text:
Are there "degrees of badness" in close reasons?
The closing of a post for "duplicate" or "too localized" carries no penalty. On the other hand, the closing of a post for "off topic" or "not a real question" carries a downvote. Apparently the first two are "not your fault" closes, while the latter means "your fault, reputation penalty."
And there is another category, "not constructive," or "argumentive and subjective" that carries no penalty. Why would that be a "no fault" close?

From the original proposal for this feature, site founder Jeff Atwood's "Should questions closed as “not a real question” and “off topic” get an automatic downvote?"

Having community downvote these OT and NARQ questions at the time of
  close would accomplish a few things:

earlier tripping of our protection heuristics for new users, that is, no more asking 10 questions in a row that don't get downvoted, but
  all closed
a disincentive for users who feel they can "try the waters" and float egregiously off-topic or utterly vague questions in our
  community, at no risk
no more using up daily downvotes, at a cost of -1 rep, to the users who helped close these questions and genuinely feel these
  questions should be actively discouraged by downvotes (as I frequently
  do)

OK. I get this much. But then why is argumentive and subjective "no fault," or "less "bad" than these?

I think the reasoning goes that argumentative and subjective are harder to get right, are more of a gray area, and are more likely to have been made in good faith. Please note that I am neither endorsing the policy nor condemning it; I'm just trying to answer your question about why it is the way it is.

It's worth considering that the automatic downvotes were implemented almost entirely because of Stack Overflow, which gets a lot of utter crap that has probably almost never appeared at all on this site. What makes sense for SO might not seem so relevant here.

@DavidZaslavsky: "What makes sense for SO might not seem so relevant here." "You can say that again."

I explored this question further in the following stack overflow meta question: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179923/should-we-have-fault-and-no-fault-versions-of-not-constructive-closes


text:
How should I deal with a dialog that took place on my question?
I asked this question. Two people answered it, call them Poster 1 and Poster 2.
Poster 2's answer began: The answer by [Poster 1] demonstrates a remarkable lack of both sound bidding and ethics." Poster 1 commented on this answer, "I have to -1, as you're really misinterpreting what I'm saying."
I jumped into the discussion by writing under the other comment, "I am not downvoting, but I would caution you about your first line. Actions taken by people with a lesser understanding than yours do not automatically imply a lack of ethics, A good, highly meritorious answer otherwise."
Poster 2 wrote back to Poster 1 saying that if Poster 1 would modify his answer, Poster 2 would modify his "first line."
I am dissatisfied with that reply (to my comment). Do I have good reason to be? (When I "called out" Poster 2 on another site, a moderator's opinion was that he and I were about equally at fault.)
Should I also say something to Poster 1 as well?
Or should I let others address this, as I did by coming here?

I would argue that there is no reason to attack another user for a question/answer/comment when answering a question. The point about issues with the other post can be made without attacking the credibility of the poster.

@JoeW: OK. You're not the "Joe" that was Poster 1, are you?

Nope, I don't know enough about bridge to post answers on those questions.

@JoeW: On another site, Poster 2 and I had this rather acerbic exchange: https://history.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4101/how-skeptical-should-we-be-about-wikipedia-references

If you think you can take an action that's likely to lead to improving an answer, whether by directly making suggestions or asking for clarifications, or by participating in a discussion that could lead to a helpful conclusion, feel free to take it.
If you can't do that, then you should step back. Escalating a situation is worse than doing nothing.
If you feel a situation may require moderator intervention, you can flag a post or comment. However, moderators aren't here to sort out every disagreement; this is more for when people are breaking the rules in some way.
If you feel the situation may involve the site working incorrectly, you can bring it to meta. However, meta also isn't here to sort out every disagreement; meta can help with "is this actually an answer to the question?" but it can't help with "whose comment/answer is right?"
In the end, not every disagreement is going to get resolved, and that's just how things go. We can make suggestions, we can explain ourselves, but we can't make people change their minds. And bystanders - be they meta or moderator - won't even be able to discern who's right and who's wrong in every last situation.
In this specific case, I don't really see much more to be done. People seem to have said what they're going to say, and some voting has taken place that clearly favors one answer over another. The comments on the lower-scoring answer may be quite reasonable! But ultimately, the author is going to do what they want with their answer.

IMHO, this was a "borderline" situation. Worse than a mere disagreement, into the region of "heavyhandedness." Something I didn't want to overlook, but where escalation "was worse than doing nothing." Which is why I treaded carefully.

I think I've covered all of that. If it's bad enough to warrant flagging, flag. If it's not, if it's just a less-positive-than-ideal disagreement, then there's nothing to really do besides walk away. "I am dissatisfied with that reply" is not really something that moderators or meta need to adjudicate.

Actually, I was on the verge of flagging the original Post 2 for incivility. When I launched a "probe" and received a reply in return, I decided that "dissatisfied" with Poster 2's reply was an order of magnitude less bad than "flagging." (If I had received no reply, I would have flagged, which is to say that I avoided one flag.)

Thanks for your help in deleting the underlying answer. I liked the way that "phased escalation" played out.

Of course. That said, please note that I reviewed the answer and ultimately took that action because of flags; we'd definitely prefer issues to be raised via flags.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Merging poker and poker-texas-holdem tags?
This is by no means clear, but I'm wondering if the tags "poker" and "poker-texas-holdem" should be merged, especially since there aren't that many questions in either tag.

No, poker accounts for all variants of poker while poker-texas-holdem is just one kind of poker.

Yeah, and wouldn't Texas Hold'em be one of those variants of poker that are covered by the poker tag?

@Charles, yes, but having separate tags allows us to distinguish between a question that is generally applicable to poker and a question that is specific to a variant. Users can create a tagset for all Poker variants if they are tagged as such, but can't filter questions by title to get THE questions from a generic poker tag.

@Dave - agreed - I was just pointing out the flaw in Pat's answer.

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


text:
Is the following question pertinent to chess, and hence a good one to ask on boardgames stack exchange?
My questions are: Has anyone ever played a variant of chess such that in the starting position Bishops and Knights are switched?  (So White's back row looks like this: RBNQKNBR)  How can I find notes on this variant?
I've just asked a chess question that was not strictly about chess, and while it was accepted as a good enough question, I was referred to the meta site for analyzing any further dubious questions.  If it doesn't fit in at boardgames, where should I ask it?
Thanks!

I think the knight's tour question would have been a reasonable fit for the maths stack exchange site too.

I think variant questions are fine, as long as they're normally good questions to ask.
Having said that, I don't thnk "Has anyone ever played X" questions are good questions.
You might try something more like "Is there a known chess variant that ...".

Thank you!  I've been wondering many things about chess, for years, and just now came across stack exchange.  I must say I am very impressed!  It's a sure recipe for happy users!

How's this: Is there a variant of chess such that in the starting position Bishops and Knights are switched?  Where can I learn more about this variant?  -  I know it's two questions, but the second can be inside, and the first can be the title.

That'd probably be ok.

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


text:
How should I concisely represent a chess position in a question?
If I want to ask a question about a certain chess position, how do I put it on-screen without the process being really tedious and the format impossible to decipher?  I can type it out in in text form, but not very easily.

Until we get software to display chess positions (which IMHO is unlikely), I think the best option would be to take a screenshot of the position in your favorite chess program, and include it in the post.
If for some reason that is not an option, post the FEN notation for the position.

Thank you!

@drm65 In fact you can use an online diagram generator together with the FEN notation: http://webchess.freehostia.com/diag/index.php?lang=english (Try the preview button)

I've included a link to a site that allows multiple setup methods, including drag-and-drop and FEN, to the chess tag wiki. Any on- or offline generator should be fine, though.


text:
How do we count views on question-threads?
When I see that a question has 1067 views, is that 1067 separate people, or maybe 45 people many times?  Or maybe even 1 view per person per day is counted.  What does the 'views' number mean?

waffles has answered this:

The view count is not increased for the same IP address, within certain thresholds.
However, if you visit a question 1 day later, the count will probably increase, even if we saw the IP before.
Tracking IP lists per question would be a bit on the expensive side.
Does the number of times viewed track unique ips?

Probably?  Or definitely?  So was my guess right, in my question?  1 view per person per day is counted?

@drm if I had to guess I'd say that in that context "probably" means some combination of "it's more complicated actually, but this is close enough" and "it might change later and I don't want to be held to this"

@Pat: Fair enough!


text:
Am I asking too many questions at once?
I am embarrassed to see that the top five questions on board are not only mine, but I was the last one active in each of them.  This will make the sixth.  Could someone tell me if I am being too pushy?

There is a limit of 50 questions per 30 day period on this site (not counting "closed" or deleted questions). Otherwise, you can ask all you want.
There are some people that "dominate" (or seem to) certain topics. (Yours truly for one.) Others will disagree with me, but I don't think that's bad. The site is just in its infancy, so one person (particularly an active one) could easily have a disproportionate impact SOMEWHERE on the site.
In my opinion, we have too FEW questions on the site. The more questions, the more possibilities for answering (reputation: 10, instead of 5), the more chances for more people to gain reputation. Also, the more "authoritative" the site will seem on a certain topic.

