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Unpinning the accepted answer
It seems that Stack Overflow is getting a change and is no longer going to pin the accepted answer at the top and will now default to sorting by post score alone. In the post announcing this they posted a question asking how this should apply to other sites. Below are the choices being given and I was wondering how others thought we should tackle this.
Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers

Unpin the accepted answer on all SE sites by default and pin it back on a few sites that ask us to do so.

Keep the accepted answer pinned on all SE sites by default and unpin it on a few sites that ask us to do so.

Here are some stats about what questions would be impacted on our site. This comes from a query I got from another meta site question.
We have 8 questions with an accepted answer having a negative score and another answer with a higher score.
https://data.stackexchange.com/boardgames/query/1457490/questions-where-negatively-scored-accepted-answers-is-outscored#resultSets.
We have 220 questions with an answer that has a score at least 3 higher than the accepted answer.
https://data.stackexchange.com/boardgames/query/1457505/questions-where-accepted-answers-dont-have-the-highest-score-by-at-least-3-votes
We have 469 questions with an answer that has a higher score than the accepted answer.
https://data.stackexchange.com/boardgames/query/1457440/questions-where-accepted-answers-dont-have-the-highest-score
Update:
It appears we are going to need to make a request if we want this to happen on our site.

Start a meta discussion on your per-site meta.

When the discussion is completed and the community agrees to change the default behaviour (agrees to unpin the accepted answer), please ask one of the site moderators to add the status-review tag to the question. It will generate a ticket and let CMs know that we need to adjust the site setting for your site.

We would appreciate it if you add the outcome of the discussion to the accepted answer in this question. This will allow all of us to see the full picture.

This has been added to the Community Team's backlog and we'll update you once someone picks it up and evaluates your request.

@JNat Thank you for the update!

Hey! I've just changed the site setting. The accepted answer is unpinned now.

@NicolasChabanovsky Thank you for the work and the update!

I would strongly support making this change. The elevation of the accepted answer is primarily valuable in situations where the asker is in a unique position to evaluate the answer differently than any other voter. In particular, when questions are about the asker describing a problem that they face and answers are about solving that problem, only the asker can know whether their original problem has been solved.
This very rarely applies to our site. Most of the questions I see are about understanding rules of games, and in those cases other users with more knowledge about the game are better able to evaluate the correctness of answers.
In addition, the linked meta post links to a Stack Overflow Meta post describing an experiment that shows that even Stack Overflow itself, a site that is more focused on problem solving, not elevating accepted answers produces an improved experience. That's what prompted them to make this change in the first place.

On Stack Exchange the asker can actually test out the answer they were given and see if it solves their problem, here however those who ask questions often have no where to go to see if the answer was right or works, aside from other users on the site. We're also dealing with games where the rules can change over time, like this question where the accepted answer was correct at the time, but is now wrong in some ways. While an asker can change the accepted answer (and the answer can be edited when it's out of date), this doesn't always happen.
I support this change for these and many other reasons, across the entire stack exchange platform as a whole, but even more for our corner of it. A wrong answer shouldn't be permanently highlighted because the user who accepted it no longer exists or has simply abandoned their account - and allowing newer correct answers to rise past the old accepted answer provides a mechanism for that.
I do think that an accepted answer should still be involved in the ordering process - but as a tie-breaker, in essence equal to ½ of an upvote for the order of answers before the random sorting takes over. And there should be exceptions, particularly for meta sites where SE staff answers actually set or explain policy, but that's a case for a separate tool for forcing specific important answers to the top before either accepted or vote based ordering gets involved at all.

I would like to point out that just because a user can test an answer and it works for them doesn't mean that it is the correct answer. I have seen plenty of answers on Stack Overflow that while they might appear to work at a glance they can cause future issues down the road or introduce various security issues. Examples of this include sql injection, things stopping working due to code combability or just plan bad performance due to doing things in an inefficient manner. Could also be something of the fix only works for some cases but not all.

@JoeW True, there's always a possibility of "Solved the current problem, but introduce several more." And with SO that can be because of bad answers or incomplete information. All developers know this happens. But that's kind of tangential to the point I was making in reference to this site, where, since you don't have the rigidity of maths or coding, answers can be objectively wrong and still "work" and questions often get asked built on a false premise, like those about where the free parking money in monopoly comes from built on the false premise that money exists.


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What do I add to my question?
Why has my question What are the origins and evolutionary track of the Dominion game? been closed as needing details for clarity? What details do I need to add?

The first comment on your question is asking for clarification

Wouldn't its origins and evolution be necessarily part of its history? What are you looking to find out that you have been unable to discover? What do you mean its origins and evolutionary track in particular?

People who read your question do not understand what exactly you are looking for, and how it would be different from what you have said you already found.
So the details you should add are explanations of what you mean by "origins" and "evolution", and specifically what was missing in the sources you found about the "history of Dominion".

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Mass-fix broken links from old usages of autocard functionality
We have a nice autocard feature, which lets you easily link to Magic: The Gathering cards like Lightning Bolt with the following syntax:
[mtg:Lightning Bolt]

When this feature was first introduced, the resulting link was different, e.g. http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=Lightning%20Bolt instead of https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lightning%20Bolt. However, those links don't work anymore and they're quite widespread: this query lists all 1,786 of them.
I was planning to ask the Community Managers if they can assist; it looks very much like repairing broken links for which they have a script that can do so without bumping posts. Any thoughts from your side before I reach out to them?

Yes, mass fixing, this is beyond annoying!

Hey y'all, just letting you know this is on my list. It takes a dev to run the appropriate changes (I've reviewed them and it looks quite possible), but that probably won't happen until early January because of the holidays.

@Slate thanks for the response - considering these links are broken since (probably) a couple of years already, a few weeks delay won't be a problem :)

@slate are you aware of this: Switch Magic autocard over to a different search engine, Scryfall

@Pureferret Thanks, hadn't seen that. I'll ask if it's possible, but it probably won't be something we can do with the standard link replacer because of the particle. Will follow up soon.

I don't think switching over to Scryfall is necessary or even particularly desired here. That question was essentially an alternative to this other suggestion, which was recently implemented.

@murgatroid99 my impression was, only based on my memory when I first saw them, was that scryfall was preferred, but the stopgap you linked to would do for now. I'll have to go back and re-read when I have the chance

Actually, looking at it again, the Scryfall suggestion was actually older than the other one I linked. Both of those suggestions were made to address the same problem: for a few reasons, some cards could not be linked properly. That problem has been addressed by the implementation of the post I linked, so we don't need another change to solve it again.

@murgatroid99 the feature request doesn't just fix bugs, but adds language support and uses a better maintained and more reliable service - meaning fewer future bugs that we'd need SO Devs to fix. Gather goes down (or at least used to) when new cards are added, whereas Scryfall doesn't. There's lots more to using scryfall than just fixing a few cards.

This post is being discussed elsewhere on meta.

These links should now be fixed. These actually step outside the standard link replacer, because of some implementation details in the autocard functionality works.
So, there may be a few stragglers floating around with broken links. Any edit to those posts should fix the issue, even if the edit does not change the autocard link itself. Bar those few posts, the links should now be working again.
Shout if y'all spot an egregious number of nonworking links.

Thanks! I've updated 8 posts with a manual link to the old URL, and this query now returns 0 results.

@Glorfindel Perfect! By memory, that checks out. :)

That's awesome thanks!

That would be a good idea! I have been manually fixing them as I run across them and mass fixing them without bumps would be better.

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


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How do we create an autocard link to a card with an apostrophe in the name?
In Infractions/Player Communication - Infernal Tutor and Lion's Eye Diamond, it would be nice to link correctly to Lion's Eye Diamond. Using an apostrophe character, as in [mtg:Lion's Eye Diamond] seems to break the autocard markup: Lion's Eye Diamond. Is there some way to do this, perhaps with explicit character encoding? I had a go, but wasn't successful.
Two in the same day! [mtg: Sensei's Divining Top], needed in this question.

If we can escape the %27 it might work, but otherwise I don't know.

Isn't this related to this question? http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/794/some-autocard-names-dont-execute-correctly

@Aarthi - Yes. I'm raising it again though because it's a pain, and there's been no satisfactory response to Alex P's comment. While I agree that the API doesn't support the quote, there's absolutely no reason our implementation can't accept the quote char, and then just drop it before calling the API.

Ok. I'll ask KevinMontrose to take a look at it.

Bump This is a continuing annoyance. Many MTG cards use an apostrophe in their name.

I think the @Aarthi might have been missing from the "bump". I can never remember exactly who gets notified on these.

@shujaa - I don't think Aarthi works for SE anymore. I think Abby is now watching over us.

