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Should we have a tag rule regarding pluralization?
This question is sort of a generic version of How should we tag questions.  There is some talk in there about the board-game tag, but it's lost in the noise.  For me, these two tags are clearly duplicate tags: boardgame, board-game and board-games. But there are really two things at issue here:

Is there ever a time a tag should refer to a plural entity?  For me, no. I think this is a variation on the wiki NamePluralProblem.  Wikis tend to use the singular always unless a page is only ever referred to in the plural. But bigown clearly felt differently.
More subjectively, does a site dedicated to board games really need a tag 'board-game'?  My vote is no, seems pretty redundant.  I also expect, however, that these are the kinds of tags that will show up over and over again and for that reason, we should preemptively just make one so that the site can exert control over it.  Beside 'card-games', what other tags might fall into this category?

Plural seems to be preferred on other SE sites. I have no explicit preference.

All forms of the tag board-game seem redundant to me.

@Pat - Yes, it is the "Board and Card Games" SE site, but the 'board-game' tag can be useful for those of us that use the interesting/ignored tags feature heavily.  I think that a single (singular) tag is appropriate and needed.


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How should we handle vague questions?
This question is apparently related to mahjong combinatorics, but is vague. It's generating some close recommendations, with no rationale provided.  It has a comment thread discussing mostly whether to close.
The question is, should this site close questions simply because they are too vague to answer definitively?  On other SE sites, that's not normally a consideration for closure.

The best approach is to request clarification in a comment. Sometimes, for vague questions, I may also try a fairly broad answer that covers several possible interpretations for what the question might mean, but frequently I'll just ask for clarification. If the author doesn't clarify, then it might be worth voting to close as "not a real question," but I tend to try and give the benefit of the doubt and wait a bit before doing that.

In my case, I did my best to fix the question, by defining the key term, "made hand," in my answer. Then I tried to answer the question.

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How did we get all these untagged questions?
There are right now 15 questions with the only tag of untagged, linked here.
Some of these actually had tags at one time.
What happened here?
Please note I'm cleaning some of these up, though I don't have the time to take care of them all today.

there are currently 90 untagged questions

Now there are 94.

To be clear, the policy:

Any tag with only one question in it for an entire six month period, will be automatically culled at the end of that six month period. If this culling results in zero tags, the question will be retagged untagged.

Does every single question really need a unique boardgame tag, no matter how obscure it may be? Isn't plain old search sufficient?
If you feel strongly that a tag is justified, I'd make absolutely sure there are two questions containing that tag in a six-month period -- even by asking another question myself if need be.
15 untagged questions is honestly a tiny amount. And I think the retags Lance performed made the questions much better -- so thank you for that, Lance.
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/users/96/lance-roberts?tab=activity
e.g.

[untagged] --> [valuation] [classic-games]
  [untagged] --> [online] [blogs]
  [untagged] --> [recommendations] [board-game-adaptations]

etc, etc.
In that sense, forcing the untagged is actually helping overall quality because it highlights questions that need more than one highly specialized tag.
(You might also look at meta.gaming where they have had similar discussions, and I urged them not to blindly create a tag for every single videogame that has ever been written in the history of recorded time.)

It's obviously true that questions about obscure games are likely to be the only ones populating the associated tag for some time, and are at risk of being orphaned by the clean-up script.
One thing we can do to minimize the impact is ensure that if other tags are valid that they are also added, especially in cases where the non-game-name-tag is really the most relevant. For example, this Hi-Ho-Cherry-O question had a lot of activity lately and is rightly tagged with the game name, but fundamentally it's really a question about probability and needed to be tagged as such to get the attention of the right experts (as it obviously did).
There are a lot of questions that can be tagged this way, and if we're good about it then the impact of losing a game-specific tag will be significantly blunted (after all the point of a tag is to group similar questions and if there's nothing to group the tag adds no value).

I think what happened was that the remove tags with only one question script, removed them and when that left the question with no tags, it added the untagged.  We should get that script disabled for this site, since there are MANY games out there that will take a while to build up a population.
I wrote the team on this issue, since there were no moderators responding.
Jeff said that it's a network setting, and the only recourse was to create a second question that used the tag, so that the tag wouldn't disappear.

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Do we want 'Game Like ..." questions?
I think we're getting too many "Game Like ..." questions, like this and that.
These seem to be very subjective with so few details that thousands of games could be listed.  You also could make thousands of these types of questions by just subbing another game name in,
"Games of same depth as CandyLand?"
I see this a issue of Rating games, which is already done at BoardGameGeek, and doesn't fit well on this site.  What we really are parallel to is the game-specific forums at BGG, though with a much better interface and format.
EDIT:  Discussion (as this post is) doesn't really work well on these sites.  For example, you can't answer an answer except with little comments, and there's no threading.  Forum sites are designed fine for subjective questions, but this site with all answers related to the question, is designed much better for specific-answer types, like rule Q&A and strategy questions.  You can see how ungainly it was for me to put all this in the comments to CrazyJugglerDrummer's answer, and how even editing this into my question makes a asynchronous discussion look synchronous, but of course this now makes the comments and some of the answers look out-of-place(time).
What does the community think about this and the effect on our Q&A site?

Personally, I'm not a fan of any such questions.
I feel that there is no one objective answer to them and that makes such questions unsuitable for a Q&A site.
This site cannot compete straight up with BGG (and shouldn't).  This isn't a forum, and extensive back and forth discussions aren't handled well, by design.  If folks want to talk about subjective stuff we should just direct them to BGG.
What we do better, is have peer reviewed answers to questions.
I think our traffic bears out what I've said here.  This year, our general traffic is even, or perhaps a bit down.  However visits by new people is continually climbing.  We need to retain these folks!
What are folks coming here for?  (Based on search query terms)

Game Strategy
Dominion (Agricola is 2nd)
Where to play board games online

As you might guess, various Dominion strategy queries are the bee's knees. :)
Hard to say definitely but the top query that I think is recommendation based is about #40 this year - "quick set up board games for adults"

I believe recommendation questions were covered, primarily on Gaming.
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/the-pee-wee-herman-rule/

If we get an excellent user who asks a good, thoughtful  ["game like..."] question and sticks around in our community to participate, then it’s worth allowing it in those rare cases as a high quality “getting to know you” fun question.

I would say these should be generally discouraged -- but if you see an exceptionally high quality one, indicative of a user that might ultimately be an asset to your community, it can sometimes be allowed in those circumstances.

Wasn't that intended to apply to "help me remember this game" questions as opposed to "what is another game like this game" questions? On gaming if you asked something like this question it would be closed in a flash.

If you're referring to gaming's policy alone then the policy would be to close these questions. Here are examples of these questions on gaming: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/19145/similar-gameplay-as-cod-2-mp-hq, http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/12154/is-there-any-powder-toy-like-game, http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/11223/modern-homeworld-equivalents.

@sadly I am also referring to the "help me remember this old game" questions, which I personally hate and downvote on sight, but are still "allowed" on gaming.

Gaming in general hates list-type questions, but strangely allows "Help me remember this game" questions, despite those types of questions being generally unhelpful to anyone but the asker.

"Game Like" questions can be objective if written properly.  "Game Like" answers can be objective if answered properly.
I believe some criteria can be applied to these questions to help keep things objective.  The ultimate goal is to have a good question with a definitive answer.  And some of these questions do have definitive answers. What would be the worst case is for a "Game Like" question to be down-voted or deleted without the merits of the question being considered at all, just because it contains a known pattern.  Especially with this site in beta.
Good:

If the question asks for a comparison of game mechanics, then it is a very good question.  Most mechanics can be analyzed and compared objectively with other games.
If the list of correct answers is too long, then the question should be written to be more specific or broken into multiple questions.  The correct answer may even be that the list is too long with a reason of why.  This would give gamers new to a game some insight as to a game's classification or a specific mechanics popularity among games in general.  "Here are a few popular ones, but there are too many to list." can be a very useful answer in some cases.
If the question asks for an answer that can differ between people, it may still be a good question, and the correct answer may be a list of things that should be considered.  Questions like game length could fit this category.  Game length can be analyzed and calculated for different groups.  It may have a large deviation, but it is still a number.

Bad:

If the question mentions only a game, but doesn't focus on a mechanic, then it should probably go.  Unless the game is so unique that all the mechanics can be considered.
If the question is asking for a comparison of a subjective topic, like "fun" or "best", then it is really too broad for a definitive answer and should be closed as such.  Fun can't really be
If the question is asking for a recommendation of a new game to players of a different game, it should be removed because that is subjective.  (Only Netflix can answer that. ;) )

I think the best outcome here is to make these well written questions. The answers may be difficult to find and there may need to be a fair amount of discussion before a correct answer is found, but as long as an answer bubbles up at the end, it was a good question.
These questions are also moving targets, as new games are developed.  In which case the selected answer should be added to.  It's the same with many programming questions too.  Languages are always evolving to give you a better way to do a task and deprecating things.

+1 for a good post.  I think that for any specifics there would still be too many games to be useful.  It would take a ton of specification to narrow it down to anything useful.

