text:
Time sensitivity of magic questions
I'm curious about the time sensitive Nature of some Magic-The-Gathering questions, and whether these types of questions are really on-topic or not.  For example, take this question:
Is there a conventional way of searching for lands in a mono-red deck?
At first it seems ok, but it was state that this question was meant for Standard (Type II).  For those of you not familiar with this, Standard in Magic tournaments means the latest 2 blocks (typically 3 sets per block) and the latest core set.  The problem with this is that every year (and even every three months or so) the card pool drastically changes.  So a year from now, unless someone has gone and added a new answer, the answer to the above question is out of date.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the point of the Stack Exchange network is to provide answers to questions that shouldn't change much.  So this begs the question, should questions about deck builds based on the standard (or even extended) format be considered on-topic?

Technically only the references to Standard will be out of date since I included non-standard cards in my answer for just this reason.

Another reason for MTG to live elsewhere.

If by "elsewhere" you mean a dedicated MTG Stack Exchange site, I don't think that argument works because the intent of having answers that continue to be valid over time is a network-wide thing.

Nearly all other board and card games don't suffer from this problem.  A dedicated site can have its own rules for dealing with these things.  This is discussed in another question.

@Neal Tibrewala mind providing a link?

A much more pressing issue is how to handle revisions to the Comp Rules.

@OrigamiRobot yup, that's another issue entirely.  do they have versions for the rules?

@DForck42 - Yes, the rules are often revised.  There have only been two major revisions (6th Edition and M10), but even slight changes can throw the reference numbers off or completely change the interaction of two cards.

These are questions that certainly "time out", but so too do programming questions on Stack Overflow as technologies become dated.
I'd say that the badges for editing questions over 6 months old to freshen them are custom made for exactly this sort of thing, and shouldn't be a big worry.
We could edit tags to include the set names in such questions such as Scars/Innistrad/MTG Core 2012 to help clarify, tag editing is pretty simple and common.
I would be against tagging them as "standard" however, for the exact reason of this discussion.
Also the questions are still relevant to non-standard players, as standard is the most restrictive, so the answers given are still valuable to others.

actually the main programming questions that change over time are "best practice" questions and similar questions.  an answer for a question about PHP 5.2.x will never change (unless of course someone comes up with a better methodology)

I think most sites have this problem to some degree.  A big patch can drastically change things up over on Gaming for example.

I agree with Pat.  I don't think timeliness is only relevant to MTG, probably just more noticeable.  Any game that has a changing rule base, or has expansions (Dominion and Arkham Horror come to mind) can/do run into the same issue.

Hmm... in a sense, expansion names (or block names, at least) are like the version numbers of the Standard environment.

Yep, this is definitely the case for Gaming: WoW is a great example of a topic on which an answer in April may be incorrect come November. There is even a discussion about how (or if) mods should use tools to mark out-of-date questions so we can be sure to update them.

"so too do programming questions on Stack Overflow as technologies become dated."  This simply isn't true.  Unlike game patches, older versions of technology persist in industry for many many years.

@NealTibrewala Arguably the audience for such information decreases as time goes on due to the growing obsolescence.  Similarly answers to MTG questions will not be relevant to future players of standard events but will be interesting to a diminished audience not playing within those confines.

@Stephen In Magic, tournament formats that change keep changing.  There will always been formats like "base set + last 2 expansions" and the questions and strategies of that will keep changing.  However, a question based on an old "+ last 2" I argue is NOT future relevant as it is likely not useful if you're playing a different tournament type like "all cards allowed".  Also, as technologies age, the importance of having the question archive increases.  As someone who's had to go back and debug fortran and cobol code, I can tell you that while the consumers may decrease, the value increases.

@NealTibrewala Your opinion that MTG belongs elsewhere is well documented.  I'm certainly not going to present an argument that will convince you.  I have played in events that are "Standard from ", clearly not sanctioned nor common, but still fun.  I hope you continue to enjoy the rest of the site.

@NealTibrewala - While a particular programming language may exist in industry for many years, there have already been a number of programming tools, platforms, and even languages that have died. Console game programming is a great example, but so too are the old versions of the Mac OS. Change and growth is a constant state for any domain that is interesting and / or non-trivial.

