text:
Why the recent addition of MTG sub tags?
Recently, the tags:

mtg-planeswalkers
mtg-regenerate
mtg-indestructible

have been created.
What is the rationale for these creations?
Most recently, tags were discussed here, but later here.  More generally for Stack Exchange there's a conversation here.
I personally don't see the value in any of these tags.  There are so few questions on these topics, there's no point in creating a feed for these topics, nor do they help with searching as general keyword searches would pick them up anyway.

There's more than that: I've also created mtg-double-faced-cards, mtg-competitive-rel, mtg-professional-rel, mtg-regular-rel, mtg-color-identity, and mtg-emblems.
The rationale is that our MTG tag hierarchy has been super undeveloped (borderline nonexistent) which makes it extremely difficult to find and reference past answers or find past duplicates. Very often I simply cannot find those questions at all even when I know they're there to be found. Our canonical questions on a great many topics are lost in a giant uncategorised pile of questions tagged only magic-the-gathering.
We have a curation tool for this scenario—tags—which has been underutilised and which I'm now applying to help us resolve this problem. There are many ways to slice up the metaphorical tag pie, so what I've been doing is working out distinct, significant, and unusual topics where we see questions very specifically about only that topic and where there is a lot of distinct confusion about the mechanic or topic itself.
The most concrete case where this is valuable is when this helps us find and make duplicates. You highlight mtg-indestructible as not having value, but in the process of adding that tag we found 3 never-before-closed duplicates in only 14 questions:

Does Reduce to Ashes Kill indestructible creatures?
How do indestructible creatures actually work?
What happens if someone Doomblades a creature in response to you trying to give it Indestructible?

These duplicates were never identified in the beginning because it was extremely difficult to find questions about the indestructible mechanic. (You say keyword searches should pick them up, but I'll get to that shortly.) Now it is trivially easy to find questions about the indestructible mechanic, and when we see future questions about it, we can check for duplicates again then too. So they are already giving value.
Similarly when I added mtg-double-faced-cards we found these to be duplicates:

Can a card copying a double-sided planeswalker transform?
Mirage Mirror + Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun

I think it's noteworthy these questions are the only duplicates in those tags. We didn't just find new duplicates—rather, before consolidating the topics under tags, duplicates were simply not getting discovered and closed at all.

There's other ways these tags add value to the site:

We gather topics together to help bring them attention to the focus of experts who they need to reach. Because we have mtg-competitive-rel, mtg-professional-rel, and mtg-regular-rel, people who are experts on Rules Enforcement Levels can watch these tags to have them highlighted. (And indeed each of these tags has one watcher at time of writing this.)
We gather topics together for newbies to learn about. If you've just visited our site confused about the commander format, color identity, regeneration, indestructibility, planeswalkers, emblems, double-faced cards, or rules enforcement levels, you can dive into previous questions on that topic to learn other things you might have been unclear on.
We make it easier to find prior duplicates.
We make it easier to find and reference canonical questions and answers on a topic.
We make these topics more easily searchable and discoverable because they're actually not by keywords alone.

There are so few questions on these topics, there's no point in creating a feed for these topics, nor do they help with searching as general keyword searches would pick them up anyway.

Not actually true. When I run a search for [magic-the-gathering] indestructible is:question I find 55 questions. Despite that, there are only actually 14 questions directly about the indestructible mechanic, now tagged as such.
75% of those keyword results are noise!
This is because most questions showing up in search are proposing a scenario in which indestructibility just tangentially comes up, but the questions are not, themselves, about the topic of indestructibility.
The mtg-indestructible tag lets me cut through the noise to find the questions fundamentally about the mechanic.
I don't want to look like I'm cherry-picking though so I'll examine the other two tags you listed as well:

mtg-regenerate has 9 questions, [magic-the-gathering] regenerate is:question finds 35 results: 75% noise
mtg-planeswalkers has 13 questions, [magic-the-gathering] planeswalker is:question finds 111 results (or “planeswalkers” finds 110): 89% noise

These noise levels are why we weren't finding duplicates. It makes the topic difficult to dive into because by keyword alone we're finding tons of things that are not actually about the topic but are just tangentially mentioning it.
These noise levels aren't true of all of these tags. There's only 10 MTG questions that mention emblems and four tagged mtg-emblems. It's not hard to sift through those. Same goes for mtg-color-identity. But these are giving us value by gathering together a topic of focus and making it trivially easy for newbies and experts alike to find questions on that topic.
There's also usefulness when a tag isn't easily keyword searchable. mtg-double-faced-cards has a lot of equivalent keywords: do you search transform or double-faced or dfc or dual-faced or back face (catches a lot of questions about morph) or flip (a common misnomer that also catches flip cards)? Have you missed any keywords? Having a tag categorising the topic resolves this set of problems.

