text:
What to do when an answer is no longer correct?
What happens when you roll "Off the top" of a result table?
@Todd recently discovered that FFG has updated their FAQ directly answering the question.
It is invevitable that some of our answers will become "wrong" over time with companies releasing FAQ's and errata.
I don't want these "wrong" answers (that may have been correct when issued) to remain at the top of the stack (whether by being accepted or through voting).
What is the best way for us to address this in the general sense?

Is there any reason you can't edit the answers and the question to reflect the new reality?
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/suggested-edits-and-edit-review/

I waffled between changing my existing, accepted answer and creating a new one. I questioned whether or not it is appropriate to significantly alter an answer that has already been accepted. As the answerer I felt like I'd be choosing the accepted answer, rather than the asker. Since I wasn't sure, I went with creating a new answer. I'm not saying that was the right thing to do, it's just what I went with.

I've run into this situation a lot on Gaming Stack Exchange (due to games being patched and the rules changing).  It is common and encouraged practice there to edit the answer to update it (even if it isn't your answer).  I've never seen someone complain about this in the situation where the edit is clearly accurate.  Creating a separate answer and requiring it to be upvoted and accepted again is not only confusing and time consuming, but it could be seen as unfairly gaining rep, since you're essentially asking everyone who voted for your earlier answer to upvote you again for the new one.

In the spirit of a discussion on SE podcast #7, I've completely re-written this answer to point to an excerpt from the show notes.

The intent of editing questions and answers is to offer more permanent resources that can evolve over time. It is important to displace the old, out of date information that is often entombed in Google; for example with Keyboard shortcut to access the first link in a Google search page? Jeff was surprised to find that almost all the searches he did produced old, obsolete, and sort of incorrect results — so he rolled up his sleeves and created a definitive answer, then edited the question and other answers. Hopefully future internet travellers will find this correct and up to date answer… and they can click edit to improve it, too!

I think this shows the canonical right answer to the original question is edit to make it right, which incidentally is what Jeff suggested in his answer and the position Joel took in updating the Google keyboard shortcut answer in the quote above. I mean if that's the position taken by the guys who came up with StackOverflow and SE, I'm inclined to agree.

I think the best option is to leave a comment on the currently accepted, now outdated answer - in addition to adding a new answer with a link to the new information. The comment is the only thing that would alert a casual visitor to the news until the new answer has been upvoted and/or accepted. (I think it's too optimistic to assume that authors of old questions will update their accepted answer - they may very well not be interested in the question any more.)

In this particular case, I don't think there's a need to worry about it.  I don't see much (if any) contradiction in Todd's two answers.
In general, any time an old question gets a new answer it will reappear on the front page for a bit.  The asker will always get notified that he has a new answer as well.  If the new answer is sufficiently more correct than the currently accepted one, I think the system will take care of itself.  I, for one, would change my accepted answer immediately in such a situation (i.e., the game's authors clarified the rules).
I suppose the only time we'd have to worry is if the asker is no longer an active member.

The problem with changing your accepted answer is that it's technically not the right of the answerer to decide what the accepted answer should be, IMO. In the example used, my two answers were very similar, but not exactly the same.

@Todd, you're correct, an answerer has no way (short of writing a good answer) to influence which one gets the checkmark.  I'm just saying that the system will compel an active user to want to change his accepted answer to a newer one that is better.

Oh, I misinterpreted what you wrote, sorry. When you said "I, for one, would change my accepted answer immediately", I thought you were talking about editing your answer. Now I realize you meant choosing the newer answer to be the accepted one.

@Todd How likely is it that the asker is going to see your new answer in this case and say "Now I wish I hadn't accepted it"?  If you're worried, you can add a comment to the asker to review your edited answer and let them decide whether to leave it accepted.  I'd much rather have an edited accepted answer than have to sort through two of them to find the "right" one.


text:
Should we allow game recommendations? (Answer - YES, but...read on!)
Please read before you vote!  (Do not upvote just because you think this is a good question.)
Simple question, big implications!
These questions have proved fairly popular on this site.  However some of them get closed.  Is it possible for us to come to agreement at this time as to whether they should be allowed at all?
If the answer is affirmative, then we can follow up with further meta questions attempting to define which kinds of questions should be allowed and if they should be community wiki'd or not.
I urge everyone to read Grace Note's essay "Handling game recommendations - how can we solve these two problems of quality?" on the topic over at gaming.stackexchange.com.  I don't think I can come close to doing the topic as much justice as just pointing y'all at that post!  The site's are quite similar in the type and style of questions so I believe we can reference that essay directly.
Please vote this question:

Up - If you feel game recommendations should be allowed here in some way
Down - If you feel that no game recommendation questions should be allowed.  On meta, this will have no effect on anyone's reputation.

Of course, feel free to provide other answers and comments.  This is a big topic!  If anyone would like to email me directly to provide feedback, use havoc@boldo.com.
========EDIT=========
Ok, this vote is over.  Thank you all for participating.   We will be allowing recommendation questions.  However, the SE team and long time mods from other sites have reminding me that these questions must conform to the guidelines set forth in the Good Subjective/Bad Subjective blog post.

Great subjective questions inspire answers that explain "why" and "how"
Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.
Great subjective questions have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.
great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions
Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references
Great subjective questions are more than just mindless social fun

Please join me in encouraging questions that meet the qualifications for "Good Subjective".  You can do any or all of the following (depending on rep) as you feel correct for the particular question.

Comment on questions that are Bad Subjective encouraging the submitter to improve the question (Please be polite, especially for new users)
Flag the post for moderator attention
Vote it down (please remember to revisit occasionally to see if it has been improved)

A question is ultimately judged upon it's answers (see #1, #2, #4 in particular).  For me, if the majority of a question's answers are short (1-2 sentences), the question most likely needs to be improved.

I've mentioned this question as a system message on the main site to draw more attention to it.

@LittleBobbyTables Random note: You can use HTML in system messages, so you could just link straight here: We are currently taking a vote on the topic "Should we allow game recommendations" on the meta site; please take a look and vote appropriately!

@Michael Mrozek -- It's strange, I tried that earlier and the tags came out all garbled, or not at all, but your sample text worked just fine.  Thanks for pointing that out!

It's pretty weird to use question votes as a polling system. Why not just let people vote on the question normally, and votes on answers will show how people feel about the points in those answers?

@Michael - it is one way to ensure that each person gets one vote.  Having multiple answers can split vote counts.  Also, some people will downvote opposing answers while others will not thus skewing the results (IMHO).

@Pat True; I like to hope people wouldn't do that (it seems to work ok on meta.SO)

I am for allowing this, with some stipulations.  I don't think that "dated" questions ("What's the best game coming out this year?") are much help when the date is past, but I do think that a question like "I enjoy XXX, are there other games like it?" should be disallowed.

@ALL: Sorry about the YES/NO posts. I got confused...

@Kempeth, no worries, I deleted them just to clear 'em out.

I know this is going to sound hostile (it's not meant as such), but "who put you in charge?" By which authority can you make the decision that "We will be allowing recommendation questions"? You can't do it as a moderator, and you can't do it based on 15 upvotes. A "question" like this seems to abuse the SE platform. It'd be a lot more conventional to ask the question, and allow people to answer and up/downvote the answers, until some kind of consensus emerged, rather than this attempt at an anonymous vote

@jalf - if you feel that I have done something inappropriate and have abused my moderator status then I urge you to email team@stackoverflow.com

@Pat: with this? Not at all. Your question here is in no way abuse. I'm just pointing out that questions on meta are really discussion points, not law. No single person can make the decision that "we will be allowing this". Community consensus decides what is allowed, and that can't be decided by a simple vote. Your using up/downvotes to vote for/against rec questions is something I'd consider unconventional and inefficient, but not "abuse". Editing a statement such as "We will be allowing recommendation questions" into a question is bogus. It's not right or wrong, it just has no authority.

But it's not abuse, it's nothing to do with your moderator status, and nothing that should be reported. :)

@jalf - you are incorrect in saying I have no authority though.  One of the moderator powers is the ability to edit the FAQ which governs the site.  Check out the Gaming FAQ where both shopping and game recommendations are disallowed.  Or the cooking FAQ which explicitly bans recipe requests of any kind.  Those decisions were all drawn from discussions, posts and yes, polls on their meta sites.  Those policies are now "law" and enforced by the moderators.

@jalf - Our FAQ also has sections that I cannot edit and are policy for all SE sites, particularly the "What kind of questions should I not ask here?" section.  Trying to moderate by those guidelines as well as the explicit wishes of this community to allow game recommendation questions is not easy.  There appear to be many folks that feel that I and the other moderators are not very successful at this.  If you have suggestions on how to bridge the gap, I'm happy to listen.

possible duplicate of Should we ban game recommendation questions? - Done

possible duplicate of Game Recommendation questions are banned

I accidentally voted to close as a dupe of a the wrong question, so please be careful if you intend to follow my lead. I edited the auto generated comment to reflect the question that I actually meant to vote for.

Seeing that the first sentence of a question is "Please read before you vote!" makes me somewhat sad.