People used to jump all over new users for asking generic SE questions on site-specific metas, but that stopped a while ago -- you can ask any questions about the site here, even if they apply to all SE sites. Now that you know about meta.SO, you're welcome to ask there as well, and it's probably better (odds are high that the question has already been asked, so it can be closed as a duplicate there), but it's not "wrong" to ask here

Thank you very much!  That's more than I knew!

OK, I think I've figured that this is not The Site to ask most of my meta questions on; Meta StackOverflow is The Site.  To a new user, the status of the SO meta site alongside the name it has can be confusing.

This is no longer true.  All of your questions are welcome here, or at meta.so, whichever you prefer.  As Michael noted, this is a recent network wide policy change.  It was made specifically because it is confusing, and unreasonable to expect every user of every SE site to know about meta.SO.  Heck, just noticing that meta.bcd exists and using it is a lot to expect for new users :-)


text:
How should questions about combinations of cards or deck building be handled here?
I posed a question in a format that I thought appropriate to the question, and that I've seen implemented elsewhere.  1 card per answer, which leads to users upvoting the strongest combinations.
Since M:TG combinations can be a broad question (colour combinations, creature type combinations) and what constitutes "good" is subjective to the context of the question, the 1 card per answer format allows for the broadest audience to derive their own most appropriate answer.
With that said, it tip toes up to the line of being a good, answerable question into community wiki land.
These questions are incredibly popular and draw a lot of searches and views, according to the brief research I've done, so I'd like to see them allowed, but, what is the appropriate conditions for asking them/how should they be limited?
Almost certainly the question should be posed as I'm using [this card] and planning a deck using [these colours], what can I do to strengthen [this attribute] or defend against [that attribute].
Thoughts?

I assume you're referring to this question, by the way?

@GraceNote Yes.

Looking at that question, I see at least 2 distinct strategies. One is already in a single post, highlighting "creatures that'll get the +1/+1 regardless of which face is up". The other is spread out among a bunch of answers, which seems to be "pile on wolf tokens", with some rather impressive synergy among them. I'd think that latter strategy could make an excellent compilation answer - even if it doesn't cover all possible cards that accomplish the task, it sets the reader on the right direction.

I agree, within the answers presented I see a couple of groupings, and depending on what strategy you were ultimately following you might not use all the groupings reducing the number of answers down to the major similar groupings might be a good way to do it here.

There's two things you might want to look at. One is the concept of how voting is interpreted across the site, the other on how answers serve as solutions. I think that these questions should be able to work, but the approach may need some extra thought.

On voting
We're talking about the actual vote scores, not the resultant reputation (which is irrelevant to this point). Voting activity is something that is rated on a global scale, not on a per question scale, and whether or not this works in that understanding. By consequence, and by design, certainly votes are comparable within the scale of a single question. This lets you compare what is a favorable answer to the specific question.
However, the site as a whole uses votes to identify the top performance. A +20 answer on one question should be of similar quality and utility as a +20 answer on a completely different question.
That's why it's important that the voting scale be universal across the site. The problem I foresee with this "one card per answer" setup is that the voting schema may not line up with the rest of the site. It depends a bit on how the expertise in understanding the strategy will correlate with how people get the answers and how much detail. Certainly, a greater answer will not simply list just the card, but will go into great detail on why it's a great fit. If voting focuses on that detail, then this problem is taken care of. Should this be lost sight of, though, then it will not bode well for the quality of the site.

On answers
This has been the subject of many blog posts, but to put it simply - the Q&A model thrives on the essence that an individual answer attempts to serve as a conclusion to the question. That's why acceptance exists and only points out a single answer. When the "solution" to a question is not in a single answer, but is the set of all answers, it becomes difficult for a reader to grasp what the whole picture is. Our format lends itself towards a complete solution within one package (one post), the lack of discrete post organization makes it complex to simply put together combinations of answers.
Think of it like asking the question "How do I bake a cake?", and your separate answers were "You need eggs", "You need flour", and similar. It's all part of a whole, and undesirable. The proper answer would be the whole process, not just a single step. That's why we encourage that answers are solutions - so that people get the big picture in one post, not across multiple posts.
Questions where there are multiple "items" among the answers, the ones that work are those where a single item is the answer. If there are multiple strategies to solve a certain problem, then any single one of those strategies can be its own answer because, on their own, they do solve the question at hand.
How this affects these questions depends - is the goal to accumulate strategy among the various cards presented individually? Or is it to find a singular card that works? If it is the former, then it conflicts with how the engine as a norm functions. It may be better not to restrict users to a single card if this is the case - rather, the user could focus on a strategy as a whole (using both specific card make-up as well as general card roles). This also ties in a bit with the previous point, as it will inspire more focus on the detail and the strategy, thus less likely to suffer problems in voting.
I should note that sometimes, a strategy really does boil down to just one card, that it is the unique synergy of that one specific card that works perfectly with the given plan. That's fine if your answer only needs that one card. This point is more to address the scenarios where multiple cards all work towards the same general strategic plan - dividing that into multiple answers is ultimately a disservice to the reader.

Thanks for your answer, it's certainly well laid out and thoughtful.  Since a single play deck will consist of (usually) 60-100 cards, the question is looking for a subset of that (in the particular case of the question I asked, where I'm considering a theme deck, the combination is a substantial subset).  The M:TG universe consist of 11,000+ cards, so I think it's expected that multiple answers will eventually comprise the final solution but certainly there's no need for 1/answer as I originally suggested.

@Stephen Correct! Think of it like this - suppose there are 3 strategies core to a particular question. Each of these individual strategies are solutions, but naturally the best possible answer is one that covers all 3 (after all, if all 3 synergize with that one plan...). However, that's tolerable not to have that kind of super answer - it's rare to see that on any SE site. There's a level of tolerance to "multiple answers working together", the important thing is that each answer is independent and functional as such a subset. How the solutions work together can be future thought.

So rather than adding a single card as an answer, if someone has an answer that starts a particular strategy and your new card fits into it, edit the answer to include or add a comment below with the card name?  It does sound more like the original intent of community wiki, but perhaps these questions really lend themselves to that format?

@Stephen If it's just another example card that fits in with the same strategy and needs no special explanation, then it doesn't even need community wiki. A normal edit or comment would be sufficient.

IMHO I think questions about a specific card pool, at least in draft/sealed, should be considered off-topic.  For the most part these questions are extreamly localized, the same set of cards is almost impossible to repeat.  The other issue is that these questions are rather discussiony/listy, because each player has a differenet opinion.

I do agree that such questions are quite "localized".  The question to my mind is whether Magic the Gathering is, by its nature, very localized.  It's a game whose strategic and tactical considerations change almost beyond recognition every year or two.  Either you accept that as part of the nature of the beast, or (IMO) you send Magic users off to their own SE site!  Because there are a lot of perfectly sensible Magic questions that suddenly seem quite dodgy when placed in the SE context...


text:
Copyrights and Patents on Board games?
Can I ask questions about copyrights and Patents that are related to Board and Card games ?

I really think this should be off topic.  I can see a question about who currenly owns a Copyright or trademark on a game, but questions about the legal implications of the law or breaking them should be off topic.

I would say that this is more of a game design question than a GAME question, and should be moved to the other site.

What other site?

@Pat Ludwig: I think the original reference was to the game DESIGN site. But it's been through a couple iterations.

I think that was my suggested game design site! It lasted about 15 seconds.


text:
Evaluating your own site - a check for quality
A few months ago or so, some people might remember that I mentioned doing a quality review for this site for seeing how Board & Card Games is doing as a site. Well, it's been a few months since then, and we've gone through a more recent review. And I thought I'd like to see what the community thinks of their site, so I'm going to be snagging from my previous template that itself was stolen from Aarthi. Again, with a twist, if even still the same twist.
Meta sites often see people discussing specific questions that have been closed to determine whether or not they can (or should) be reopened, but it's rare that anyone looks at questions that are open and answered. Are they better than what the Internet has to offer? Are we making the Internet better?
Here's a rough guide:

Below, you'll find ten questions randomly selected from your site over the past 60 days.
For each question, search the internet for the question as if you were the asker!
If our answer(s) is good (complete, well-written, answers the question, useful, found in search results, etc) then vote it up!
If our answer(s) is bad (incomplete, poorly-written, off-topic, incorrect, unfindable, worthless, etc) then vote it down!
I've included my own commentary from my run of the review. These are in spoiler blocks. It's up to you whether you look at them post-fact just to see how your perspective compares, versus letting my views shift your opinion of the question.

Comment with anything you feel is worth noting, or to explain your voting choice. We have a rough guide to better/par/worse right here. If your result is par, make a choice to vote up or down.
Remember that our goal is to make the internet a better place. If you find yourself unable to decide how to vote, ask yourself: does this question and/or answer make the internet better? How you answer that question should determine your vote.
Talk to your fellow community members about how your site is doing and what you all can improve. Above all else, remember: this is a team effort!
Please note: this evaluation will close on April 24th, 2012! Get your responses and votes in by then!

This seems like a great exercise, but the random selection managed to pick 5 questions about Magic the Gathering, 2 about button-men, and 1 each about Starcraft, Munchkin, and Go. I know only the slightest bit about Go and nothing about the other games, and don't feel competent to judge quality. I would only feel very competent to judge about a game I know somewhat or a beginner question. Do you actually want input from people like me who knows nothing (or close to it) about the subject matter? Could you select a wider variety of questions - say 1 each from top 10 game-specific tags?