I completely agree that the questions are very subjective, and I suppose they do not follow the guidelines of objective Q&A. But this site isn't really making itself very attractive for the casual viewer. I guess what it boils down to is that I don't really think there's a market for a site that does absolute nothing but answer direct questions about board games.
This site is choosing to be the place for objective questions about rules and perhaps some game mechanics and other strictly policed topics. What you are allowed to discuss is very limited. If you want to ask a question that's not allowed here, meaning virtually anything subjective where you just want to talk to some fellow people who love board games and get there opinions on game related stuff, you might as well leave straightaway. This site is not about fun. This site is not about talking with your fellow gamers casually. This site is about questions, and answers. That will be your only interaction with the community.
Board Game Geek is different because its just....fun. You can do everything that's offered on this site, like talk about rules and strategy, but you can also just relax with your fellow gamers. You can rate games, talk about your sessions, ask the advice of tons of other gamers about what games you might like, and rate games as to how much you've enjoyed them to help others when they're looking to try something new. Heck you can even get into some polite arguments about what games are better than others; it's all in the interest of fun.
You may call all the other stuff 'noise' that gets in the way of the 'true objective questions'. But I don't think anyone else does. You can get whatever experience out of the site that you want. Its just a one-stop-shop for everything you could want to talk about regarding board games, and I still don't see what's to keep people coming here for the tiny topics the sites do overlap in. Yes this site is not at all designed to be like that or have any of those features and they would alter the site greatly if it did, but I don't think we're going to convince people "ask your rule and strategy questions here! (even though that's all we really offer and if you want anything besides that you have to go to other sites that also offer Q&A just like ours. But ask those questions here anyway!)"
Don't get me wrong, I love this site to death, and if the community wants me to shut up about this topic I will duct tape my mouth shut, never speak of it again, and continue to answer questions and edit tag wikis gleefully. But I'm honestly worried that other people aren't going to want to join in our little slice of paradise here because we offer so little.
Can anyone point out some flaws in my logic? Can this site really make it as a Q&A only deal? Is having questions with no one objective answer really such a bad thing that we need to purge every example we see no matter what effects it may have? I still don't understand why these subjective questions are so bad in the first place. They only add additional interesting content, variety, and address issues that countless board gamers want to talk about just as much as rules and strategies...

The problem that you're missing (the flaw) is that the user interface for this site SUCKS for discussion.  It's completely designed for objective Q&A.  The subjective stuff just doesn't work well with the interface and just clogs up the whole site.  I go to BoardGameGeek all the time to look up rule questions, and get completely frustrated at their forums because they're NOT designed for Q&A, they're designed for discussion.  I look forward to this site taking over the Q&A aspect so that I don't have to spend hours searching BGG for a rules answer.

I'm not sure if this site can attract enough attention from existing sites like BGG to get the Q&A audience, but the world sure needs a site that will.  I also think this site will work ok for specific strategy questions, even though those get looser than Q&A questions.

You might be right that a lot of people who just want a forum will be turned off by the type of site we are, but there already is a one-stop-shop called BGG, and trying to compete on that level would be quite ineffective.

Meta-Comment: Notice how many comments I had to leave to make the points I wanted, it's really a sucky interface for a discussion.

To be honest, I don't think the traffic looks good enough that this site is going to make it, but I hope it will.

Eh, @Lance... You could really improve your question by taking some of the points you're making here in comments and putting them front and center.

@Shog9, valid point.

@Crazy, maybe we should start a new site called "Boardgame Family Trees"... tagging games with all their mechanical and thematic features, strategic depth, time to play, etc etc... so if you want to find a game that features rats, takes 6 players and takes less than an hour to play, it's one click away!  That would actually be a jolly fun site.

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Loose house rules questions?
I see a lot of questions asking for generic house rules for a game.  I don't really think that fits.
I think questions about house rules to solve specific problems, or the benefits of a house rule are ok, but "what are your house rules" questions aren't real questions (this is also the stance on RPG).
Should we allow these broad house rules questions?

I agree.  House rules questions should be asking about solving a specific problem, not just "everybody list your house rules".

I think they should be allowed as community questions, so there's one place someone could go to to learn about different variations for a specific game.

Is there a difference between "house rules" and "variants"?  I see house rules as being designed to tweak a small part of the original rules in order to solve an imbalance or problem.
I see variants as bigger changes for the sake of fun and variety.  I would support community wiki questions for variants, but not for house rules.

No, I disagree.  We're not here to keep lists (where's Grace Note when we need her).  Besides, users can't make questions community wiki anymore.  We don't want to create a new perpetual task for the mods.

@lilserf, I don't think "house rules" are always created to solve a problem. I've known people to make up house rules just to make the game interesting, or because they wanted to...


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If you can't sit down at a table and play it, it's not a board or card game - Good definition?
I'm wondering if LittleBobbyTables' definition here, might be a good, simple, definition of what this site covers?
What potential grey lines, or exceptions might there be? Are they serious enough to make it unworkable?

It's a good start.  It doesn't directly cover electronic tools/versions of our games though.

There are a few axes on which we need to figure out where to put the dividing line between on and off topic. For instance, the rule you mention, can it be played on a table, is a good one, but not sufficient, as you can sit down and play an RPG on a table, but I think that's off topic for this site.
Here are a few areas where we need to figure out exactly where to draw the line. To the left are what I would consider solidly on topic, to the right probably off topic, and we need to figure out where the line is in the middle.

Coop games - Solitaire games - puzzles
Diplomatic games - creativity games - roleplaying games
Dexterity games - lawn games - sports
Board games with random or rule-based extra players - computer implementations of board games - board games with electronic components - computer games

For the first category, I think that solitaire games are on topic, while puzzles (such as Sudoku or crosswords) are off topic. But how to distinguish solitaire games from puzzles? I believe the criterion would be that solitaire games essentially produce an endless or large variety of different puzzles through randomization (most solitaire card games involve just shuffling a deck of cards, solitaire or coop games might involve rolling dice or other forms of randomization), while puzzles are static and new puzzles in a particular category (such as Sudoku or crosswords) must be created by another person or computer. I would, however, say that questions about puzzles that are specifically related to a board or card game, and commonly used in training for playing board and card games, would be OK; for instance, "I'm working on this chess problem, and the book lists this solution, but I just can't figure out why this other line of play doesn't work."
For the second category, I think the distinguishing criterion is that there are objective rules and win conditions in a board game. The win condition or outcome of a situation might be based on subjective votes or other actions from other players, but once people have made their decisions, there is a set of rules for determining the winner or outcome of a situation. In a roleplaying game, a GM is needed for deciding which rules to apply, running NPCs, etc, and so there is no objective set of rules for resolving situations or the outcome of the game.
In the third category, I believe that dexterity games can be on topic (such as Jenga or Pitch Car), but I think that the rule you mention, that you can fit them on a table, is a good one. Thus, crokinole would be OK, but foosball or pool would not.
In the last category, I think that the rule that you can play it by hand, with no computer involved, should apply. You may use electronic equipment to aid you (an electronic dice roller in place of physical dice, or using a spreadsheet to keep score instead of doing it by hand), and questions about how to do so may be on topic, as long as it's all stuff that you could do by hand. You can't play a game of Quake by hand, so questions about Quake are off topic; but you can play Ticket to Ride by hand, so asking about places to play ticket to ride online are OK.
Or to use Pat's example, Civilization and Advanced Civ are clearly on topic, Sid Meier's Civilization is not, as it can't be implemented as a boardgame. The computer game port of Advanced Civ would be on topic, as it's a game that could be played on a board, though for technical questions about it there may be better forums (or may not; people on a boardgame question and answer site may have more familiarity with the online forms of the games than people on a computer game or computer software question and answer site, and a good measure of whether something on topic is whether this is the best place to find people who can answer a question about it), and Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame is on topic, as it's obviously playable by hand on a board instead of on the computer (and if anyone ever implements Civilization: The Boardgame: The Computer Game, asking about that would be on topic too, as it's still playable on a board).
Do those seem like a reasonable set of guidelines? In summary, for a game to be on topic, it 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

For a question to be on topic, it must relate to a game that is on topic, but the particular instance that the question is referring to may loosen those rules. Questions about playing games with giant pieces will make a game not playable around a table, but if it's a game that could be or is normally played around a table, it's fine. Questions about Go problems or Chess problems are fine, even if they are static puzzles, since they are related to a dynamic game. Questions about computer implementations of board games are fine.
I think that gives us a pretty good definition of what's on and off topic; there will always be some grey zone, but it will solve most of the problems.

Cool, I didn't realize an off-the-cuff comment would stimulate this kind of discussion.  This answer sums things up very well, I think.

Voted +1, although I personally think that all games purely based on dexterity should be out. (Jenga and Twister have a strategy component though, and should be in.)

@Erik I don't really have an opinion one way or the other about dexterity games. They don't interest me that much, but it doesn't bother me if they are discussed. Most of them have some strategic component, so it's hard to distinguish on that basis. I don't think they'll really be a problem, unless we start allowing all sports and lawn games, which are pretty clearly off topic.