Possible duplicate of Game Recommendation questions are banned

I recently read the Stack Overflow blog post "Q&A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!" and I think it's quite relevant to this discussion.
Let me provide an example that applies Jeff's thinking.
Example
Let's say I am shopping for board games and I really don't like the trading mechanic in games.
I could be really lazy and ask, "What games don't have a trading mechanic?". Or I could be kind of lazy and ask, "Are there any games like Settlers of Catan that don't involve trading?"
Let's imagine, instead, I try to solve the same question without seeking game recommendations. This opens up a whole lot of opportunities for good questions; here are a few examples:

"Do the Ticket to Ride series of games involve any trading? If so, which ones?"
"Does trading happen very often during a game of Settlers of Catan?"
"How can I make trading less important in Monopoly?"
"I don't like how much negotiating trades slows down a game. How can I speed things up?"
"How can I tell if a game involves lots of trading?"

My Point Is...
Game recommendation questions stop people from learning. By restricting game recommendation questions, we're likely to get more questions (and better ones). This is especially true if we provide some suggestions on how to replace a recommendation question with a better one.

Update
In the case that we allow game recommendations, the above principles are still applicable.
Although my argument is against recommendation questions, there are parts of it that shouldn't be thrown out if we decide to allow game recommendations. We can advise users (especially in the FAQ) that questions like the examples above are preferred over general recommendation questions, and link to guidelines on how to do so. This could encourage users to turn a question like "What are some good games to take camping?" into one like "How can I know whether or not it's sensible to take a game camping?", yet still allow questions like "What are some games similar to Agricola?".

An excellent, well-thought-out answer in my opinion

Forbidding game rec questions will not produce more good questions. It will only produce more bad questions because people will try and weasel themselves through.

@Kempeth: That's a good point, but I think that's why providing suggestions on how to replace a recommendation question with a better one is so important. I believe this will help those on the site who genuinely want this site to keep getting better, rather than try to work around the rules. I believe that kind of user is in the majority.

I just added the "Update" section. I saw how the vote is trending and figured that, by adding that section, I can hopefully ensure those ideas are still considered as a possible way to solve the core problem. I see some very good points in the arguments for allowing game recommendations, anyway.

@LittleBobbyTables: This is a little late, but thank you!

Without recommendation questions, how would I find to continue your example, "games like Settlers of Catan, but without the trading"? Should I simply visit Boardgamegeek, go through their top500 games, and for each one, make a question here asking about the game? You're right though, if rec questions are banned, there has to be a replacement. So what is it? If I want to find games such as those mentioned before, what do I do? What do I ask? Which games do I ask about, and how do I find out about them?

@jalf I would say you would refer to a question like "How can I tell if a game involves lots of trading?" and perhaps learn that Boardgamegeek has a search by game mechanic. Do some searching through there, and perhaps find there's not much to help you see which of those games is similar to Settlers, and then ask your question. My point is that we should be able to expect a certain amount of effort to be put into a recommendation question before it's asked.

I personally am very much in favor of such questions. I however recognize the need for quality - and frequent lack thereof in these questions.
My reasons for allowing game recommendations:

Common need - As boardgamers we all share the desire to find new exciting games to play.
Rephrasing pointless - There is no way to around asking for recommendations if that is what you are looking for. No amount of "officially sanctioned" questions can replace the conciseness of a well phrased "game recommendation" question. Hoping that by banning such question will make users post lots of good "sanctioned" questions is illusory. A user who would not invest enough effort to ask a good "game rec" question will certainly not invest enough effort to ask X "sanctioned" questions instead. Not gonna happen...
Prolonged Usefulness - Unlike the fast paced world of video games or technical products a good boardgame will likely remain popular for years to come. Thus a good recommendation will remain valid far longer in our field.
Not disruptive - I've seen people argue that "too many" [what's that exactly?] game recommendation questions would disrupt the site. Stackoverflow has tens of thousands of tags to categorize its questions. No one over there needs all of them. From the perspective of a Java developer any question relating to .NET, Python, VB, PHP is essentially dead weight. Arguing that one single category of questions is disruptive is unrealistic when confronted with the huge success of StackOverflow.

Yes, we should allow them, but we should be more aggressive about encouraging good answers. In the example LittleBobbyTables cite, the answers actually has zero votes. It violated the principle of one-recommendation-per-answer. Is it possible to just remove answers like that?
I'm a bit biased, since today I will be purchasing the LOTR board game and all three expansions from a co-worker, and I never would've been interested in cooperative games, especially this one, if it weren't for this question. As someone who has (I hope) benefited from recommendation questions, I'd like to see them stick around.

How do we encourage good answers?  And what do we do to non-good answers?  Is it just through voting, or some other subjective measure?  As it stands, there is a big grey area in the middle of the obviously good answers and the obviously bad ones for me.

That's a good point -- there is certainly a benefit from many of the recommendation questions. I'm not sure if it's a net benefit, though, and Pat's questions are a big issue.

If we decide to allow recommendations to continue, I would want to see better quality answers than some of them we have been receiving lately.  Not to single a user out, but in the "What are good games to play during a one-hour lunch break?", consider the following answer:

We've played Bang, Citadels, and Race for the Galaxy during our lunch break. Bang has the plus/minus of having people get removed from the game before the game ends.

It's a start, but it doesn't really tell me much about why the games are good to play during the lunch break.  As it stands, I could just scan BGG, find games that have a play time of 60 minutes or less, and crank out answers.  It should take more effort in these types of questions to get an upvote.
From what I have been seeing, recommendation questions seem like an easy way to get, and generate, a ton of upvotes with very little effort.
As it stands, I think we should either:

take Gaming.SE's lead, and disallow recommendation questions and close all currently-open recommendation questions, or
check with SE moderators and see if making these questions Community Wiki is appropriate or not

I prefer the first bullet point, since Community Wiki is a whole other can of worms that I rather just not touch.
There seems to be a general (and totally valid) frustration with our inconsistency in allowing/disallowing these questions, and for the site to truly flourish, we need to put this one to rest.
EDIT:
And before anyone else points it out - yes, I'm aware I have contributed to these types of questions by answering some of them.  I have, however, had a change of heart in the last few days.

I think most of us are guilty of contributing to recommendation questions!

Almost all of our top users have contributed to questions tagged recommendation.  I'm 4th for all time on up-votes for recommendation questions:  http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/tags/recommendations/topusers

Gaming.SE's reasons for disallowing them are all true here, but the problem is, a good recommendation question is a lot more useful here than it would be at Gaming.  A modern computer game pplayer can easily find out the current major releases with property 'X'.  In board games that's trickier, and BGG doesn't always provide an easy path to the answer.

Another unfortunate issue with the example answer is that (in my opinion) the three games listed should be put into separate answers, even if the question was never marked Community Wiki.

How about migrating recommendation questions to meta and treat them like discussions?  Meta is supposed to be for "discussion, support, and feature requests for this site".  (This is the description for meta when you suggest a question be migrated to meta.)  We recently migrated What's the best way to describe our hobby's games? over here to meta, and it got me thinking.  I'm very hesitant to say we should be banning recommendation questions, but they have a lot of problems as we know.  Perhaps by migrating them to meta, and encouraging future questions to be done on meta, we can retain them, while putting them somewhere more appropriate.
As an alternative, we could encourage people to ask for recommendations up on chat, but I think very few responses would be generated that way.  What do you guys think?

Meta is for discussions about the site, I don't see recommendation questions as discussion about the site, but rather discussions about games.  I like the chat suggestion though.  Our chat room never really took off and could use a kick start.

It would be a different middle ground then other stack exchange sites have taken if we put those questions on meta.  Suggesting things go in chat could be tricky, but it still provide a forum for the topic.

we could even create a new chat room specifically for recommendations questions if needed.

TBH I don't consider the chat to be a good place of this. I've always found it to be a confusing crossbreed between a forum and IRC. It may be difficult/unintuitive to handle multiple requests in parallel.

@kempeth - chat isn't used by now, so feel free to try it out.  I don't think multiple requests are going to be an issue right away!  We can bookmark specific things for later followup as well.

Yes, but the questions should be very specific, and community wiki.

Questions can only be made community wiki by moderators.  It is meant for the RARE situation where the community needs to make a lot of edits to a question.  It is not meant as a flag merely to prevent reputation gain for otherwise inappropriate questions.

@bwarner, Yes, I have been involved with many CW questions on the SO Meta, and coined the term Community Wiki Police.  My point is that it needs to be Community Wiki so that it can be easily edited.  I had forgot about the loss of ability of anyone to make their questions Community Wiki, so it'll actually happen when we give it enough answers that it flips.

Why would the community need to edit someone's request for a game reccomendation?

For completeness (and the usual editing reasons).  I've edited quite a few game rec posts this last week.  But you've actually got me wondering if we need a different status that can be applied to game-rec posts so that they're not used as rep-feeding mechanisms.

I think reputation concerns were one of the main reasons that game-rec was killed on Gaming.stackexchange.  Find 2 open-ended game-recs, suggest a generally popular game (like Agricola), get 50 upvotes on each (I like Agricola too!), and you're now in the top 50 users on the site.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


text:
Wording of the FAQ (Updated)
I've updated the FAQ to explicitly specify some categories that we do not cover, but I'd like to also include some verbiage on what types of games we do cover.
Making this Community Wiki, please feel free to edit the main answer or supply your own as you desire.
2011/01/17 - The main faq section "What kinds of Questions should I not ask here?" has been updated.  This update came from the StackExchange team and applies to all SE sites.
I also added the blurb from the comment below.