"If your result is par, make a choice to vote up or down" -- Does that mean "Vote all pars up or down consistently"? Or "For any par rating, vote up or down depending on which way it skews"?

@Joe Expertise in the matter isn't wholly necessary - I'd never even heard of button-men when I did my pass, but I was able to judge those questions adequately. Even if you don't understand the finer mechanics, you should still give it a shot just by reading the question to see what might be up. As for the distribution, it's a purely random selection, though the bias to Magic is indicative of the site's own content count.

@Alex The latter. We would like every one who participates to vote on every entry, so that's why we don't recommend just not voting. As such, if you feel it's par, then vote up if you feel it's still good par, and down if it's a bad par.

How does trample work against infect?
Good? Bad? Royal Flush? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Par. We're correct, and other sources confirm it. We do rank high, nicely, actually for a lot of trample questions haha.

my searches mostly found answers where the same creature had both trample and infect making our question/answer more unique.

Can the Wand of Dowsing Draw from Door Cards?
Good? Bad? Devious? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Par. Answer is correct, we show up high, but we're not better than what is out there. Plain and simple.

I actually had some trouble finding anyone asking this, though lots of confirmations of the answer in other discussions.

Is there an optimal swing die value for Changeling VS Iago?
Good? Bad? On the border? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Better. Solid answer, we show up on a lot of searches for this material both directly on swing dice, and just on the match up itself. Which is apparently a common enough matchup that it shows up in a lot of searches. We're pretty high in ranking and we have a solid explanation present, so that's excellent.

Wooh Who, I am making the internet Better. Maybe I need to work at actually solving my Which Button-Men Soldier Character is best question.

Brink of Disaster timing
Good? Bad? Bueller? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Par. In the sense that this is asked within the scope of sacrificing, it's the same as what's given out there (so, correct), and findable. Other searches with regards to the timing of Brink of Disaster with the stack seem to fail, so noting "sacrifice" in the search is a bit of a must.

I want to +1 this for the "Bueller", but a it's only par. :/

Online Resources for Go Tutorials on specific topics
Good? Bad? Eerily attractive? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Par. This is one of those questions that there's not really "better" solutions so to speak, because of how the approach nature works. As such, we can't really rank better. We show up on various searches, not on other searches. We have an in-depth answer that touches on a lot of aspects. But ultimately, we're just another method of advice for learning the game in a sea of so many opinions here. I like the strength and backing of our opinion, but I can't judge it as "better".

If two fighter's dice all come up with the same numbers, but one character rolls fewer dice, who goes first?
Good? Bad? Third Option? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE Par. Come out pretty often in a number of odd searches (I even tried being as far from the title as I could, still hit us). Answer is from online rulebook, though, so by definition, our answer can only be on par with what's out there.

What happens if Genesis Wave puts Fists of Ironwood onto a battlefield with no creatures?
Good? Bad? Bagoodd? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Par. Draw3Cards has the question on a broader scope (it just asks about auras in general, not just FoI), while covering exactly the points of David's answer even more in-depth. If it lacked the final point from David's answer, I might've judged Better, but because it does get the other one, we just match. We are lower on ranking but not enough to hurt us badly.

The Fists of Ironwood thing is a very specific quirky subcase (does it create its own creatures to enchant, basically). I think our answer is the correct level of depth for the question.

Making 2-player Starcraft more enjoyable
Good? Bad? Misprint? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Par. In the sense of actually answering the question, this is better than what is easily found out there. The wrong searches just tell you how to buy the game. But, you need to hit specific terms (enjoyable rather than enjoying, interesting, etc) to actually find us. Absenting a specific match, we fail to show up fast. So we're par, in the sense that it's hard to find anything out there and it's hard to find us out there with the exact right words.

I actually had a pretty easy time finding it... managed to find it on my second try, with "improving two-player starcraft board game" (first try was a naive search without the words "board game" in there). And again on my third try, with "better starcraft board game for 2 players".

MtG: making makeshift cards for home play
Good? Bad? Draw? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Par. This is one of those things where it's not as if there's some optimal solution that's better. Really, you can copy my review of the Go question and it'll be the same - we simply can't be considered better, simply one amongst many alternatives of equal applicability determined by the resources of the reader. We're slightly hard to find, though.

Does sacrificing a permanent cancel its effects, or do they still resolve?
Good? Bad? Illegal? Please vote in accordance to the guidelines explained above, and optionally leave a comment if you have something extra to say.

 GRACE'S NOTE: Worse. You can find this information pretty readily, but we are only on searches that tend to include "condition" and "effect". So, other rules-directed searches miss out, very widely, and this is a pretty basic rule element of the game. So, our poor searchability I'm going to weigh very highly.

(Edit: A non-edit to update the Question link.)

I bear some responsibility in the Worseness of this question. I was unsure how far I should edit a question. The typos and terminology are not what I would expect from a well written question. Perhaps this lead to both the Questions and the Answers being fairly poor. (Note: My answer is also very poor, and long winded. I didn't not take the effort to make it short).

@user1873 Your recent edits make me feel much better about the question.

@user1873 - great edits are tough work!  Your recent edit is great.  Don't be afraid to rework future questions like that.  If a post has a lot of misspellings, then odds are it has other problems as well. :)

@PatLudwig, I know that now. At the time, I only had a month or so under my belt. I was unsure how much I should edit the question without losing the original authors intent. My recent edits are better, but it probably could further be clarified. I think some time soon, I will either edit my question to reflect the new edited question, or post a newer shorter answer.

@PatLudwig I took the liberty of editing your comment to make it more grammatically sound. :D

@Aarthi - maybe I meant for it to be there!

@PatLudwig LIES! :P


text:
what 'listing' questions are on / off topic here?
See this question (http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/348/games-that-play-well-with-a-wide-range-of-different-numbers-of-players) which I'd have thought was clearly not suitable for a SE site, but which has been left open, with many upvotes and answers.
This question (http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/4322/how-can-i-find-games-based-on-caesars-campaigns-in-gaul-and-britannia) was closed and had to be edited before it was re-opened, even though it was very specific and had a really limited quantity of objective answers.
So, has the "policy" been worked out, and the only real difference between these questions is the time they were asked, and questions like the first one are only here because of historical reasons?

There are definitely historical artifacts floating around that would probably be closed quickly today.  I go through more or less monthly and delete some old closed questions, and then close some old list questions so they will all eventually be addressed.  It's not a fun task, I don't particularly enjoy it; instead I focus on ensuring that new questions are of sufficient quality.
If you wish to speed the process, feel free to flag them, this will "force" a decision quicker.
In terms of what is acceptable, please see the FAQ.  There is a lot of good info there as well as links to some worthwhile blog posts that set out to explain the "StackExchange Way".
Two reasons that most list questions get closed is that every answer is equally valid or that you could imagine a book being required to fully answer the question.
Subjective questions are allowed. (This seems to be a common misconception)
The definitive guidance is the blog post Good Subjective, Bad Subjective.  A list question would have to be very carefully worded to avoid the six pitfalls listed there.  In particular:

Great subjective questions inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”
Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.

We do not want questions that lead to an endless list of just game names.  That is not interesting, people will be voting for the game and not for the best answer.  Back when we had many more list questions it got to be a race to be the first person to mention Dominion as you could rack up quite a bit of rep.  Is Dominion the best game for all occasions or is it more likely that it is a very popular accessible game that everyone knows?

the "infinite list of X" is definitely to be avoided, though there is some subtlety around very narrow and highly specialized lists, which can be OK provided the answers a) explain why and b) are indeed limited by some natural factor other than "hey, I have an opinion about this too!"

List questions are frowned upon here, because they tend to "break down" into either trivia, or "all answers are equally acceptable." So if you ask a list question, there ought to be a pretty good reason.

The list should be relatively short.
The list should contain the answer to an actual problem.
The usefulness of the list in solving the problem should be apparent from the context.

Example question: What are games with tiles that a blind person can play by feeling the indentations? Offhand, I can think of dominoes and mah jongg, maybe a few others. Does the list serve a purpose? If you, or a friend of yours is blind, yes. The answer has an objective criterion regarding which games' tiles are "feelable," and thereby accessible to a blind person.


text:
Why was my comment deleted without explanation or a discernible good reason?
In this question competetive viable or junk? I left a comment explaining why the question was a bad match for this SE, and I want to think it was constructive criticism, nothing remotely delete-worthy IMHO. It got deleted along with a string of less helpful comments. I would like to know why my comment got deleted.
This is not the first time a comment of mine was deleted that was IMO perfectly fine. Comment deletion should be a lot more transparent so people can learn what got it deleted, or to appeal the decision.

You didn't post a comment on that question. You posted a comment on this nearly identical deleted question. Your comment there was only deleted because the entire post was deleted.

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


text:
Can the edit approval rules be improved?
When a post has a suggested edit, it takes several votes to approve the edit, even by people who could themselves edit posts without review. While the edit is pending, I can't directly edit the post either. This is counter-intuitive and drives me a little nuts, because I want to see the post edited and improved.
I propose to change the edit rules that an already approved editor can, with a single vote, approve or disapprove pending edits, so that the post is again open for further edits.