Just a small addendum/note, there are over 3.1k mtg questions on the site of around 9.7k total questions. It doesn't really make sense for ~1/3 of the sites questions to be under a single tag, especially when using sub-tags adds so much searchability without really costing anything

Brilliant answer.  I certainly see the value now!  The use case of, "using tags as an efficient search" had never occurred to me.

Maybe we could talk through general guidelines for mtg tags? It sounds like you've got a philosophy here (e.g. tags for keyword abilities of the form "mtg-{keyword}") and it'd be great if we could consistently follow it. If you're up for it, a separate Q&A summarizing all this would be really helpful.

@Cascabel I'd be up for doing that. I could have something out as time is available over the next few days.

Specifically I think it'd work as a self-answered question - what are our conventions for mtg tags? and you can preface your answer with a note that it's not final (though based on actual existing tagging, so it's not just a proposal either).


text:
Why do people ask on the board and card games site about chess?
There is a site about chess an one about
Board & Card Games.
I keep seeing questions about chess on the
Board & Card Games site.
*The problem is it brakes the topic.
2 of 2 things need to happen.
1) Whoever reads this, move your chess posts and go around giving people this important advice
           2) Make it clear!

Sorry. What do you think the problem is? Please expand.

@Andrew How can this be a dupe of my question, when my question is predicated on the answer to this one?

@DonielF both questions specifically ask if chess questions should be moved to the chess se as off topic here. Your question is of better quality actually asking if they should be considered off topic and moved, while this 'question' is more a statement saying we should.

People asking about Chess on Board & Card Games is not a problem for Board & Card Games. It doesn't break anything, Chess is a Board Game and is therefore on topic.
As to why people ask about Chess on Board & Card Games when Chess would seem the more obvious place, the answer is they don't. Not much anyway, looking at the chess tag there have only been 8 questions this year.

Then I've got to say, some posts aren't in that tag.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Are there other ways to reference Magic cards in posts on BoardgamesExchange?
I wanted to write a Magic question here on BoardgamesExchange in which I need to reference some cards. So I wanted to include them in my post, but:

I don't know if there are more possibilities than just inserting a link to the card from the Magic card database on wizards.com? (e.g. In Bolas's Clutches)

For example as another possibility I could imagine to directly include a picture of the card in the post, but:

I don't know if it's legal to do so or if I would harm some copyrights there?

Or is there maybe a more syntax based possibility like on reddit.com/r/magicTCG by surrounding a card with double brackets (e.g. [[In Bola's Clutches]]) which then triggers a bot to post a link to that card as a comment?
It would be nice if there was a possibility which shows the card directly (e.g. as a popup)! So there would be no need to click on that link and open a new page to see the card.

Possible duplicate of Please add support for the Magic AutoCard window

Boardgames SE has a special shortcut syntax exactly for this: specifically, if you type [mtg:<card name>], for example [mtg:Black Lotus], you will get a link to Gatherer for that card name - e.g. Black Lotus. There are some issues with this feature but it works pretty well most of the time.
Note that the link won't appear in the preview, but it does appear in the rendered output. (I've also just discovered it's quite hard to stop the rendering happening...)

I'll just take this opportunity to blatantly self-promote my SOUP user script / browser extension that fixes a bunch of these issues, including the lack of edit preview.

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


text:
Can the Autocard feature be improved (again)?
This used to be an answer. Now it is a feature request.
The Autocard feature for Magic: the Gathering was updated in 2016. Since then the community has discovered a couple of bugs. We also found a solution that addresses those bugs, doesn't reintroduce old bugs, and as a bonus adds support for multiple languages.
Here are some test cases from bugs we've had in the past:

Regular cards (Lightning Bolt)
Cards with apostrophes (Death's Shadow)
Single word cards whose names are a subset of another card (Island, Curiousity)
Double word cards whose names are a subset of another card (Sun Titan)
Cards that are also an avatar (Platinum Angel)
Both an apostrophe, and an avatar (Hell's Caretaker)

A separate bug is that whilst we usually link card names in English, if a visitor's PC is configured to another language (e.g. German or Japanese) Gatherer completely fails to find the card. (Because it looks for the card name in their language's list, not in the English list.)
Test Results for the current autocard link as of 2018-05-27
See the test run here. If the link took me directly to the one card I was searching for, it passed. Otherwise it failed. I copied the URLs that were produced, in case they change retroactively. The base URL is always gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx.