@Brian: to be honest, I don't have too strong feelings either way either, but I felt I should write it down in case there turned out to be a silent majority, willing to reveal itself by massively upvoting my comment :) I'm happy to accept the games as on topic as it stands.

I love dexterity games, @Erik, so I'm glad they're still on-topic.

As usual, @Brian, your answer is exhaustive and I agree with most of it. However, I'd suggest more lenience on board games that include electronic components. Knizia's King Arthur for example seems like a full board game to me, even though the board has conductive ink and a voice speaks to you from the sword in the stone. I think there are a few other games where some electronic component gives the players clues or reveals goals throughout the game. There have been a few VCR / DVD games (no good ones that I know of). I suggest all of these are still primarily board games.

@Don Sure, as I said in the answer, there will always be some grey zones. There are sometimes board games with minor electronic components, and there are sometimes computer games with a few physical components (feelies). There will always be a certain amount of judgement. If it's packaged and sold as a board game (like King Arthur), then it'll count even though there's an electronic component to it. I generally say that we should err on the side of being inclusive, unless there's clearly a better place for the question (like gaming.se.com).

Air Hockey yea or nay? I'm assuming off-topic. I searched meta and the main site. Reviewed the About page. Any definitive answer?

@PrestonFitzgerald I'd say that's just past the line, but it's off topic. As mentioned in this answer, "...I think that the rule you mention, that you can fit them on a table, is a good one. Thus, crokinole would be OK, but foosball or pool would not." Given that air hockey the game is the table, it's not played on a table, rules it out. From the discussion I was referring to: "If you can't sit down at a table and play it, it's not a board or card game."

That's what I was thinking too @BrianCampbell. I just wanted to double check with the natives. There doesn't appear to be a better place for that kind of conversation on SE. I guess I'm off to Area 51. Thanks!

To expand on my comment above, we would want to consider these four games.  Which of them are on topic, and why?

Civilization, a boardgame by Francis Tresham.  And the later Advanced Civ version.  These are definitely on topic.
Sid Meier's Civilization, a computer game that was probably inspired by the boardgame but isn't very similar in game play at all.
Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization, a computer game that is a direct port of the Advanced Civilization Boardgame.  Can also be used for PBeM.
Sid Meier's Civilization, the boardgame - This is a boardgame that is directly inspired by Sid Meier's computer game.

I love Sid Meier's Civilization games myself, but I wouldn't call that a board game.  The Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization example is a gray area.  I lean towards yes since it's a direct adaption, but that's hard to define.  What if they made some small tweaks to the game then, does that count?  Between between Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization and Sid Meier's Civilization would we draw the line?

To give an example of a game that was ported to the computer with some tweaks, consider Europa Universalis.  I don't know where the line is either....  But I think we can find some people for and against anything but the first boardgame Civilization

I'd count the first and the last as being on-topic.  The Sid Meier computer game series is definitely off - that's a gaming.stackexchange.com question.  AH's Adv Civ is arguably on topic as long as the question is equally applicable to the board game - if the question is "Will it run in DosBox?" then that's off-topic.

One rule I would definitely have is that anything with a computer-programmed AI opponent is banned.
Computer games, where they are really electronic versions of boardgames - and where there are actual copies of the game made from atoms not bits - are at least arguable.  Certainly, the majority of questions relating to Diplomacy are the same whether it's FTF, PBM, PBEM, DiPjudge or phpDiplomacy, and I think very few would object to questions relating to black-press, public-press or gunboat (all variants that are only possible in non-FTF formats).  Where it's a commercial implementation of a straight conversion (e.g. Matrix Games' Empires in Arms) then it's more arguable, but again if the question is about the game and not the computing aspects, then I think it's on-topic.
The only AIs that we should be discussing, though, are the scripted pen-and-paper AIs, like the solitaire game of Republic of Rome.  I guess a computer implementation of a pen-and-paper AI might be acceptable.

gunboat can be played FTF. And if you use enough paper, you can use any kind of press in a FTF game.

I think a better phrasing would be "anything dependent on a computer-programmed AI" is banned.  I don't mind discussing a computer implementation of a board game which happens to include the option of an AI opponent, as long as it can be played against humans.  (As long as we're discussing the game tactics, that is; questions about AI are obviously off-topic here in most cases.)  Otherwise we have to ban Chess, for a start.

@Tynam Fair comment.


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Social games - allowed?
Technically they're not either a board or card game, although you can play them whilst sitting round a table if you really wanted to.
However, I've got great new information out of threads like 'Anyone know more 'social' games like 'Werewolves"' and been able to pass it on in this more recent question.
[Self promtion ahoy!] Moreover there is a Pervasive Games proposal on Area 51, that could cover some of these games - especially the outdoor ones.
It pre-dates this sites beta but has a very low number of followers, perhaps it should be closed in favour of this site?

I believe that social games should be allowed; we've had several questions on them already, they seem to have gone over well. There is also some overlap between social games (or party or parlour games), and board games, so it would be hard to draw an exact dividing line.
I'm less sure about pervasive games; I'm not terribly familiar with them, so if you could write or link to a good definition of them, that would help. What I'm writing here is based on a very rough idea of what they are from a little bit of Googling and glancing at some information.
I think that some of them might be on topic, while some are closer to sports, RPGs, or computer games, which are off-topic. Essentially, I would say for pervasive games, if social interaction, strategic skill, and random chance (dice, cards, RPS) are the bulk of the game, they could probably be considered on-topic, like Werewolf or the social aspects of Diplomacy (which also has a board, so that helps).
If there's a significant physical aspect or geographic aspect (as in some Assasin's games or geocaching), it may be off topic; better for a dedicated pervasive games forum, or possibly considered a sport. If there's a substantial roleplaying aspect, or LARP like aspects, it might be more appropriate for a roleplaying forum. If there's a considerable online aspect like Alternate Reality Games, a computer gaming forum could be more appropriate.
I think that we should generally try to be inclusive if possible here; try not to close anything as off topic if it could be considered on topic. However, there's a certain aspect of "I'll know it when I see it."
We can also try and apply the rules of thumb that I listed in another answer about what's on topic; "playable on or around a table" may have to be stretched a little, but Diplomacy already stretches that (as you need to be able to go off and make and discuss alliances in secret, so a substantial portion of the game is not around the table). I think a guideline for what is acceptable is that only social interactions may be taking place elsewhere than on or around a table; if there are substantial physical components beyond that, you're rapidly approaching something different than what we cover here.
For reference, the rules of thumb I listed:

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

An interesting note about 4. Be Playable by hand, by human players implementing all the rules. would rule out at least one CCG. NFL Showdown, used an electronic card reader to determine which player was the most important for a certain offensive vs. defensive play. It required that you scan the plays, and player cards to determine yardage, interceptions, etc. Not saying that (4) isn't a good general rule, but there are always going to be exceptions. There also is a board game that has a computer/safe talk to you as a kind of timer for events (cannot remember the name).

I think we should be more restrictive and keep it to Board and Card games, that's even a little wider than I like, but it get's harder to restrict it after that.  I'm not looking forward for being the repository of all knowledge for Candy Land.

CANDY LAND!!!!!

The repository for all knowledge for Candy Land could fit in a Stack Exchange comment box, so you probably don't have to worry much if it does eventually happen. :)


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Are game design questions on topic?
Are questions about new game design and development on topic?
Example: How do I become a professional game designer?
They were voted as such in the Area 51 proposal.
(Note: To allow easier discussion, this question was separated out from 'What to do when a question had some votes to be on-topic on definition phase?').

In the absence of either an existing Stack Exchange site for board game development (like gamedev.stackexchange.com) or a proposed and seriously committed to alternative on Area51 (unlike Tabletop Game Design), I think they are very much on-topic - as long as they are tagged appropriately.


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What should our logo and site design look like?
One of the big 7 questions.

One suggestion per answer please

Logo guidance, from Jin (resident UI designer for at least some of the Stack Exchange sites):

Please note: I prefer gray-scaled logo submissions, that way we can judge the IDEA of the logo more objectively. We can always add colors to the logo later. Also, the logo itself(sans the site title text) should be able to fit in a square dimension nicely. This way we can use it for favicons, mobile touch icons etc.

er... usually doesn't Jin, SE's graphics guy, start this question, since he's the one who will be making the question?  Yes, I'm aware this is one of the big 7...

I was trying to think of a logo that could convey both board and card games, while not trying to be too specific, or using copyrighted images.
I bashed these out in a few minutes to try and mimic a checkboard with playing pieces.

I then decided to add the four card suites, to show both board games and card games.

Again, they're not much, but hopefully they'll get things rolling.  All constructive criticism is welcome!

It's a god start.

Too abstract. I'm a big fan of abstracts and playing cards, but I think we should have something with a bit more humor, which references more modern boardgames as well as the classics.

Also honestly there's some optical-illusion vibration going on with those color inversions that hurts my eyes.  I'll bet a checkerboard pattern could make a nice site element somewhere, though.

The first thing that springs to mind is a (famous?) playing piece in front of a deck of cards (perhaps the latter shouldn't be distinguishable as playing or specific game cards).