VTC as duplicate of the newer thread, in which this was resolved.

Let's switch to using Magiccards.info instead of the Gatherer for our mtg: links.
Currently they point here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name={name}

Let's point them here:
http://www.magiccards.info/query?q=!{name}

It'll work, since they don't drop the apostrophe like the Gatherer does.

Kiora's Follower using the Gatherer
Kiora's Follower using Magiccards.info

The MTG Salvation Wiki uses Maggicards.info instead of the Gatherer, and this bug is probably why. It's a little crummy having to either make people compensate for broken links, or use improper names like Kiora Follower to get around it.
What's that ! there for?
It's the exact match flag. Compare:

With a bang, only the card you specified turns up: http://magiccards.info/query?q=!Pox
Without a bang, others do too: http://magiccards.info/query?q=Pox

This also handles specific cards better.
See how the Gatherer handles these: Inkmoth Nexus and Pox.
Compared to Magiccards.info: Inkmoth Nexus and Pox

So far, I can't find any cards that don't work. Apostrophes work. Commas work. Magic's AE thing works. I guess the only issue is a bit of a legal question.

The bug is internal to Wizards' website - their public card search drops the apostrophe instead of passing it on. The link is already encoded correctly - they're just stripping punctuation for some unknown reason*.
If they ever fix this, we're already sending them the right input so it'll just start working.
As a work-around, just drop the possessive:  Sensei's Divining Top ->  Sensei Divining Top
*my money's on crappy input sanitizing

Frankly: a lot of things about the Wizards website is pretty terrible. INCLUDING THEIR TOS. shakes fist

I already know this. So why can't we (StackExchange) strip the apostrophe before sending it to the broken API? The work-around is lame. It looks like a typo.

Couldn't we copy the way MTG itself displays cards?  Giant Growth The auto-popup window is really nice.

See aarthi's comment about Wizards' TOS above, @Andomar. We'd have to violate it in order to do that - and yes, lots of other sites do so, but we're not interested in the liability; if they change their TOS, we can implement it.

@ire_and_curses This seems to have been forgotten, but "community" just bumped this, so I thought I'd chime in and say strongly agree with your comment.

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


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Please implement the Chess replayer on Board and Card Games
The Chess beta site now has a cool replayer, to allow Chess games/positions to be described, rendered and walked through. It's been around for a couple of months now.
We've been asking for this for some time. We already have a nice go renderer, and basic card-linking functionality for magic-the-gathering, both of which have been great. Now that something has been written for chess, our 6th most popular game, could we please have the same functionality enabled here?

Might it be better for questions with that level of complexity to be migrated to the chess site? (If the beta fails, the questions could be brought back here, and the replayer enabled at that point.)

@mattdm - No. 1) It's a great way to present even a static board. 2) All Chess questions are on topic here, even/especially complex ones. 3) The question of whether a separate site is needed for Chess is quite undecided, hence the beta. 4) The existence of the Chess beta says nothing about the existence of Chess questions on this site. That beta is in no way more valid than this one.

I've updated this post to [status-declined], because it better matches the answer below - that implementation would create a conflict with the Go renderer.

This would be nice on occasion, but... At present, it would interfere with the Go renderer. Until such a time as these can be integrated, I would recommend just using the dedicated Chess site for questions that would benefit from this.

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


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Should AI Generated Answers Be Allowed
Should we have a stance on AI generated answers (and possible questions as well)?

AI generated answers are not allowed as they can be tricky to verify as correct and it can be said if you are using AI to generate an answer you won't be able to verify if it is correct or not.
AI generated answers are allowed but need to be properly cited as an AI generated answer to allow users to know the source of the answer.(All AI generated content is required to be cited per SE policy)
AI Generated answers are treated like all others and no special actions are needed for them(not allowed per stack exchange)

As a note I am asking this question as there are new banners available for answers to indicate that they are not allowed or not
Sites can now request to enable a banner to warn about their policy on AI-generated content

@murgatroid99 can this question be featured to try and increase the visibility

That is a good point. I have featured this question.

Regarding #3: AI answers that are not clearly listed as AI are considered a Code of Conduct violation under the Inauthentic Usage policy, and so are essentially prohibited already. Making a more restrictive policy is, of course, totally fine.

@cocomac If that was the case why is there an option to have a banner warning users that all AI generated answers have to be properly identified? "Reminder: Answers generated by artificial intelligence tools must be cited on [Site Name]. Learn more" That option suggests that it isn't required to state that AI is used in an answer.

@JoeW I'm not sure exactly what you mean. An AI answer listed as an AI answer is allowed by the Inauthentic Usage policy, so having a banner reminding users to state that they used AI is fine. A banner saying that a site decided to fully ban AI and to not use it is fine as well.

@cocomac My point is that if it was true that an AI generated/edited answer has to have a statement listing it as AI why would one of the choices listed in the post I link be to add a banner stating that AI answers must be noted as such. The fact that it is a choice to turn on for a site suggests that posting AI answers without listing them as such is allowable. That question is saying sites can have a banner saying AI answers are not allowed, AI answers must be identified or no banner at all. You should post an answer explaining why you think they are not allowed without reference.

The community consensus is clearly against AIG material being permitted at all. Why has this post been edited to say they are okay with referencing? This is neither necessary nor desirable. @murgatroid99

@Nij I think there is a misunderstanding with the edit, the update was to remove the option of saying that AI content must be cited because that is already a sitewide requirement. When they asked the question of which type of banner a site wanted they missed the fact that all AI answers where already required to be cited under the inauthentic use policy.

@JoeW the edit is somewhat poor, probably best would have been to just remove option 3 from the points list, the option for allowing without referencing the AI generation, as it stands this asks a question and appears to give a single option (granted the one it seems our community agrees on) and still lists the third, no longer Stack Exchange permitted option in the edit notes beside the second option that would be stack exchange permitted.

@Andrew The attempt of the edit was to explain why it was being removed, if you feel you can do a better job feel free to make an edit yourself.

@JoeW done, how's that look?

@Andrew Option 2 is also no longer available as all AI answers are required to be properly citied based on existing SE policies. The  meta question that sparked this question has also been updated to reflect that.

@JoeW Option 2 IS still available, because it is the alternative to Option 1, Option 1 is we do not allow AI content, option 2 is we do allow AI content (with the required citations). Option 3 is the only one no longer available as it violates the SE policy that citations are required on AI content, option 2 is the answer that allows and requires citations and meets SE policy.

@Andrew I removed it as an option from my question as it was only included due to the incorrect information that citing AI answers was not already required on all sites.  This question was asked about adding new requirements around them and not just restating an existing rule. Please don't roll back my edit again.

@Andrew "As was pointed out in the comment thread by Joe W (thank you!), our current Code of Conduct (more specifically, its Inauthentic Usage policy) prohibits posting AI-generated content without appropriate attribution (explanation here). With that in mind, it doesn’t make sense that the “answers must be cited” variant, shown below as one of the possible two options for sites to opt-in to, would be optional. As such, we’ll be rolling out the “answers must be cited” option as the default for all Stack Exchange sites in the coming weeks."

@JoeW This is a question asking what this site should do, it DOES make sense that the answers must be cited variant is one of the options, because as a question it needs 2 choices minimum to make sense, Option 1 is no we should not allow them at all, option 2 is yes we should allow them (in line with the SE policies on citations), option 3 is the only one that should be removed because if violates the SE policies - the options are do we keep the default minimum or do we ban outright, we still have the choice and we still need to consider both.

If you want to remove it you need a major structural rewrite to the question to be in line with a "should we do something or nothing", remove the bullet points, ask it open ended, and point out the minimums in that case, without providing any options at all, instead of the more "here are our choices, which should we choose" as it was originally written.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@Andrew There is nothing to continue in chat, the second option is being added to every site by default and there is no longer a choice to request to add it or not.

There's a fundamental disagreement on what we're discussing, and why the option still belongs, so there is more to continue in chat - in the words of Neil Peart "If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice" it's still an option, either the default minimum or to choose to reject all AI content - you have presented a choice here "reject AI content or...." with nothing after the or in the ways you have edited your question

@Andrew In the end it is my question and my decision on what should be in it. Also I have pointed out how the question I reference has been updated to state that the second option is no longer something to choose from and will be added to all sites by default.

Why is the option, "AI generated answers are allowed but need to be properly cited" struck through even though that is a valid option?

I apologize for the long turnaround time, but I enabled the no AI answers banner.

@SpencerG We understand how you are all busy with many different things. Thank you very much for the new banner!