Pass: [mtg:Lightning Bolt] -> ...?name=%2b%5bLightning%20Bolt%5d
Pass: [mtg:Death's Shadow] -> ...?name=%2b%5bDeath%27s%5d%2b%5bShadow%5d
Fail: [mtg:Island] -> ...?name=%2b%5bIsland%5d
Pass: [mtg:Sun Titan] -> ...?name=%2b%5bSun%20Titan%5d
Fail: [mtg:Platinum Angel] -> ...?name=%2b%5bPlatinum%20Angel%5d
Pass: [mtg:Hell's Caretaker] -> ...?name=%2b%5bHell%27s%5d%2b%5bCaretaker%5d

Solution — A new Gatherer autocard format
The community came up with a solution that is almost a one-liner in JavaScript.
function urlFrom(cardName) {
    const baseUrl = 'http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx'
    var queryString = '?name=' + encodeURIComponent(cardName)
    return baseUrl + queryString;
}

Or:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Platinum%20Angel

No brackets or pluses. Using this URL also fixes the language bug.
Here's a fiddle demonstrating that the solution works. The links in this fiddle point to every card we've found that may cause bugs for Autocard linking (or are bug examples), and all the links pass.
https://jsfiddle.net/ws165r64/52/ (See doppelgreener's answer for a fiddle with a more comprehensive test suite)

The community is doing really good work here.

The Autocard feature has been updated to use the new url format, and to improve on our encoding of card names so as to fix many (hopefully all) of issues with the old one. Here are some of my test cases:

Lightning Bolt
Death's Shadow
Island
Who // What // When // Where // Why
B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster)
_____
Junún Efreet
"Ach! Hans, Run!"
The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service

Note: the code that inserts links here runs server-side, as part of the process for savingt a new revision (it is not run client-side, no JS is used). So old posts that need the updated logic will not show up with the new links until a new revision is saved.
Thanks for your patience on this one. As a former MTG player (I used to run black/blue and red/green decks when I started during 4th edition), happy to work on this one.

Thank you very much for the code update!

Adding an answer with all the example cards as a quick way to check some of cards that are not in the latest update post.
Lightning Bolt
Death's Shadow
Island
Curiosity
Sun Titan
Platinum Angel
Hell's Caretaker
Bonecrusher Giant
Stomp
Dwarven Mine
Raven's Run
Very Cryptic Command
Garbage Elemental
Knight of the Kitchen Sink
Ineffable Blessing
Sly Spy
Everythingamajig
Ghazban Ogress
If you want to test in another language here is a link for changing the default. https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Language.aspx (Thanks to doppelgreener)

I've run through the jsfiddle test battery to double check results.
I've also made an updated battery that removes some duplicates and consolidates cases in the Javascript: https://jsfiddle.net/cmo1prfu/
Eldraine update 23 Oct 2019: This also passes test cases introduced by Eldraine which break in the current autocard. Those test cases are adventurer cards and their corresponding adventures, and the new card Dwarven Mine which has a name that's a subset of Dwarven Miner. Here's their broken current autocard links: Bonecrusher Giant, Stomp, Dwarven Mine. Here's their working links in the new format: Bonecrusher Giant, Stomp, Dwarven Mine.
English language: some minor breaks

"Soldier" doesn't link to the token, just a search page listing cards with Soldier in their name (no tokens). This is fine, not being able to link to tokens isn't a big deal especially considering a Soldier token can be like nine different things.
Split cards can only be referenced by one side: the links to Alive, Well, Insult, and Injury all work. None of the joined combinations work (e.g. Alive // Well, Trial / Error, Insult /// Injury with or without spaces). This means for split cards we only link to sides and would have to write [mtg:Alive] // [mtg:Well] if we wanted the full card linked.
Who // What // When // Where // Why works, but the single-slash variation doesn't.

Some accented card names have to be spelled precisely. The following fail if they are missing any special characters:

Ring of Ma'rûf (cannot be spelled "Ring of Ma'ruf" or "Ring of Maruf")
The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service (cannot be written without the reserved sign)

Just "Emrakul" is in the list, and leads to a search page since there isn't any one card called that. That's fine. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn works: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Emrakul%2C%20the%20Aeons%20Torn
Foreign language differences
These are tried after I set my Gatherer language to Japanese, German, and Korean. This section documents any difference from the English experience.
The cards from Unstable with functional variants all break:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Very%20Cryptic%20Command
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Garbage%20Elemental
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Knight%20of%20the%20Kitchen%20Sink
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ineffable%20Blessing
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sly%20Spy
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Everythingamajig

X is fine: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=X and so are all other silver bordered cards on the list from Unhinged and Unglued.
Cards with special characters must be spelled exactly or else they fail, e.g.:

"Ghazban Ogress" breaks: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ghazban%20Ogress
The correctly-accented "Ghazbán Ogress" is fine: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ghazb%C3%A1n%20Ogress

Both Ghazban Ogress links work fine for me. Using Chrome on Windows.

@Rainbolt Did you set your Gatherer to another language first, and do you have any scripts running that might replace the link (like SOUP)? They should both work in English, but for other languages the non-accented version breaks.

Oh, no. Sorry, I thought that was a different part of the answer but I see the big bold heading now!

I just added these to my answer and the link works for all of them for me.

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


text:
Was it appropriate to flag this comment as "No longer needed"?
The author of this question originally set a scene in which three players were involved, but then posed question didn't involve one of the players at all. An observant user left a comment along these lines:

If player X isn't relevant to the question, I wouldn't bother mentioning player X at all.