Could we have a link to Brian's in-depth discussion of what counts as a board game? http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/174/if-you-cant-sit-down-at-a-table-and-play-it-its-not-a-board-or-card-game-goo/180#180

You can ask questions about these types of games:

Classic board games like Monopoly
Modern "German" style board games such as Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico
Traditional Card games like Poker, Bridge and Euchre
Collectible Card Games like Magic: The Gathering

You can ask questions about these topics:

Strategy and Tactics
Rule clarifications, interactions or alterations
Play Etiquette and other social aspects around playing boardgames
Storage, Preparation, Enhancements or Repairs
Game Recommendations (with Restrictions)
Many other things...

Avoid questions about:

Trivial information easily procured elsewhere. I.e. "What games where released this year?"
Social inquiries about our members instead of games. I.e. "What's your favorite game?" - Use the chat such things.

Restrictions concerning Game Recommendations:
To be determined

I've included game recommendations even though the decision is not yet final. This is just meant to illustrate how it might look if these questions are approved. - Kempeth

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


text:
Have you visited area51?
After Dori pointed me at a proposal for Advanced Squad Leader I took a closer look at area51.stackexchange.com
There are many proposals for sites based on games that I think can be (or already are) covered here just fine.
I opened a question to encourage folks to stop by and help us build a great site for all games.  Please consider stopping by to assist.  If you are an expert on any of the proposed games, it would be awesome if you could weigh in on those proposals as well.

Yes, definitely -- also consider the reverse: which games are so huge they could deserve their own site? (Not many, but it's a useful thought experiment..)

Starcraft 2 comes to mind, but it doesn't have its own site (see gaming). I don't believe that there are any board or card games that deserve their own site apart from this one, but that's just my opinion.

I fully agree. However, it all comes down on defining what exactly makes a game huge. Is it the complexity of rules, the existence of a community with authorative people that everybody knows, etc...

In my opinion, huge is self-defined. If there are people who are interested enough in a single game to sustain a SE site completely on their own, then it should be considered. That said, the Area51 filter of followers, commitments, and then beta is likely to ensure very little gets stood up unless it has at least a fighting chance. It's not just game depth and complexity and number of fans, those fans also have to be folks who'd participate in a SE site.

Looks like the ASL page has been suspended/shut-down for lack of participation.
Bridge has been deleted.
War Games hasn't had any activity in a month.
Go and Chess are in commitment, as are Magic and Poker. If I had to guess at games that might be able to sustain separate sites Go and Chess would have been on the lsit, but we'll see if they can make it to and through beta. I'm still inclined to think that being all together would be better and my guess is that if they fail or take too long folks may start swinging by here to try it out.
Tags are so flexible and SO is such a good model for how a diversity of topics can survive together.

Go might make it to beta; Chess isn't likely to. With a commitment score of 25%, only 4 commits in the last month ... I suppose it could still happen (and I would fulfill my commitment if so) but I'm not counting on it. In the meantime, there's been an obvious influx of bridge questions since that proposal was removed (if primarily from one source, IIRC he's specifically mentioned the deleted proposal as why), so maybe Chess failing would help BCG.

@Dave:  I fully agree.  While I'd be excited to find that there are 200 or more BCG members that play chess/are interested in chess, I don't think it's the case.  I see that many of the committers to Chess are not on this site.  Given that, it seems logical that they are holding all their input back until they can push Chess through to beta, which would definitely detract from this site.

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


text:
Questions about specific bridge hands
Are these appropriate for B&CG?

Does a Takeout Double Apply to a "Passed" Partner?
In Bridge, Do You Count Defensive Points In the Opponents' Suit When Making a Takeout Double?

While I'm enjoying the influx of questions and I recognize that the asker has tried a bit to generalize the question, they both seem like they could be closed as "Too localized"
Should we require the questions to be generalized so as to apply to more people?  As asked, it seems very unlikely that another person will have the exact same question very soon.

I think as long as the takeaway can be generalized, then the questions are OK.  I don't think questions should devolve into "How should I play this hand?" or "What should I bid here?" - those questions are certainly too generalized.  However, these questions have been framed as "How does this concept work?", with a hand given as a place to start the discussion, which I think is acceptable.
Questions of this sort should really should be no different than a person on Stack Overflow asking how a function works in a certain language while provide a piece of code in the question as an actionable example.

Interesting analogy, thanks!

Thanks from me also.

-1: Disagree with: these questions have been framed as "How does this concept work".

These questions (as stated) really have no specific answer.
Consider the first question:
For one, important information about the bidding system you are playing, and the opponents are playing is completely missing. The scoring and vulnerability are also missing.
Even if the above information was specified, then giving a specific hand and asking if it is a takeout double or should partner pass it or not (without even giving partner's hand) is not really an objective question and is too localized.
If the question was rephrased as: opps playing blah, us playing blah, scoring blah etc in the sequence (1H) - Pass - (2H) - Double, is the Double for takeout? Then such questions might be ok (but still are borderline localized) and IMO actually bad questions as they show no prior research: this is just checking what the system defines it/you and your partner have agreed. If neither, then it is a gray area and has no real objective answer.
If all the question asked was if partner is a passed hand, will your double be takeout (without providing a specific sequence {based on the title of the question}), then it is either a "lookup your system" answer or cannot be answered objectively ("it depends").
Consider the second question:
(Note that system/scoring/vulnerability was also not provided)
If the question was just: "do you count points in opponents suit when making a takeout double?" The answer is "it depends" or "when the hand calls for it".
If OP is interested in a specific situation (giving a specific hand) then it is too localized.
This is not a my partner is nuts/assess the blame site. Questions which ask what one should/should not have done probably needs to be closed. I would recommend OP ask the questions here: http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/index.php

@arybhata: I would say that the bidding and scoring, system, are Standard American, unless otherwise noted or implied. In the first question, the implication is that partner should TAKE OUT the double unless she has "strong defense." I gave her heart holding, Axxx which doesn't qualify. With that holding, most authorities would say she should bid something, irregardless of what else was in the hand. In the second question, at least, I wrote "down 5" (vulnerable) and gave both hands. There's no "it depends."

@Tom: 1) You should edit the question to mention the system, otherwise your question is meaningless. "Standard" American is not standard in rest of the world, you know... 2) If you are discussing a specific hand, then it is too localized. Otherwise, the answer is "it depends". In either case, it is not suited to this site. You seem to have entirely missed the point of this answer.

I prefer these questions for two reasons. (But will gladly accept fixes from you, since you've successfully fixed my questions before.)
First "It seems very unlikely that another person will have the exact same question very soon." Exactly! It leaves room for more questions without closing them for duplicates. This may allay the concerns of some that I'm asking "too many" questions and not "leaving room" for others.
Second, relatively few people will have EXACTLY the same problem as I. But many will have SIMILAR problems. In one case, a partner failed to take out a double when (probably) she should have, because she didn't fully understand the rules. Many players have had that experience with their partners. So let's clarify the rules and apply them to this situation. (And others.)
In the other case, a partner made a "technically" correct takeout double that failed because of a special feature (her strength in the opponent's suit). If I'm forced to bid over a takeout double, I expect "shape" and maximum support for the unbid suits. Basically, I felt that she violated the "unwritten rules" with only 9 HCP and only 10 cards OUTSIDE the opponents' suit. There are any number of other situations where the "book" says to make a certain bid, and common sense tells you that it's all wrong. Not limited to takeout doubles.

I think the point about someone else having the exact same question is that if no one else has the same question as you (finds themselves in the same situation as the one you describe in your question), no one else will get value out of the answers.

@Dave: I reworded the questions to make theme clearer. The gist of one question was, "when can a partner pass a takeout double?" The circumstances were a bit unusual (partner claimed her earlier pass "qualified.") The last might not happen to another person, but the first might (partner had "good," but not "good enough" defense to pass) probably would. The second issue was, is it worth running the risks of a takeout double with a hand good for defense?


text:
How should a question about House Rules be written?
Focus on a problem to be solved.
Our FAQ reminds us that "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face."
Therefore the question should focus on what issue you are trying to resolve by using a house rule.  Examples:

I find the endgame of XXX monotonous
YYY is a great game, but the card deck is too small and repeats often.  I'd like more variety
My group enjoys ZZZ however the game ends too quickly for us and we have experimented with ...

House Rules that haven't been tested in actual play shouldn't be discussed here.  That only invites speculation and we should direct those questions to a traditional forum (where they'd probably be welcome).
Emphasis actual play experience instead of guesswork.
I feel strongly that any question here must involve people who have actually played the house rule under discussion.
Ideally the Asker has that experience
The asker should try his or her proposed house rule, then come here to ask about the implications.  If the asker hasn't tried the rule, then he is most likely seeking to have a discussion along the lines of "What do you all think about XXX".  These sorts of questions are prohibited via our FAQ.  Here are a couple examples that I think are potentially good questions.

My group used this House Rule for a couple games and it seemed to solve the problem for us.  Can anyone see any unintended consequences?
The House Rule solves the problem for us, however there is one annoying side effect that we haven't been able to solve.  What tweaks would you suggest?

Asking about a popular variant/house rule
If there are popular, commonly used house rules for a game.  Those can be discussed without playtesting by the asker as long as it ties back into the problem.  However, the question should insist that any answer be based on actual use of the house rule.  Example:

I'm considering using this house rule. Can anyone that has tried it tell me whether it solves the problems I see with this game?