I was thinking one of the workers in Carcassone.

@Codemwnci - Agreed, a Meeple is a good idea, and recognizable, but I'm not sure about the legality of it.

A Meeple, that's what I was trying to remember. Thanks! That would have driven me crazy all night.

Power to the meeple.

+1 for meeples if we can get 'em.  There are a ton of third-party sites out there with meeple imagery and products so it may be legally clear.

A couple meeples sitting around a table, playing cards.

If well designed, it can work.

I like it, but if you don't know what a meeple is it might give more emphasis to card games.

I also like the idea of using both board and card game imagery.
My thinking was the most easily recognizable iconography for card games is standard-aspect-ratio playing cards arrayed as they are when held, and the most recognizable and still somewhat ambiguous game board is the chess and checkers board.

It's gray-scale per the instructions and I put literally no thought into the typography, so this is just a conceptual design. Additional things that could be tweaked by a professional:

spread of the cards
relative scale of cards to board
the absence of lines on the top and bottom of board, which are currently there to intimate that the board continues out-of-frame

Does anyone know the copyright rules of using board game pieces in the Logo?
I like @Jon Hadley's idea about the cards and a board game piece, but not sure of the legality.

A big pile of spilled out random game boxes with some dices/tokens/figures in front.

I like the random game pieces, but not a big pile of them. Maybe a die, couple game pieces, and a deck of cards thrown together as if they just fell out of something.

My suggestion would be a big king's chess piece for the logo. There shouldn't be any legal issues with it. It is easily recognizable and unambiguously liked to board games.
For the design one could add an assortment of Go, checkers and those generic cone game pieces, some dice or fake money bills.

sorry im new here, but that would crash with chess.se, no?

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


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Problem with expansion tag
I was looking at the battlestar-galactica tag and noticed that it seems to define two additional tags for the expansions, namely "battlestar-galactica-pegasus" and "battlestar-galactica-exodus".  Neither tag has any entries.  However, there are two questions   tagged exodus. I attempted to edit those questions so that their tag was "battlestar-galactica-exodus", but encountered an error:

Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:
'battlestar-galactica-exodus' exceeds maximum tag length of 25 characters

What should we do about this?  Maybe switch to "bsg-exodus"?  But that seems less clear...

My bad - I think I added those to the wiki blindly believing I'd used them before, but clearly I hadn't.  I think bsg-exodus is clear enough personally but I'm intimately familiar with BSG already so I'm biased.
Edit: I fixed the wiki (edit queued, that is) to link to the existing pegasus and exodus tags, at least.  They may be fine as they are.

I recommend renaming the tags to add the "bsg-" prefix.  Even if people don't know "bsg", the scoping will help to convey that these aren't new (as-yet-unknown-to-the-reader) games.

We can now rename it
All sites are now allowed to use tags with 35 characters. Thus we can rename these tags to battlestar-galactica-pegasus and battlestar-galactica-exodus.


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"Name that game" type of question is on-topic?
See What's the name of this board game?
In Gaming.SE this type of question is very popular. Should we consider them on-topic?

Yes, that's a great kind of question for this site. We have an example already, where it's worked out very well. (Speaking of which, we should probably decide on one tag for both of these).
These questions have an objective answer (the original game the questioner was thinking about). They can have multiple potential answers, if the questioner wasn't specific enough, or some answers may provide more detail that would allow the questioner to positively identify the game in question. If there is not enough detail to answer at first, this can be clarified through comments and edits to the original question.
So yes, I think that this format works very well for StackExchange, and think that it's definitely on topic for this one.

In the months since this was first brought up, Jeff has questioned their value, and the biggest concerns that arose are that they don't require subject matter expertise to answer, and that no one other than the OP can truly know if they've been answered, meaning that they can easily become broken windows. (Upvotes tend to mean "I believe this is a good guess" rather than "This answer is useful".) As long as those issues don't become problems here, those questions will probably fit in well.

I would suggest to always use the [identify-this-game] tag instead of the [Name-that-game] tag. It should be set as a tag synonym.
This tag name come from gaming.stackexchange (71 questions with this tag so far), so I think we should keep it as a standard.

So wit will be.


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Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline
The Elevator Pitch
This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine the user who will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to grab their attention. It should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. Make every... word... count.
Here are some creative examples:

Gawker: Daily Manhattan media news and gossip. Reporting live from the center of the universe.
Gizmodo: The gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it’s unnatural.
Autoblog: We obsessively cover the auto industry.
DumbLittleMan: So what do we do here? Well, it’s simple. 15 to 20 times per week we provide tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane.
Needcoffee.com: We are the Internet equivalent of a triple espresso with whipped cream. Mmmm…whipped cream.

Use it as a Tagline
A shorter elevator pitch can be used as a tagline — something you can display in the header at the top of the page. If it doesn't fit, consider shortening it or creating a separate tagline. Here are some great examples:

Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
Lifehacker: Don’t live to geek, geek to live!
The Simple Dollar: Financial talk for the rest of us.

The Motto (don't forget your logo)
A logo begs for it own little, short tagline — like a motto. Maybe the tagline inspires the logo; Maybe it's the other way around. Mottos make good t-shirt, bumper stickers, and other marketing material. Either way, you'll recognize a good motto when you see it:

Just do it.
Think Different.
The Uncola.
Intel inside.
Like a rock.
The king of beers.

…and perhaps all this leads to a proper name and domain for your site… eventually. So let's start from the basics. Come up with a killer elevator pitch, tagline, and/or motto!

I am assuming one "pitch" per answer for voting purposes? Is this still an active question?

Yeah, it's probably corny, but I figured this would get the ball rolling.
The Tag Line

Card and Board Games:  We love games more than anyone else.

The Motto

That's how we roll.

I'm aware the phrase "We love games more than anyone else" may irritate other board-game discussion sites, but to me it certainly gets your attention, and could get people talking.

We know everything about games so you don't have to.
Variations:

We know everything so you don't have to
We know what you don't
We know everything about gaming so you don't need to
Knowing everything about games
We know
We know all games

The Tag Line: You may not know Jack, but we do!

Motto: Aces who know Jack.
(This is a bit heavy on the Card side, though.)

Motto: Board Gaming Q&A done right.
In my opinion, this would tell a user what BG.SE all about, and also convey its key difference to BGG as an all-embracing board gaming website:
BG.SE is specialized on one aspect only (board gaming Q&A), and actively tries to excel there. BGG on the other hand has lots of different features and aspects - it's good on many of them, but one can hardly expect them to excel at every aspect of their site.

very nice!  I like it.

although judging by the definitions from the question, that's more of a tagline than a motto...

Maybe a bit corny...

Board and Card Games: Answers from the Kings and Queens of gaming...

Motto:  Board Gaming Demystified

The Motto (or maybe even name for the site?)
Cardboard Conundrums
The Tagline (maybe too long, might be more of an elevator pitch)
Answering questions on games of wits and luck since 2010.


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Just how subjective can we get?
How subjective are we wanting BCG to be?
For example: Longest Game Session is a type of question I find to be far too subjective (it's almost a poll). It also falls on the wrong side of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective in my opinion.

Judging from gaming.stackexchange.com, game recommendations will be a frequent question type despite being fairly subjective, especially "What are some other games like X".
Gaming calls those on-topic and I think we should too, although those questions should be community wiki.
For a subjective question to be worthwhile, I think the voting has to mean something.  In the case of game recommendations, it means "oh yeah, I love this one too", but for others (like Longest Game Session) it's meaningless.

Game recommendation lists are useful and should be on-topic on this site IMHO, just as they are on gaming.stackexchange.com.
I voted to close the post mentioned above not only because it was chatty and more suited to a discussion board, rather than Q&A site, but also because even if it was answered, it would not in any way enrich the site or the members experience of it. It wasn't useful.

I agree that your example is on the bad side of too subjective. The point here is to talk about the games themselves, not take polls on subjects like people's favorite games or tell stories about a fondly (or painfully) remembered long session.
That said, a community wiki about what kinds of games people would recommend and why might not be a bad idea. Thoughts?


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What to do when a question had some votes to be on-topic on definition phase?
What to do when a question had some votes to be on-topic on definition phase? Respect the voters or redefine what is on-topic here?
Actual example: How do I become a professional game designer? See Are51 also.
If you think that question is off-topic, vote to close but don't down vote yet. We are learning here. Nobody knows what is a good question.

Yes, its a big question.  I feel we should be guided by the initial proposal, but not bound by it.

I think it would be better to open separate questions on meta for separate "types of questions". (This is how it typically goes on http://meta.cooking.stackexchange.com.) So the first answer could be one meta question.

@Erik: Done. Thanks.

I thought you'd separated 'Are game design questions on-topic' out into a different question, based on @Erik's suggestion, but I couldn't find it. Started one here instead: http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/236/are-game-design-questions-on-topic


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Card Game Legal Questions are off topic (apparently) can this be added to the of topic FAQ?
I asked this Magic: The Gathering question:
Are Magic The Gathering Proxy cards illegal to print?
It was closed as Off-Topic.  The main/first closer indicated that is was because the question was legal/law related.
I am usually very careful to check the Help Center so I don't post off topic questions.  There is nothing in there either way about legal questions.
Now, I know that listing everything that is off topic is not possible.  But legal questions are a fairly broad scope of questions to ban without indicating that they are not allowed.
Can legal questions be added to the Help Center as off topic ?