(Note: This is not a verbatim quote. I cannot see deleted comments, so I'm quoting from memory.)
The question was subsequently edited to remove any mention of player X. So, I flagged the comment as "No longer needed". The flag was declined.
Was it appropriate to flag this comment as "No longer needed"?

Wasn't me, but sometimes it's just an accident, wouldn't be surprised if that's the case given that the end result was deleting the comment. Delete and dismiss are next to each other in the flag dialog, easy enough to mess up.

Accidents are okay. Also, I realized that the title of the meta post asked "Why was my flag declined?", but the body asked "Was it appropriate to flag the comment?". The former can only be answered by the specific moderator who declined the flag, but the latter could be answered by anyone who is familiar with flagging etiquette. I want to learn flagging etiquette, not moderator behavior (I understand the two are closely related). I updated the question to be consistent.

Yes, "no longer needed" is appropriate for obsolete comments, and as far as I can tell, that comment was obsolete, and that's why someone deleted it eventually. I don't know why your initial flag was declined.
Note that comment flags are lighter-weight than question/answer flags, just as comments are themselves less important. In particular, the only available options are dismiss or delete. There's no "helpful" option like on posts, which we can use despite taking no action, and there's no way to add an explanation.
So if a flag has merit but we decide we want the comment to stick around for any reason, you'll see the comment flag declined. This is relatively common, e.g. a mostly-obsolete comment that still contains a point that's not mentioned anywhere else.

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


text:
Teach people how to find their own cards
Someone asks

Are there cards that turn life gain into damage?

List of three cards. We upvote. Author accepts. Then, someone else asks

What cards can change mana color?

Another list of cards. We upvote. Author accepts.
We have tons of questions like these two. We encourage people to use Board and Card Games like a software developer might use a database, except without having to write queries. "Hey database, can you give me some rows that are blue and combo with this other row?" Ask a question, get a list. This doesn't teach anyone anything except to come back later and ask for another list when they need one.
We need to teach people how to find cards. Here is an example of an answer that lists a bunch of cards but (currently) doesn't teach the reader how to find them. Here is a better example of what I think we should move towards.
There are two ways to phrase what I want to ask:

Can we encourage questions to ask for a process rather than a list?

Comments, edits, and an attitude adjustment are all we need to accomplish this. Example:

"I see that you've asked for a list of all the Blue cards. Why don't you try asking how you can search for cards with a specific color? We prefer questions that ask for a process rather than a list of cards."

Can we answer with a process rather than a list?

Again, we only need comments, edits, and a shift in attitude. If you see an answer that only has a list, add a process or suggest that the author do so. And don't upvote.
Do not start replacing the lists that are already out there. That would be destructive. Lists, when not too large, actually do add value to answers, but I think they should be paired with information about how the list was developed.

I just want to point out that among the answers you linked to, mine (the second one) links to the searches that were used to find the listed cards.

@murgatroid99 That's great, and an oversight on my part. Maybe some insight as to how you came up with that list would be good, but it's already a good answer.

You need to balance "rejecting the premise of the question" (your suggestion doesn't do that) and fending off "help vampires". I agree that it's probably a good idea, but be prepared to just revert to the original Q when faced with hostility.

"There is no way that the author pulled those thirteen cards out of his head." Why not? I just did that today on a question, pulling a dozen cards from memory. I had to double check name spelling for some of them, sure but my answer was from memory. I even did try to create a query on scryfall to give definitive results - I couldn't make it work.

Can we answer with a process rather than a list?

I'd rather see both!
I definitely think that, if the process is relatively simple, an answer will be better if it includes it. I also think that, as long as the list isn't insanely long, it should be provided in the answer. The list is still helpful, even if the process is there. Also, if things are nontrivial, making it part of the answer provides an opportunity to annotate and explain things.
On the other hand, if the process is complex - for example if the best you could do was make five separate searches, weed out false positives, and combine the results - it might not always be terribly helpful.
In either case, I don't think there's really any reason to answer with only the process. Providing the list directly answers the question, generally desirable in answers. It also helps demonstrate that the process works, making it easier for readers/voters to see that you haven't overlooked something, which in turn makes it more likely for us to end up with a good, complete answer.
StackOverflow is a decent analogy here. When someone has a specific programming problem, a good answer will include a specific solution for that problem. It might also include some broad discussion of how to arrive at that solution, and that'll often make it a much more valuable answer, but without the solution itself, it's not the best answer it could be. And if that broader discussion is actually pretty complex, it might be too much for the answer.

Can we encourage questions to ask for a process rather than a list?

Given that as described above I think answers should often provide both a list and a process, no: we shouldn't stop people from asking for lists.
We could encourage people to ask for a process along with a list, though. I'm mostly ambivalent about that. I'm certainly on board with people explicitly encouraging good answers. But really, the responsibility is on the people writing the answers. If we're going to pester someone about this, why not pester the people who are writing answers without explaining how they got them?