We should not allow the use of AI for answers on this site.
AI has proven to be unreliable, making answers that sound reasonable but are out and out false or wrong. It can be used for creative writing, and as a tool for other things but usually needs work after the fact. There's an extra risk on a site like ours where an answer given could have been correct, but no longer is, magic-the-gathering is the most common tag on BGSE, Magic is a game with changing rules, and a large language model AI is very capable of giving once true, but no longer correct, answers.
In general though AI answers run counter to the entire point of Stack Exchange, getting an answer from experts, or at least people with more experience in a topic. If people wanted an answer from an AI, they could just ask the AI their question directly.

I suggest that we do not allow AI answers on this site as they can be very difficult to verify if they are correct or not and based on writing style can easily be taken as a correct answer when they are not. I feel this way as when an AI is used to generate an answer the required knowledge will not be present to verify if it is accurate or not.

While I have an opinion about AI, I'm not going to say right now what I think this site should do - I'm not a regular of this site, and I don't really know it. This "answer" is regarding option #3, which states "AI Generated answers are treated like all others and no special actions are needed for them
".
Tl;dr: AI answers that are not clearly listed as AI answers violate the Inauthentic Usage policy, which is part of the Stack Exchange Code of Conduct. This has been confirmed by a SE Community Manager (staff). Per the Moderator Agreement, diamond (i.e., elected or appointed) mods are expected to enforce the CoC. How mods handle AI-content (as a CoC violation) is, to an extent, up to them. But, individual sites aren't really supposed to make policies overriding the CoC. You cannot, for example, make a policy that allows being intentionally rude to other users.

To respond to your comment:

@cocomac My point is that if it was true that an AI generated/edited answer has to have a statement listing it as AI why would one of the choices listed in the post I link be to add a banner stating that AI answers must be noted as such. The fact that it is a choice to turn on for a site suggests that posting AI answers without listing them as such is allowable. That question is saying sites can have a banner saying AI answers are not allowed, AI answers must be identified or no banner at all. You should post an answer explaining why you think they are not allowed without reference.

AI content that is improperly referenced (i.e., not cited as such) is clearly banned, regardless of whether or not there is a banner announcing it. A lack of a banner does not mean something is permitted. It's entirely possible for a site to say "We don't want the banner", and, for example, deciding they will ban all AI content, whether cited or not.

Thank you for this information and explanation of why it is considered a violation.

As an update the post has been updated that they will be making an update to help center articles community wide to note that AI articles need to be properly cited.


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Do we really need a rules tag, again?
From what I can tell, we determined that the rules tag was a meta tag and not useful for the site back in 2012: Do we really need a rules tag?. Well, it's back. It appears to have been recreated back in September 2022 with this post and added to fifteen total questions in the last few months.
Reading through the answers given to the original thread back in 2012, the reasons given for not using the tag (that were well supported by the community then) seem to apply just the same now almost eleven years later. So while I am open to contrary feedback, I am making this a burninate-request since burning the tag will not leave any of the fifteen questions untagged.

I've added a [status-review] tag to this, so that it'll end up in the staff's queue; they have the tools to blacklist tags.

It seems like we should be removing it from the existing questions (especially as it got recently  added to some) while we wait on other possible action.

@JoeW: Indeed – for tag-block requests, we ask that the community remove the problematic tag from the questions it's currently on first (unless it's on too many questions for the community to handle on its own, e.g. 75-100 or more) before escalating the request to staff. (Since it's only on 15 questions right now, hopefully y'all should be able to get that done pretty quickly.)

@V2Blast I have gone ahead and removed the tag from those 15 questions so we are good on that front.

status-completed
Tag was already burninated, and now is banninated

FYI: This was added via what we call an Intrinsic Block, in that the concept of rules is intrinsic to just about every question on board and card games, that it should almost be considered a de-facto tag on every question, so no need to explicitly add to each.

tag-block-request
The rules tag should be burninated, and it should also be blocked from usage. Our situation is just like that of RPG.SE's: the tag isn't useful because it applies to over 90% of our questions, and thus essentially becomes a tag tax. Also just like RPG.SE, it keeps coming back, because people keep asking questions about rules, so we should go ahead and block it to keep it gone.

Heck... No!
We had the discussion like a felt half dozen times. None of the arguments has changed: when is a question not about rules? Almost never. It serves no purpose!


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Should we refer recommendations and open questions to BGG and Reddit?
Once in a while someone asks a recommendation/open question.  The answer they get is "we don't do recommendation/open question" + closing the question.  To me that feels too harsh.
I think a better answer would be: "we don't do recommendations/open questions, a good place for those questions is BGG/Reddit/others?"
Here is the latest example:
which framework for an online mulitplayer boardgame

I don't think we should do that as a formal policy but members are free to make a suggestion of where a question can better be answered. I think overall we should focus on the question being on or off topic and just let people point to offsite resources as needed.
And honestly the question you linked to seems more of a programming question on how to implement things in a digital game then a gaming question.


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Does the lack of an image automatically mean an identify-this-game question should be closed?
In the question What game do these dice belong to the poster gave a complete description of the game components he had (and which as it turns out are very uncommon if not unique to the target game) and yet the question was closed as being either unclear or in need of details.
Is a picture required for such questions?

I think in this case it's sufficiently clear, so I voted to reopen. The tag wiki even says

"A game on a blue polka dot board with yellow dinosaur pieces from the early 90s" is great.

so while a picture may be very helpful (and I edited the tag excerpt and wiki to reflect that) it isn't required.


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Please create a tag for Spellfire
I am a new user to this Stack Exchange site (although I have been an active user on other SE sites for many years). I had wanted to ask a rules question about the collectible card game Spellfire, Master the Magic, but it seems there is no existing tag for it. I believe Spellfire was the second CCG created after MTG (but was discontinued in the 90s), so I'm a little surprised there is no tag for it already.
As a new user, I don't have enough to rep to create a new tag myself. Could someone possibly create a tag for Spellfire?

Welcome to the site! Unfortunately, we can only create tags by adding them to questions, and up till today there aren't any Spellfire questions. Please ask your actual question on the main site, using any other tag (even if it's not really applicable). It's best to leave a comment asking for the tag to be created.
Once somebody else creates the tag, it's recommended to create a tag excerpt for it; otherwise, it might get cleaned up after six months.

Ok, thanks for your advice. I posted my question here: Who can cast spells during combat in Spellfire?. It seems you already created the Spellfire tag - thanks for that!


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Tags that need a Wiki entry and Questions with untagged after losing their tag to a purge, how can I help?
The purge of tags without wikis on only one question has us currently sitting at 70 untagged questions. That is a great number of questions.
We could resolve this by making additional questions or creating a tag wiki. I don't have edit access, so my best method of helping is making additional questions.
Shall I begin asking away?

Of course, good questions are always welcome! And we have a healthy voting culture here, so if you ask one good question (or write a good answer), you'll likely have enough reputation to create tags, suggest edits adding those new tags to untagged questions and suggest tag wiki excerpts for them, so that they remain tagged. (But please don't bump too many posts at once.) That is actually how I started out here ...


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Add support for graphical playing card representations

Possible Duplicate:
Can we get a renderer for Cards?

Could we get some sort of support for automated inline graphics representing playing cards?  The visual aid could be helpful in clarifying questions and/or answers that involve specific hand combinations.  One such question I'd consider using it for is here:
Counting multi-runs in cribbage
For example, this code:
[cards:AS,AC,2H,3H,6D]
Could resolve to:

(Images from http://www.stevedawson.com/poker-hands.php)
Personally, I'd prefer the cards to be slightly larger so that they're more readable on high-resolution screens.  But, the above is a good example of the feature I'm requesting.

Yes, this would be great, and has already been asked. Please check out the linked question and see what you think of balpha's concerns.

Thanks for the link.  I didn't see it pop up as a suggestion when I wrote this thread.  I think @balpha's concerns are mainly centered around a proposal to convert free text into card images.  My suggestion completely avoids that problem by requiring Markdown-style tags, with a defined format, to generate the card images.


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Why did this question get three review comments?
The answer here What if I forget to pay rent? ended up with the auto comments (some of which aren't very friendly, but that's a separate matter).
I can't see on here what the review responses were.
But this Meta question Prevent duplicate auto-comments from review deletion recommendation implies this shouldn't happen.
Why did it?

The Low Quality Posts review queue asks you, if you choose Delete or Recommend Deletion, if you want to leave one of five standard comments, corresponding to the most common situations where a (new) user posts an answer which is (by Stack Exchange standards) not an answer.
Apparently, three reviewers chose three different comments, so the duplicate comment prevention didn't apply. Anyway, the answer is now gone.


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Closed a dupe but with the wrong Q&A, please close again
This question is a dupe of that question, but I closed it with an answer that wasn't the actual dupe. I re-opened it but now can't close it again.