Legal questions are not off-topic per se. What SE is trying to avoid is to be considered giving personal legal advice. Some non-lawyers have been sued who ran websites that gave "free legal advice." Your question appeared to be asking for personal legal advice (or some people just decided that it sounded that way).

@user1873 - This is exactly what should be in the help page!  I know (now) but why not make clear for everyone?

it isn't a problem that needs to be addressed. We don't get a flood of legal questions, and we don't close very many of them. One of the problems with your question is that it is asking several different questions (it is unclear what you are asking) are proxies legal, does WotC have an "official" ruling, is there something you can show Costco.

I wholeheartedly disagree with Pat's answer, and think that we should be explicit that legal questions are off topic if that is the stance that we are going to take.
We do accept questions that are only superficially about board games. We allow questions about probability (drawing a specific cards by turn X, having Y lands by turn Z, etc.). We even allow questions about Magic Online that have absolutely nothing to do with the physical game's rules.
Would it really kill us to explain up front that legal questions just aren't on topic, period? Are we so concerned about saving a bullet point on the Help Page?

Agreed, and the asker here is a prime example of why what is and isn't on topic should be more clearly outlined, perhaps in more places than one. Not everyone reads certain pages, like the tour.

I wouldn't mind if legal questions were on topic, but I agree if they're not we should be clear.

@doppelgreener I understand why they aren't. First there's a liability issue, how liable are you for answers given, and can you be considered to be practicing law without a liscense? Second, the question is who's law, the law in say Sweden is different from the USA (which is why PirateBay famously laughed off a Disney DMCA notice) and anyone answering would give information on the law where they are, which may not apply.

@Andrew There isn't a liability issue -- contrary to popular misconception, people can advise each other with regards to the law without being liable as lawyers and it doesn't count as practicing law without a license. (That would require actually claiming to be a lawyer.) I moderate another stack where we engage on law questions because it's critical to our hobby. There is simply a choice stacks can make to make these off topic, perhaps due to expertise questions. (I'm not even aware of one here though actually.)

I'm cautiously in favor of adding a bullet point to the help center to clarify this, and can do so if there's enough consensus. The one thing I'm wary of is that it actually is already pretty long, so the odds of anyone actually noticing are relatively slim. I might be more a fan of this if we try to shift some of the details out of the help center and into a canonical meta post, so that the help center can be more focused on the quick lists.

@Jefromi I agree, conciseness is good if we want people to pay attention. The list of examples is taking up half of the post, and I'm not convinced that we need so many examples. I think most people can figure out what "a board or card game that can be played around a table" is without 16 examples. A smaller list would be fine too, like "Magic: the Gathering, Checkers, or Warmachine". While we have the hood up, can we fix "boardgames" to be "board games", and not capitalize "Board Games" unless we're referring talking about "Board and Card Games"? I wish I had edit privileges on that page...

@Rainbolt Well I can't grant you access, but: https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1669/on-topic-help-center-spring-cleaning/1670#1670

@jefromi - I agree that a link from the help center to a "canonical meta post" is great.  A concise list is crucial to getting the bulk of the visitors to read it.  Just need to have the details somewhere (and have it linked to from the help center so that it is clear that it is "official").

There is no need to add this to the Help Center.
This information is contained right within the Tour.

Board & Card Games Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who like playing board games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing board games.

The on-topic section is attempting to define the boundaries of our charter.  As well as excise certain topics within that charter.
Your question is not directly aimed at our charter.  A board game expert would not be the best person to answer your question, you need a lawyer.
I should note that not every question that fails to directly score on our charter should be closed.  It is up to the community to make that judgement on a case by case basis.  As a moderator I'm not likely to overrule such decisions very often.
Consider a couple fake questions:

How can I safely store my huge MtG card collection?
Are MtG cards safe to feed to my hamster?

Both questions are superficially about MtG, but you wouldn't need to be knowledgeable about the game to answer the questions authoritatively.  I'd expect one question to be answered, and the second to get closed pretty quickly.

Even if a board game expert would not be the best person to ask, there is a good chance that they have found or read about similar cases and know how the company that published the games reacted in those cases. It is not completely unrelated.

While the 2ndQ, "Are MtG cards safe to feed to my hamster?" Probably would be a better fit for Veterinarian.SE, it might be reasonable that someone who plays MtG knows the composition of MtG cards (quite possibly people who PnP). But, it probably is off-topic because it isn't really about board&card games.

@user1873 - if it got a great answer fast, it just might survive. :)  It's a community call along with each respective questioner.  If they want an answer from Boardgamers, they are free to ask.  It's just when the question strays away from being directly about our games that the question risks being closed.

Question 2 is entirely on topic for MtG: do not eat the delicious cards!!


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B&CG is now the definitive place for Magic: the Gathering questions
Since many of you likely won't have seen this, I'd like to draw your attention to
Why is the Magic the Gathering proposal shutting down?
It seems an executive decision has been made that a stand-alone MTG site would not be viable. Board and Card games is now officially the place on StackExchange to ask your MTG questions. Which is great, since magic-the-gathering is the number one most-talked about game on the site, by some margin.
So if you've been holding off on getting stuck in because you were waiting for another site, wait no longer! Tell your friends! More Magic players in this community will lead to better questions, better answers, and more clout when asking the devs for Magic-specific features.
Happy questioning. :)

I think it'd be nice to get some more representation for other collectible games -- L5R and the like -- to go along with our Magic stuff. I just can't contribute much since I don't play any of them. :/

@Alex P - I agree. On both points. ;)

Now that we're sorta taking on the proposed site's mantle, I think there is the question of how we feel about the more specific, narrowly-scoped questions -- take note of some of the "top questions" on the proposal, like "What is the best way to counteract  in ?" and "I'm considering [Card A] and [Card B] for my deck. Which would be better?"

@AlexP - the best way to judge that is just for folks to ask questions as they need the answers.  I assume it is all on topic as long as it meets the usual requirements of the site faq.


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We should implement Magic the Gathering pop-ups on hover
In the comments to the original linking syntax request, ghoppe said:

Thanks for the card links. As the guy who whipped up the jsfiddle, I
  admit I lifted the tooltip function (which is open source) to speed
  the creation of the popup. But there is an API to retrieve just the
  images from gatherer — any popup script could be used. e.g. The Cheese
  Stands Alone I completely understand the stance of not wanting to use
  undocumented APIs, so I'll take what we can get. ;) – ghoppe May 3 at
  1:13

Kevin Montrose's answer there says

Do note that the AutoCard feature only seems to document opening new
  windows, that nifty hover affect is something else. I'll do some
  digging to see if that is documented anywhere, but if not we can't
  copy that particular behavior.

Like many of us, I'm a programmer of some experience myself. My question is: why shouldn't we implement this anyway, even if the image service is undocumented?
Reasons to implement:

It's very easy: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?type=card&name=The%20Cheese%20Stands%20Alone
The original blog post uses the tool-tip hover as the first example, implicitly endorsing it, even though it doesn't provide the code in the article text.
The original blog post was written in 2002. This API has been around, and been stable, for 10 years! Do we have any reason to think it will change?
It's very low-impact. This is not critical, site-breaking functionality. Nothing depends on it. If the API changes, we don't see pop-ups anymore. Oh well. That would mean... we wouldn't see pop-ups! Which is what we (don't) have, right now.
It would be very slick, and would present a much more 'pro' image to the MTG crowd.

What are the counter-arguments? It would be nice to have a chance to discuss the issue as a community, and hear the issues.

Point #2 is highly relevant. I didn't notice it earlier, but that page does literally say "Do you want to do this? You totes can!"

Yes, that's not even just an implicit endorsement, it's explicit.

agreed and upvoted :)

I've contacted Wizards of the Coast directly about this issue. Depending on their response, I'll have a better answer for you all.

Update! I was put in contact with the WOTC Assistant Brand Manager. Hopefully this keeps working its way up the chain.

Update: Redux -- after a long radio silence, I've started the contact process anew.

@ire_and_curses, Is this legal in the first place?

@Aarthi, Aaand?

@Pacerier - What makes you think this is not legal? Also, Aarthi left SE some time ago.

Anymore news on this feature?

Could someone please look into this again. It's almost 4 years ago this was asked and most magic oriented websites have this feature and it would greatly improve this website in my opinion

Sorry to Necro-Post but has there been any progress for or against including this? I agree with @IvoBeckers that it would be a very handy addition to the site.

I've written a userscript that does this now. You can get it from GreasyFork.

I'd love to see this made a standard part of the site, so that I have one less Chrome extension installed. I used this earlier today and it worked wonderfully. I didn't notice any increase in page load time.