+1 We've been discussing this in chat, and this is exactly the conclusion we have reached (I think... it's an ongoing discussion). A list augmented with a process (or an explanation) is better than just a list or just a process. Perhaps I took too much of an "anti-list" tone in the question.

In principle, I would agree that teaching people to find cards is generally more helpful than just dumping a list of matching cards. And I would encourage everyone to at least provide the searches that were used to find that list, so that anyone looking at the question gets an example to help them search.
However, finding these cards takes more than just a working knowledge of the available search tools. It also requires often substantial knowledge of how cards are templated, which is usually only gained through a lot of experience with the game. For example, taking the second answer you linked, the two searches that found the given cards (on magiccards.info) are

o:"mana as though"

and

o:"}, {T}: Add" or (o:"}: Add" -o:"{T}") (o:"Add {W" or o:"Add {U" or o:"Add {B" or o:"Add {R" or o:"Add {G" or o:"Add one mana")

The first search is the shortest string that matches both Sunglasses of Urza (which was mentioned in the question) and Mycosynth Lattice (which I remembered had a similar ability) without matching any irrelevant abilities. The second search finds every ability that costs at least 1 mana and generates at least 1 colored mana.
If we also consider the first answer you linked to, every one of the 3 cards has a different wording. It would be very difficult without the benefit of hindsight to write a search that found all of them without finding dozens or hundreds of irrelevant cards. And they probably didn't find all of them.
This answer is another one I wrote for a question like this. For this one, again, knowledge of how alternate costs are worded was necessary to formulate the correct search.
In addition, for most of the answers of this sort that I have written, crafting a search that avoided both false positives and false negatives was too difficult, and I had to manually whittle the list down by checking each result.

I crafted a query that two of the cards in your answer, and two that you missed (arguably Wall of Limbs doesn't count). Here was my rationale: I want my opponent to lose life whenever I gain life. I am "you" and I am "a player". So I OR those two trigger conditions. Then, I AND the word "loses" and suddenly I am down to five cards.

Sorry, I edited the comment a few times so it kind of obsoleted your response. Anyway, it's not the results I got that matter. It's the process I took to get there that matters.

I would argue that a process that misses some cards (possibly a significant number) is not as useful as a list of as many matching cards as possible.

A process that finds four cards is certainly more useful than a list containing only three.

Can we move this conversation to chat?


text:
Primarily opinion based questions that morph into objectively answerable questions
At least on Magic: the Gathering questions, which seems to attract the same regular crowd of users, I am starting to see a pattern. A question gets challenged as primarily opinion based, and the author reacts by encapsulating that question inside of an objective one. For example:

Is Card A better than Card B?

... transforms into...

Is there a consensus that Card A is better than Card B?

Sometimes this tactic works, and the question gets reopened. Technically, the question is objectively answerable. I view this as an attempt to squeeze in primarily opinion based questions where they don't belong. Does the rest of the community feel the same way, or do you guys like to see questions transformed like this?

I would say that it is still a primarily opinion based question because based on where you are discussing the question you can still get different answers all depending on play style of the groups in question.

"encapsulating that question inside of an objective one" - when I read this, I think of the transformation "is A better than B?" into "in what situations would A be better than B or vice versa?" which seems a lot more likely to succeed and be received favorably than "is there a consensus..."

@Jefromi "in what situations [...]" indicates a question that is Too Broad. If I feel like the OP can reasonably narrow down "situations", I'll ask, but when the meat of the question is "is A better than B", I don't expect that the OP will be able to narrow it down in a way that would change my vote.

@Rainbolt Situations can be categorized, though. For example, a card might be stronger against decks playing small cheap early creatures. Anyway, the point wasn't to get too much into the detail of the best form there. I'm just saying that your "transformation" is pretty much the worst case, a trivial wrapping of the original question that's hardly a transformation, as opposed to an attempt to actually transform the question into an objective one. (And since we happen to know that we'd prefer an objective form, we should help the OP make it that way, not just say "please narrow it down".)

@Jefromi Right. My point was that even thought situations can be categorized, I'm not necessarily looking forward to categories of "better than". You see, unlike Pat and yourself, I wouldn't vote to reopen a question just because it said "better against small weenie decks" or "better in a blue control deck". It's still POB to me.

And my point was that even though it's possible to change a question into one that's still too subjective or too broad, it's also possible to change it into a good one, so the title here ("morph into objectively answerable questions") doesn't really match what you describe into the body (essentially, morph into another iffy question).

@Jefromi If I thought that the question could be transformed into a good one while still preserving the original intent, then I probably wouldn't label it primarily opinion based in the first place. Instead, I would make or suggest an edit to change the question's presentation.

Real questions have answers, not ideas, items or opinions.
Easy to say, but hard to always put into practice as you've noted.  A simple "better than" encourages speculation.  We don't want that. A good answer will come from the personal experiences of the answerer.  Ideally, reading it we should know that they have been there and done that.
My suggestion when faced with a "better than" question is to ask the questioner, "better for what purpose?" and "Why do you want to know?"
A fleshed out question that I would consider valid is:

I'm running a variant of deck X and I'm having trouble with deck Y usually I get (weenie rushed, milled, whatever).
What strategies should I use against this deck? Are there cards I could add to my sideboard?