You can't limit MTG questions to just the eternal formats, but as you said, the questions do not keep their meaning over time.  I think SOP for this site (and for mtg.SE if it ever exists) could be to specifically mention which sets/blocks they are looking for are in st at the time of the question.
Instead of "What is a good card for X in Standard?" they should read "What is a good card for X in Standard (Scars, Innistrad, M12)?"  or something with similar effect.
That being said, I also think the questions should try to be as general as possible and not limit answers to one specific format or combo when they can get around it.  Maybe just have the question be "What is a good card for X?" and have the poster indicate his preference for sets/blocks.

adding the blocks legal at the time still runs into a logistics question because you now have to remember to add it to each applicable question, which won't happen.

I think this is a good idea. It could definitely be added to the FAQ and / or the tag wiki summary, and also something that is not particularly hard to add in with an edit after-the-fact.

MTG specifics change, but the principles, largely, endure. To me, the real value of those specifics is as a jumping-off point for clearer, more grounded communication. That's why I really like questions like "Why wouldn't you just always run four Diabolic Tutors?" I think they allow us to explore Magic concepts without answers becoming over-generalized.
Even though it is a moving target, I prefer to reference Standard over Legacy, Vintage, or Modern in my answers because (1) it's a format more people play and (2) I believe that any given year's Standard is more like most people's casual-play environments than the "eternal" formats, which seem to have very idiosyncratic styles. To put it more simply, I think an answer that talks about tapping out for a powerful 6-drop is likely to be more relatable -- even if that six-drop used to be Keiga but now it's Grave Titan -- than an answer about Vampiric Tutor and Ancestral Recall. Standard is just closer to how Magic is "designed to" work.
Also, anecdotally speaking, when I play casual Magic before FNM draft, I'm almost as likely to see Lorwyn cards as I am to see Scars cards. And the latest thing the middle-school-aged kids are all talking about? Slivers deck. So oftentimes these cards that saw play in Standard but aren't Legacy-worthy still see tons of kitchen-table play years after they're printed.

There is another reason to perhaps focus a bit more on Standard that has not really been mentioned yet (although @Alex P aluded to it in his answer), and that is the fact that many of the people who have questions about MTG are going to tend to be new players.
Most people just starting out in magic will be playing with cards that are currently in Standard because most new people tend to get into the game through drafting, which is almost always done with Standard sets.

drafting isn't necessarily done in a format like standard, or extended.  it's usually just 3 packs chosen to draft with, the most common pattern being the newest set/block.  questions about drafting mirrodin-mirrodin-mirrodin or mirrodin-dark steel-fifth dawn will never change.

@DForck42 - I agree that having the relevant sets indicated in the question is the best course of action. But lacking that, leaning towards favoring standard over others (for the reason given in my answer), would be the next best thing. That's more the sentiment I was after.

Is drafting the way most new players get into Magic? Not in my experience. Drafting is a great way to grow your collection, but successful drafting requires learning an extra set of skills on top of regular MTG strategy and deckbuilding. Many new players I've met avoid it because of that added complexity and pressure. In my entirely anecdotal experience, modifying precons is the primary way new folks learn Magic.

New players don't tend to be drafters but they do tend to have access to the latest cards only.  Having said that, drafting is one of the more interesting ways to play Magic, so I'm hoping that this site can accommodate questions about it - even though they are arguably "localized", to a roughly one-year time window.

Magic is a game that breaks the rules - it's a substantially different game every year, despite having the same name.  I have sympathy for people who think it should be relegated to a different site because of its peculiar issues; but if we are willing to accept it as being a popular "board or card game", I think we have to cut it a bit of slack.
It's a bit of a square peg in a round hole on our site, but I don't think hammering furiously so it fits the usual standard is the solution.  Either ban it altogether or accept that a Magic question has a considerably shorter half-life than, say, a Bridge or Puerto Rico one.

I would argue that all magic questions are potentially ephemeral because of the potential for the underlying rules of the game to change.  Combat damage used to go on the stack and then it didn't.  Planeswalkers used to be unique by subtype and now they're legendary.  But There are plenty of times that even answers to Magic rules questions have to be updated because it's a living game.
Beyond that, magic's golden rule (that cards can override game rules) means that rules questions can have their answers change just from a change in card content.
Given that, I don't see questions about deck construction as all that different from rules questions.  Both can become out of date as the game changes.