Voted to close it for you.

status-completed – I've dupehammered it.
In the future, you could edit the duplicate list instead of reopening it.


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Tag for templating questions
I suggest a new tag, if it doesn't exist already:

mtg-templating

or alternatively, if there is a meaningful difference between the two:

mtg-wording

It is meant for all questions that primarily deal with how to interpret the English and subsequently rule meaning of card text and that can't always be cleanly answered with a CR reference. Examples:
Can Haphazard Bombardment destroy something with two aim counters?  (suggested dupe: Suggestions about certain ambiguous card text (Abzan Battle Priest))
Why does Cryptbreaker need this additional text?
Does "[card name] or another [type]" require [card name] to be in the proper category?
What happens if the legend rule doesn't apply to only one of a pair of legendary creatures with the same name?
Thoughts?

How would it add value in searching for the question of finding experts to answer it? I am unsure on that.

It would help to find duplicates more easily.

Makes sense, I can support that

It would only help find duplicates more easily if it were accurately applied.  Not all tags are, so a good tag wiki and some retagging would be needed.

I'm iffy about this tag, but I think there's a workable core here.
Part of it is that I need to be able to see what tags belong on a question by looking at the question, not at the answers. That means when this part comes up...

[...] and that can't always be cleanly answered with a CR reference.

... that means I don't necessarily know whether a question is a templating question or not until it's answered. Tags don't handle this Schrödinger situation very well since part of their purpose is to connect questions with experts who will answer it, so if I only know how to tag it after it's already answered, something is wrong.
Part of it is also, what is and isn't a templating question? One of your examples isn't a templating question, it's a legend rule question: What happens if the legend rule doesn't apply to only one of a pair of legendary creatures with the same name?. Maybe that's a bad example. But to some extent “templating” means “the text on the card”, and all questions about specific cards come down to the text on the card. I suspect this would be a little too broad of a tag if we're applying it in such a way this example might be included.

I see where you're getting at with two of your examples:

Why does Cryptbreaker need to specify "untapped" Zombies?
Does "[card name] or another [type]" require [card name] to be in the proper category?

... since these are about templating qua templating. They're not “how does this card work?” but instead “why does the card say these words specifically?” or “does my card need to say these exact words in order to work the way I intend?” These are drawing lessons about how people get the intended functionality of a card into that card's rules text within the bounds of the CR, which is what templating is really about from a MTG R&D department point of view.
I think this might be the core of the tag that you're imagining, and I suspect these aren't the only questions we have that are like this. This will be workable since we'll be able to see what it is based on the question itself, and we'll have clearer lines to draw.


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How can I structure questions appropriately to learn more about strategy for the games I enjoy?
I know broad topics and things that are more "discussion" than "directly answerable" are discouraged on B&CG, but I really want to pull apart, exchange ideas, and learn about strategies pertaining to various games I play.  My question is

Are there tips for structuring my general strategy questions to make them acceptable such as proposing my opinion on optimal play in various phases of the game?

This sounds like it's not what people are saying the site is meant to answer, unless the situation is extremely specific (i.e. "when this occurs, is this the best play?" versus "is X a strong strategy for the opening while doing Y for the endgame").
If anything but the most specific strategy questions don't have an easy place in B&CG, that would be my loss and has been frustrating as a new user to this site. I tend to use some advice I read somewhere in the B&CG faq for now, which is to post whatever questions I have anyway and let them be closed or discussed, but it's still frustrating to simply want to talk about strategy with the community and not fully understand which side of the fence my questions are on.

The lack of answers should not be taken to indicate that this was an inappropriate question to ask.  I think it is that nobody really has this figured out yet.

A mantra for this (and any Stack Exchange site) is that questions must be objectively answerable.  Objectively evaluating strategies is something I only know how to do in the case of a "solved" game, or in rather limited contexts.  So, I think it comes down to the scope of the question.
Limited Scope questions are definitively answerable, and an excellent fit for this site:
What is the advantage of "Complete Destruction" over "Extra Head" in King of Tokyo?

This lends itself to a quantitative analysis, and can be addressed pretty straight forwardly for those of us mathematically or coding inclined.
Broader scope questions are fuzzier, they may or may not fit well:
When should I try and hold Tokyo in King of Tokyo?

So much of the answer to that, depends upon game context.  How combative are your opponents?  Are they trying to win by killing or victory points or card drawing?  etc. etc.  If these can be worded to limit their scope, they seem like they'd be excellent, but "fixing" these questions depends on the resolve of the original poster.
Open ended questions are just not going to fit:
What's the best strategy in King of Tokyo?

Too much depends upon your opponents, how they interact, what their motives are (my 7 year old always goes for energy cubes, so the strategies I use to defeat him are completely different than I use for my 10 year old who always focuses solely on victory points).
I would love to see more strategy questions here.

The more work you've done on your strategy question, the better it's likely to be.
A weak question is, "What are the best strategies for game X?"
A stronger question is, how does strategy X prevent bad outcomes in game Y if the opponents do Z? Here, you've thought about what your opponents are likely to do, and are asking if the solution X, prosed by you, is an adequate counter.


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Should our magic-the-gathering tag have subcategories?
As has been mentioned before the bulk of our questions are tagged magic-the-gathering.  Would there be any value in breaking this down into subcategories?  I'm not a MTG player so I'm not the person to pick the subcategories, but things like this could work:

deck building
card interactions
buying and selling

Does this seem like a good idea?  What subcategories would you like to see?
Does this break any site rules about how tags are done? (Apparently no, since they already exist!  Dur.)
Edit
Can I made this bad question any better by turning it into: why aren't the more specific tags used more often?  Does it make sense for most of the MTG question to be in the general tag and nothing else?

Are you seeing any specific problems caused by the fact that we don't have these subcategories? In other words, what is the problem that this proposal aims to solve?

Over half of the posts on the front page and in the weekly digests are about MTG and they all have the most general tag.  It seems like we could do a better job of bucketing these things so that people can find other related Q/A's.  Finding anything related in a bucket of 3000+ things seems more challenging that it needs to be.

The 3 subcategories you suggested could apply to many other games besides mtg which in the end would make them more of a meta tag.

They were just intended as examples, I hoped someone with deeper knowledge would have something better and it seems like that's already happened.

We do have a fair number of more specific tags already, of the form "mtg-something" - go here and search for "mtg" to see things like mtg-commander, mtg-drafting, and so on.
Generally, we could add more tags in that vein if we think they're organizationally helpful, i.e. if the topic meets these criteria:

people will likely want to search for and browse questions on that topic
we have a substantial number of questions on that topic
we don't have so many questions on that topic that it would be nearly equivalent to the main magic-the-gathering tag.
it will be intuitive and obvious how and when to use the tag.

Given that, I'm not too sure about the tags you've suggested:

deck building and card interactions - given that we don't get a ton of play strategy questions, these two pretty much divide the topic into two pieces, deck building (i.e. outside actual play), and rules (i.e. during actual play). That makes them a bit less useful, since they're so broad, and even more importantly, it's pretty unlikely that folks posting questions will think to use these tags.
buying and selling - we just don't get a lot of questions about this, so I don't see a lot of potential added value.

Thanks for showing me tags I missed.  I hadn't seen those used much so I hadn't noticed them.  I just used those bullets to give an idea of what I was talking about.


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Are there scenarios in which posting answers that aren't answering the question is acceptable?
I just stumbled upon this (subjectively very interesting) question: Which alternative methods of choosing a starting player actually WORK?
As far as I can tell, the question is mainly what's being asked in the title, and at no point does it actually ask for suggestions on better methods. In fact, the only extensions of the question I can see are this line further down:

Are these rules mostly just there to be cute - and quickly ignored - or should be follow them religiously?

As a corollary question, are there any games that vary the starting player by means other than pure randomness? [...] Also, are there any games that have rules for fairly assigning seating order [...]?

About every single one of the upvoted answers (including the accepted answer) do not seem to answer the question stated in the title whatsoever, and exclusively address the corollary question quoted above (which, to my understanding, makes little sense without having an answer to the main question first). All of these answers seem to be answering the nonexistant question of "Can you name another method any game uses to determine a starting player?".
Now, this seems like a rather common thing to happen on StackExchange-style sites, and there are mechanisms for it, such as voting to delete answers, and downvoting. However, none of these answers seem to have even gotten a significant number of downvotes (the highest count on the top ten answers is 1 downvote at the time of writing). From that I can only assume that the userbase (I dare not say community) has decided that these answers are useful, even though they do not answer the question.
As for the accepted answer, it follows the template of "posting a method rather than an answer" as well, but adds this line:

It is the best of both worlds.