It's really the same question, just with solid details.  These details should encourage people with similar experiences to give great answers.  We want these types of answers on the site.
Practical answerable questions based on actual problems
We want to connect experts with people with actual problems, thats why I mentioned "Why do you want to know?" above.
Consider a simple question:

"What is the best blue flier?"

I could see this question coming from a new member of the site.  They don't know any better, it's not their fault that StackExchange sites are not really forums.  They look similar and the new person wants to fit in, participate and get a discussion started.
Our job is to politely query them to try to determine which of the below two situations the questioner identifies most closely with.
1 - Your buddy, who doesn't play much MtG but loves to talk about it.  Recently he was on his couch thinking, "Blue is the best color, so many cool fliers.  I wonder what the best one is?"
This person doesn't have a real problem.  He just wants to talk.  Let's sent him on to a forum.
2 - The serious player.  She's been trying out a new deck for a couple weeks, took it to her local store.  She did OK, but got crushed by certain decks.  She thinks a blue flier might help.
This person has a real problem. Let's help her!

I don't like the example. "What strategies should I use?" is really broad. "What cards could I add to my sideboard?" tends to change with every single release. I would still vote to close this.

I wanted to reverse my downvote and cast an upvote, so I made some minor grammatical edits. I was tunnel visioned on the example that I didn't like, and now I've realized that the answer contains very good advice on how to approach the questioner. We all know by now that I need more help than most people on approaching questions tactfully.

@Rainbolt - Its a fair question but I think it is OK if answers won't always stand the test of time.  In my head, I'm picturing a three paragraph answer by someone with a couple Pro-Tours under their belt.  Even a couple years later people should be able to  absorb knowledge by reading their answer and seeing the thought process in action even if the cards in question might not be perfect (or even legal) anymore.  Meanwhile, s/he gave solid advice to someone that was struggling with the question.

Huge +1 for "Our job is to politely query..." One of the things I hate most is seeing a vague question closed with unhelpful "this is wrong" style comments that tend to upset the OP, when we could've asked a couple questions (or even just edited ourselves!) and turned it into a good question.

@Jefromi - Thanks, I looked but didn't see any recent examples.  I know I've seen some in the past that were not ideal.  Regardless of what folks give us, I'd love to see our initial interaction with them to be very positive.  I urge folks to use their votes freely, but comments should be respectful and few.  I'd rather see a comment upvoted that wasn't perfect rather than five different comments saying some version of "your question is not awesome"

Sorry, I wasn't trying to talk about a specific case, just the general idea. I don't think there's anything you need to rush out and save!

Personally I think it is still primarily  opinion based for a couple of reasons.

How do you decide what the consensus is? You can visit different communities and they can not only give you different opinion's on which card is better but they can give you different reasons why one card is better then the other. A lot comes done to play style and experience. If one group has figured out a trick to get more use from a card they will likely value it higher then a group that hasn't.
Personal play style and deck construction. This plays a lot into the value of a card. If a card fits into the overall style and construction of your deck you are going to place more value on it then if it doesn't. Which means that if Card A fits into your deck better then card B it doesn't matter that others think more highly of Card B.
Expansions, while I know that answers will get out of date when expansions and rules change the simple fact that a cards value can change drastically with each expansion. Cards can get better as new combos get introduced or get worse as cards leave the legal sets or as rules change.


text:
Are game specific communication questions on topic?
I have questions that revolve around communication in Magic. It's not a rulings question. For example:

When I ask "Declare blockers?", often my opponents do not understand. What can I say in order to clearly communicate to my opponent that I would like to move the the Declare Blockers step?

Obviously the question would be a little more detailed if I actually posted it (I might describe my opponent's reactions and the problems it leads to). If it is purely a communication question, is it on topic here?
There is a real need to avoid ambiguous conversation in Magic, but it could be a topic for another site.

I'm curious: why would you have thought this might not be on topic here?

@DavidZ For two reasons. First, the best way to communicate might be considered subjective. Just looking at the question I posed as an example, can you see how there might be a few "good" answers, but no "correct" ones? Second, the topic is communication. One could argue that communicating clearly isn't really about Magic at all.

@Rainbolt This kind of thing -- especially in a tournament setting -- is definitely in the scope of Good Subjective though.

Yes, you can ask it here
This is a question about playing Magic the Gathering, intended for Magic the Gathering players and experts, and thus on topic. It's not a topic about its exact mechanics, but we do accept questions about games that are outside of play, and this is halfway between both.
This is not e.g. a good question for English.SE, because whoever answers it on English.SE would have to also be a Magic the Gathering player who thoroughly understands the context you're asking about.