A lot of the rules based questions have answers that don't change at all or rarely change ever. For the cases where a rule changes the answer can be updated and the question still valid. For a question about deck building, especially centered around a single card, the entire question could be invalidated with a ban of a card in the next update or when the card goes out of cycle through normal updates.

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


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Should we have a standard for editing questions like "Help me think of this game?"
Assuming that we allow them, should we come up with a standard way to edit question titles?
I just saw this question and wanted to try and make it look a little better.  There's a big noise to signal ratio in the words chosen for the title.  The first significant word is "construct" which is the 12th word.
My thoughts would be standard questions titles like:

Name this game: (edited text)
Games similar to: (edited text)

They wouldn't even need to be enforced.  A few edits here and there would give the community enough example that I think people might start using them on their own and perhaps adopt new or better ones.
Is this a good idea?  If this is a bad idea, why would it be bad?  I can see perhaps the "metatag" argument being used, but it is more about shrinking the insignificant question text down while keeping question readable.

I think you're completely right and have edited it as such -- don't hesitate to click that edit link and submit edits like this in the future!
(also note that we do automatically insert the most significant tag into the HTML title of the page, so it gets coverage.)

As soon as I hit 200 rep I will!  (And don't forget to vote for questions, they need votes too ;) )

@mcl you can suggest edits anywhere even with 0 rep: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/suggested-edits-and-edit-review/

I must be thinking of some other privilege then.  I need a privilege roadmap for dummy's picture.

@mcl there is always http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/privileges

The short answer is you should always edit if you feel it will improve the question.
Edits can be rolled back anytime if someone disagrees.  We have yet to have an edit war here, but myself and the other mods will step in if necessary.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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What's the difference between the two online-bridge questions?
The following questions are currently adjacent on the front page:
Online resources for learning/practicing bridge (3 answers)
Is there a good casual online place to practice/learn bridge? (2 answers)
Are they dupes?  Since they both have answers, should they be merged?  Or am I missing some important difference between them, and if so what is it?

They look like dupes to me.
The reason they are on the front page, have answers, and are not already marked as duplicates is likely due to somebody using those questions as a place to advertise their bridge related website.

Ah, I see.  Ok, that explains their adjacency.  Is one a better question than the other -- which direction should the dupe go?  Should the answers be merged?

I have voted the newer one as a duplicate of the older one.

Both answer sets look of similar quality to me, but I believe the June 3, '11 question is slightly better.

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


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Let's save our tags!
As noted here, tags with only one question are harvested after about six months, leading to questions ending up untagged and hard to find.  I've come across a few of these recently and added them back, just deferring the problem for another half-year.  But the real solution is to ask more questions about these less-common games.
The following game tags currently have only one question.  Can you save them?  If you do, edit this post to claim credit for the tags you save so we know whom to thank.  Or if some of these tags shouldn't exist, please fix them and update this list.
Tags with tag wikis (so somebody cared enough to start colonizing these):

star-wars-lcg

Tags without tag wikis:

011
alexandros
avalon
battleship
battlestations
bismarck
careers
circus-imperium
day-and-night
discwars
discworld-ankh-morpork
dungeon-petz
dust-warfare
elixir
encore
evil-baby-orphanage
flash-point
formula-de
gloria-pictoria
gosu
hansa-teutonica
hawaii
heroclix
imperial-2030
infernal-contraption
kings-of-war
last-will
mage-wars
mtg-pauper
mtg-planechase
nuts
ora-et-labora
parade
pegs-and-jokers
princes-of-florence
quantum-tic-tac-toe
seasons
set
somnium
star-wars-gf
struggle-for-catan
survive-escape-atlantis
swish
the-pillars-of-the-earth
trivial-pursuit
village
world-without-end
wrath-of-ashardalon
zombicide

In some cases it might make sense to merge these tags (e.g. if the tag here describes an expansion or variant of a game that already has a tag).
Saved!

empire-builder - by Canageek (later deprecated by crayon-rail-games, sorry Canageek and thanks for the help!)
necron - by Pureferret
vinci  - by MonicaCellio
dominion-cornucopia   - by Johno
rummikub - by Omega
penny-arcade-gamersvsevil  - by Johno
talisman - by TheJug
american-megafauna - by ire_and_curses
bios-megafauna - by ire_and_curses
in-the-year-of-the-dragon  - by Paul Marshall
advanced-civilization
blackjack
kids-of-catan
swish - by Joe Golton
decktet