Don't "improve edit" and "reject and edit" do what you want? Described toward the end of this FAQ post: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/76284/133299

I did not go through the queue, I clicked on the edit button directly from the post, and was not offered the reject or improve options.

There's not a suggested edit in the queue here to try it on, but I tried on another site, and when clicking on the edit link I do indeed get shown the item to review, including the improve/reject+edit options. (And in any case, it sounds like in this case, you didn't even cast your single vote, so I'm not sure that changing the number of reviews required would've fixed it, unless someone else happened to have already reviewed it.)

I did cast my vote, not sure what gave you the impression that I didn't.

You said you didn't go through the queue, and that you didn't see the reject/improve options (which are presented directly next to the approve/reject vote options), so I assumed you hadn't seen any review options at all. My misunderstanding.

I very much don't like the idea of requiring fewer reviewers in general, for much the same reasons as Joe W mentioned. When people actually edit a post, they tend to put in some effort - they're doing a complex task (editing the text of the post), their name's going on it. But when going through the review queue, and only making a simple yes/no decision, it's very very easy to skim quickly and miss things.
If suggested edits aren't getting reviewed quickly enough, it's because people are not often enough going into the suggested edit queue and doing the reviews.
Here's a post with a pending suggested edit:

And here's what happens when I click edit:

(Screenshots are from another site, since there's nothing in the queue here right now.)
At this point you can cast your one approve/reject vote and see if it's enough to finish the review. You can also "improve edit" or "reject and edit", if you have edits you want to make, and you're willing to make sure the entire post is in a good state after your edit (i.e. that you haven't introduced issues by accepting the suggestions, or that you haven't left issues unaddressed by rejecting the suggestions).

This is something that is unlikely to happen as it has been shown on other sites that people who have the edit privilege are not always properly reviewing suggested edits. Because of this the rule is in place that either multiple people need to review it or the poster can approve it themselves.
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/271889/why-cant-i-approve-suggested-edits-single-handedly
I know this is frustrating but I do agree that we don't want someone just robo reviewing the suggested edits and having a lot of bad edits go through.


text:
Where can I ask questions like this: "Hi there. Tell me your opinion about my deck"
This community calls itself "board and card games" but refuses to answer a simple question like the one in the title so I'm looking for a site where I can ask something like this.
Any ideas?

This belongs on meta, if anywhere. There are established guidelines for what types of questions are appropriate for this site, detailed in the FAQ. If you want to discuss things outside the scope of the FAQ, there is a chat system, or you can look for other sites. Criticizing and complaining about this community at the same time as asking for recommendations for other places to go is not particularly constructive, however.

Come on! I need more downvotes!!!!

On meta downvotes signify nothing other than disagreement with the post.  There is no reputation at stake on meta, please don't take the down votes personally

From this site's FAQ:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual
  problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the
  usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.
Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an
  entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.
If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to
  participate in a discussion about _”, then you should not be
  asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to
  explain _ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of
  course welcome in our real time web chat.)

So you could try taking it to web chat.  Alternatively (I assume you're talking about Magic decks) there are a million other community sites out there.  I recommend mtgsalvation.com as one that's busy, friendly and free.

Friendly what others here cannot be called.

Well, deck-building advice questions do contain an actual problem someone faces, and they are answerable with good advice. However, the problem is that it would only help the person who asked the question, whereas the goal of Stack Exchange questions are to be more general so more people with the same problem can benefit. It's the same reason why very specific bug-fixing questions on Stack Overflow are either closed or edited to be less localized.

@edem: I'm sorry to hear you say that. :( Your deck advice questions being closed were not personal! They're just not the kind of questions we're looking to have on this site. If you ever have any other M:TG questions that could be answered with a single authoritative objective answer, the community would be happy to help you out. :)

@adamjford He's actually asked several questions that seemed pretty good (and got upvoted and received helpful answers).  Good comments, btw!

@Beofett: Yep, you're right. Should have checked. :P

One way to ask this type of question, which seems to be accepted based on this discussion is to generalize and discuss a strategy and perhaps a particular problem you're having with that strategy against certain other strategies.
If you can make your question general enough it regains that sense of being helpful to others, and does, to some degree, make it a little more time resistant since particular cards will come and go but the effect they provide on game play should still tie into the strategy.
With your particular deck you could explain what your strategy is and try to strengthen that strategy or ask how a particular change might work with the strategy.
I don't think there's a comprehensive list of strategies out there, but certainly some are obvious: token swarms, white weenie, direct damage, life gaining, aggro decks, mana producing in dual/tri colours and so on ...
Obviously we're all still trying to find that right side of the fine line where these things fit.
For example asking how to modify a white weenie deck so that it can better compete with a red direct damage aggro deck might be better than providing the white weenie decklist and asking for change suggestions.


text:
Are poker questions referencing specific hands too subjective for the site?
I learned to play poker by asking and pontificating on specific hand histories posted on other forums and talked about with friends.  For any but the most basic decisions, poker is often clouded by so much metagame as to make a single "right answer" impossible.  I am for poker discussion here as opposed to the area51 poker proposal, so I ask my question here.
Example post to get an idea:
I am playing a no-limit cash game of Texas holdem with blinds of $1-$2 at a 7 handed table where everyone is about 100 big blinds deep.  An aggressive losing player opens to 12 on the button, and it folds to me with JJ in the big blind.  Ive been here for about an hour, but quiet, and havent played with this gentleman before.  Is 3-betting or calling better, and why?  What is the correct plan for dangerous flops?

I think you should ask your question on the site, vetting questions on meta prior to seeing how they actually play out on the main site isn't the best plan as far fewer people will see it here. I think it would be a slightly better fit with a bit of generalization.  Something like:
"What do I need to call/raise an aggressive player who makes a strong opening bid?" as a subject and then use your full question text.  This gives room for people to give strong general tactical advice while addressing your specific question as well.  I play poker but I'm not deep enough into the tournament scene to know if opening to 12 is critical to the question, or could be generalized.  My gut tells me that could be generalized a bit as well.
I would prefer not to see 3 questions that differ only in that the players hand is tens/jacks/queens.  Let's see if we can answer your question while answering the broader case as well.


text:
Should a date be added when displaying a quote from the mtg Comprehensive Rules
Since it seems to be quite common that when answering a question, a quote from the magic the gathering comprehensive rules is also included, can we adopt a common format for quoting from the rules?
Can I have 1000 cards in my deck?
Yes.
M:tG Comprehensive Rules (2012 Feb 1)

100.5. There is no maximum deck size.

(Note: I believe that previously there was a change to the rules that required that you were able to shuffle the deck unassisted)
Is it much of a concern, or does the CR not change often enough to need a date (do they move subsections around much, so that 100.5 will not be regarding deck size in the future?)

I believe the CR are revised with the release of each set, but mostly to reflect any new abilities in that set. Only a small fraction of the existing rules actually change in each revision, and of those changes, the majority occur in conjunction with the release of a core set (so, once a year). Plus they do try to maintain the numbering for existing rules.

This isn't necessary as every post is dated already.  If an answer was posted 6 months ago, I wouldn't expect the information to be up to date without further checking.  This is a great reason to try to include the source of any answer so that folks can easily verify the ruling and decide for themselves how much to trust it.
Also, every game is subject to this to some extent.  It will happen to Magic much more often than most, but modern games are supported by online FAQ's and designers posting to various forums who often change rulings

Including the source also gives other people the opportunity to correct an out-of-date answer (or propose a correction if they don't have the rep themselves) or to post a correct one if the existing answer depends heavily on an old ruling.

@Dave - and also, other folks should ask about the source if it isn't clear from the answer.


text:
Would a Community Blog for BG.SE be useful?
Stack Exchange supports Community Blogs. I could see the value in having a Community Blog for Boardgames.SE, as I am sure many users find the technical rules questions a little dull. The Blog can be an escape from the dry day to day questions, and a chance to liven up the discussion in a more open format.
Some of the first things that need to be decided are the scope of the blog.

Do we want to session reports about games we have played? I could see this as bi-weekly articles covering either new games we played for the first time and the games first impressions, new decks we tried out in a multiplayer environment, or an overview of a game and our impressions about why a particular player won.
Do we want to review product? I have a closet full of games, but I don't suffer from the obsession that many do that are from the cult of the new. I do have some coworkers though that enjoy buying and playing newish games. I wouldn't mind offering up some reviews of board games. I could see reviewing games on a monthly basis, so that users have enough time to play 4-10 games to get a good sample size.
In depth strategy articles or something like the Game Tech podcast that discusses game theory.

Do we have enough interest within the community to make posts, or have people read them? If I am the only one interested in this, this will fail horribly. I would think that we need at least 5-6 regular contributors, and 2-3 users who are good editors.
I am not sure the best way to track interest in the community. Upvote this post if you are interested in reading a blog? Upvote individual answers with (Product Review, Session Report, In-Depth Strategy) to indicate interest in what articles you would want to read.
Maybe a seperate thread with people interested in contributing, and another thread for people interested in consuming.
What does everyone think?


text:
Should the FAQ Description of Board and Card Games reflect both Board and Card games?
Currently the FAQ description of this site (which I see is appended to any question that is migrated from this site to another SE site) includes the lines.