Question types to avoid
Asking for recommendations of house rules to solve a problem
Instead this question should be phrased to ask if the problem exists.  Just because strategy X always wins in a certain game for you does not mean the game is broken!  Other people may have different experiences.
Instead of "I need a house rule because XXX always wins in game YYY" try "What strategies can be used to counter XXX in game YYY"  Perhaps the answer is "Everyone knows that and uses house rule ZZZ" but I think more often the answer will be "Have you tried ZZZ?"
Not stating a problem
Giving a list of house rules and asking what people think the impact will be without telling folks what problem you are trying to solve tends to lead to short, not very insightful answers.
If the problem is "Game ZZZ does not have enough variety/options" consider first asking a question "In Game ZZZ, does every game follow this pattern?" or "What strategies besides XXX are viable in game YYY"

I was disagreeing with you on the question that sparked this, but this is a really cogent post, and makes a good point.

@Lance - Thanks.  I was hoping that most of us could come to an agreement in principle on this topic while understanding that there will always be differences in opinion on each item.   If you have suggestions/changes I'm eager to hear them.

With respect to the "what strategies" form of the question: it seems like "how can we deal with situation X in game Y" might be better. Sure, it's bad to assume that house rules are the answer, but assuming that they aren't isn't ideal either.

@Jefromi - definitely agree with that.  It irks me when people who have played a game once, or only with one group ever assume that a problem they see is endemic to the game.  I prefer to give the designer the benefit of the doubt and assume they did enough play testing.  (It isn't always true, but...)


text:
Magic tag cleanup effort requested
magic-the-gathering has received a lot of questions lately and it is now our #1 game tag (#4 overall).  I'd like for the top users of that tag to get together and update the tag info to reflect the way we'd like the tag to be used and what it means to us.
Currently the tag info is pretty generic and just says some bland corporate stuff about the game.
A couple things that I think could be addressed would be:

questions to avoid (fix my deck, others?)
Should mentioned cards have images right in the post?  Should we link out to them?  if so, where?
A list of good general resources for people wanting more information about MtG
what else?

I'm hoping that users who are more in tune with the current MtG scene that I am can run with this question.  If this works out well, I'd love to extend a template to other popular games on this site and really get their tag wikis looking great too.
Thanks!

Perhaps also it would be worth adding [mtg] as a synonym tag.

@shujaa - this has been done.

I have added a rework to the edit queue, I hope that it gives someone else a good starting point for polishing into a useful tag wiki.


text:
FAQ Update - suggest example games
Based on a recent meta discussion I've updated the FAQ to include a concrete list of example games.  I grouped them into categories that made sense to me and made sure to include the top 10 games based on current question count.
Please take a glance at it and suggest changes/improvements.  If a change is popular or blatently better than what I've done, I can make the change.

Thanks Pat, the updated FAQ looks much more relevant to our current site.
One thing I find missing is a direct reference to something like Warhammer 40k or similar, figurine based games.  It is certainly implicit from the faq, but since the point is to become more explicit we should probably follow with the current consensus which seems to be

figurine based games are on topic
questions that directly related to the preparation of the pieces are on topic

In the second point, this would relate to filing (ie flashing), priming, painting, basing, weighting and so on.
I don't know how much these issues directly relate to the actual game play, but it's certainly more relevant to their games than customizing chess pieces would be (which I  think would be off topic).  For lack of a better site to suggest these questions be directed and based on questions already accepted as on topic I think it's worth adding.

good call, I knew I'd forget something :)  I'll make the change when I have a spare moment later today.  Thanks!


text:
Vote Early, Vote Often!

Possible Duplicate:
Vote Early, Vote Often

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/vote-early-vote-often/
Just a friendly reminder.  Recently our Q/A rate has been stable, traffic is a bit up, but voting is a bit down.
We need more medium to high rep users of this site to help govern it.  Please consider voting (up or down) any questions and answers that you find helpful.
There are also a couple badges that you could earn while doing so!

Nothing like writing an exact duplicate, THEN clicking on the voting tag to see what the other question with that tag was....d0h


text:
Lists of games - good and bad
This site has a lot of lists of games.  Previously these may all have been closed or converted to CW (Community Wiki).  This community appears to have chosen to allow many of these questions and find value in them.  I think only two such questions have been closed so far.

https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/548/best-board-games-of-2010-closed
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/830/which-absolutely-non-mainstream-strategy-board-games-should-i-try-closed

There have been a few requests to convert other list type questions to Community Wiki.  Until recently, that wasn't an option as there were no moderators.  Now that we have moderators, how should these be handled?
My opinion is that we should hew a little closer to the guidelines set out by this blog post, http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/
Personally I like questions that ask for game recommendations with a good set of requirements, such as

Recommendations for 6-player board game
What cooperative board games are there that I could safely play with my wife?

Other questions that appear just to be asking for lists I believe could be closed.

https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1266/what-older-games-show-a-lack-of-political-correctness-today
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1203/are-there-board-games-about-star-wars
Which Settlers of Catan expansions are recommended?

Some questions are way too subjective for my tastes
 - https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1283/what-humorous-games-are-actually-fun-for-hardcore-gamers
In closing, I'd like to see how many folks agree with my basic point that we have a few too many of these list questions.  Ideally the community would discuss some of these on meta, and close them.  I will also likely close a couple on my own.
Thanks for reading!

Poke - Pat, can you expand on why you locked the political correctness question?

@Jon - I deleted an answer just before leaving work.  When I got home and checked on it, the answer was undeleted.  I locked it down to ensure that only a moderator could change it again.

but if community consensus votes to re-open (or indeed close) it, shouldn't it be left as such?

@Jon - In general yes.  In this particular case, I disagree.

Out of the three questions you link to as "just asking for lists" I think two are reasonable questions.
Asking about older games that show a lack of political correctness may be useful research for someone looking into culture change.  Asking about games that model Star Wars sounds to me like a sensible question - I don't think it's subjective.
I do agree that asking for recommendations for Catan expansions, without giving any additional requirements, is not a great question.
On a related note - if a question is closed by common consent then that's fair enough, but it seems odd to have locked it (see the political correctness question).  There's no evidence of an argument and there isn't a reason given for it being locked.

+1 for arguing against the political correctness question lock. I thought that was an interesting historical thread and would vote to re-open if i could ....

I've already voted to close on a few of the very subjective ones.  I definitely think we should go with the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions that you link to.

I think you need to err on the side of common consensus (it's a community site after all) but most importantly avoid becoming the Community Wiki Police ....


text:
Tag Wikis - Please add and update them!
Recently, tags started showing their tag wikis when hovered over.  This site has very few tag wikis created, and it would be great if we could get those filled out for our more popular tags.
If you have the 1500 rep and the necessary upvotes for a tag, please consider adding the tag wiki or editing if it already there.
As a little incentive, editing an existing tag will earn you the Tag Editor badge.  Furthermore, these edits count towards the Strunk & White and Copy Editor badges.

You realize you're only talking to 12 people right?  I mean you could upvote some more of my answers to help, but it's going to be a while. :)

@Neal - anyone can propose edits to the tag wikis now.

Actually it is the Usage Guidance which is shown. But you are quite right, it is very useful to improve this.

I had a go at making tag wikis for arkham-horror and agricola. Please take a look. It seems like most game tags will probably follow a similar template. I'd appreciate any feedback people here might have, either on these specific tags, or the more general format I've gone for, particularly if there is further information or other useful links that could be added.
I also added Race for the Galaxy, but I need someone with more privileges to peer review it before it'll become visible.

Those look awesome, thanks!

Approving them as I see 'em, thanks again!  4k rep to edit any tag wiki I just noticed.  They must have snuck that in recently.

@Pat Ludwig - No worries. Ironically, it seems I am awarded 4 rep for each one of these 'untrusted wiki edits' - woohoo!

Yes, I did know that part.  You are limited to only 1000 rep total for such edits.  Therefore after 250 or 'em you can slow down some :)

I created a tag wiki for Power Grid -- I probably could have been a little concise, but ended up going all-out.  Feel free to clean it up if the detailed section is too detailed.


text:
Are objective questions that result in game lists on-topic?
I'm thinking of this question:
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/83/largest-number-of-components-in-the-box
This question isn't subjective -- some game will have the most components.  But on the other hand, it's likely this question will just result in a big list of answers listing games and their component numbers.  It inherently can't settle on a "right" answer because somebody else can always show up with a more obscure game with more components.
And voting for answers to this kind of question is meaningless - votes accumulate for the current "winner" in component count, but then a higher count answer is posted and it has to accumulate enough votes to pass that earlier answer.
I just don't think this kind of question makes sense in this forum.

I think that "Subjective" is the answer.  There is a question about "What are good cooperative games..."  This results in a list of many games from different users.  And I would believe this to be 'on topic'.

There is a difference between a recommendations question (which I think we will call on-topic, and is on-topic at Gaming) and this kind of list.  Both can or should be community wiki ultimately, I think.

Those lists should be Community Wiki, if anything.  I don't think we have mods yet so we won't have CW posts.
Use your votes to close for anything you find objectionable.  If 4 people agree, it will close.

Subjective or not, the question you linked simply provides no value. It's straight-up, one-liner trivia.
If you look to the "guidelines" in this blog post, it will help you separate polls asked to solve a problem versus mindless social typing.

