2 to 1 and 4 to 1 (rows 1 and 3).

The best option might actually be to create a third, comprehensive question, comparing the three trading options all in one place, and if possible consolidating the best answers from the existing questions before closing both of the original questions as duplicates of this new, more complete, version.
If there's concerns about rep for doing so, the new question can always be marked community wiki.

After looking at the questions it seems to me that both of them can be answered in the same answer as the reasoning behind the answers will be the same. There might just have to be some minor modifications to the original post to include that information.
I think they are fine as duplicates.

How can they both be answered the same way? The 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 cases both require ports, and the 4 to 1 case does not. An answer that covers the question covering the first two cases will not address the "savings" of not needing a port in the second question regarding the 4 to 1 case vs. the 2 to 1 case.

@TomAu Both are a matter of resource conversion and in the end it doesn't matter that you need a port to do one but not the other.