This question came from our site for people who like playing board
  games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing board
  games.

Similarly the FAQ contains the lines

Board and Card Games - Stack Exchange is for people who like playing
  board games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing
  board games.

After which the FAQ then goes onto further define what that actually means.  On first sight this seems to exclude a number of games which are on topic for boardgames.se.  I am thinking particularly about both traditional card and collectable card games which by most peoples definition would not be defined as a board game.  Is it possible to make these lines in the site strap line and FAQ reflect this site better and demonstrate that the site is in fact more inclusive than it currently appears.

While I'm not opposed to changing the FAQ, we should focus on what the right change is.  The very section you quoted is immediately followed by:

How do we define Board Games?
Please see this meta question for the full discussion, the summary is:

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

To me, as the site is boardgames.stackexchange.com we need to define ourselves based on that name and then explain what "Boardgames" means to us.
Perhaps a list of examples should be added?  Something like
Settlers of Catan, Poker, Dominion, Chess, Go, Magic:The Gathering, Bridge, Warhammer 40k?  I'm sure we could argue endlessly about which games to include, but would the basic concept satisfy you?

Agree entirely that the right change is difficult.  The way that I see the problem is not with the FAQ itself but the fact that the site strapline "This question came from our site for people who like playing board games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing board games" that is used on other sites (effectively advertising this site) does not truly reflect the nature of this site.

@AlexC - what would you propose as a change?  As of yet, noone has suggested anything that is universally regarded as "better"

We come back to the same question that is taking place on the discussion about the URL.  There seems to be strong consensus that the site is not about Board Games, but rather about Table Top Games, of which board games are a notable part.

How about 'This question came from our site for people who like playing, designing or modifying the rules of existing board and card games.'

I like the idea of including specific examples a lot.

Given the consensus on meta as the beta has continued, I believe the FAQ should be updated to reflect the current state of on topic areas.


text:
At what point does a question become a list, and are lists really that bad?
I was looking over some of the old closed questions, and trying to rephrase them so that they can be more objectively answered. I received a comment that the edit would still lead to a list of answers, which isn't a good fit for the site?
1) Can someone point me to a meta discussion that explains why lists are not a good fit for SE?
2) At what point does a question lead to a list? (example: If I ask what is the best spell for a multiplayer drain deck, Drain Life, Exsanguinate, or Bond of Agony List? ; What is the best spell for a multiplayer drain deck ? Now is it a list? What is the best black multiplyer spell? )
Is 2) just a matter of degree? Does it matter if the answers are more/less likely to be opinion or supported by facts?

Oooh, I got this.

"List question" is a very broad and unspecific term. There a lot of things that can be qualified as "list questions". But only some of them are unacceptable and don't entirely work. Even your examples in #2 I wouldn't consider the problem to necessarily be that they are a list, but perhaps one of scope. As for unacceptability, I refer to this post of mine that bwarner linked already as a good starting read.
But the problem you're trying to determine here seems to be more about when there are multiple possible answers to a question, and not that it is an endless repository of options. Let's lay down some ground points then.

It is perfectly acceptable for there to be more than one correct answer to a question. This is why we even have a voting system at all, and why we allow multiple answers. This does not mean that "Of these three cards, which is the best for a drain deck?" should have three answers, though.
If the answer a question needs is a list, then the list should fit in one answer. An example I use from Arqade is "Where do I find all of the subtanks in Megaman ZX?". There are exactly four of these - a proper answer will list all four. This should not get four answers, one for each location.
The word "best" in a title is not an instant condemnation sign. Implicitly, any question asking for the solution to a problem is seeking the best solution to that problem. A question whose core is still fully legitimate, just the presence of the word "best" is irksome, that is still a legitimate question. This does not mean that this question should get a separate answer for every possible best option, though.

There's a resonating point that I made in all of these. Which is that a lot of questions will benefit a lot more from a comprehensive answer that covers multiple points, than one that just covers a single one. The conclusion can still be a single one.
Let us look at your two examples.

What is the best spell for a multiplayer drain deck, Drain Life, Exsanguinate, or Bond of Agony

A great answer to this question will cover all three cards, explain the advantages to each one, and either come to a conclusion of a single card being more universally useful or a conclusion on which scenarios will make which cards shine. A good answer will highlight one card and explain why it is more useful than the other two. A meh answer will just name a card and notate why it is good. A bad answer will just name one card.
Is there opinion? Yes, but the more opinionated an answer is, the less helpful an answer is. The more fundamental and fact-backed an answer is, the more useful it is to other people and thus the more rated it will be. What makes this still a helpful question is that there still is the room for fact-backed answers. At least, in theory. I don't know these cards so I have no idea, but my assumption is that the root question is as such.

What is the best spell for a multiplayer drain deck?

As we start cutting things down, what's happening is that the scope is losing helpfulness. When you reach this point, an asker should be thinking, "Is the answer too situational for this question to be helpful to others?" I don't know drain decks well, but for example, "What is the best set of Slivers for a Sliver deck?" is too broad. Sliver deck is a strategy, certainly, but it also makes use of other strategies. Do you go Shadow/Poison and go for direct player kill? Do you go stat-stacking and overwhelm by Power/Toughness monstrosities? The reason Slivers work is because you have a lot of options that all work with a core theme.
I hope this illustrates my point well enough. It's been too long since I played a deck that I know an example that isn't too broad. But the basic point is, you don't need to specify "What is the best out of these options" and can instead opt for "What are the best options for this strategy?" if the latter question is narrow enough in scope that the answers will be genuinely helpful. This can be the case even if there is more than one opinion on the answer - the ultimate core of the question is "How can I accomplish this strategy?", which you'll note the lack of "best" but it will still get the same answers.

What is the best black multiplayer spell?

This is when it obviously gets to be too broad. I don't think I need to cover this in more depth beyond what I said in the previous point. At this point, though, the scope is so large that it illustrates the problem most people think of with lists. That is, because there isn't a narrow guideline, all people have to go on in answering this is their opinions. Factual stricture like saying "Well, for this strategy, the best option is..." starts to get away from the question that was actually asked. Which, while the answer is useful, it doesn't handle the question itself. That makes the question bad.

Takeaway. If it invites a list, that doesn't make it bad. If the list isn't useful because it's too broad, that is a problem. If the list isn't useful because the scope makes a non-opinionated answer difficult to spring up properly, that is a problem. But if there's multiple options and perspectives to solve a problem, it can still be a valid question. I recommend this post I wrote as just some further reading on the subject of this specifically.

Thanks for taking the time to write this here. It's very helpful.

I disagree with your middle point. The first question helps the answers avoid lists and focuses their attention on comparing and contrasting why certain cards would be better than others(with possible differances due to situation). the last qestion is overly broad. the middle question is just like the first, but doesn't list all the spells considered. I think you could ask for which cards will effectively help you win in MP whether the strategy is Slivers, or Drain Life, or etc.

@user1873 I don't know if drain multiplayer is narrow enough - that's why I explicitly avoided judging on it and used an example I did know would work. If the implication of that passage was that the given example was too broad, that was not my intent - I just wanted to explain what happens when trending in that direction. I also did not specify "for multiplayer" in the question about Slivers, just to ensure that the scope would be too broad.

@GraceNote, I realize that you didn't specify the format for the sliver deck, but that doesn't mean that that cannot be clairified in the question, or perhaps the answer list which slivers would be more relevant in which format (EDH, multiplayer FFA, Legacy, 2HG, ... I do understand your overall point though. I just disagree that someone asking about "best sliver deck" isnt necessarily too broad (although it runs the risk of lists if answers). It might be that poison is less effective than sliver-geddon, or sliver-combo, or ...

While you covered what the 'great' answer does, I feel you missed what the 'greatest' answer does. Most often, when I see a list provided by the asker (even when I'm one doing the asking) he haven't stepped back far enough to answer the fundamental problem. So while the great answer does give the advantages of each one as you describe, the greatest answer, I feel, provides the formula by which the cards are evaluated. Then as an exercise, evaluates the cards given. This is going to be most beneficial to future readers.

Don't have time for a long answer right now (and this probably deserves one).
For me, the main difference between a good subjective list and a bad subjective one is:

Are the answers likely to be voted on by their merits, or because they mentioned a popular game?

When people vote for well written, reasoned opinions then few people object to it.
When they vote for a one word answer, say, Dominion because the voter played it, is familiar with it and it legitimately answers the question, "What is the best game for XXXX" (for most values of XXX) then we've devolved into list-ville.
Experience has shown that most questions of the form, "What is the best XXX for YYY" devolve rapidly into short answers.  The votes follow based on what people are familiar with, rather than a good assessment of the merits of the answers.
Early on, you could get 10-20 or more upvotes just for being the first person to type Dominion into any recommendation question.  No further explanation was needed.  That cheapens the whole reputation system, we want to reward people who give great answers, not the quickest on the draw.

So essentially, it is to discourage new users from gaming the system, and flooding the SE network with subpar content. I don't think I have the power to make someone else's question a Community Wiki, so I suppose it could just remain closed.

Unfortunately, I guess that is the problem with this type of question. Unless the community has been conditioned to downvote terse answers that provide little value, you cannot leave thee kinds of questions in the hands of users (we are our own worst enemy) +1, but maybe because your answer should have been longer...