I guess my question, then, is how we label a close request on this kind of question?  It's not actually subjective, it's just useless.  That one was closed too localized but even that doesn't really seem like the right reason.  I guess it's really just off-topic?

I would probably close as as [not a real question]. It's a "real question" in the sense that it has a question mark, but it's not real because WHO THE *bleep* CARES.


text:
Witcher Adventure Game
In the Witcher Adventure Game, you can play as one of four characters trying to complete a set of quest.
Would asking what are the optimal strategies for each character be on-topic?
On one hand, I think it should be since there must be some better strategy as others which can help you complete the rightly chosen quests. On the other hand, this might be too general to give a suitable answer.

There is a substantial number of strategy questions for other games , and it looks like most of these haven't been closed (example: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/14069/14416). I suppose this means that those questions are on-topic. If they are, then the Witcher strategy questions also should be on-topic.

And yet one of my questions on strategy was closed...

But it has been closed as "too broad" not as an "offtopic".

Indeed but I cannot fathom that Ghost Story is so complex that there are not some solid advice as to how to win games, especially on lower difficulties. The same could be said of Eldritch Horror or Pandemic: it's just too complicated.

@Sardathrion I think the issues are that folks are pretty skeptical of non-factual questions here to begin with, and what's "basic" isn't always as specific as it seems. There might be dozens of individually basic strategy ideas, once you ask enough people, but by the time you put it all together you're basically giving full strategy advice, not just basics.

Since I asked the questions and they have neither attracted downvotes nor been closed, I am assuming that they are fine.


text:
Request for tags
Since I am new to the site, I don't have enough rep to create tags. I have a question that could really use the tags "redemption" "artifacts" and "fortresses" and even possibly "rules-clarification".
Not sure if you want the rules-clarification one, but I would like to ask a question regarding the Redemption TCG.

rules clarification is a poor tag choice. No one (well, except maybe this guy) can be an expert in "rules-clarification". If you're good at clarifying rules in one game, it's unlikely that experience well help you with other games' rules.

Ask your question, don't stress about the tags.  It'll work itself out.
There are plenty of folks who will tag a question for you.
Use whatever tag you wish to create your question if there is no suitable tag that exists already.
In general, we're big on game specific tags, and not as much about other tags.

The problem is I can't put the tags on my question. I don't have enough rep. I have also searched for tags similar to what I'm asking and they also don't exist. I can ask my question, but I can't tag it with anything related to what I am asking. My hope was to have the above tags created because I have a rules questions about artifacts and fortresses within the Redemption TCG game.

@ChrisAldrich - I mean "Use whatever tag you wish" above very literally. Use magic-the-gathering, use dominion, it doesn't matter.  Tags cannot be created without a question to put them on.  Any tags that are wrong will be fixed very quickly by those with the rep to do so.

will do. I guess I'm just used to dba.stackexchange.com where they will create tags for the users asking for them.

@Chris Aldrich - See also http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1064/how-to-tag-unlisted-games

Is there no tag that fits already?  (I don't recognize the ones you listed, so I don't know if those are games, expansions, rules variants, or what.  If they're expansions/variants, tag with the parent game.)

@MonicaCellio - Redemption is a TCG. Artifacts and fortresses are card types/elements within the game.


text:
Are questions regarding similar game suggestion on-topic?
I need to ask a question on the forum about similar games like Bang. Is this on-topic or not?

We do not allow game recommendation questions. Please see the What topics can I ask about here? and the What types of questions should I avoid asking? pages in the help center for more information about what questions we allow.

Murgatroid99 was a bit blunt in his answer.  You can on ask for ways of finding similar games. Example: "How can I find games that are similar to another "XXXX"?
This would wield answers such as: "You can go to www.boardgamegeek.com and do a search by type of game" , etc.


text:
How should we tag questions?
What should be the main tags on the site?
Tagging by game is obvious, any question specific to a game should be tagged.
I don't see the point of board/card tags; they supply very little information and many posts won't have them.  Perhaps if a question is not game specific then that would work.
house-rules is a great tag.  Could we use rules-as-written or perhaps just rules for rule questions that don't invite people to write their own rules?
PS this would be community-wiki if I could.  At least I don't get rep for it!

I like just rules for clarifications on existing rules, personally.

I don't see why we need a house-rules or a rules tag at all (or tactics or strategy or board-games). I consider all of these meta-tags that do not add value to the questions. See also http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/ for more.
I can't imagine myself ever wanting to search by "house-rules" to find all the various house-rules people have come up with. I would want to search by a specific game.
In my opinion, most questions should have 1 tag - the game they are asking about. I'm not seeing much value from the extra tags.
Here (on Gaming) is a question where it makes sense to have 2 different tags -  It's about combining 2 different specific things into 1 question.

Damn, when you're right, you're right.

I'm torn on this.  I can see where you're coming from, but I do kind of like viewing dominion and then seeing the subtags of stuff people are asking about within the dominion tag.

I disagree. Having a rules tag might be good for someone who's a rules lawyer and wants to highlight questions about rules, since they're good at figuring out rule intricacies. Some people are interested in only the official rules, and may ignore house-rules questions. Some people may be more interested in talking about strategy than rules, and follow the strategy tag. There are plenty of reasons to have tags beyond just the game name; you might be asking about a whole genre while using one game as an example, or you might just have interests that are finer grained than an entire game.

I also disagree. What about if I wanted to see all questions that have specific game tag and house-rules, just to find out what kind of modifications people make to rules of this game? How about this: I'm preparing to teach some people rules of the game X. If I type in search field [X] [rules] I will get questions about rules clarification in the game X. That's exactly what I wanted - I was looking for the list of rules, that might be most confusing to other players. Why take this option away?

I'm seeing a board-game tag that I think is unnecessary.  This site is for board games, card games, things like Dominion that feel like both at once.  Anyone interested in a particular game can easily discover which specific type of game it is - this tag just clutters things up.

Whoops, didn't see your mention of this in the OP.

What if people want to search for all questions about board games?

Hm. I have a hard time seeing that as a likely use case - why would they need to know about all board games ever?  Just to look for questions to answer, maybe?

@lilserf Exactly, if they're interested in board games but not card games (or the other way around), which is rather common. We should also probably have a separate tag for card games that use poker cards instead of special cards

I'm still unconvinced that this will provide enough usefulness to offset the fact that nearly EVERY question will have one of the two tags on it, and that some games (like Dominion) will be difficult to classify.  If every question is tagged either A or B, do those tags really need to exist?

@lilserf If an asker had six tags they wanted to use and needed to drop one, I would say drop board/card-games, but if you've got five spaces why not use them? It's not like it takes up more space on the page, the tags are in one row either way, and we're going to end up with the same problem as on the Unix SE where half the posts have [unix] or [linux] tags and the other half don't. (Also, you can use @Mic to reply to my comment)

I like this type of tag but this is clearly a meta tag and meta tags don't use to be well accept on other sites.

@bigown I'm not super attached to it (and it sounds like we're going to end up not using it), but it's definitely not a meta tag; it's a tag about the game in question itself, not about the post

I don't like it because it will be the subset of all questions about board games that the questioner has remembered to tag board-games.  It's about as pointful as a loops tag on SO for every question that involves a loop.

These tags seem like the perfect example of a useless meta-tag as seen in The Death of Meta Tags

Tactics vs Strategy?  Do we need both as tags?

On a purely pedantic level, they can be quite different.  Not sure how often they really are different in most board or card games though.

Someone has a good example to keep both?

@lilserf There is a difference, but I doubt how much they will be used differently.  Strategy seems to have a lot more use so far.

Yeah, and the average user will probably not care about the difference.  I think strategy is likely to be the more common tag.

For most that do care, doctrine is what is really meant rather than tactics, anyway.

We need create a standard to some words. We already have boardgames, board-games and board-game.
For me the correct is board-games

I retagged a "variations" to "house-rules" already.

@Richard: English is not my native language, so I know little about some expressions. I just learnt it. Thanks.

For those of us who remember them, can we use the old Avalon Hill three character abbreviations as tags - DIP, CIV, ACV, A3R, 3R4, or should we tag more like diplomacy, civilization, advanced-civilization, advanced-third-reich, third-reich-fourth-edition?

I think generally the full name of the game is the better tag - it will be easier to find questions that way for Google and for the casual reader. I believe we can set up aliases so that if someone tries to tag a question with DIP, it automagically becomes diplomacy - anyone have a link for that?

Full names of the games are more consistent with the other SE communities as well. Additionally, if someone types "dip" into the tag box they're going to get autocompletion to "diplomacy" right away and see our pattern.

But the odder codes would make good tag synonyms.   Agreed.

@Erik http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms

See also http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/81/should-the-threshold-for-suggesting-tag-synonyms-be-lowered


text:
"recommend a game" questions
I think there is a risk that "recommend a game" questions are "bad subjective".
Can I suggest that we recommend that any "recommend a game" question should be tagged recommendation and should try to limit the number of possible answers, perhaps by answering the following questions

How many players is it for?
Do you want a competitive game, a team game or a co-operative game?
How long do you want a game to last?
How complex would you like the game to be - from "playable by pre-literate children" to "need to read multi-hundred page rulebooks"?

And probably other questions that will come up in the answers - can others please suggest other questions that people might use to limit the results.
In particular, I propose that anything you can do with just an advanced search at boardgamegeek is not a sufficiently specific question.