Now that technically answers the question, although in an objectively rather unsatisfactory way, as it is not providing any hint of debate in favor of what's being suggested, nor does it really express that this method works... it sounds more like "it also isn't great, but the best you can get".
Going by my understanding of the StackExchange principles, I'd proceed to downvote pretty much every answer, vote to delete some of them, and perhaps research a little on my own to be able to provide a good answer to the original question - but at least going by majority vote, I seem to be vastly outnumbered in that thinking. Am I missing something here? What is going on? And, to loop back to my original question - am I supposed to view these answers as useful, simply because quite evidently (going by user input), they are?

For what it's worth... I consider the real question to be defined by the body of the post, and the title to be just a summary. Ideally they should be consistent with each other, but if there's any ambiguity about what's actually being asked, I take the body of the post as authoritative. So as I see it, the real question is primarily this:

...are any of these actually superior, on a long-term basis, to just choosing at random?

and secondarily this:

Are these rules mostly just there to be cute - and quickly ignored - or should be follow them religiously?

Asking two questions in the same post is not great, of course, but that's a whole separate issue.
Anyway, looking at it from this perspective, a lot of the answers describe alternate methods of choosing a starting player and list some advantages of those methods. By listing advantages, they are answering the first part of the question. They're anecdotal answers, sure, but if you expect a proper study or statistical analysis or something like that, you'd be waiting forever. In a case like this, anecdotes are probably as good as you're going to get. Given that, I don't think it makes much sense to consider these answers unacceptable.

More generally, based on my experience on this and other SE sites, I'd suggest that posting answers that don't answer the question is not (or, should not be) acceptable, but we should assume good faith on the part of answerers. If it's at all plausible that the person posting legitimately and reasonably thought they were answering the question, that should be good enough to keep it from being deleted outright as a non-answer. Of course, if you think an answer doesn't actually answer the question, that makes it not useful, which is precisely the listed criterion for downvoting, so as far as I'm concerned, go ahead and downvote away. You can also leave a comment on the answer pointing out something that you think other people should consider when casting their own votes. If, after all that, other people still disagree with you and think the answer is useful enough for them to upvote it... well, there's really nothing else you can do at that point, so you might as well just go with it.

Simply put I think they are answering the question by talking about alternate methods of choosing a starting player that work for them. In the end if a starting method works or not really comes down to opinion as there are methods that work for some groups and don't work for others.

It's worth considering that the title of the question was edited fairly recently, well after most answers to the question where posted. This gives the appearance that answers aren't answering the question, but in reality they WERE answering the question at the time.
Expecting the authors of answers to come back and edit their answers when a question is changed 11 years later might be a bit much.

As I also said in this Meta Stack Exchange answer,

Titles are a reference label, a brief description of the question so it can be found by later searches; they do not form the whole question, or even a relevant part of it.
The body of the question is where the question must be asked. If that happens to include identical text as the title, good! It means the title will be very particular, making it easier to see what the rest of the body might involve.

The title is not the question and the question is not the title.
I strongly disagree that a person honestly believing they've attempted to answer a question makes it so. Either they have addressed the facts and context provided and have provided a resolution to the query made, or they haven't.
Making that judgement is up to each reader, and it may be more or less objective to do so, but "I really thought that's what it wanted" is not enough to make a post become an answer to a question, any more than it being technically marked in an Answer box does.
If you think a post in the Answer box does not (attempt to) resolve the query, flag it as Not An Answer. If you think it is unhelpful, and you probably should, if you think it's not answering the relevant question, downvote it.
If you think the question is intended to seek something that is not explicitly requested, such as by implying it only or by interpreting the text in that way, you can suggest an edit to make that intent explicit, as long as it does not invalidate any existing answers or actively change the intent of the question, such as it may be identifiable.

I would disagree with you on the not an answer flag. Just because an answer is given that may not be what the person asking the question wants doesn't mean it isn't an answer.  In the case of the linked question even the accepted answer was questioned as answering the question which the OP accepted showing it was at least helpful if not answering the question.

Then, I don't think you've understood what I said, and someone accepting an answer doesn't mean it actually does.


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Are questions regarding historical tournament results of MTG decks on-topic?
There is a question I've been meaning to ask about the history of tournament results of certain Magic: The Gathering decks during a particular standard season, but I am not completely sure whether the BCG Stack Exchange is the right place to ask it.
The question would be along the lines of:

Did [archetype] decks get any significant standard tournament results during the standard of [block] and [block]?

Would that be on-topic for this site?

Yes, regardless of the deck
As murgatroid says:

A rule about whether questions are on topic needs to depend on the topic itself, not on external information about the specific subject.

Let the votes decide if a particular question is an issue, and we can address any flooding if questions if it occurs.

My view: yes, but only for decks which are in some way already notable. To take some recent examples, asking about Omnath Adventures in Zendikar Rising standard would be on-topic as the deck was very successful, so much so its namesake card was very rapidly banned. On the other hand, asking about Mono-Black Aggro in Zendikar Rising standard, a deck which saw effectively no high-level play, would not be on-topic as that would just open the floodgates to an huge number of questions (every deck archetype in every timeframe), most of which would not add any value over an MtG database site.

I understand your concerns about opening the floodgates, but I wonder two things. 1) What threshold do you set for a deck to be considered successful and 2) if you already know a deck is successful enough to meet the threshold why wouldn't you know enough to not ask the question?

I'm not sure what my own answer to this question would be, but this is not the right line to draw. A rule about whether questions are on topic needs to depend on the topic itself, not on external information about the specific subject. Plus, my experience has been that it's never really worth worrying about "opening the floodgates". If we were going to have a problem like that, we would already have that problem, because most people don't put this kind of work into checking whether their question is on topic before asking it.


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My post on a Nemesis thread
I was wondering why My post was deleted in the question regarding the nest destruction
I think it was an alternative / question following the same line of the idea.
Does depressurising The Nest kill the eggs?
Here`s a screenshot

I tried contacting the users who deleted it but even with the provided email on one of them My emails kept bouncing back.  Any help please ?

You posted a question as an answer. That is not how SE works. The question should have been posted as a question (as explicitly stated in the comments).

With all due respect, did you read the comments that were posted?

However, please note that we're not a regular discussion forum, but rather a focused Q&A site. If you have a new question, please use the Ask Question button rather than posting an answer to an existing question.

Stack Exchange runs on a model of no chit-chat. Your post would be perfectly fine as a new question, but should not be posted as an "answer" to a different question as it isn't an answer to the question.

Stack Exchange is a question and answer site, not a system of post threads like most forums and social media. You posted a new question as an answer to the question - it wasn't an answer so it was deleted.
If you want to ask a new question, you hit the ask question button, if you want to reference another question that inspired your new question, you can add a link to that original question in your new question, like I did in my question here.

I understand the posting now, but like I said, My question was in the same line of Idea and I was submitting a new idea through the question.

@LordRamiro If your intention is to have the original question expanded, then comment on the original question to suggest that the original poster make the edit. But really, in most cases, the new question should be posted as a new question.

@L.ScottJohnson The OP won't have been able to comment on the question due to not having 50 rep - but that's no reason for posting answer-comments.

Ah, right. The solution then is to gain rep, which often leads to finding out more about how the site works, to boot.

@L.ScottJohnson which brings us back to his best choice being asking a related question (which I'd say is still the better choice over asking for the original question to be changed) earning him the rep he needs because it is a decent question to ask.

Your "answer" was deleted because it did not provide an answer to the question. For more information, please see Why and how are some answers deleted? If you want to know how to write a good answer, please see: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer


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2021 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection

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

Board & Card Games Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2021-10-18. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.
Here’s how it’ll work:

Until the nomination phase, (so, until 2021-10-18 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into currently.

We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:

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

The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.

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

At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.

We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

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

How will you handle questions that are borderline off-topic or otherwise low quality, and can't be trivially saved by an edit, but might be considered acceptable by a reasonable person (just not you)?  Does being a moderator change your action in any way on these questions compared to not?

What do you mean by borderline off-topic? Seems a bit strange to classify it as borderline but not able to be saved with an edit

The intent is to get at a question that the moderator thinks is maybe off topic, or probably off topic, but isn't definitely off topic.  Questions saved by edits are easily editable - what I'm aiming for is the common problem that arises when new moderators are either afraid to close questions they would have before cast close votes to close (but now are afraid to do so unilaterally if they're not 100% sure) - or move to close questions too quickly before there is a community consensus, in the case where there's no clear consensus.

Okay that makes sense, but for me it a lot of it depends on why it is off topic or low quality then just being off topic/low quality.