There are a number of great discussions about this topic on Arqade's meta.  Here's a few links to ponder
https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/997/handling-game-recommendations-how-can-we-solve-these-two-problems-of-quality
https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2453/list-of-blogs/2455#2455
https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/475/best-favourite-subjective-list-type-questions/486#486
I think the volume of traffic on Arqade forced this issue to be dealt with more so than it has been here so far.  But I think the lessons learned there apply equally here, and we'd do well to learn from them.


text:
How can I check my progress towards a particular badge?
Specifical, I want to know about the Struck & White badge. I seem to remember at one point that the number of edits to posts that I have made appeared somewhere on the page, but it doesn't seem to be visible at the moment (not displayed on mobile perhaps?)
Review tasks shows a bar and a hashmark.
Generalist you can check by examining your tags.
Deputy (helpful) flags are displayed just below you logins.
Fanatic (consecutive days) are displayed on your profile.
Are there any tags that don't display your progress?
It might be best to have a complete listing of how to find out your progress for each badge.

Research Assistant (editing tag wikis) seems particularly difficult to find. Best I've been doing is counting the +2 rep I get for tag wiki edits, but those will go away when I become a Trusted User.

@shujaa Actually, it's not that difficult. All you have to do is go to info tab subpage of any tag - example of mtg tag info. On the very right you can find something like this: Your Badge Progress (Research Assistant) 2 tag wiki edits (4% done). Cheers. Does anyone have a way of finding out progress towards Sportmanship badge?

Progress towards Strunk & White used to be displayed in the review tab, replaced with progress towards Copy Editor once you achieved it. That doesn't seem to be the case any more, which is probably a regression bug.
If you hover over the gray progress bar for any of the review queues, you can see progress towards several badges (Custodian/Reviewer, Civic Duty, Copy Editor and Electorate).
In general, there is no single place to track badge progress. I also find this quite annoying. For a long time, it was policy not to provide any badge progress indicators at all.
Which badges are tracked, and where their progress can be seen, has changed somewhat over time, so searching historical questions for links on MSO is not hugely rewarding. You may like to raise a feature request over there for a centralised badge tracking, or ask for a complete current list.

Notably, one can track one's badge progress through the data querier interface mathing, but that dataset lags. When I've approved edits, I still get the progress tracker bar, though.


text:
On whether asking "how winners spend their last moves" is on-topic
I recently started playing Caylus on the iOS, and thought that the answer to the following problem would help me formulate a strategy and better understand the game. Note that this question could apply to many games, and indeed I have considered the answer to this question for such games as Brass, Agricola, Princes of Florence, Le Havre etc.

How do players who consistently win utilize their last few moves in this game?

In Agricola, it would surely be some sort of super-efficient "fences + renovation + major improvement + family growth" combo, though we would have to factor in other players who are playing to win. Put in these worker placement games where players can acquire better/first turn order... well, I'm not sure if that simplifies things.
Anywho.
Is this question on-topic?
This is practical, since I play this game (!) and would be putting the answer(s) into practice against AI and human opponents.
The problem that I face is a lack of strategy. Sure, this is a nebulous, subjective problem to have, but a clear strategy will solve it.
I would like others to explain [this] to me.

I feel like you're better off asking the question than asking a meta-question about asking the question. I don't like the "[closed]" tag, either, but nothing bad actually happens when a good-faith question is closed.

As discussed in Considering the number of strategy questions, should we write specific scope limitations for strategy questions? , strategy questions are encouraged and appreciated by the Board and Card Games community, so long as they are reasonably scoped. For example, the question:

What are good chess strategies?

is too broad. End game strategy can be reasonably scoped for many games, though I think adding some context is often warranted. For example, your question just inspired me to post a Settlers end game question I have sometimes wondered about:
What is optimal end play in Settlers?


text:
How 'bout a quick review of our MTG tags?
We have a lot of MTG questions, so categorizing them is probably important. I was looking at our MTG tags today. Currently, it looks like we have:
General:

magic-the-gathering
mtg -> synonym for magic-the-gathering

Formats:

mtg-modern
mtg-commander
mtg-cube
mtg-pauper
mtg-planechase
mtg-drafting

Other:

mtg-history
mtg-manabase

Prominent overlapping generic tags:

rules
strategy
deck-building
multi-player
sealed-deck -- so far this is only attached to MTG Sealed questions

Do any of these call out for synonyms, name changes, &c.? Are there obvious categories we are missing, representing unlabeled or underrepresented content?

Gah.  For the love of god, quit flooding the front page with re-tags!  Can we assume that a question is a rules question by Default?

@CaulynDarr That's me. Sorry, I didn't knew that just retag would do this. Still, It would be good to retag them, so searchs are improved. I'll stop now, anyway.

@Pablo Improving tags is fine, but you pushed every other game question from the last week waaaaaaay off the font page.

@Pablo I remember reading somewhere that just retagging without any body-text doesn't actually bump the question... I guess that is untrue! :(

In my opinion:

Limited tags should probably match official format names:

mtg-drafting => mtg-draft
sealed-deck => mtg-sealed (my assumption is that this tag is actually game-specific; I don't know of non-MTG sealed, and it probably doesn't play like MTG Sealed)

mtg-history seems like it should be a generic tag instead (like strategy and rules are). Seems to fit other game questions like, "What are the differences between the first-edition and current rules of Carcassone?"

There is draft and sealed in other games, at least in L5R and probably more games. Should these be generic tags or specific to magic?

I also found the tag two-headed-giant, that should be mtg-two-headed-giant.
innistrad should be mtg-innistrad.
There are also questions about limited formats, not specific to sealed or draft. Perhpas a mtg-limited tag should be created?
Examples:
Relative amounts of luck in MTG limited formats?
How many lands should I have in my sealed or draft decks?

Is it reasonable to merge mtg-drafted and mtg-sealed into mtg-limited?

@Circeus Tricky question! There's a lot of overlap between Sealed and Draft in terms of card evaluation and deck-building, but they play very differently as well. If we're going to distinguish between Standard and Modern, I think it makes sense to distinguish between sealed and draft as well.

@AlexP Well, right now we have 4 sealed-deck and 21 mtg-drafting (which include the 4 sealed-deck, as those four are double-tagged), so the question whether there is a need for the split currently is certainly warranted.

@Circeus Actually, I was talking about adding the mtg-limited tag in top of the existing ones, not instead of them.


text:
What are the actual use cases for tags?
We've had a lot of discussion about tag usage recently. I think a lot of these have been... unproductive. It's not clear to me that we're all working from the same understanding of what tags are supposed to do.
So,

What is the actual purpose of tags, on this site?
How do we expect users to interact with tags?
How can we measure the value/appropriateness/whatever of a tag?
What constitutes a "meta" tag? Are they all bad?

I am not a stack exchange veteran but as a gamer I find this site useful and have used tags extensively for 3 reasons:
1) If I just learned a new game I like to read every single Q that is tagged "beginner" and some of the Qs tagged "strategy." See https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/a/851/2260 for detail.
2) In the main (active) view I use favorite and ignored tags heavily for filtering purposes. Many of them are specific game tags as I want to follow all Qs on games I love and ignore those on games I never play. However, I also am very interested in following certain types of questions such as strategy, game design, teaching/beginner, etc.
3) I use tags in combination with the Q to better understand what the Q is. In addition to the game name, if it's tagged as beginner than I should keep my answer simple (or avoid it altogether if I hate answering newbie Qs). If it is Bridge and it's tagged bidding, it may help me to more quickly figure out that this is a question about bidding, not declarer play. Far more useful would be specific bidding systems like "standard-american" or "acol" as I could then ignore what I don't know (acol) and only look at what I know (standard american).
If I could not filter in the active view and quickly determine what a Q is about, I might have already given up as an active user as I have not played Magic the Gathering and several other popular games - it would be too much trouble to pick out Qs of interest to me for either reading/voting or answering.

Thanks, Joe! This is excellent input.

Let's start from the bottom and work our way up. Jeff Atwood wrote a post about meta tags that was referenced in an older discussion about tagging here. It contains the following definition of meta tags, courtesy of Aaronut on meta.cooking:

Meta-tags are actually a subset of a larger problem that I usually call dependent tags. These are tags that don’t say anything by themselves – you can’t tell what the question is about unless they’re paired with some other tag (or several of them). These tags are a problem because people don’t realize this and will often use that as the question’s only tag.

Meta tags tend to cause two types of problems: they squeeze out tags that would otherwise be applied to the question (and thus need a second pass to be tagged properly), and they cause confusion as to what, exactly, they mean. From Jeff's post:

Best practices to whom? Beginner by what criteria?