FWIW, as of version 1.50 (just released today, January 23, 2018), my SOUP user script now includes an implementation of this feature.  It uses the Scryfall API, which I've also changed my improved [mtg:...] card link support in SOUP to use per this feature request.
Unlike the [mtg:...] link reimplementation, however, the hover card popups are enabled also for manually created card links to Gatherer or Scryfall (since people tend to mix the two link types and, while testing this feature, I found it really annoying to have the popups appear for some card links but not for others).
(If you have both SOUP and Marc's HoverCard user script installed, you may see two card popups appear for some card links.  This should be otherwise harmless, although I do hope that my version should be good enough to make HoverCard redundant for SOUP users.  Please let me know if you feel there's something I should add or fix in my implementation of this feature.)


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Should Arqade migrate questions about online board games here?
Over on the video game site Arqade a discussion about an online card game platform called OCTGN is taking place. The suggestion there is that since this is an implementation of a way to play (physical) card games, such questions would be better off being migrated here. If that was the consensus, we would start to receive all such questions asked over there.
Obviously, this is a bit of a gray area between the two sites. So far, we have been allowing most questions about online implementations.
What do you think?

No, we are not a technical support site. These type of questions are a better fit for Superuser.SE
The relevant information was provided by the head support lead for the software, keldon52

The purpose of this software isn't for a specific card game, or board game, it supports many games. The problem is, we aren't forwarding people here for questions on how to play rummy, we're forwarding people here for problems with the software, or port forwarding, or how to log into the client. Other ones would be "How do I make a game, how do I scroll around the board, how do I tap a card, shuffle a deck, invite 4 players and setup some complicated match".

These technical questions are likely not a good fit for the site.

Although it's not a perfect parallel, BoardGameGeek.com has been increasingly sending discussion about even computer implementations of board games to the sister site VideoGameGeek.com.


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Should this question about fonts be closed?
The recent question Designing - How do you approach finding the right font for your game? has been put on-hold as "primarily opinion-based".
Should this question really be closed? I am concerned that

Most of us don't know much about fonts, so it's hard to judge the subjectivity of the question.
There is a desire to migrate the question to a site that might be more suitable.
Reading this answer, I find myself thinking this is an existence proof for exactly the kind of non-subjective answer, written by a game designer, that makes this question acceptable.

Regarding the second point, it is well established that a question can overlap multiple sites, and can therefore be on-topic for both. In particular, this B&CG specific-discussion describes our current consensus.

I think it should be reopened.
The question isn't asking what font should I use, it is asking how do I figure out what font I should use. The first question I agree would be opinion based, but the one that is actually being asked is not. As Joe's answer shows it does have an answer that is objective.
As freekvd says in his answer this is not currently answerable by a graphics designer, but I think that is perfectly ok. Here we can help them define what sorts of things they should look for in the font (does it need to be readable from across the table, are you trying to get a sci-fi feel, etc.) and once they know the sorts of things they should look for they can then go to GD.SE and ask them "I am looking for a font with X, Y, and Z characteristics. What are good fonts that meet those criteria?"

Agreed. Maybe it just needs to be edited somehow so that everyone will stop assuming the OP is asking for specific font choices?

I did some research, and I was wrong to flag for migration. According to this abnormally large post:

[Migration] should only be used when you are 100% certain that not only does the question not belong on the site where it was asked, but that it absolutely does belong on the site you are targeting with the migration.

I am 100% sure that it belongs on Graphic Design. I am only 60% sure that it does not belong here. 60% is not good enough.
This does not mean the question is reopenable.
Just because it belongs here does not mean that it is a well-written question. I was not among the original close voters, but if I were, I would have used a custom reason:

This question does not contain enough details to provide a solid answer in a reasonable amount of space.

Arguably, voting to close as Too Broad would also be correct here. In any case, it doesn't matter where the question ultimately ends up - it needs more detail.

Do you still think that your custom close reason (or Too Broad) are still valid on the question in light of the existing answers?

@murgatroid99 Yes. The too broad close reason means "you can imagine a book being written on the topic". I can imagine a somewhat short book being written on this topic (hence the "arguably"). The custom reason seems more educational: it describes my actual problem with the question.

I think the answer to this question is absolutely relevant for B&CGSE, but those who can best answer it are over at Graphics Design. As mentioned, they have a whole category for font selection. They might not have the same experience with board games, but they do have a lot of experience with a wide range and variety of all-purpose objects including packaging, pamphlets, magazines, outdoor advertising, etc.
It is a common misconception that graphic design is only about look and feel. Functional design is much more important to a good designer.
That said, after coming home from work today I checked with my wife, a graphic designer, and she said the question is unanswerable in its current form. There are too many different card sizes and text amounts that would lead to different font choices. Catan resource cards are small, and on hand. Machi Koro has regular sized cards that are constantly on the table, at an angle. Dixit has large cards, where text only appears as part of the artwork.
In its current form, the question should remain closed. If it's made more specific, it could be re-opened here, or on Graphic Design.

My number one takeaway from this answer was that you had to ask your wife, a graphic designer, whether the question was suitable.

Gotta love the irony, right?

I wouldn't be so eager to say it's unanswerable. It's definitely true that there's not enough information there to choose a font, but it's not asking for that. It's asking about the process - what things do you need to consider? And that's a really helpful question to answer. Sure, we could pin the OP down on their current game, and they'd get a useful answer, and it might help a few people in the future, but we could also provide starting points and directions that'll be useful for a lot more people.


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Clarification of beta status
Since many of you may not routinely follow the global meta-meta, I wanted to point out an important recent meta-meta post about the status of endless beta sites like ours:
Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites
The executive summary is:

We're not in any danger of being closed.
The rule of thumb for graduation is 10 questions/day. We presently average 4-6.

It is possible that we might remain in this "non-graduated" state for a very long time. There is an ongoing discussion within SE, and on the meta, about differentiating between the first 90 days "beta mode" and the kind of steady state sites like us find ourselves in. This has the potential to lead to some intermediate changes, such as removing the beta label, site elections, or minor site CSS tweaks, or... Everything is up for debate.

"Everything is up for debate" --> brings to mind "the only thing we know for sure is that we don't know anything for sure"...

I wish I knew what can be done. As it is it's mostly an MtG site (30% of all questions). When I have questions I come here, but I know that I get better answers at BGG. I'm not sure what is needed to change that.

@zespri I think the mechanics of asking and answering questions are better here than BGG.  What BGG has going for it is a large population, and participation from the actual creators of the games who can give authoritative answers.

I would say one of the big problems as it currently stands is that when a site goes from beta to live the pool of people who can help clean up the site shrinks by a large margin as all the requirements to perform actions increase by a large margin.

@bwarner But we're encouraged to search before posting questions.  And if most of the time I can find an answer on BGG, doesn't that mean I should not post my question?

To be fair, we've already BEEN in beta for a long time.  I just noticed that one of my answers was from December 2010.

I'm surprised that the hurdle faced is average 10 questions a day. The longer it drags though, it will be tougher to bring the average up due to the long duration.
Any intention to conduct a drive for members to actively ask question? I think I can come up with 30 questions a month, 10 other people would then already help us sustain that average for a month.


text:
Please prioritise unbundling graduation "perks"
The latest criteria for considering site graduation is 10 questions/day.
As we are all painfully aware (2015, 2013, 2010), we have been in endless Beta forever, and that doesn't appear to be changing any time soon.
It seems obvious to me that this site has demonstrated its stability, continued interest, and the dedication of its user base.
I am concerned about three things with this continued "beta":

The site design looks generic and temporary. The "beta" label makes it hard to take us seriously, or realise that this is a stable community. And it deeply frustrates those of us who have worked hard to make this site viable.
We still have the same unelected moderators we appointed 6(!) years ago, and no process for the community to consider replacements. Obviously I am one of those moderators, but I don't see why this community should be expected to accept my benevolent dictatorship for 6 years, with no expectation of when or if it will ever change.
We are low-priority for site-specific improvements (e.g. chess board renderer, MTG autocard improvements).

Robert Cartaino makes an interesting argument here about the beta process. In essence i) the nomenclature is wrong and ii) this doesn't need to be an all or nothing process.
I strongly urge the StackOverflow team to look seriously at the idea of "unbundling" the components of the so-called "graduation" process. I don't think this limbo is fair to sites like ours. At a minimum we need to lose this unfair "beta" label, get a distinct CSS theme, and allow community elections.

The question-rate metric is as much about prioritizing SE's resources as anything else. All of the stuff you list takes time and people, and directing those toward the areas that need it the most is essential. So... Question rate as a proxy for need. It's all very communist, Bernie would approve.

@Shog9 - I understand the need for prioritisation. And question rate is clearly a powerful proxy for value. I am arguing that it is not correct for any site to be in the position we are in, 6 years on. To put it another way, it would be simplistic and wrong to use question rate alone as the prioritisation driver for all sites. Perhaps our situation is unusual, I don't know. But it deserves closer attention.


text:
So long and thanks for all the fish
Over the last year or so my activity here has dropped off, for a number of (predictable) reasons. It's been a long time coming, but I wanted to let you all know that I will be stepping down imminently as one of your moderators here at Board & Card Games. I started moderating here over five years ago, and it's time for a change.
It has been an honour to serve this community as a founding member and moderator, and it will always be something I remember with pleasure and pride. The site continues to go strong and I am sure the future is bright. I hope to still see you around occasionally, certainly the next time I have an ambiguous rule to clarify!
Take it easy. May all your dice rolls be sixes, your opponents be cursed with the wrong colour mana, and your available resources exactly match your intentions!
ire_and_curses

Thanks for the 5+ years, and hope you have time to play enough games that we'll see you again for a question or two eventually!