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Has the color scheme changed?
I am not seeing an announcement anywhere, but it sure seems like the color scheme has changed to a bunch of Orange text?  Is this new?  Or do I have a lousy memory?
Is there a reason for orange?  Orange is a pretty odd color choice IMHO.

Please post screenshots showing what you think has changed as it will help people understand.

Shortly after I asked this I saw it as well

It appears to be a bug that they are working on fixing as we speak.
Why did all sites turn orange?
It it appears to have been fixed and reverted back to the correct colors.


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Is a [spoiler] tag necessary?
We have a recently created spoiler tag, which is currently attached to two questions. Both of those questions are also tagged with risk-legacy, but if we left this tag alone, it's likely it would be tagged to questions for other board games as well.
It seems to me that this tag is wholly unnecessary since questions themselves can block out content in spoilers:

 Spoilers are blocked out like this.

One of those questions already uses this spoiler block anyway.
Since we already have ways to denote a spoiler, should we just get rid of the tag altogether?

No, we do not need a spoiler tag. It describes the question itself, not the topic of the question. Tags like this are known as meta tags, and are explicitly discouraged. I have removed it from those two questions.

@Rainbolt Thanks, I knew there was an official statement about it but I forgot to check the blog.


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Dealing with Commander rules changes
This rather old Q&A has gotten a rules change that changes the answer, so it has been updated. However, the rules change that is the basis for the update has "only" been announced by the Commander Advisory Group, while the answer implies that the rule is already active. I have no reason to doubt it will arrive as advertised, but as far as the Comprehensive Rules are concerned, it hasn't happened yet, and in sanctioned Commander events (or official online play), people would still have to play with the current rules.
Therefore I would suggest that using the CAG as a reliable preview source is fine, but the CR should still be the only source to describe the current state of Commander rules. I am open to discussion since Commander is a special case in the CR.

This makes sense to me.

I think this would have prompted more immediate and useful change if it was posted as a comment on the answer in question than as a meta question. These rules change very infrequently, so there isn't a whole lot of value in developing a general principle for handling those changes.

For all intents and purposes, CAG defines the rules for Commander - it's a format that WotC adopted after it was created and made popular by players, and I think more people follow CAG rulings than WotC rulings for the format, at least when not playing in WotC events.

This is a couple of months ago, but I'll leave this answer just to record what happened with that post (which I'm the author of):
On June 19 I happened to see this meta, so I updated my post (revision 7, right at the end) to clarify the rules update was not yet present in the actual Commander rules page. I did not actually realise the rules were not already active on the Commander site's rules page until seeing this meta.
@murgatroid99 advised in comments to post a comment on my answer requesting change as well. I agree with that; I would be receptive to comments like that on my posts and would update in a situation like this, and I might not have become aware of this otherwise. I assume that such a comment didn't get posted because I happened to spot this meta pretty quickly and already acted on it.
Today I've further updated the post (revision 14) to describe the rule as present on the Commander rules page.
For those curious, I've also added Wayback machine links to my answer for before/after the rules change: June 18, August 18.


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Can formatting help please include links to community-specific features?
This community has support for go-board diagrams, chess and no doubt many other useful features, but the basic formatting help does not include links to descriptions of them.
As a consequence the way of using them seems to be edit+copy+cancel+paste+hack+pray or searching on meta, which worked for me for go, but involved a little more following of links and experimenting than seemed ideal.
Since that seemed unnecessarily indirect and laborious, I ended up adding another answer with essentials, links and samples to How do we enter Go Boards on this site? . Since I found the necessary information via an answer to Can we integrate software to show Go and Chess positions? although the question sounds less relevant, I also added an answer there linking to my detailed answer.
It would be helpful if the help pages for formatting (or the pages for creating posts) were to make it easier to discover the appropriate descriptions. Since these pages appear to be largely generic, it may be helpful to have a standard text saying how to find community-specific markup, which could involve a new special-purpose meta tag such as community-specific-markup.

I would say if you want to do this crate meta questions that contain the specifics of the formatting that you want to explain how to use, and then link to that meta question from inside the tag wiki.

@Malco: When you say the tag wiki do you mean [tag:go] or [tag:chess]? While not where I would automatically look, I think it is a good idea. Later: I have just checked for Go, and there were some basic instructions, which I extended with a link to my fuller answer.

@PJ by tag wiki I am referring to these pages eg: go tag wiki, chess tag wiki. Though I agree it isn't that intuitive, there is precedent (see mtg tag wiki for how to format the autocard).


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Remove 'ethics' tag?
There are only 4 questions tagged ethics in 2 years, all by the same user. There is no usage guidance for this tag, and all four questions are about the card game bridge, making the intended scope even more unclear. We have four related tags that are more common and better defined: etiquette, cheating, legal, and perhaps tournament.

I would consider the ethics tag different then etiquette, cheating and tournament though I am not sure if it is needed or not.

I'm not familiar with bridge, but is [tag:ethics] a phase of the game, like fuseki in Go?

@SocioMatt Bridge (from my limited understanding at least) seems to have a lot of rules that deal with how players share information between partners, and the questions seems to be about when you can deviate from your prior agreements with your partner (I think, more or less, maybe...)

It appears that "ethics" has a specific meaning to Bridge players, so as an immediate fix I propose that the existing tag be renamed to bridge-ethics and given corresponding usage guidance by a user who knows more about bridge. The tag isn't used much yet, but perhaps bridge players will start using it more once it's clearer what it's for.
As other answers have pointed out, there are ethical questions that might belong on this site like the ethics of king-making or of making a game that reinforces stereotypes. If and when such questions get asked in the future, we might consider making a new ethics tag.

yeah. that works.

I suspect most questions about things like kingmaking would just be social questions, not actual ethical questions.

(This is more replying to "Is it used properly in the bridge questions?" than to the original question; but it is still an answer rather than a comment)
Bridge has (nearly universal) rules that cover the inevitable mistakes; if you revoke by playing one card when you were obliged to play another there is a two trick penalty, reduced to one if the effect was smaller than usual. These rules, deliberately, do not cover the intention of the player; they are purely mechanical, and questions about them use the rules
tag.
Like most games involving money and international prestige, bridge also has occasional cheating scandals; international pairs have recently used the positioning of their bidding cards to show partner what they hold. This is flagrant contempt for the whole rules system, and questions about it (if on-topic), use the cheating tag.
But there is also a huge area between the two, covering for example how long you are allowed to hesitate before a bid, when you must (and must not) warn the opposition about the unusual meaning of a bid, and what conventions you can play at a particular tournament. These points are covered by "Rules and Ethics" guidance given by the various rulemaking bodies (mostly but not always national), which usually attempts to 'put the players in the same position they would have been in if everybody had played properly'. Since most people believe they played properly to start with and it is impossible for an adjudicator to know what the player intended, this is not easy, and very many of these questions are discussed at all levels in the bridge world. If they are asked here, ethics is the only reasonable tag.

I think that the ethics tag is just fine but it may or may not be appropriate on the questions it is tagged. As I am not that familiar with bridge I am unable to judge if those tags are used properly or not.
A couple of areas where I think the tag does have some use. Questions about king making in games where a player causes someone else to win/lose while they themselves can't win or the actions prevent them from winning. Another area is co-op games where something may be legal according to the rules but may or may not be against the spirit of the rules.
I don't know if this tag will see a lot of use but I don't see anything wrong with it.

I'm not a bridge player, but I think those questions could all be tagged cheating.
Those four questions appear to all essentially ask whether something is considered cheating in a formal context. If the subject of the question is permissible, it's not cheating, though I suppose it could still be bad etiquette. If it isn't permissible, it's cheating, though it might be a relatively mild form of it.
So the core question is "is this cheating?", and cheating seems appropriate.
I suppose we could consider whether ethics or cheating is a better name for the whole concept. ethics is less loaded, but it's also less specific and not as obvious (only one user has used it?), so I tend to favor cheating.

From my point of view something being ethical or not in the game is not dependent on it being cheating or not. To really get into the ethics is a much deeper topic.

@JoeW I agree, but that's not how the tag was used. The "ethical" issues raised appear to all be just asking "is this allowed in formal/serious bridge play?" It looks like bridge players may tend to use the word "ethics" to describe this, but it's what would be called cheating (or not) in most contexts.