Gaming.SE's ongoing game-rec discussion We do not have a solution, and even if we did that doesn't mean it would be right here.

sigh. here we go again...

My questions were intended as guidelines rather than a hard prequisite.  I had something like Jeff's "good subjective/bad subjective" in mind, ie these are questions you should be thinking of asking.

Toned down from requirements to suggestions per various answers.

From the looks of it, one common type of recommendation question will be "I like X.  What are some other similar games?"
When the question is about mechanics and the design of the game in this way, I'm not sure your list of questions is appropriate.  The asker won't necessarily care how many players it's for or how long it lasts - they just want something with similar mechanics to game X.
I also think we should keep a close eye on the meta-discussion of this issue at Gaming, as both sites are going to have similar patterns for recommendation questions.

I don't think there's a problem with suitably specific questions asking for game recommendations (e.g. this one). I know there's no one definitive answer, but this is game site, not StackOverflow, and there are going to be a lot of people interested in recommendations for good 1-/2-/4-/10+ player board/card/mix-of-board-and-cards games to play with teenagers/blind players/over-competitive spouses in-the-car/on-a-plane/in-a-tent.
Marking them as CW just discourages people from asking or answering these useful questions, which I don't think is what we want.

Exactly: do we really want to discourage these kinds of questions? They have no "correct" answer, but that doesn't mean that good answers and questions should not be rewarded.

OK "suitably specific" was what I was trying to define.  The one that really set me off was "recommend a two-player game".  I mean, I could recommend anything from a 2000-hour monster, to a ten-minute beer-and-pretzels game in response to that!

This discussion is repeating itself on every friggin SE site. I personally believe that game recommendations of sufficiently specific nature ought to be on topic.

They represent an central desire among gamers - to find new games they might enjoy.
They also allow new and casual members to bring in their own experience and thus foster the community

For these reasons I believe that these kind of questions should:

Be allowed on the main site.
Remain outside CW as that actually discourages answers, because you don't get anything for it.
Be answered with only one game per answer so the voting mechanic can be put to good use.
Be filtered and overly general inquiries closed. I agree with closing "Best games of 2010" as it is mere chit chat and not aimed at solving an actual question.

But in any case: I strongly recommend to vote on this issue as soon as possible. I've seen this question drag along for weeks on other sites. We need a decision soon or all hell will break loose.
I've been involved with the game-rec discussion on gaming.SE. Endless talk and indecision. I eventually left it be because I got sick of it. IMO we are better off allowing these questions and to spare ourself the flamewar. If they really turn out to be so disastrous for quality as some think then we will see and the SE community will finally have it's answer. But until then our job is to try and make this site as good as we can - not a copy of the others.

I think the consensus here is that specific game-rec questions are OK, generic ones aren't.  What I was trying to do with the question was come up with some criteria for "what is specific enough?"

I think well phrased, or suitably niche list questions, such as 'What cooperative board games are there that I could safely play with my wife?' are useful, but should be flagged and then set as a wiki, as they have no one 'proper' answer.
I don't think they necessarily have to meet the list of requirements suggested - although that is a good start.
They should however always suggest that one suggestion is added per answer, to enable easy voting.
EDIT: Prompted by ire_and_curse in this thread - The questions should only be converted when community consensus flags enough attention, not ad-hoc by mods.

Another question has been asked (and closed) here https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/548/7
The question has generated some discussion about the suitability of the question and two sides of the argument are quite reasonable.
I worry that many people will come to this site looking for ideas about what game to buy next, and the community are all too happy to help answer the question. My concern around closing the questions too quickly is that we stifle the usage of the site and it fails as a result.

I am upset that the above question was closed.  It wasn't a malicious, ill-informed, vague or bad question.  Left open, it would have provided useful information that I would have enjoyed reading.  I wouldn't have WANTED the question to be more specific: if I knew what sort of game I was looking for, I would probably be able to find it.  I want to hear what gems other people have come across this year.  It feels to me that people jump to close anything that doesn't admit a completely concrete, objective answer on StackOverflow just because they can, not because it's a pointless question.

Yes, this sounds like a good idea to me. I think this may well be one of the major difficulties we encounter, so we should be strict in recommending an edit of the question/voting to close whenever we feel this recommendation is being violated.


text:
MTG AutoCard doesn't show up in previews
The [mtg:cardname] card tags don't show up in (JavaScript?) post previews. All that's visible is the plain text.

I asked the developers about this one: changes to the live post preview would be non-trivial, and this specific fix is pretty low on their List of Projects (by Priority). It may be done later on, but please don't expect a change in the near future.
Fortunately for all of us, there's a five-minute window of free editing -- stuff like this is what that's perfect for!

This isn't the first issue with the real rendered page being different than the preview. Why do they not use the same engine? It seems a lot more work to have two different renderers than it does to just have one.


text:
Please add support for MTG autocard plurals/short names
The current autocard link syntax works great, but it can be a bit awkward to use with plural names. It's easy to change [mtg:Lightning Bolts] to [mtg:Lightning Bolt]s. Getting correct links to cards like [mtg:Scions of Oona] requires restructuring text to use the singular name, though.
The easiest method to address this, at least that I can see, is what Wikipedia does with its link syntax: [mtg:card name|optional text overriding the link text]. Then we can easily post about how two [mtg:Scion of Oona|Scions of Oona] give each other shroud.

This has the added bonus of letting us be even lazier when talking about iconic or previously-mentioned cards - e.g. [mtg:Lightning Bolt|Bolt] or [mtg:Karn Liberated|Karn].

@IanPugsley [mtg:Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon|Skittles]

I forgot all about nicknames! Though [mtg:Wolfbitten Captive|Werewalla] and such isn't really as important as the plural or shortening, it's nice that this one feature could add this much value.

Yeah +1 from me, then I can talk about old school [mtg:Prodigal Sorcerer|Tim].

+! good thinking.

Just being devil's advocate, but wouldn't a correct plural of "Scion of Oona" be "Scion of Oonas"? I'm aware that any old scions would be "scions of Oona", but as a complete proper noun "Scion of Oona" referring to a card by that name, wouldn't the actual plural put the "s" at the end? Still think it would be a nice idea though, just making trouble :P

@Johno Talking about "Scion of Oonas" breaks the cards' connection with the fictional things they represent. At which point I'm going to start giving them awful nicknames instead of referring to them by name, anyway. :)

@AlexP Fair point. If I was referring to cards I'd say "Scion of Oonas", but I guess I should let myself be absorbed into the mythology a bit more!

I asked about this and, given how the current linking add-on is coded, this would not be possible. The inner part must be an exact match to the actual card name, or the whole thing basically goes awry. Adding "plural" support isn't really possible, from what I understand. Your suggestion of Wikipedia syntax is good! But there's a much easier workaround:
Just append "cards" to the phrase. So, to parrot your examples back at you:

"I have three Scion of Oona cards..."
"I am using two Lightning Bolt cards..."
"There are several versions of the The Cheese Stands Alone card..."

It's not the same level of elegance, perhaps, but that workaround should be fine for the vast majority of usages.

You're all free to tell me I'm wrong and insist I go back and ask again. :)


text:
Avoiding ambiguity with Netrunner tags
Following the re-release of Netrunner under the Android franchise, I expect to see more questions about it. There are two tags for the two editions (netrunner and android-netrunner), but is it worth renaming the "netrunner" tag to "netrunner-ccg" (or something else) to remove all ambiguity and avoid questions being incorrectly tagged?
If so, and as a separate question, is it worth having a generic "netrunner" tag for release-independent questions? That is, questions about Netrunner at large, but not restricted to either edition? It may be that such questions are too rare to worry about, although the fact that I wanted to ask one is what brought me here!
Comments? Opinions?

In general, most tags should be game specific. Few if any questions should be generic enough to cross over multiple game titles. A few examples might be something like:

What is the history of the Catan games?
How does each version of Cosmic Encounter differ from each other? Are all expansions compatible with each version?
Can I use the Daily Actions from one D&D board game in another?

These types of questions that ask for answers within a particular universe are fairly rare, with perhaps one or two questions only. Unfortunately, with only one question, a tag will disappear. Truthfully, many of these questions could just list 4-5 games that the game is referencing, or focus on the game that they are interested in.

Um... you can't create a synonym. But you can retag the existing questions manually to [tag:netrunner-ccg] (which I see you have done).

@ire_and_curses, yeah I figured that out when.the system blocked me. It complained that both tags (or one) needed 5+ upvotes. I suppose we will need more questions before a synonym can be made.

Netrunner defies the standard naming situation. It was originally put out by Wizards of the Coast and set in a generic universe. More recently it was revived, the rules and game concepts were transferred almost exactly (with a few minor adjustments and a couple major ones) and the game was set in a currently fleshed-out game-world with everything from board games to RPG's set in the same world. There are still people playing the old game, with fan-based card sets being developed and authorized for tournament play still, but the new system is out and being run by a completely different gaming company and it's not using a CCG concept but an LCG.
So I would think that android-netrunner and netrunner-ccg and netrunner would probably allow for all specific sets of questions. Of course... I am new here to Stackexchange still and learning my around still.


text:
Misaligned privileges
In asking what I can do for the site, I thought I  might make a grab for the Research Assistant badge. I'm a bit confused because it seems I've earned the privilege to approve tag wiki edits (1500 rep needed, according to my privileges sidebar), but when I edit the tag wiki I'm told that I don't have enough rep; my submission needs to be reviewed. Also, I don't see a Tag Wiki section of my review tab, nor is my own tag wiki edit appearing my my Review/Suggested Edits tab. Should I be able to edit a tag wiki without approval? If not, should the 1500 beta rep for approving tag wiki edits be changed?