Died, leaving orphan wikis behind
(If you re-create anything on this list, try to find the now-untagged question about it and tag it too.)
Note: According to this, single-use tags won't expire any more if they have wikis.  Can someone who can access the orphan wikis below recreate these tags and restore their wikis?  Then we'd just have to find the now-untagged questions.

carrom
constantinopolis
dominos
gin-rummy - merge into rummy?
gloom
kingdom-builder
lost-cities
neuroshima-hex
pirate-king
puzzle-strike
republic-of-rome
rook
shogun
spiel-des-jahres
titan
yggdrasil

Note: I compiled this list via visual scan of the end of the tags list, so it's possible I've missed something or accidentally included something that was being addressed as I typed.  If so, sorry and please note it.

This is super awesome. :D

@Aarthi, I stole the idea from another community where you liked it. :-)

OH MAN NO WONDER! It felt so ~familiar~ I didn't know what to do except express my approval :D

@Aarthi, I would never object to you expressing your approval. :-)  Just wanted to give credit where it's due.

Ha, fair enough! :D

shogun is my question and my wiki!! but the game is so easy I can't think of another question to save it :(

I like this idea a lot! I'd edit more tag wikis, but I don't have the permission. Yet...

@Johno, I don't either, which just means our edits have to be approved before taking effect.  Dive in!

There are a lot more orphan wikis than that. I'll take a look at restoring some, but it's a tediously manual process. I've tried experimenting with recreating the tag, but that doesn't appear to re-link the wiki to its parent, so it looks like the text has to be cut and pasted into the new wiki space.
Also, looking at the text of some of these wikis I am not convinced all that many should be reinstated. At least one user seems to have systematically cut and pasted the blurb from the publisher (or BGG) into the wiki space for many games.
Even more annoying is that there is currently no way to delete orphan wikis, so after pasting the text, the original lives on, cluttering the list.
I've raised a feature request on Meta about this: Please complete the orphan wiki lifecycle.
Restored:

belote
carrom
discworld-ankh-morpork
gloom
kids-of-catan
lost-cities
somnium
titan

I'm not surprised that some tags died before we ever began trying to save them.  Maybe you can crowd-source the effort by posting the oprhan wikis somewhere (waves hands :-) ) so other people can try to identify them and their original questions?

Oh yuck; no way to delete orphans?  What a pain.  (Apparently I do not have enough rep to see the orphans. :-( )

@Monica Cellio - yeah, the lifecycle for tag orphans is woefully incomplete. I'm raising a general meta question for it now, but I wouldn't hold your breath. I'll have a think about getting the text to some more visible location.

on publicizing the wikis, if there are enough people with the rep who are willing/able to help, maybe just point people there and ask for help.  About how many orphans are there, beyond the ones we know about from this question?

@Monica Cellio - There are about 200 orphans, although some are legitimate (tag is gone and shouldn't return), and some are low quality (cut and paste from elsewhere). There are a few really good wikis in there as well. Not sure what the rep threshold is, it would be 10,000 on SO. I've linked the list in your question and in this answer, and raised the meta feature request (see above).

Looks like either 2k (if it's a mod tool) or 4k (trusted user); can't tell from here.  Either way, I've got work to do to get there. :-)  Thanks for raising on MSO!

Thanks for your work on this!  BTW, the Titan question was mine so it was easy for me to find.  I restored the tag to the question (recreating the tag).  If I wrote the wiki (can't remember) I might have used the phrase "monster slugathon" -- just mentioning that in case it helps with ID.  It's also possible that the wiki wasn't worth saving and could be recreated; it's been too long and I don't recall what it said.

@Monica Cellio - You're welcome. :) I've restored the Titan wiki using your hint. Feel free to review, and expand if you like: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/titan. I've decided to do the obvious good wikis by hand, since it looks like the vast majority are either cut/pastes from elsewhere (which is against our policy), or are too brief to be worth my time to restore.

@Monica Cellio - What game is this (you wrote the text)? This Avalon Hill game for 2-6 players is a game of conquest. Players start with two units and can end up with up to 12 (or more if they defeat other players and take their counters). All units may move each turn, and when a unit moves into a hex it can recruit monsters to fight with it -- if it has a recruiter native to that terrain. There's a limit on unit size, so as they grow players must split them into smaller units. If two enemy units meet they must fight; the fight is conducted on tactical terrain maps using hand-to-hand...