In the context of board games from the user perspective. The primary arena that really has "ethical" concerns would be publishing. (Is it ethical to report on a publisher that has rejected my game?). That and maybe modern sensitivities (Such as the question of Puerto Rico and the brown colonists cubes). Also the ethics of making a game that reinforces harmful stereotypes. Questions such as Would making The Train1 a fun game instead of an interesting one be ethical? or Should I include slaves in my historic civil war game, or Is it right to make money on a game that causes people harm and others like that.
The thing is I can't imagine many questions with descrete answers appropriate for Stack Exchange, that are also ethical in topic. So yeah in inconsideration with the fact that we have etiquette, cheating, legal, and tournament. I don't see a need for ethics. And based on four questions in two years form one user. It sounds like no one else in the community can come up with a use for them either.
1 - The Train - Designed by SCAD Professor Brenda Brathwaite is a pick up and delivery game in which at the game's conclusion it's revealed that the delivery items are jewish people being delivered to Auschwitz

I would disagree with that and say it has as many or more in game play itself. Also I think you are confusing offensive with ethical.

I'm not confusing them but I might not have been clear enough to get my point across. That said while I think I'm reasonably versed on the ethics of board game design, I'm less so on board game play and if you do have reason to believe there are ethical dilemmas that come across in board games worth the effort of stack exchange query I would read your argument.  Beyond Kingmaking and pile ons and general issue like that I'm drawing blanks.

just noting that while I was writing this you appear to have made your own answer.

I don't think the examples you gave have anything to do with ethics but rather something that is designed to be offensive


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HoverCard, a userscript for MTG card link tooltips
I've created a userscript that shows a tooltip for any links that start with:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx

It works with both name and with multiverseid in the query string.
HoverCard: BoardGames.SE MTG Gatherer Card Link Rollover

Chrome users will need Tampermonkey.
Firefox users will need Greasemonkey.

It will display a tooltip centered under the hyperlink. If there isn't enough room to display it under the link, it will display it above instead. If the link spans multiple lines, the tooltip will snap to the far left under the lowest line.
After enabling the userscript, reload this page and test it for yourself:

single word Fumigate
multiple words Cataclysmic Gearhulk
hyphen Long-Finned Skywhale
comma Chandra, Torch of Defiance
apostrophe Nissa, Nature's Artisan
double quote (") Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon"
aether (Æ) Æther Tradewinds
exclamation Framed!
periods and brackets B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster)
accent Ring of Ma'rûf
underscore _____

Ampersands (&), slashes (/) and colons (:) are broken when used with [mtg:] MarkDown. You must use multiverseid:

[mtg:R&D's Secret Lair] R&D's Secret Lair
.aspx?multiverseid=73967 R&D's Secret Lair

Gatherer doesn't seem to like https calls, so the script breaks on a secure connection. I added an explicit http: to the imageUrl and that makes the script work, but that introduces a mixed-content warning.

@MichaelSnook Thanks for the feedback. Can you link an example question where this happens for you? I'd like to reproduce it so I can think of a way to deal with this.

Sure, compare https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/29716/how-much-damage-do-i-take-when-i-trample-a-stuffy-doll-that-has-pariah-attached with http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/29716/how-much-damage-do-i-take-when-i-trample-a-stuffy-doll-that-has-pariah-attached -- it works with the second page but not the first.

I did some debugging, the issue is that if you use https for stack exchange, the user script defaults to https for the gatherer search as well, but gatherer doesn't answer.

@MichaelSnook That's correct. I can't build a way around this. Since Wizards.com doesn't provide the card API on HTTPS, I will have to force it on HTTP. If it causes your browser to spasm over mixed-content, that is normal behavior. Thanks for reporting :)

I'm clicking card links then remembering I don't have to anymore. Can I just thank you again for making this? It's so good.

I'm getting Javascript errors using this, around the value of the selector. What is the "i" at the end of the href filter? 'a[href*="://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp" i]'

i makes the selector case-insensitive. It's a CSS4 selector. It's not supported by all browsers yet.

Thanks, hadn't seen that. I'm using an up-to-date Chrome though and it's giving me an unrecognized expression error in jQuery. Here's a simple-case Fiddle showing the same thing: https://jsfiddle.net/6e2ezdud/

@GendoIkari I'm also getting errors. It seems like the i directive is no longer working in Chrome, but I'm chalking this up to Chrome (because it's still valid CSS4). I also still need to update the script with doppelgreener's bug below. I'll write an update this week.

Cool thanks. I hadn't known about this until today, but look forward to using it!

Looks like a jQuery support thing. Works for selectors in general in Chrome and Firefox, but gives that error in both when using it as a filter in an 'on()' method.

@GendoIkari Then something recently changed, because this was not broken before. I'll make case-sensitivity optional when I write the update, but if somebody writes .../pages/card/details.aspx instead of .../Pages/Card/Details.aspx HoverCard won't work because jQuery will match it case-sensitively.

Just updated to v1.0.6. It no longer uses [... i] so it shouldn't break anymore. Also I added support for Search urls and I noticed there was a Handler url so I added those two for matching.

Awesome, thanks! Lion's Eye Diamond isn't working (http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/32665/why-isnt-selvala-explorer-returneds-ability-instant-speed); though Sphinx's Revelation in this thread is...

Lion's Eye Diamond-like cards are fixed in v1.0.8. Please upgrade.

FWIW, my SOUP user script now also includes this feature.

The tampermonkey script doesn't appear to be working anymore...

It appears it's no longer meta.boardgames.se.com but boardgames.meta.se.com.

Additionally, it seems that Chrome no longer allows loading HTTP resources on a HTTPS site. So it's forcing the image url to https://, which doesn't work on the Gatherer site. I think that effectively killed this userscript.

@MarcDingena I want to update this to use Scryfall's API which is HTTPS. Is this on Github or another repository where I could contribute to it? Alternately I could upload it to my own userscript repository (effectively taking ownership of version 2) if you're okay with me doing that.

@doppelgreener Please feel free to contribute to https://github.com/mdingena/HoverCard

@MarcDingena I have done so. :)

The greasyfork script isn't updated yet with those changes. Should we be fetching the script directly from the Github raw file (https://github.com/mdingena/HoverCard/raw/master/hovercard.user.js)?

Not sure if it's possible to add authors to GreasyFork scripts? Can you set up GreasyFork to pull from GitHub?

There's no metadata for authors on userscripts, AFAICT. I've moved most of my userscripts to Github just to keep things in one place instead of two, and plan to migrate my mana symbols userscript over now that I realise it's not there already. (I could share the migration procedure if you want to do that.)


text:
Warhmmer 40k Tyranid Tag
Would it be possible to get a tag for the Tyranids army from Warhammer 40k? I noticed Tyranids is missing although it looks like some of the armies are there.

For reference we currently have tags for Tau, Necrons, and Orks (and Space Orks)

I am not familiar with the game, what does having an army tag do for the question?

@JoeW Each army has it's own rule book and this would allow me to filter for armies that I am familiar with to answer questions.

If there is a question where the tag is needed (as a tag has to be on a question to be created) and it isn't created when I get off work I can add the tag for you.

@joew yeah I just need the tags added for warhammer 40k armies. I can update the question with all the missing ones if you would like me to.

But is there an actual question where the tag can be used, and currently doesn't use?

@nij Yeah I just made one where I was specifically asking about representing a Tyranid model that doesnt have a official model but official rules for it exists.

Please provide a link to a question where this tag would be appropriate so that the tag can be added to the question. There is no way to create a tag without adding it to an existing question.

@JoeW http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/34260/do-warhammer-models-that-have-no-models-have-specific-dimensions-stated-any-wher/34262#34262

So you're saying that each army is a variant of the game? Otherwise it seems like overly partitioning of the questions.

@JonTheMon Their is a core rule book and then each army has its own rule book. Then each armies rule books may have supplement books. I certainly don't think we need tags for the supplement books but a book for each of the main armies as detailed in the core rule book. This link contains all the rule books and supplements for them. In the side navigation bar you can see a list of the armies which is not one to one with books. https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Warhammer-40-000?Nu=product.repositoryId&N=102352+1990622255&qty=12&sorting=rec&view=table&categoryId=cat440130a-flat.

@JonTheMon The armies is what I would like to have a tag for but even some of those could be condensed into one. For instance Tyranid Cult despite being a stand alone army should probably be condensed with Tyranids since they are a supplement of Tyranids.

I think the Warhammer 40k armies could be compared to board game expansion packs, which we do frequently create tags for. They are different enough, as shown by their different rule books.

I have created the tag tyranids for you on the question you linked. Please update the tag wiki with the appropriate information so that it does not get removed from the system.


text:
Naming the tag for questions about legendary cards and the legend rule
We've got a bunch of questions in MTG around navigating the legend rule, and handling various cases involving legendary permanents in circumstances where the legend rule might apply. I've tagged them to aid discoverability (I'm sure I missed a bunch). I've called the tag mtg-legendary-cards and given it this description:

Questions about handling Legendary cards in light of the Legend Rule in Magic: the Gathering, and questions about the Legend Rule itself.