Is such a tagged question for beginners at that game? What about people with experience in similar games, but none with that particular game? How much experience makes you more than just a beginner?
Why would someone follow the beginner tag? No one has enough experience with all games to be able to answer beginner questions on all games; neither would someone be interested in beginner's questions for all games. The tag itself is meaningful only in combination with other tags, but cannot be followed in combination with other tags. Yes, it may assist you with respect to searching ... but would a question for beginners not also contain the word "beginner" itself? Tags are not intended to be substitutes for searching – we already have that ability.
Number of followers is a useful metric for evaluating tags: ideally, we would look at something like views per followed tag vs. views per non-followed tag, but that's really not possible, because one advantage of following/ignoring is that you can scroll through questions without clicking and still get an idea of the ones you're more/less interested in. (That is, essentially, what I believe tags are designed to do; they also serve as a funnel for searching, so that people don't have to try five different spellings of a particular game to get all the questions for it.) Let's look at the first page of tags on the main site.
rules has 5 followers and 455 questions. That's generally an indicator of meta-ness, and of course rules isn't a game called "rules" (which, btw, is one reason to avoid meta tags on sites like these: it can cause confusion if we end up getting questions on such a game). Does that tag give you any indication as to whether or not you might be able to answer the question? No. It just suggests that the question is about rules ... as would most questions be on a site like this. (See also this discussion on RPG meta.)
magic-the-gathering has 99 followers and 391 questions. People follow it because they play MTG or are interested in it, presumably. A question tagged magic-the-gathering gives you an indication, through the tag alone, whether or not you might be able to answer it, and further, gives you a reason to follow or ignore it, something that rules does not.
strategy: 16 followers. house-rules: 4. game-design has 23, but that makes some sort of sense, because in another context the topic is deep enough to merit its own site. Of course, on that site, nothing is tagged game-development.
As far as what the actual purpose of tags is, on this site? I don't know that anything has changed since that original discussion. Here's an excerpt from Mag Roader's answer:

In my opinion, most questions should have 1 tag - the game they are asking about. I'm not seeing much value from the extra tags.

With that in mind, I would say the purpose is to link questions to the game or games about which they're asked, or to a topic like history if the question is not game-specific but is also on-topic for the site.

As @JoeGolton alluded to in his answer, I think the "meta" tags used on this site are far more useful than meta tags on other sites. Being able to quickly ID questions by game, as well as by other "attributes", like rough experience level (beginner, expert, etc.), or broader mechanics that are common to a genre of games, like bidding or shuffling, is very useful as well.

I agree filtering is a major reason. They are probably helpful to the search engine (and I've used them a few times in the past for browsing, but I'm kinda quirky), and I'm fairly sure they are also used by the algorithm that determine the related questions on the sidebar.


text:
Autocard opens non-scrolling windows
On two different computers I use, both running recent Firefox, this site's Gatherer links open non-scrolling windows. The windows both have no scroll bar and can't be scrolled by arrow keys / mouse wheel.
If I do "open link in new tab" or navigate Gatherer manually without using links from B&CG, I get no such problems.
No scrolling is a big deal because it's a terrible UI experience that makes it functionally impossible to see full Oracle text for cards.
Try it:
Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder
vs.
Direct link

I'm fine with "switch to Scryfall" as the answer if that actually happens. If not, we need to fix this. https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/switch-magic-autocard-over-to-a-different-search-engine-scryfall

bug seems to be in IE as well, but can't replicate in Chrome. Autocard frustrations seems to be growing, I am all for a switch to Scryfall if it fixes things as well.

@Malco I suspect the bug may be a by-design feature of WotC's javascript thing following 2005-ish web design conventions. (And Chrome just doesn't honor it because, enh, why would you?)

Yes, this is by design. I'd agree with you that it's pretty bad design, but still, somebody at some point must have thought it was a good idea to add scrollbars=0 (and resizable=0) to the window.open() call. As it happens, my SOUP user script fixes this, as a side effect of rewriting the [mtg:...] links to use Scryfall instead.

Fix mtg.js
Note the JavaScript script we're using for autocard links (thanks to Ilmari Karonen for catching this):

window.open(link, "autocard" + (+new Date()), "toolbar=0, location=0, directories=0, status=0,menubar=0, scrollbars=0, resizable=0, width=770, height=890");

We should clean this up to link to Gatherer in a more "normal" style (just remove some of the forced styling and let the browser manage it) instead.

That feature is only supported by IE, Firefox and Opera which is why you have the issue in firefox and I don't in chrome.

Actually it may not be supported by IE or Opera anymore which leaves just Firefox with this problem

That sounds like it might be a bug with firefox as when I open any gatherer link in chrome it opens with scroll bars as expected including the one you linked in your question.

I think that's Chrome rejecting the window settings because it thinks the settings are dumb.

Adding scroll bars to windows that do not show the entire content is expected of browsers (and all other programs) and something that you would have to deliberately work around which I don't think this site is doing.

That's what "scrollbars=0" is doing.

After looking into it more I think Firefox is the only browser that supports that setting which would make it a bug with Firefox imo.

Interesting find, Joe.


text:
Are questions about Disk Wars on topic?
Setting aside the nature of the question, would questions on the game Disc Wars be on topic on this site?

For a sec there I thought you were talking about Core War :)

Yes, no problem.  Disc Wars is fully on topic.  From our faq a boardgame is

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

To my knowledge, Disc Wars has no problem clearing those requirements.


text:
Is this an appropriate place for Nikoli-style pencil puzzles and games?
In particular, I have a couple of questions about the development of these sorts of puzzles (think Sudoku, Kenken, Nurikabe, etc) and I'm not sure whether this is the best forum for them or whether there's some more appropriate spot.  Questions about the mathematics behind them clearly belong in math.stackexchange.com (and I've both asked and answered questions about puzzle-math there in the past), and if I were trying to figure out the details of programming them for a computer then obviously gamedev is the site.  But my particular question is about development (and in particular, publication) for this sort of puzzle, and while it feels a little out-of-place for this particular site I'm not sure that there's one better.  Does anyone feel that this is/isn't an appropriate place for questions about pencil-puzzle design (as opposed to, e.g., board game design - note that it's a pretty short hop from Sudoku to something like Y or Hex), and can anyone suggest someplace better?

Puzzles are not on topic here per our FAQ.
I'm not familiar with Nikoli puzzles/games.  A brief googling led me to what is perhaps the company site.  It looks like strictly puzzles to me, although I admit I didn't look extensively.
We have previously defined what games are on topic.  The short list is that the game must:

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

In general puzzles fail the third test as they are done solo without randomization and that keeps them from qualifying here.
If there are further details about Nikoli-style puzzles & games, please comment or expand upon the question.  Thanks!

Well, the examples I gave are probably the best ones available - Sudoku and Kenken are the most notable at the moment, and none of the others are particularly more 'game-like' than those are.  If those are off-topic for this site (and while I personally disagree with the linked-to answer, I can very much see where that perspective is coming from), then where would be an appropriate place within the StackExchange hierarchy for them?

@StevenStadnicki - perhaps codegolf or there is an Area51 Puzzle proposal.

codegolf definitely doesn't fit; computers aren't involved in the process at all except behind the scenes.  On the other hand, the proposal looks like exactly what I would be after - time to jump in with a commit.  Thank you!

@StevenStadnicki - no problem.


text:
Board and Card Games Self-Evaluation -- Let's Get Critical!
You love your site and we love your site, but there is a whole world of people out there who might not even know it exists. When they do find it, their first impression will either scare them away or keep them around. Given this, let's take a hard look at the questions and answers here and make sure newcomers see the site at its best!
Below you'll find ten questions randomly selected from this site. What do you think about each of them and their answers? Are they the best they can be or can they be improved? Would they look interesting and inviting to an outsider or are they a little embarrassing?
Upvote the corresponding post here on meta when we're awesome. Downvote when our content just isn't quite up to par.
Oh, and do comment to let everyone know your thoughts and take part in this conversation. :D

Thanks for all your help, everyone! :D

What is a Gateway Game?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

+1, good example of a terminology/lingo question.  Maybe a little open-ended, but otherwise nice.

+1 A useful, well-phrased question, and a well-researched, complete answer with examples and clarifications. Great.

Note that the original Q I wrote for this produced a pretty good answer but not a great answer - so I had to work a bit to reword the Q (and unaccept the old answer). The work paid off as I got a great answer. I then revised the Q yet again to make it more like a reference rather than a work in progress. I say all this just to indicate that this Q took a bit of work.

Maximum attainable points for a single player in a two player game of Carcassonne
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

+1 Fascinating, in-depth, and decidedly on-topic.

Assuming it's correct (I have no idea!) this is a well-calculated and explained answer. My only criticism of this question is: how useful is it REALLY? It's an incredibly specialist question for only hardcore Carcassone players.

@Johno I'm sure Pat or mafu or ire_and_curses could provide more insight here, but I'll say this much: questions like these (which only pertain to like 1% of people) have massive amounts of value for us. Often, they are the way people find our site in the first place!

@Aarthi Agreed! I'm sure there are users that would find this question interesting and thought-provoking, but from the point of view of new users and beginner gamers, it would probably rank low on a "usefulness" scale. I'm not saying (nor did I) that this question has no place here, I'm just trying to provide an alternative point of view for the sake of criticism.

@Johno Ahhhh. Okay! Well, my perspective is: a beginner wouldn't likely be looking for/at such a question, and a question like this would attract a new user to our site. Mind, I'm not an expert in (or even really familiar with) this field, but if it's as excellent a question/answer as you say, as a n00b I'd be inclined to poke around the site more, perhaps even join -- especially if excellent, deep-engagement questions and answers like this one are present here.