Oh, that's Titan. :-)


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Tags (and wikis) needed!
There are currently 89 30 untagged questions floating around. That's crazy! These questions need tags, useful tags, tags that'll help folks find them.
And those tags need wikis. Because if they don't have wikis, tags used by only 1 question will be destroyed after 6 months. Which is probably how we got in this situation to begin with... A good wiki describes how the tag should be used, clarifies any ambiguities that might exist in what it refers to, provides resources for askers and generally just looks nice.
Anyone care to help edit these?

"if they don't have wikis, tags used by only 1 question will be destroyed after 6 months" Can you explain where the qualifier in bold came from? I've never heard of that until just now.

@Rainbolt See this meta suggestion which got implemented in 2013: single tags no longer expire if they have a wiki. We've been actively using this for a while on RPG.SE to prevent system tags from being deleted when there's only one question about that system: Save our system tags!

@doppelgreener Thanks! Exactly what I was looking for.

Voted to close this question instead of retagging.

In order to ensure these tags survive, we need to make sure each one has either a second question, or one question and a tag wiki. This is relatively easy for those with editing privileges, less simple for those who have to suggest edits and wait. I think we can work together though.
How can we create these together?
We've got two tasks: creating the tags and keeping them alive.
Tag creation: When a tag needs rescue, add it to the list below, along with a link to the question it's attached to so we can recreate the tag later if necessary. Those who must suggest edits, please suggest edits then add them to this list. Those with edit privileges, please take the time to rescue the tag at the same time if you can.
Tag rescue: Look through the below tags, and create wikis for them or find second questions from them. Please remove tags you rescue from this list, but only when your edits are approved. (i.e.: unlike tag creation, where you should add it when you propose the edit.)
If this list is getting long, please take some time to do some tag rescues rather than tag creations! :)
Tags needing action

buffy-the-vampire-slayer Sunrise vs. "Summon Eclipse" in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
puzzle-strike How does DeGray's Pilebunker chip work when trashing Gems of size 2+?
labyrinth Is 3-4 player endgame necessarily a deadlock?

Needs tag synonym the-amazeing-labyrinth. Maybe this should be the primary one?

x-files-ccg Typo in the Women's Health Clinic, Richville, MD card?

Also check out the list of new tags, since many of them are created without a wiki.

@Rainbolt I'll help create them too. We've got some time to create those tag wikis. But this is not personally pointed at you, it's also to make sure others don't miss that bit.

Unfortunately, it seems like it's tough for low rep users to help with this because tags can't be created without editing a question, meaning they'll have to wait a few hours for their edit to go through before they can add a tag wiki :-(

@Thunderforge I've reformulated this answer. Please use it as your resource to help you add tags and create wikis for them later!

@Rainbolt I've reformulated this answer into something more productive. And now that I've about finished moving house, I'll get to work adding some wikis. :)

Some of the tags the questions need already exist and just need to be added to the question. I will start working adding tags to questions on that list a couple each day.
--
Got some more done today and getting close to the level where I can add the tags without needing a review which should help get them done faster.


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What does the tag "goldfish" mean?
A user with solid reputation on this site (over 1500 rep) tagged a question of mine with the "goldfish" tag. What does that mean? The question obviously has no connection to a real goldfish, but I don't get the deeper meaning behind this tag. Anyone able to share light on this?

sorry about probably not providing enough information in the "reasons for edit", so that you could see why the tag was editted. Ire&Curses has it right, a goldfish is a helpless opponent that does nothing to prevent you from playing your deck (what you described in the question). Goldfishing is sometimes  used to see how fast a deck can win(win on average).

From this list of Magic:The Gathering jargon:

Goldfish - Playing a deck against no opposition to see how it draws
  and how quickly it can win, given no resistance. At one point, this
  also referred to playing a deck against an imaginary opponent who
  simply cast a 2/2 for two every turn, though that usage has fallen out
  of favor.

I've added this description to the goldfish tag wiki. I don't have an opinion on the tag one way or another.


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Should this site be called "tabletop games"?
Miniatures gaming is on-topic, which never would have occurred to me without seeing the question or reading the FAQ because it feels different from "board" games and certainly isn't a "card" game.  The niche filled by this site seems to be: not computer, not RPG, but otherwise, most types of games.  Would "tabletop games" (or "tabletop gaming") characterize our scope better?  (This is the term I've seen used at gaming conventions that support both these and computer games.)
(This is a question-question, not an advocacy-question.)

possible duplicate of Is "boardgames.stackexchange.com" a suitable url for a board and CARD games site?