Thanks for everything!

Thanks guys! I'm sure I'll be around. :)

Thanks very much, it's been good having you as a moderator. I love your sign-off line. Take care. :)


text:
Is this type of soliciting comment acceptable?
From ripper234's profile:

14h   comment     What is a good strategy
  for using the Doomsday card?
If you
  want more Magic experts to look at
  your question, trying asking here:
  draw3cards.com
15h    comment     What
  should I buy to teach Magic, The
  Gathering to someone ?
This looks like
  a great question for draw3cards.com
15h   comment     Why Does Magic Use The
  “Paris Mulligan” Rule?
This looks like
  a great question for draw3cards.com
Nov 5     comment     Magic: The Gathering
  stack
Note - see draw3cards.com
Nov 5
    comment     Why would you want to play
  with a deck bigger than 60 cards in
  MTG?
Note - see draw3cards.com for a
  dedicated Stack Exchange.

I believe this user actually owns/runs the (v.1) StackExchange site http://draw3cards.com. I sympathise with the desire to increase traffic. And it's true that the site might be of interest to the perusers of these questions.
But that doesn't change the fact that this is essentially (targeted) spam advertising. Potentially, a comment of this type could be left on every MTG question on this site.
Is this acceptable? Would it be acceptable if it wasn't a site powered by the Stack Overflow engine? What about if it was an 'official' MTG StackExchange site?

Sorry, I thought that in light of the
discussion on Meta what I was doing was considered "ok". I will stop.
http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/207/whats-the-policy-for-questions-on-games-that-have-their-own-stackexchange-site

This is covered in
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/faq#promotion

May I promote products or websites I am affiliated with here?
Be careful, because the community frowns on overt self-promotion and tends to vote it down and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if they happen to be about your product or website, so be it. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers. Also, if a huge percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details.

Basically in small doses, so long as the answer or comment answers the question this is generally OK. When it is all you see from that particular user, or it is randomly sprayed over every post that user sees, then ... not so much.

Per Robert Cartaino, SE1 sites are not exempt from normal site policies.
As a consequence, the comments were removed.

A previous discussion (not dup, but related) is https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/207/whats-the-policy-for-questions-on-games-that-have-their-own-stackexchange-site
A couple issues for me:

Links off to other sites - We use these all the time, in general this is allowed..  In answers, a link to further information is relevant and useful.  Tagging every question about a game with a link to go elsewhere doesn't strike me as great idea.  If the link was in the form of an answer and explained further why that site would be better for that particular question I think it would be better.
Disclosure - It seems apparent that ripper is the owner of the site.  A SE1 site should not get a free pass from the disclosure requirements of the FAQ.

In short, I can tolerate this in small doses, but I don't want every MtG question to get a link off to another site.
Perhaps we should link to them in the tag wiki?


text:
Why are we still in Beta?
I've read the meta discussion at What are the success criteria for an area 51 beta site, as well as the blog post When will my site graduate?
Neither of these helps me understand why Board and Card Games continues to languish in beta status. As of this writing, we've been in beta for 1157 days. That's over 3 years.
Compare us to a non-beta site like Bicycles. Consider the Area 51 statistics for Bicycles and Board and Card Games:
                              BicyclesBoard and Card Games
Questions per day4            3.8
Answered              100%    98%
Avid users             173       449
Total users            1735     4852
Answer ratio          3.5        2.3
Visits/day              843        5780
It's clear that we have a dedicated user base that isn't going anywhere, and we have significant site traffic, almost an order of magnitude more than Bicycles.
I understand that the Area 51 stats are just guidelines, and are not a hard and fast rule for kicking a site up out of beta. I understand that every site is different. But I think it's not unreasonable to feel frustrated that we don't seem to be progressing, or have any indication of when we might leave beta.
It feels like we're being ignored, because StackExchange can't quite decide what should be done with us.
Please: look again at our status, and respond here with

Some insight into why we continue to remain in beta.
Under what circumstances we might migrate out of beta.
When we might reasonably expect that to happen.

Update: So here we are, 8 months later. Any movement on this?

6 months ago or so, we only had 3k visits per day. The questions per day ratio is pretty low, but not as bad as it used to be. I for one would love for us to get offical status, because when we do you can run queries against the database at data.stackexchange.com

@user1873, soon beta sites over a certain age (B&CG will qualify) will also have data in data explorer. That said, you guys still need some info, which I'll get to you this afternoon.

Read also this answer: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/136001 It's more about … "Has the site grown into a stable and growing collection of high-quality content with a community that all-but-guarantees continued success for a long time to come?" [than the numbers]

@starplusplus - Thanks for the link. But I don't think Robert's answer there adds anything. This site is stable. It does have a growing collection of high-quality content. And it has a solid core of users who aren't going anywhere (which is what one of the metrics explicitly measures). Sounds like end of beta to me.

On Japanese, we were told sometime in March that we were in the graduation queue.  It looks like only a handful of sites have graduated since then, so my guess is you're stuck in the queue waiting on the designers to catch up.

Board & Card Games is looking pretty strong. I think it will probably graduate soonish (which is a technical measurement). When the last community self-evaluation came through, the results indicated that quality is nice and high, but Q&A numbers are holding steady - not rising. That's the biggest concern. Questions are a Q&A site's life blood (unsurprisingly), so we elected to hold off on graduating the site to make sure we weren't about to witness a precipitous drop-off in the number of questions being asked. Basically, we needed to make sure the core community here wasn't going to drop off.
In all other ways, the site seems like it is ready for graduation and elections. When the next evaluation rolls around I think the team will look on it favorably (but I make no guarantees).
(Be advised, though, that the backlog of sites waiting for graduation designs is quite long, so even if we graduate the site tomorrow it will be quite some time before the community sees the results.)

I wonder if the fact that we don't have a graduation design might be discouraging people from becoming core contributors (first impressions and all). Pity that the site design backlog is so long.


text:
On the over-enthusiastic use of community wiki to protect poor questions
I have recently seen several examples of highly subjective questions which were made community wiki by a moderator, presumably in order to give them some semblance of propriety. The most current example is Who is your favourite game designer?
Now, to some extent I sympathise with the problem the moderators face. You don't necessarily want to just close these questions without any community support, lest you face the accusation that you are being too heavy-handed or authoritarian. You may expect the community to eventually deal with the question. However, in the interim, the question continues, people get points, and it seems unfair. Or maybe you just have a more liberal outlook on subjective questions, and feel that more site content is basically a positive thing. So, CW, and where's the harm?
In this situation, it may seem reasonable to convert the question to community wiki. No one gets any rep any more, the close votes can continue to accrue, and if the community feels strongly enough, it will eventually be shut. Also, on Stack Overflow, there is a history of users pressuring others to convert subjective questions to CW, normally with the threat of close votes if they do not comply (the so-called 'Wiki police'). This is a norm that many users feel they understand.
There are four problems:

Subjective questions are not inherently evil. But they are much harder to write well. Most of them are poor questions, and should not exist. This is described in detail in the blog post Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. This is official Stack Exchange policy.
Converting a post to CW requires moderator intervention. It therefore sends out a strong signal. It says "I am a moderator on this site, and I think this question is ok, because I haven't stopped it, and in fact I am encouraging it to exist." This is harmful. Most users are not very experienced with the Stack Exchange engine, and they are looking for guidance about community norms. This sends the message "lousy questions are fine, as long as a mod can stop by and fix them up with CW."
Community Wiki was recently banished for all normal users. Why was this done? Why can only moderators set the CW flag? It happened to avoid exactly this situation - weak questions being protected from closure by the nullifying of reputation gains. CW was originally intended only for the situation where you have an answer, and would like to explicitly dilute your ownership, and encourage the community to improve it. It is a signal that says 'this content is jointly owned - please improve it'. The reputation feature is just a side-effect. Preventing reputation increases is not the purpose of community wiki.
It is no longer reasonable (if it ever was) to pressure users into making questions community wiki. This is also official policy. The line is now much sharper; for almost all questions, they either should exist, or they should be closed. There is no CW limbo space. And it's not sufficient that a user request their question be wikified either; the reason for the CW needs to be clear and valid.

Please can we stop hitting poor questions with the community wiki flag without careful thought?

Perfect! StackExchange has evolved, old behavior from old times of SO isn't applicable anymore.

I'm not sure if you're saying we should stop CWing questions and just leave them alone, or stop CWing questions and close them

@Michael Mrozek: I'm saying these questions shouldn't be made CW. Whether a moderator should close them is not clear. I would argue not. If the community judges them to be unsuitable, they will eventually be closed. I'm certainly keen to hear other's thoughts on this as well though.