To edit all tag wikis you need the Trusted User permission obtained with 4k reputation.
At 1500 you can approve tag wiki changes but that is part of the review process and at least a couple people need to approve the same change.
Prior to 4K I believe you can edit the tag wikis of tags which you have significantly participated in but I cannot find a reference to that right now.  Searching.
Edit - search over, the answer is right on this very page.

Looks like @ire_and_curses beat you to the details. You were still first, so I'll accept yours to boost that much-coveted meta rep ;)

@shujaa - looks like between the two of us, you have a complete answer :)  Yay moderators!

Requirements for editing tag wikis are a bit confusing, but basically, there is both a reputation requirement and a specific knowledge requirement. From this answer on meta StackOverflow:

You will see that 20k users (Trusted users) will be able to edit all
  tag wikis. Further than that, the ability to edit tag wikis is not
  connected to your reputation level. The requirement to edit specific a
  tag wiki is:
You have at least 100 upvotes in non-community wiki answers with that tag
    OR you are in the top 20 answerers in this tag
You have at least 2000 reputation points

I believe trusted user requirements on beta sites are lower (status completed on that issue), but haven't found the numeric value yet.

in that case I apologize for all the reviewing you'll have to do if I'm successful in getting that Research Assistant badge.

Oh, and Trusted User on beta sites is 4k, according to my privileges sidebar.

@shujaa - No problem. That's what we're here for...

@shujaa - Also, I'm sure you know this, but don't cut/paste from Wikipedia. Summarising is fine though.

@shujaa - your Research Assistant badge is our Reviewer badge :)

@Ire, don't worry about that.


text:
Should the tags 'tools' and 'game-accessories' be synonyms?
I think they should (or one should be eliminated), but I don't have enough rep yet to make that happen.

tools
game-accessories

I agree. Tools seems vague; I prefer game-accessories as the master tag. I'll leave this up for a day or so, then implement the synonym if there are no objections.


text:
Regarding go tags, should [fuseki] be a synonym for [openings]
Some Japanese Go terms, such as joseki, don't have an English equivalent. Fuseki, on the other hand, is commonly translated just as "opening". We have a widely used openings tag with a nice, general tag wiki. At least a couple Go questions are tagged with "openings", when they could just as well be tagged "fuseki". Especially for the sake of new members looking for Go questions, I think searching for "fuseki" should return results, but should Go questions prefer "fuseki" to "openings", or should they be synonymized?

I use fuseki and opening exchangeably in practice. http://senseis.xmp.net/?Fuseki supports their equivalence.
Since it is possible to search for questions tagged both go and openings, there is probably no need to keep separate tags.
If there is agreement, I'll merge the tags.

Sounds good to me.

Merge performed.


text:
Should we simply down-vote questions we don't like?
A lot of people vote to close (or just straight-up close) questions they don't find interesting, don't appear well-written, seem off-topic, or don't seem to have a clear answer.
Should we simply down-vote such questions?
If we're worried a question will foment an unproductive discussion, is it sufficient to simply down-vote it (ideally telling the asker why), and let closing wait until such an unproductive discussion is actually manifest?
Closing a question seems like the nuclear option, as it's pretty hard for the community to overturn it, especially a small community like ours. If our community finds a question interesting, that's ultimately sufficient for it to be answered, no?
I understand this site isn't Reddit, and I apologize for my question's rhetorical bent, but it seems like our community feels the down-vote button is only for users whose rep is too low to vote to close.

Interesting isn't good enough, in my opinion -- questions need to fit within the parameters of the site (and the general SO format) as well as be legible questions.  I might find a question fascinating, but if it's off-topic, it's off-topic.

I've undeleted this, I hope you don't mind.  I think this could be a useful discussion and I wanted to answer it.

A lot of people vote to close (or just straight-up close) questions they don't find interesting, don't appear well-written, seem off-topic, or don't seem to have a clear answer.
Should we simply down-vote such questions?

Those seem like reasonable reasons to downvote, but I wouldn't necessarily vote something down because it's not interesting; as long as it is on-topic for the site it should be interesting to someone.
The official tooltip for voting on questions was recently updated from

This question is clear and useful

to

This question shows research effort; it is clear and useful

Since what I objected to most in "bad" questions was that they were so lazily asked, indicating near-zero effort from the asker.

Thanks for mentioning this, I hadn't noticed the change.

When determining if the best action is to down vote or close, I think the best thing to do is to take cues from the hints on the site.
Closing, as Pat points out, doesn't kill a question, it prevents people from posting answers until it's cleaned up. Voting to close a question brings up a dialog box prompting you to select one of five reasons why the question should be closed. If it doesn't meet one of those reasons, then closure probably isn't the right answer. The whole point is that the closed question is put in time out until the problem is resolved, at which point it can be re-opened--or deleted if no one cares enough to fix the problem. I've seen questions get closed, fixed, and re-opened.
As for down voting, it really has a different purpose. Closure indicates a structural flaw in the question: it's an exact duplicate, it doesn't have an answer, it belongs on another SE site, etc. Down voting serves to suppress a question that doesn't meet the criteria for closure (i.e. there's nothing structurally wrong with it), but just isn't well asked.
Jeff points out a good criteria as he explains why the down vote hint has changed: a good question is not only useful but reflects a little bit of work on the part of the questioner. Now this isn't a coding site, so the idea of research is likely to be a little different, but I always cringe when I see someone ask a question that is answered by quoting a crystal clear sentence from the rules.
Take a strawman question like "How many dice do you roll in Monopoly to figure out how many spaces to move?" It's a board game question, so on topic; it's objective, a real question, not a duplicate, and not too localized. But, it's boring and lame an has an easy answer (and isn't even worded very well). I'd down vote that because the question is disrespectful of the time that another person might take to answer it.

One aspect that doesn't seem to be widely understood is that closing a question does not complete it's life-cycle.
Ultimately there shouldn't be many closed questions, they should be reopened or deleted.  Closed questions can still be commented on and edited.  If there is useful content there, they should be.
I do periodically go through and delete what are, in my opinion at the time the "worst" of the closed questions.  We still have 34 closed questions, I'm sure there are some potential gems in there.
Users are free to downvote and/or vote to close questions if they have the privileges for it.
This recent question is a perfect example of the process at work.  I felt the question, as posed was quite poor and closed it while noting that it could be rewritten and opened.  That's exactly what happened and I think refutes your assertion that the community won't reopen questions.

Indeed. However, in that particular example I think the closure by a moderator (you) was a little heavy-handed. If it had accumulated 5 close votes in the usual way, fine. But I think as a moderator, particularly as an unelected, pro tempore moderator, you need to be especially careful about how you choose to express your opinion. In fact, I think moderators should avoid actions derived from opinions whenever possible. In this sense, you are in fact more limited than a 'normal' user. Open questions are not especially dangerous. Trust the community to vote appropriately!

@ire - Thanks for your thoughts.  I'm a strong believer in the Broken Window Theory.  Open bad questions also get answers.  I really feel for people that end up wasting their time answering a question that doesn't pass muster.

Please be modest in deletion, we can no longer vote to undelete a moderator's deletion.

@Lance - If the community will handle the processing of closed questions (either delete or rehabilitate+reopen) then my services won't be required.  Deleting a question that has been closed for a couple months ought not to raise too many hackles.


text:
Merge teaching and learning?
learning has 11 questions and the following wiki excerpt:

How to gain skill in a particular game, or teach others how to learn a game

teaching has 9 questions and no wiki.
What is the difference between these?  Can we merge them?

They've both been nominated for deletion in this question. However, I think this main site question may have been created to try to demonstrate teaching's worth, so there might not yet be consensus on their fate.
If they're not eliminated entirely, I agree that they should be merged.

I see some good questions there, though the other meta post makes a good point about "meta" tags.  Merge now and discuss elimination later?  At the very least we shouldn't have two of these running around.

Sounds good to me. I think [tag:teaching] should be the one to keep, if any.

I agree with shujaa -- teaching is more descriptive and self-evident than learning, in my opinion.

I've merged these: [tag:learning] -> [tag:teaching].


text:
Are questions about flavor acceptable?
With a lot of games, and particuarly in this scenario, Magic the Gathering, flavor is an aspect of the game that doesn't directly deal with the game play, but it has a big impact on the overall enjoyability of the game for some people.
If you're wondering what flavor is, it's what makes a card fit into a world or a story. For example, in the history of magic, every single spider printed (except for one very old card) has some kind of hate towards flying creatures. Why? Because spider webs catch flies, of course! Another example of flavor would be Mogg Flunkies - they're bigger than they should be for their cost, but they can't attack by themselves. Why? Well the flavor is they need someone smart enough to tell them what to attack, because they're really, really dumb.
The flavor of things isn't just in the cards, but often in the game itself. Magic doesn't have a deck, it has a "library". There's no discard pile, there's a "graveyard". These are all considered forms of flavor.
My question is: are questions that enquire about flavor permitted on BCG? Example questions might be "What is the flavor of Planeswalkers going to the graveyard?" or "What is the flavor behind Forced Fruition?".