This answer to that question overlaps this question.  I understand that URLs are harder to change and deemed "less important", which is why I asked about the name independently of the URL.  If changing both is possible, then yeah this is a duplicate.  If the URL is fixed, we can still talk about the name.

Definitely a valid point - the two are separated, though a fair amount of discussion on the subject of "what should our name be" occurred in that previous question. However, a name different from the URL has only really happened when that same URL is registered and redirects the user to the appropriate SE site (e.g. http://www.seasonedadvice.com/ goes to Cooking.SE, whose design says "Seasoned Advice").

When I think tabletop games, I don't think of board or card games.  I don't disagree that the site could use a more inclusive name, but I feel like tabletop is just as limiting as board.

@OrigamiRobot Curious, if not board and card gaming, what do you think of?

@ghoppe - Wargaming and/or miniatures gaming.

Analog gaming. :P

It's a pity that "gaming with real live people in your living room" is too long. :-)

It's video gaming's fault.  It appropriated the term "games".  Now we are left struggling to name what we do in a non-confusing fashion.  I used to play 40K at a game store called the Fantasy Shop.  Often the you would hear the manger answer the phone, "No, not that kind of fantasy shop."  Basically video games should give us the name back.

@CaulynDarr NEVER!

@MonicaCellio I play a lot of online board games, so sitting in your living room will not apply ;) but played with real live people could fit

I think one big issue with "tabletop" is that the games I most often hear called "tabletop" are RPGs. Which have their own thing.

The line is fuzzy, especially since we allow Digital versions of popular board games.  Is words with friends an allowed topic here?  Yes.  What about Civilization Revolution?  No.  The only difference between those two apps is their origin (one CAME FROM Scrabble, the other CAME FROM Civilization the Video game), they're both iPhone Games.

After re read this some more time, I (a non natural english speaker) will have problem found this site if the name is tabletop. Board games (although played across the network) looks better. Also card games is ok on the name (although magic has  a deck, and some spaces like the graveyard, that make them a "board game", without a drawed board ;) ). So I think the name is ok as it is.. In any case, although is illegal, I can download the Puerto Rico manual, and make my own board implementation ;). so in a board or in a monitor, the game is the same!

@AlexP I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an inclusive word that covers Board Games, Card Games and Miniatures gaming but doesn't include RPG games. There is already a question about Mafia, which is arguably a RPG. Would a question about a "murder mystery" game belong here? Some overlap is ok. I agree that it's a problem if most people associate "tabletop" with RPGs but I don't see it that way.

I'd rather the name stay as "Board and Card Games" rather than change to "Tabletop Games." I think of myself as an avid board gamer and an avid player of card games as well. So "Board and Card Games" works for me.
Not being a developer, this is the first stack I joined and I might not have joined if it were it called "Tabletop Games." Why? Because I'm not a table top game player. I don't even know what this phrase means. I can see from the discussion above that there's other people who are fuzzy on what this phrase means.
Perhaps a few years from now when there are many more participants, "Board and Card Games" could be split into "Board Games" and "Card Games" as each has plenty of material to drive an entire community. Each of these phrases is commonly used and well understood. But I think there are currently too few participants to support splitting the site into "Board Games" and "Card Games."
So I believe sticking with "Board and Card Games" is best.

Hmm, I thought "tabletop" came from gaming conventions (but I'm not avid, just a hobbyist, so my perceptions are suspect).  Joe, prior to the discussion here, did you think miniatures games were on-topic here?  (Possibly they're a small-enough segment to not matter compared to the other naming issues raised here?)

@MonicaCellio I have not attended any game conventions for over 2 decades but I play 2-4 games/week and used to play more than that. I think there are many avid players who don't attend conventions - and that includes everyone in my current circle of gaming friends. Because the name has an "and" in it, I thought of this as an appropriate place for any kind of game (except video/computer), including miniatures. But I hadn't really thought about miniatures specifically as the questions seem to be primarily related to board games or card games.

@MonicaCellio Not sure if "avid" implies gaming conventions. But I've played hundreds of games of Settlers of Catan and thousands of hands of bridge, which both seem "avid" to me. I played so much Cosmic Encounter (eon) as a kid that I ended up compiling a database of game data which got published. I did attend 2 game conventions as a teenager but don't remember the term "tabletop games." Maybe that's a term that started to be used later?