I think the question linked at the top of this one should be closed with a vengeance, before it starts spawning other similar questions.

@bwarner I was shocked when that question didn't close instantly

@ire_and_curses - I take mild offense at the implications of "over-enthusiastic" and "without careful thought", but otherwise I see your point and I'll take that into consideration.

@Michael Mrozek - I'll admit I made an error in judgment in changing the question to CW, but if you were shocked to see it still open, why didn't you vote to close it?  Not being hostile, just curious.

@littlebobbytables give the man another 100 rep and I'll bet he would have. :-)

@Put Ludwig - I misread the rep requirement as 250; I was one line off on reading the requirements.  It still could have been flagged for moderation attention in that case.

@LittleBobbyTables Exactly what ire described in #2 happened; I was about to flag it, and I realized a mod had made it CW and figured that meant you were already aware of it and decided not to close. I don't blame you for making it CW or anything; the rules about CW and subjective questions on this particular SE are really fuzzy

@Michael Mrozek -- I see.  I can't speak for the other mods, but if you think we made a mistake, I'd be of the opinion to go ahead and flag it anyways.  The worst thing that happens is we have one more message to read.  And I do agree, the rules for what is subjective here is very fuzzy.

Sorry I am traveling and doing too much on my iPad will drive me crazy.  Which other recent posts have been made CW?

@Pat Ludwig - Using this search it looks like there's only one other: Describe your favorite game in one sentence.

Ok, so it isn't quite an epidemic yet.  Good discussion though!

"Who is your favourite game designer" vs "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective": go!
Great subjective questions inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”: I thought it was made pretty clear in my question that I was looking for, not just the name of people's favourite designer, but what qualities they brought to the table that made them a good designer.  Sure, some people's answers were just "I like designer X because he designed game Y".  But the question itself asked for more than that.
Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers: Again, I specifically asked to see the reasoning behind people's picks for the top designers working in the field today.  It would have been nice to get more of that, but what can you do?
Great subjective questions have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone: If you can find "ranting and flamebait" in either the way the question was asked, or any of the answers that were provided, then colour me amazed.
Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions: Once more.  The question asked people to say what qualities and strength they'd discovered over all the games in a designer's career that made that designer a favourite.  If people didn't provide such, then they weren't answering the question as posed.
Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references: As above.  How can you nominate someone's design work as great without reference to the unique mechanics and flair they've added to the mix?
Great subjective questions are more than just mindless social fun: Was this really a "so, what did you have for breakfast this morning?????" type question?  If you can't acquire a deeper understanding of boardgames by investigating what the best designers are doing and how you are doing it, then I just don't know how else you can.
I accept that some of the answers given were, in practice, less useful than they might have been.  The aforementioned "I like designer X because I like game Y".  I do however resent the allegation that "the question obviously fails all the criteria in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective".  It wasn't a lazy, thoughtless question designed to snag a hundred replies and some free reputation - or at least, that very much wasn't the intention!  Yes, I'm new here, perhaps the question wasn't phrased as well as it might have been, and maybe on balance it's better off closed.
Nevertheless, I'm finding these sites rather frustrating due to the lack of obvious rhyme or reason as to whether a question is allowed or not.  Currently popular and highly rated question on the boardgames site: what game would you recommend to someone who wanted to play Monopoly with you?  HOW is that any more subjective than "what game would you recommend to someone who is looking for a game by a truly great designer (please show your workings)"?  Don't get me wrong, I like the Monopoly question, I'm just finding people's idea of "excessively subjective" questions, um, excessively subjective!  And I don't really understand why a few loud voices huffing and puffing about how awful a question is trumps at least as many people enjoying, upvoting, following and politely and (reasonably) intelligently debating the issue.

An interesting read! I think we both agree the answers are not what you wanted. My take on this is that there is a reasonable question there waiting to get out, but the execution could have been better. Specifically, I would not use the word 'favourite', and would have cut down the individual Q's you ask in the main body, which give a lot of wiggle room for not providing the detail you clearly wanted. It's also extremely broad; if you'd stuck to mechanics rather than designers, you might have found the answer to "what the best designers are doing" easier to achieve. My opinion. ;)

Re: "Huffing and puffing" - The issue is not about what volume of people enjoy a question. Interesting subjective questions always get lots of upvotes. This is an issue in itself (disproportionate reward). See e.g. the top SO questions. People like them. But people like forums too. Bottom line; if it improves the objective content of the site, and doesn't detract from other questions, it's good. It's taken Stack Overflow a long time to reach this point of view, and they've tried a lot of alternatives along the way.

Anyway, this has been discussed to death on meta. Related meta posts you may find interesting: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65128/should-we-have-a-subjective-version-of-every-stackexchange-site, http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com There are many more.

Don't get too hung up on "Currently popular and highly rated question on the boardgames site" defining questions that are actually good. I think it's true on most SE sites (certainly SO) that the graph of reputation vs. if a question is "good" is a bell curve; questions with no votes are generally not great, but the questions that get an absurd number of upvotes are almost always not great either -- they're massively subjective, and everyone who reads it thinks "hey, I know the answer to that!" (because everyone knows the "answer" to that) and upvotes it

The object is to ask specific questions on boardgames: strategy, rules and design in a Q&A format.  It isn't designed for list or poll type questions (and doesn't work well for them because of that).  It's so you can find the answers you need when you need them.  Not have to hunt through hundreds of posts like at Boardgamegeek.

That question should just have been closed since it isn't a specific, one-answer question.  Stack Exchange is designed for one-answer questions.  Having said that, the official Stack Exchange policy is that list type questions should be CW, as per here.  Since the no CW for questions policy has been implemented (which I think is great), there is now some ambiguity I believe over how to handle these questions.  Maybe one of the mods can get Robert Cartaino to chime in here.

I believe that the SO mods are watching each SE to see how/if CW is used.  To my knowledge not a whole lot of guidance has been given.


text:
What shall we call the tag for Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game (2010)?
After editing, this question makes it clear that it is about Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game, the 2010 version from Fantasy Flight Games, not the 2002 version (the rather similarly named Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame).
As aramis points out in the comments, there are a fair few games called Civilization, so disambiguation is likely to be an ongoing concern.
Clearly it needs a tag, but what should the tag be called?

Unless there are two questions on any game, it doesn't really need a tag as it will get removed automatically by the system after a period of time.
For those two, we might need to go with sid-meiers-civilization-2010 and sid-meiers-civilization-2002.

I believe that tags should be used to classify, not to identify.  This is one reason why tags would be removed from the system if they're not joining questions.
Things to consider about tagging are the usage patterns.  I can see three usage patterns for tags:

Looking at the tags on a question to help figure out the question (e.g. which civ game are they talking about?)
Selecting questions based on tags (e.g. search results of a tag, or filtering out questions based on tags)
Selecting appropriate tags for a question.

So, consider two different tagging schemes, for the proposed question:
A. 1 tag per game
[sid-meiers-civilization-2002],
[sid-meiers-civilization-2010]
B. No unique tag per game, but a unique collection (if known)
[civilization] [glenn-drover] [eagle-games] [2002],
[civilization] [kevin-wilson] [fantasy-slight] [2010]

How do these stack up on the three use cases?
1A.  If I know the publication date of the game I'm familiar with, then I'll know that it matches or doesn't match the game I'm thinking of.  Otherwise, this doesn't help me know.
1B.  If I know any of the publisher, designer, date, etc. of the game, then I'll know if it matches or not the game I'm thinking of.
2A.  I have only 1 tag to search or filter on, and I, again, must know the game based on date.
2B.  I can search or filter on a wider range of games.
3A. I need to know the publication date of the game in order to tag the question.  This may be difficult to obtain.
3B. To tag the question, I only give what I know about the game (designer, publisher, date, etc.) and it's also allowed to leave it ambiguous.  In an ambiguous state it's still useful for searching and filtering and even disambiguation, even if not complete.

Very interesting.  My first concern is that using 4 tags per game seems like a lot, and doesn't leave a lot of room for tags for other reasons.

What's the maximum # of tags?  I'm trying to maximize utility here.

5 or 10 depending on who you ask.  Either way, it gets used up fast when talking about multiple games, or say, a game and its expansions.

Well, part of my point is that all the tags aren't required.  I'd probably leave out the date, as I think it's less useful as a "classification".  Basically, you can classify just the question using tags, or you can classify the question and the game it's about using the tags.  Consider how useful a search like "strategy"+"martin wallace" would be when trying to figure out techniques for a brand new martin wallace game (this is under the assumption that game designers tend to have favorite mechanics)

Let's see what other folks think.  This would be a big change and set forth a tide of people editing nearly every question.

wouldn't this only change questions with games that have the same name?  I'm not suggesting we remove game-specific tags entirely, just that we treat the tag like a 'name' instead of a unique-id, and use additional tags to disambiguate (while adding utility)

once a few questions get retagged in this style, it seems only logical that it be extended to other questions (that may not need disambiguation).  I don't see an easy way to tell people not to do that (and enforce it).  Taken to the extreme, most questions on the site get edited for tags within a few weeks.