I feel this tag name may not be ideal as it might imply to people that any question involving a legendary card might warrant the tag. On the other hand I'm worried “legend rule” itself might be a relatively obscure piece of game terminology and thus [mtg-legend-rule] might or might not work.
What should this tag be called? Is mtg-legendary-cards fine? Should it be called [mtg-legend-rule] or something else instead?

In case you're wondering “why even tag this stuff at all? it's already tagged magic-the-gathering”, see Why the recent addition of MTG sub tags? for my reasoning. TL;DR: tagging is making it easier to find questions and duplicates in a topic than text search alone.

I was thinking about it while drafting up this question — I think maybe we should call it mtg-legend-rule with mtg-legendary-cards as an alias. The legend rule is what these questions are about, and [mtg-legendary-cards] will make the tag more discoverable, but it'll also be clear when the [mtg-legend-rule] tag doesn't actually apply.
The summary could remain the same:

Questions about handling Legendary cards in light of the Legend Rule in Magic: the Gathering, and questions about the Legend Rule itself.


text:
Should we burninate [mtg-history]?
Our site has these two tags:

history on 42 questions. The tag wiki says: “The history tag explores variation editions of changes to a board game. It also is used for looking into the past events that lead up to a game in some way.”
mtg-history on 6 questions. No tag wiki. Two of these questions are also tagged [history]. All questions are questions about the history of MTG. (The tag is not about the Historic mechanic.)

I believe the [mtg-history] tag is redundant since we can already signify we're asking about MTG history with a combination of the tags [magic-the-gathering] [history]. That's what other games are already doing: [yu-gi-oh] [history], [go] [history], [poker] [history], etc.
Should we burninate mtg-history?

Yes, let's burninate it. It's redundant, and we can & should tag MTG history questions as magic-the-gathering history.

I've just today burninated mtg-history, since it seems like we didn't actually do that back in 2019. At the time of writing the post in favor of burninating the tag is at +17/–0.
I've removed it from the following questions which are all tagged magic-the-gathering history:

Has the significance of the term 'cast' changed?
Can anyone provide a citation for the existence of pre-alpha MTG rules about an initiative stat in combat?
What's the "biggest change we've ever made" in Magic?
What land destruction enabler was wrongfully banned in the early history of Magic: the Gathering?
What exactly was so broken about Urza's Block?
When did big creatures in Magic stopped having a mantainance cost?
Is "The Aristocrats" the first WBR deck to top 8 a Pro Tour?
Where did Interrupts in Alpha & Beta Magic Editions end?
How would casting a Lightning Bolt in response to Giant Growth work in early Magic?

Strangely enough now that the related tag is gone, a user has started asking questions about historic rules versions and mechanics, like the retired card type interrupt.


text:
Board Games SE mana symbols: a userscript for auto-conversion of mana symbols to images
Alternate name: a userscript for makin' the fancy pictures happen
I've created a userscript that auto-converts MTG's mana and tap symbols to image form. A lot of us have wanted this for a while so I went ahead and made it exist. You can get it here on Greasyfork:
Board Games SE mana symbols

Chrome users will need Tampermonkey for Chrome.
Firefox users will need Tampermonkey for Firefox or Greasemonkey.

Credit: Mana symbols by micku on github, in turn based on the work of Goblin Hero and skibulk of Slightly Magic. Energy symbol by ahkren of Slightly Magic.

What's this script do?
This script will convert the following to fancy image icons:

The five colors and snow mana:
{W} {U} {B} {R} {G} {S}
Tap, Untap, and the Energy counter symbol from Kaladesh (E):
{T} {Q} {E}
Generic mana (0 to 20), and the new C symbol for colorless mana:
{C} {0} {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} {6} {7} {8} {9}
{10} {11} {12} {13} {14} {15} {16} {17} {18} {19} {20}
X, Y and Z (the latter two just for fun):
{X} {Y} {Z}
Hybrid mana:
{W/U} {W/B} {U/B} {U/R} {B/R} {B/G} {R/G} {R/W} {G/W} {G/U}

Writing the letters in reverse (U/W vs W/U) is ok.

2/X hybrid mana:
{2/W} {2/U} {2/B} {2/R} {2/G}
Phyrexian mana, including the plain P symbol featured on Rage Extractor:
{WP} {UP} {BP} {RP} {GP} {P}

This script kicks in on any question page for this site (main or meta) when that question is tagged magic-the-gathering. It pays attention only to uppercase mana symbols in plain text. That means it ignores “{w/u}”, and it ignores code blocks and image alt text.
This script uses one sprite sheet so you're only loading one image.
With the script, the above section looks like this:

Recent changes (December 5th)

New improved sprite sheet & symbol appearance. As of 1.11.0 this is a double-sized sprite sheet, which adds support for high-resolution displays (retina, tablets/laptops with screen zoom, etc). Credit for the sprite assets at top.
Now works in HTTPS.
When you copy text with a mana symbol, the plaintext symbol will now actually be on your clipboard. In other words, if you highlight and “go {R} burn!” you'll have go {R} burn! on your clipboard; previously you'd just get go  burn!. (This feature also happens to make the script screen reader friendly, in case that helps anyone.)
After you perform or load an edit, the newly edited version of the post will also have mana symbols. Previously the script wouldn't prettify a newly-loaded version of a post until you refreshed.
Added {P} (as featured on Rage Extractor), and more accurate {C} and {E} symbols.

Please let me know here if something's broken, or if there's something this script doesn't do that it should, or if there's some way I can improve where and how mana symbols are displayed.
Enjoy!

+1 Very cool. I hope that, if the site ever leaves beta, and assuming that performance doesn't take a huge hit, that this tool may be absorbed into the site. Any chance you could post page load times on a page with 100 symbols and another page with 1000 symbols, both with and without the script, across maybe five trials (that's a total of 2 times 2 times 5 results), just to show that performance is or is not negatively affected? I could help but lazy.

Do you know enough about this kind of thing to publish it as an extension for chrome so that it's easy to install/update?

@Jefromi Argh! I didn't see Chrome had done that. I'll look into extension stuff for the future but for now I'm recommending Tampermonkey.

@doppelgreener Yeah, it was a while back, to try to stop people from doing it by accident. As a bonus, when you manually install it you get a warning that it can read and change your data on all websites :(

Nice one, @doppelgreener!

Interesting contribution.

You can handle post previews by defining a Markdown editor hook, and new posts by using jQuery .ajaxComplete(); see this script for improved MtG card links for an example of how to do both.

@Ilmari Thanks, I'll look into these! For the latter you might be interested in answering this Stack Apps question on that precisely.

Done. I also just updated my answer on SA to describe how to deal with edit previews, since I couldn't find a good description of that anywhere yet.

@IlmariKaronen I saw and voted! I will probably accept it when I put it into action too. You could also make a self answered question for that post preview thing if it may fit better in that. :)

Any update for the new colorless mana symbol?

@DavidZ Ah yeah, thanks for reminding me. Life got pretty full-on recently, but that's done and I've got the tools I had before to add that symbol in. Will be in soon. :)

@doppelgreener While you're at it, could you update the URL patterns to include the https protocol? Unless it would cause an inappropriate level of security warnings. (I can report this elsewhere if you prefer.)

@DavidZ Fair idea, I think I can do that just fine.

@DavidZ Somehow this slipped through the cracks for me. This userscript now works in HTTPS.

Great, thanks :-)


text:
Adding image from web blocking jpeg
I wanted to add an image to a post, I chose the "provide a link from the web" option, and it gave me "Failed to upload image; the format is not supported". That would make sense if I was trying to upload some strange format, but it was just a plain old jpeg, namely "http://taniwha.web.fc2.com/MTG_image/FE/FE_Img/FE_B3.jpg". Can you seriously not link to jpegs? Or, is there something wrong with that particular image?

That URL redirects to a regular HTML webpage, and just happens to have .jpg at the end. If you want the URL for the actual image, right click the image and choose "Copy image address". That will give you the URL for the actual image.

The actual URL for the image is the URL that gets redirected to a HTML page though. (Until caching magic happens in your browser, which will probably be after the first time you visit that URL. But the image uploader might not be doing that caching magic.)

When I open the image URL, I see query parameters that make it serve an image instead of the webpage.

Oh, right!! The ?50160067 on the end of http://taniwha.web.fc2.com/MTG_image/FE/FE_Img/FE_B3.jpg?50160067 makes it reliably point to the image itself.

There is something wrong with that particular URL (not the image itself), because when I open it, I get redirected to a HTML page which, in turn, provides an image file. Web servers can do that kind of thing, for reasons such as hotlink protection.
The  image uploader would also get redirected to a HTML page and say "welp, I can't do HTML pages" and give up.
You should save that file to your computer and try to upload it from there.