Thanks Joe.  I didn't necessarily mean that "avid" requires conventions; just observing my own gaming group, we have a couple people who go to about one con a year and they bring back new games and terminology.  So cons are a vector and I thought that's where "tabletop" came from, but it may be regional or I may be just plain wrong.  And it's true that I don't know what terminology is used at chess/bridge/poker/go conventions (assuming those exist).

Though I asked the question I don't know if I get to accept an answer for a community discussion, but given all the comments I'm inclined to accept this one -- changing the name may cause more problems than it solves, so leave it alone.

@MonicaCellio 10-15 years ago I frequented bridge clubs and one bridge tournament (ACBL sponsered NABC tournament) and while I heard Bridge referred to as a card game I don't recall ever hearing the word tabletop. I'm not aware of conventions for card games but there are many tournaments organized for Bridge and Poker.

@MonicaCellio You might want to wait a week or two more before accepting an answer to let any further discussion develop. It would be nice to hear from people who have lots of convention going experience in the past few years.

Tabletop is a word who's common usage is more often associated with Role playing games (to distinguish them from LARP).  Since RPGs are outside of the area of this site, I wouldn't use tabletop.
The main problem is we're in a period of transition away from the traditional categorization/naming of things to a new one, and it hasn't settled out yet.
If you HAD to pick a name, Parlor Games is probably the most correct.  Clearly that word is never associated with Video games, and rarely associated with RPGs.
However, it's fallen out of common usage.
Most people use "board games" as a catch all term.  For example, Traditional games like "Canasta" can be found with a "board game rank" on BGG.COM.  Same with CCG's like Magic.
I also dislike the "and" in the title (I thing board games would be fine, even if it included CCGs), but that's certainly not universal.
The real question is not what do we name this site, it's where do we draw the line on what questions we want here.  The choices are either to do it based on a definition (any definition) or based on the knowledge/interests of this particular community.  If we choose the former, we need a descriptive name (like it has now).  If we choose the latter, we can call it anything, since "The Community" will know what we mean instinctively.

"Parlor games" usually refers to stuff like Mafia or Pictionary, though -- group games with an emphasis on communication and little if any boards to be found. The games we focus on here -- stuff like Settlers, go, Magic, Cosmic Encounter -- aren't parlor games. I'm pretty sure that the original (Victorian?) usage likewise didn't include chess or wargames with miniature soldiers.

Interesting; I haven't heard "tabletop" used for RPGs before, except when a LARPer is trying to clarify why what he's doing isn't like D&D et al.  Maybe I don't go to enough gaming conventions. :-)

@MonicaCellio http://forum.rpg.net/forum.php Note the forum titles. (Although, if we go by their naming convention, the name of this site is "Other Games" :D )

I agree - Tabletop Games is a better name. The other issue with the name "Board and Card Games" is the and. It makes it sound like card games are an afterthought, especially since the URL is only Boardgames. Now with miniatures included it feels like we should rename it "Board and Card and Minature and Collectable Card Games!" Did I miss anything? Tabletop is more descriptive without sounding contrived, and more "hip".
Tabletop feels more inclusive to Magic as well.
We are still in beta so it would be nice to change it now. Make the old URL redirect to tabletop.se too!

I have never heard anyone refer to MtG as a tabletop game.

@OrigamiRobot: I agree, but TableTop games is a broader term that is more likely to include MtG than Board Games.

GAMA(Game Manufacturers Association) which runs Origins and the Game Trade Show here in the US and represents the manufacures of miniatures, board games, RPGs and card games refers to the industry as either Tabletop Games or Hobby Games.

I vote that "Board and Card and Miniature and Collectable Card Games: Did I Miss Anything?" be the official new name.


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One crayon-rail-games tag to rule them all?
Currently we have two questions tagged empire-builder and one about the Eurorails family of games that doesn't have a game tag at all.  We could of course create a "eurorails" tag, but that question applies as well to Empire Builder, Iron Dragon, Lunar Rails, and all the others.  Really, all the "crayon rail games" are of a class, with the differences among them being akin to the differences among versions or expansions of other games.
Does it make sense to tag questions about these games with some over-arching tag and not with the individual tags?  If I'm looking for questions about Empire Builder, I'd probably want to see the Nippon Rails questions too, at least until the bucket gets huge.
Should we have one tag, and if so what should it be called?  Eurorails-family?  Crayon-rails?  Something else?