I love this kind of questions: turning a game into a puzzle that an algorithm can solve. I think it helps an experienced player look into a game in a different way.  When I wrote this question, although it seemed solvable, I was hoping for answers that would provide insight into the solution. It blew me away how fast someone got to a well researched definitive answer. I think this speaks a lot for the people on this site!

I found this very interesting, but I'm fairly sure the selected answer is not actually achievable.  I tried messing around with the tiles for a while, and I couldn't construct the farming layout required while maintaining all the completed roads.

"Brigand Attack" (when upgrading Settlement --> City)
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

A little terse, but a straightforward request for rules clarification and a (well-sourced) answer explaining it. No more is needed!

Constantinopolis Taberna Building
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

Question is very good, and the answer covers everything.

What happens if a blocking creature with flying loses flying?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

+1 Overall, I think the site is very good at rules questions (for all games, not just Magic). We tend to be accurate, detailed, and timely.

When should you side lands in and out?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

+1, I feel like this is a decent scope for a strategic question on this site.  See: http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/655/2242

How can I play around graveyard hate?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

+1 I found the answers to be terse but functional.

I don't know what to think about this questions. This get a lot of Q about magic, and sure the traffic is good. But all of them that are not rule related seems to ask about strategies. Are there any good answer for that?? My fear is that tomorrow a new set of card negates that strategy.

@gbianchi This answer would have been relevant in 1993 (when Tormod's Crypt was first printed), and I can assure you it will still be relevant in 2013. That's not a bad lifetime for a question!

Also, I'm pretty sure that questions about rules and questions about strategy will make up the bulk of questions about any game. Those are, like, the two essential parts of playing a board game.

Computer Scrabble UI & communication protocol?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

+1 I think this is good for being the top answer on Google.

I'm not sure if this Q is for this site. It cover all problems about algorithm and computers, not the game itself.

I'm also not sure if this belongs here, but I'm not sure where else it should go! The asker specifies that they couldn't find anything on Google and since there's no Scrabble.SE (as far as I know), maybe the question should be here. Given the ill fit for this site, I still think the answers were decent, though by no means great.

There's sort of a weird line between board-game-based video games and computers-playing-board-games in a more academic sense. My general feeling is that the second class of questions has a good home here, though I'm finding it hard to articulate why.

@AlexP stackoverflow has a game-development tag. OP is asking about the protocol to comunicate the UI with the engine. Is asking about development, not the game. This case is borderline, but still not related to gaming. Could confuse new users to think that the site is computer development related instead of focusing on the game aspect.

@gbianchi Well, he's basically asking about designing a computer player rather than a computer game (the goal of the question is to avoid redoing the game stuff). Is there a dedicated AI Stack Exchange?

@AlexP Not anymore; we closed that site a very long time ago because it wasn't working. I think building characters/players is on-topic here, though this feels like a gray area. Maybe it deserves a meta post?

How to describe the strengths and weaknesses of white to a new mtg player?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

-1 I think we tried pretty hard, but overall it's kinda meandering and unfocused. Reminds me a bit of a forum.

What happens when a piece is kinged in checkers?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

-1 Other sites seemed to cover it better.

If the answer is an exact extract of a wikipedia page, we are not getting a good answer. Also the Q is bad, since wikipedia answer it!. Can't vote down (below 125)

I also think it's not a great question (poorly researched). I'm not sure what more you could expect from the answer in this case...

It's not so much that other sites cover the question; it's that ANY amount of research would have produced the answer post haste.


text:
How do we foster a good chat community?
I keep coming to chat to discuss various board-gamey things. But it's always empty. I feel that a good chat community is one of the ways to get a good community together in general, and increase traffic.
If people come here for chat, and learn that the people here can answer questions, this will become the place they come for answers.
How do we do this?

From my experience, the best thing to do would have someone parked in chat for most of the time, whether that's a mod or a top user. It's like a restaurant -- you want some people in there on opening day, or else no one will be in there.

@Aarthi Challenge accepted!

Aarthi's comment is, I think, really the best approach. Until there are enough people who naturally hang out in chat, people have to "seed" it by making more of an effort to hang out there and talk about things ... or even to play. (Depending on the game, players may want a separate room. Random comments may work better in some play-by-chat games than others.) And it's not like seeding the main site by asking questions we really aren't facing, because this is simply making people more available in case someone drops by for whatever reason ... quality of conversation in chat isn't at all the same type of issue as quality of questions on the site.
I don't think this is much different than asking how to grow the site in general, because everything basically depends on everything else. Chat becomes more active with more people on the site. More people means more questions, more answers, and more meta activity. More people in chat means more off-topic questions diverted there (because there's actually someone around to answer, or to try to answer; it doesn't sound quite the same to say "you can ask this in chat, though" when no one is there to help) and more conversation. More conversation in chat can lead to more questions on the main site. It's just hard when the site hasn't yet reached critical mass and it isn't clear how we can get more active participants on the site.

I think another good way to draw people in is t have some kind of event in chat, perhaps a recommendation event, where we talk about all of our recent/favourite games. Hopefully that will foster more communication and more questions from everyone.

Scheduling recommendation events sounds like a great idea to me, especially if we can advertise them in a banner or through a meta "question" or whatever ... some way to let people know "look, it's not that we don't like recommendations, we'll handle them, just not as questions on the site", but at the same time, we're giving them a specific time and place to have them answered. (Once chat has regular visitors, it may not be necessary to schedule rec events.)

See if you can drop any requirement for reputation to post to chat- if it becomes lively you can always consider raising it again and you can always remove pests later. Like many SE chat room- this one is lifeless.


text:
How should I tag betrayal at the house on the hill?
Betrayal at the house on the hill has a ludicrously long title. Too long to be a complete tag on this site (>25 characters). Currently I'm tagging my question as BatHotH...which is less than perfect. Is there a better option? Have I created a monster with that tag?
Is there a better way to tag it?

Betrayal-at-the-house
Betrayal-house-hill
Betrayal-athoth

?

Well, for a start, it's actually called Betrayal at House on the Hill, although that's still 24 chars, plus 5 for the spaces.
My vote would be for betrayal-at-house-on-hill (25 chars). Having betrayal at the start is valuable, as the tag will auto-complete for new questions, and also in searches.

They all seem to be tagged "betrayal-on-house-at-hill" now... oops?

@Jefromi - Looks like the OP made that change (I'd been waiting for a little more consensus before applying). Fixed now. ;)


text:
Community ads for other sites, 2017 edition!
Could some artistic people put together some quality community ads to put on other sites?
I'd recommend
Sci-Fi Community Ads
Roleplaying Community ads
and
Gaming/Arqade Community Ads
So what do people think? Can we do this?


text:
Do we need a pre-emptive cannonical QA for diferentiating Mana and Land in Magic: The gathering?
Both these question confuse Mana and Land in magic-the-gathering.
Do I have to take mana from my deck or hand when tapping a dual land?
How do dual lands and their mana work?
Is it worth making one of these the cannonical QA for this type of question?

Someone has taken it upon themselves to provide such a question: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/45595/how-do-lands-and-mana-work-in-magic/45596#45596

Usually we wait until someone asks the question and then you answer it and it will eventually become the dupe target (if the quesiton is common enough dupes don't take that long to pop up). If someone wants to preempt things, or thinks that existing Qs aren't good dupe targets, then the usual course of action is to make a meta Q first and then build the Q and A on the main site.

this is different from if you just want to ask a Q and self answer, since that doesn't involve going through the site and closing a bunch of other questions.

It's hardly preemptive when there are multiple examples of the problem already on the site, is it?

@Nij but none of them aimed to be authorities, canonical question and answers.

That doesn't make this preemptive - meaning before the thing has happened that it aims to prevent or avoid.

@Nij normally a canonical question arises naturally because of the large number of questions, that is what this is aiming to pre-empt. Look at Malco's comment: " Usually we wait..."

I think so.
For most questions, a "pre-emptive" canonical is overkill. I agree with Malco's comment: "Usually we wait until someone asks the question...and it will eventually become the dupe target."
But this question is somewhat unique, because it is highly unlikely that a player who misunderstands lands & mana would ever ask a question about the difference between them.  Most players who misunderstand it do so because they don't know there is a difference.
So even though we might end up with a good, organic canonical answer, it will probably be an awkward question to use as a dupe target.  For a beginner, it would be confusing to have your (hypothetical) question titled "Can I use the Forest from tapping Llanowar Elves in the same turn?" closed as a duplicate of "Do I have to take mana from my deck or hand when tapping a dual land?"  There are many questions that could be closed as a dupe of this canonical, but it would make little sense to close them as duplicates of each other.
A good canonical for this topic introduces the concept behind the underlying misunderstanding, and then provides a central place to put amazing answers.  And I think Zags' post is doing an excellent job of that.

For a similar case, consider the canonical stack and priority question.  Somebody who understands the stack is unlikely to have questions about responding to instants, but somebody who doesn't understand the Shock/Giant Growth interaction will have no idea that the answer has to do with the stack.

I made a new question (What is the difference between lands and mana?) as the canonical question for the sake of clarity.  I was motivated by a similar argument espoused by @BJ Myers.  While the questions were the same and had good answers, a lot of the question and answer were spent describing and clearing up the asker's particular confusion rather than answering the question in general.