Having spent a small amount of time on English.SE they would have enough experience in MTG be able to answer it, but they wouldn't; they would send it here instead.


text:
Are well-defined theoretical or custom Magic questions on-topic?
Let's say I'm working on custom cards for fun, within Magic's rules. If I had a new mechanic, would it be on-topic to ask a question about the rules implication of the mechanic?
For example, if I had a mechanic which was intended to make a creature's power always match its toughness after modifications. If I posted my initial definition:  means that this creature's power is equal to its toughness. I'd receive an answer explaining how layers would make this wording not work, and how the ability could be worded within the rules.
By "well-defined", I mean that the question is not about how to balance the effect, nor seeking opinionated feedback.
This question refers to Magic, but could apply to any rules system.
Would questions like this be on-topic, as they help people explore and understand the rules, or off-topic because they don't answer questions about the existing game, and wouldn't be practically useful to the vast majority of readers?

Khans of Tarkir green Enchantment, Assault Formation.

I am generally in favor of questions about custom Magic cards. They're interesting ways of exploring nuances in the rules, and that's valuable especially with rules as complex as Magic's.
I think that if we do choose to allow this, we have to accept that most questions will be of the form "Does this custom card function as I intend it to?" or "What does this custom ability do?", and that in some cases, the only correct answer will be "This is not covered by the rules". We should also encourage people to not only answer whether the card works but also to describe how it functions in edge cases, and especially cover interactions that break the game.

I like this - having some guidance on how to answer in a more useful and informative way helps provide questions of the type "does this work?" with answers that explore the rules more deeply, rather than just "no - because of rule XXX". This makes the answers more useful to people beyond just the card creator.


text:
Announcing a “Graduation” election for 2021
Summary: Board & Card Games Stack Exchange will begin the nomination stage for a moderator election on 18 October 2021, as your “graduation” election as a result of having lost your beta label a while back).
The timeline:

On October 11th, I'll post a question collection post on Meta, so that the community can post questions they'd like to see the candidates answer.

Starting on October 18th, users can nominate themselves. The top questions collected on the previous week will be compiled into a questionnaire on the election page, so that potential moderators can answer them.

The existing moderator team will need to run in the election if they wish to keep their positions.

On October 25th, if there are 4 or more candidates, we'll run an election. If not, I'll extend the nomination period for a week. If, at the end of that extension period there are still less than 4 candidates, I'll simply appoint the candidates who've nominated (and aren't already pro-tem mods) and we'll default to considering this a "pro-tem election" just to try to keep the total number of moderators on the site at 3 (for full details of the process, see the announcement on Meta Stack Exchange). (There's a small chance we'll need to remove a nomination, but I doubt that will come up.)

If there is an election, I'll announce the results on meta on November 2nd (or November 9th, if we need to extend the nomination period).

If you have any questions about the process, please stick them in an answer here.

Yay!  I've been waiting for this for years, maybe a decade :)

So our child is finally becoming an adult. Such a proud moment.


text:
What does the help center mean by "the preparation of miniatures/terrain/etc."?
When looking at the help center to see what kind of questions are on-topic, I saw the following:

Minature wargames (including the preparation of miniatures/terrain/etc)

What exactly is meant by preparation of miniatures or terrain? I don't believe it implies questions about building or painting miniatures or terrain are on-topic, though I would happily stand corrected.

Is there a reason you don't think that painting or building miniatures wouldn't be covered by that?

Because the help center claimed "Board and Card Games Stack Exchange is for expert Q&A from people who like playing, discussing the strategy of, and getting rules clarifications of board games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing board games." This made me believe that the game itself was the focus, not more creative parts such as painting miniatures or terrain. A question like "How can I create a desert base for my miniatures?" just feels off-topic to me.

If the game is on topic for B&CG.SE (ex. Warhammer), then questions about building and painting miniatures and terrain for those games are also on topic. While most of the questions we get are rules questions we also support questions about other aspects of games and game related topics as well.

That said, "X is in scope" doesn't necessarily mean "X is likely to get good answers here" and we have to be honest with ourselves that we're likely not the ideal place to come to for mini-painting advice.

@Cascabel If we know that this is not the best place to ask, wouldn't it be beneficial to redirect people to a good place to ask, such as Arts & Crafts

TBH I feel like this might be a better place than Arts & Crafts... while there's a knee-jerk reaction to assume paint=paint, there's a fair bit of cross-pollination between boardgames and miniatures. Check out any particular board game (that has minis) subreddit and you'll see a ton of threads about painting those minis. And more and more games these days come with minis.


text:
2020: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

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

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we welcome 2021, and in keeping with tradition, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Board & Card Games over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Users suspended²
0
6