I have no objection to questions about flavor as long as they meet the other criteria of a good question. From What Type of Questions Should I Avoid Asking

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual
  problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the
  usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

I'm not familiar enough with your examples to judge them as questions without seeing potential answers. I'm a bit worried about the questions not really being answerable and/or falling under the "chatty, open-ended" clause, but I don't know.
Questions about flavor are fine; they should be judged based on the same criteria as any other question.
I know there's quite an extensive "lore" for MtG, and if someone started asking questions about plot points that are best accessed through books, I might advise them to use the SciFi/Fantasy Stack Exchange instead. I think an analogous situation would be if someone asked questions about, say, making a custom table for board gaming. I think a lot of questions about its functionality and design would be on-topic here, but if they started asking what kind of glue to use for the joints there's probably a construction or DIY stack exchange better suited.

I agree with this. Flavour in and of itself is not taboo, but I think it will be difficult to come up with reasonable questions based on flavour alone. Most questions of the form "What is the flavour of X?" are very easy, and fail the bar for adequate research, IMHO. There are also a very large number of them.


text:
Are questions about "games" that require no decision-making acceptable?
There are some pastimes (such as Candyland or War) that are commonly referred to by the general public as games, but actually aren't, as they have no decisions to make.
Are questions around such topics welcome on our site, since they technically aren't games any more than staring at my wall is?

I think as a community, we have already accepted candy-land as on topic. We already have two questions about it. Having meaningful decisions isn't one of the criteria that we decided was important for being on-topic, so you are free to ask questions about Candyland, War, Chutes and Ladders, etc. The help page notes the following criteria for being on-topic:

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

Wouldn't such 'games' violate the third criterion and therefore be off-topic? If there is no decision to be made, there is no challenge.

@corsiKa, it depends upon how you define "challenge" too. (contest/competition). There is randomization and other players, and it certainly is a contest/competition to see who wins.

Good answer.  One thing to add is that I don't see a reason for us to go against the common definition of a board game.  The guidelines written above were meant to help define the "edges".  If you were to ask random people on the street if Candy Land was a board game, would anyone say no?

I think this is a good discussion to have. In the original discussion where we set our site boundaries, Brian Campbell's excellent post explicitly argued in favour of games based on luck or randomisation:

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."

My opinion is that games which are completely luck-based are fine to ask about. Although strategy and tactics are non-existent, there are still reasonable questions about rules, probabilities, differences between editions, history, terminology, etc.
By their nature, questions on these games will tend to be rarer, but that's fine too.
At some level the off-topic dividing line is arbitrary. All games fall somewhere on the continuum between pure skill and pure luck. If pure luck games are excluded, what about games that are almost entirely luck? In other words, there is no a priori reason to ban these questions; explicitly denying one end of the spectrum is unnecessary.


text:
Are questions about constructing board games on-topic?
I'm looking at building a Settlers of Catan board this year, but I'm not sure if asking questions about specifically constructing the board is on-topic here. Would someone please clarify whether or not a question such as this is considered on-topic on Board & Card Games?

Maybe this is a good time to migrate my question to math.se

Think of it this way: who do you want answers from?

If you want answers from expert crafters, then perhaps the home improvement Stack Exchange is a better place to ask. (There isn't a Stack Exchange for carpentry, 3D printing, or papier-mache yet; if you want to ask a more specialized/skilled group, find a forum that caters to the type of work you want to do.)

This would be for questions about the proper way to join, sand, stain, debug your 3D printing script, or whatever else goes into the construction of a board.

If you want answers from expert board gamers, ask here!

This would be marvelous for figuring out a good design for your board, or working out what additional features you want to add to the board.

If you ask the B&CG Stack Exchange about how to do a seamless join, most of us are incapable of giving that answer; we just don't have the expertise. (There are exceptions among us, but the vast majority of the members here can't help with carpentry. There's a reason that this question about computational complexity doesn't have a good answer yet, even though there's a board game in the question.)
So, what kind of questions do you want to ask? Can people who are expert at playing board games help you?
(Also, what kind of construction are you doing? A bunch of us make our own board games from plastic, cardboard, playing cards, and/or custom printing, both professional and otherwise. I made the brash assumption that you were doing high-skill construction, such as carpentry.)

Good points; if I understand you correctly, you mention 'figuring out a good design for your board' in terms of how to improve the game itself and how that's B&CG's cup of tea (and not "which color looks better for the ocean: light blue or royal blue"). Is that correct?

Yes. A question about what color to use isn't answerable definitively. When you're asking questions, try to couch them so they have "real" answers: not "what should I add to the board", but "I hate the X board, for Y reasons. What can I add/change/spindle/fold/mutilate to fix Y?"

I'd add that simultaneous cross-posting is probably not good, but if you ask a question and don't get any good answers after a few days or a week, try another related Stack Exchange.

Yes, board construction (and board game design and implementation in general) is on-topic, but the usual rules apply (answerable, not opinion-based, not bad subjective, etc.). See for example

Specific standard measurements and info necessary for making a standard Shogi set (board and koma) (this one is about building a board)
What is a good way to make Water Effects in Terrain? (constructing terrain for tabletop wargames)
Where to buy or how to cut blank hexes for own game prototype?


text:
Solitarie card games are they on-topic?
I think it is, they're valid solo card game.

Solitary is single player game mode. Solitary mode has Agricola, Race For The Galaxy (with expansion) and other games. So it is on topic.


text:
Rubik's Cube is it on-topic?
Well, this is not board or card game, but it has same purpose. Combination/logic puzzles like Sudoku, Mastermind, etc. should be on-topic?
In Programmers.SE we embrace some related proposals to avoid too narrow sites.
Is there any real valid reason to Rubik's Cube be off-topic? Can we be inclusive before the SOIS team tell us to be so?

Programmers.SE embraces anything and is worse off for it IMHO :P

@Jon Hadley, not anything, questions are closed there too.

And I am attacked every time to close questions there :-)

Rubik's cube is exactly the examplar case that gives me trouble.  I think emotionally we feel the cube is a puzzle.  But it's hard for me to deny that 'produce a cube with solid-coloured faces' is a victory condition for a one-player game, and there are a clear set of legal moves to use to achieve it.  (That there is a known algorithm for achieving it is clearly not an obstacle; there's a known solution to Connect 4 as well but it's clearly a game.)
Pace gomad's answer, I think single-player games and puzzles usually both possess a defined winning condition (a goal), and a legal sequence of moves to attempt to achieve it.
Proposal: A single-player activity with a goal and legal moves is a game, as opposed to a puzzle, if it also possesses a clear losing condition; that is, a game-state under which the goal can no longer be achieved.
This rules out Rubik's cube, crosswords, and other puzzles where you can always keep trying.  It allows Freecell and other solitaire card games (they usually have a can't-try-any-more-moves end-state).  And importantly for my peace of mind, will always allow solitaire games such as, say, solitaire Pandemic or Death Angel, which we clearly do wish to be on topic!

Thank you for putting your finger on the issue! A game is a separating event - at the end of the game, players are divided into winners and losers, even if there is only one player to begin with.

Very interesting proposal.  I like it!

The Rubik's cube is an interesting case. I would generally classify it as a puzzle, rather than a game.
However, we generally consider solitaire variations of games to be on topic, and might consider solitaire only games (like Klondike or Freecell) to be on topic. I'm not sure how you could draw a line between solitaire and a Rubik's cube in any meaningful way.
I have tried to provide some criteria for distinguishing puzzles from games in my answer to another question; the one I offered is that if it has a dynamic or random setup, or random events during the game, then it could be considered a solitaire game, while if it's static unless someone or a computer creates a new instance (like a crossword or sudoku), then it's a puzzle and off topic. But by this definition, solving a Rubik's cube would be on topic.
So, I'm wondering if anyone has any better way of distinguishing a solitaire game from a puzzle, or if we just want to say that solitaire games are off-topic, or that puzzles are on-topic.

No.
I think there is a difference between puzzles and boardgames.  I'll admit that there is some overlap, but I do not believe that we should expand to encompass every puzzle activity.
Update, so far we've had 1 topic on Rubik's Cube and it has been closed by the communityRobert Cartaino.

https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1136/how-to-solve-rubik-cube-in-least-moves-shortest-method-closed

I wouldn't mind if puzzles are included. But I can imagine that they don't fit the general concept of the site.
But then again, you can see a puzzle as a one person game.

A Rubik's Cube, like many puzzles, is a toy, not a game. A toy is something you can play with, but it has no ruleset. A game is a rule set that defines an action framework. Actions within that framework constitute playing the game.

A deck of cards is a toy
Rummy is a game

If there was some game - a ruleset defining a framework of actions - involving Rubik's Cube, then that would be on topic. The cube itself is not.

Wouldn't you agree that given a scrambled cube, finding the solution is a goal? The rules being, you can switch a layer clockwise or ccw. There are even variations where you want to go to flower configuration instead of solid color.

Concure with eipipuz; this point is exactly why Rubik's cube gives me trouble.  I think emotionally we feel the cube is a puzzle.  But it's hard for me to deny that 'produce a cube with solid-coloured faces' is a victory condition for a one-player game, and there are a clear set of legal moves to use to achieve it.  I'm trying to think of something that in principle distinguishes this from, say, solitaire Pandemic, and I can't.   EDIT: Wait, yes I can. Answer submitted.