Users destroyed³
3
0

Users contacted
1
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
5
527

Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
0
194

Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
2
808

Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
0
266

Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
2
953

Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
0
904

Questions reopened
11
18

Questions protected
0
38

Questions migrated
0
1

Questions flagged⁵
4
150

Questions closed
6
225

Question flags handled⁵
51
103

Posts unlocked
0
1

Posts undeleted
0
14

Posts locked
0
26

Posts deleted⁶
24
450

Posts bumped
0
125

Comments undeleted
1
0

Comments flagged
0
330

Comments deleted⁷
318
489

Comment flags handled
154
181

Answers flagged
7
821

Answer flags handled
108
719

All comments on a post moved to chat
2
0

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

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2019: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

A big thank you to Shog9 for writing the queries and script to facilitate fetching and posting this data to all the sites in the network, and to Brian for the subsequent work making the whole thing more user friendly.
Wishing everyone a happy 2021!


text:
2023: a year in moderation

It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

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

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.
So as we say goodbye to 2023 (and January 2024… ahem) and move into 2024, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Board & Card Games over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community User¹
Community²

All comments on a post moved to chat
0
0
0

Answer flags handled
106
48
0

Answers flagged
17
12
124

Bounties canceled
0
0
0

Comment flags handled
103
11
2

Comments deleted⁸
92
0
148

Comments flagged
27
1
89

Comments undeleted
3
0
0

Escalations to the Community Manager team
0
0
0

Posts bumped
0
83
0

Posts deleted⁷
41
95
76

Posts locked
0
26
0

Posts undeleted
4
0
8

Posts unlocked
0
0
0

Question flags handled⁶
10
84
0

Questions closed
21
65
6

Questions flagged⁶
0
1
104

Questions merged
0
0
0

Questions migrated
0
0
0

Questions protected
2
4
1

Questions reopened
4
5
0

Questions unprotected
0
0
0

Revisions redacted
0
0
0

Tag highlight language set
0
0
0

Tag synonyms created
0
0
0

Tag synonyms proposed
0
0
0

Tags merged
0
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue
29
0
286

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue
10
0
89

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue
13
0
233

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue
1
0
55

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts" queue
20
0
66

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue
3
0
36

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue
33
17
151

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue
0
0
0

User banned from review
0
0
0

User review-bans lifted early
0
0
0

User suspensions lifted early
1
0
0

Users contacted
1
0
0

Users deleted
0
0
0

Users destroyed⁴
5
0
0

Users suspended³
0
12
0

Footnotes
¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² This refers to the membership of Board & Card Games without diamonds next to their names.
³ The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
⁴ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁵ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2022: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2024! ^_^


text:
2022: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

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

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Board & Card Games over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

All comments on a post moved to chat
1
0

Answer flags handled
132
53

Answers flagged
18
166

Comment flags handled
503
523

Comments deleted⁷
586
573

Comments flagged
221
805

Comments undeleted
1
0

Posts bumped
0
77

Posts deleted⁶
51
150

Posts locked
0
9

Posts undeleted
2
6

Question flags handled⁵
29
31

Questions closed
46
57

Questions flagged⁵
3
63

Questions migrated
2
0

Questions protected
0
8

Questions reopened
10
1

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue
74
252

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue
13
119

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue
28
256

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue
7
70

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue
28
101

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue
11
40

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue
49
167

Users destroyed³
8
0

Users suspended²
0
17

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

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2021: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^


text:
Use tag warning to improve Magic: The Gathering questions
Many times we see even veteran users asking Magic: The Gathering questions which can be instantly answered by the Gatherer rulings under the card. User @acccumulation suggested to make users more aware of this feature.
The only compatible Stack Exchange feature I know of are so-called 'tag warnings'; the Community Team can set these up so that whenever a user asks a question with a certain tag, they show up like this:

We could use this to

ask the user to double check Gatherer rulings for any cards in the question
indicate that we have [mtg:Island] as a special syntax to make it easier to link to cards

Would this be a good idea? Any thoughts for more information we could include?

Can we add the [tag:cm-review] to this, if that helps?

@Pureferret you mean [tag:status-review]? Well, they'll only act if we as a community have made a decision. I'm happy with the three upvotes I got but I feel like it needs some more support.

I'm somewhat ambivalent about this. On one hand people are supposed to look for their own answers first, but on the other we run the risk of discouraging questions that should be asked. There have been cases where the rulings and oracle text on gatherer don't actually clear things up, or have been misread and misunderstood. The most notable one I can think of being the definition of "any target" meaning "creature, player or planeswalker." Pointing people too strongly to gatherer may lead to people who misunderstand the ruling or text because of new players to the game not understanding the context that oracle text or ruling exists in properly.

Just because they are pointed to gatherer doesn't mean that they can't still ask the question if they don't understand what is presented on gatherer. The problem being addressed is when someone asks if card X means it can do Y and the gather ruling on it directly answers the question.

@JoeW Which is why I am ambivalent about it - I am sure seeing a yellow warning pop up on their question telling people to look for an answer themselves somewhere else will discourage a portion of users from asking their question even if they still need help (or again assuming a wrong interpretation they get from a ruling is correct without asking)