I like crayon-rail-games. See e.g. the list at BGG.

I think if it has support on BGG, it makes sense to use a similar tag.

I'm inclined to go with this -- tag the Eurorails question with this tag and then make empire-builder a synonym.  Any objections?


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How does this question have the same tag twice?
This question shows as having rules, agricola, and rules.  When I tried to edit the question to remove one of the duplicates, it only showed one instance of the duplicate.  Why is the question showing the tag twice?

Interesting defect.
I cleared it by removing rules as we're discouraging it's use.

Has anything ever been synonimized with rules?  I wondered if perhaps these were two different tags when the question was created.

@MonicaCellio - That is probably what happened, I believe I've seen it before with other tags.

@MonicaCellio That's what probably happened; it was in the early days of the tag synonym feature.

The rules tag - so good I used it twice! ;-)


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Bridge: Discussing merits of bidding systems/conventions
There has been a recent flurry of questions trying to discuss the merits of bidding systems in bridge (some well known, some home cooked).
IMO, these kinds of questions are too broad with no definite answer and are not suited for this forum.
Given that those haven't been closed yet, I am wondering if others think the same (of course, the site is still in Beta, and I can't see the close votes yet).
Here are some examples:
Why Do People Use "Precision" Bidding in Bridge?
Are there "established" systems where "Five Card Majors" isn't a strict rule? (this might seem on-topic, but IMO, this has no real answer too, and it looks like the author is really looking for arguments supporting his home cooked system)

There is only one close vote outstanding at the moment.  Folks with sub 500 rep should use a moderator flag if they feel a question should be closed.  Anyone can comment to improve a question as well.  Downvoting can also be done.

@Pat: I am aware of that, but given the traffic to this site (and its Beta stage), I was thinking maybe the community is ok with making some allowances (in which case, I would not want to flag for closing).

@Aryabhatta - I'm  proponent of the Broken Window theory.  IE - Lowering the quality now will attract more of the same.  I'd rather grow low and slow if necessary.

@Pat: Fair enough...

I would say this: I have seen several people's reputations climb by answering my questions. (And I have doled out a number of acceptances.) The other issue is, why am I making such a splash on the site? Because that's what I do in "real life." You'll soon miss me when I'm gone.

@Tom: It isn't about any one person. This is about the kind of content one expects on a stackexchange site. Discussing merits/demerits of a bidding system is too open ended. And asking open ended/broad/ questions is specifically against the rules of this site.

@aryabhatta: Ok, maybe I should stay away from the philosophical questions. But I believe that questions like when and why do people use Blackwood instead of Gerber are "inbounds." I'm also getting a "crash course" on what "flies," and what doesn't.

@Tom: FWIW, I agree with some of the questions (like blackwood vs gerber) and even upvoted those. It is always heartening to see people showing interest in bridge!

I added my personal experience (observation) to (mys answer of) the 5 card major question. My opponent was pleased to see AKQ over 97542. Knowing him, he'd be displeased with 853. 2) It has an objective answer (upgrade to Qxxxx or better). These are two criteria of a "good subjective" question.

I think it would probably be better for there to be some specific hook to the question.
e.g. "So, what do you all think about Precision?" is quite bad.
But "I don't understand why 1C is a strong bid in Precision - shouldn't low bids represent low point counts, and higher bids represent higher point counts?" begins to represent a valid question.
Basically, I feel that there should be a genuine "issue" that the question-asker is having, rather than just "hey, let's talk about aspect X of game Y".  But a genuine issue that just so happens to turn into an interesting and wide-randing discussion should not be discouraged...

In the question, I said: "I was taught that "higher bids mean higher points." Precision blatantly violates this rule." Or should I have put this in the title?

@Tom: Probably.  I was kind of defending that question, because while the title sounds very generic, what you were actually asking was the unpacked version of the question.  It is quite hard to fit a complex question compactly into a short title though!


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Why isn't this "Not an answer"?
I flagged this answer: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/a/13576/1224 as not an answer, because I think it should be a comment to the accepted answer.
The flag was declined as "flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer".
Can some mod please move that answer-comment (and the comments to that to the accepted answer?).

Thanks for bringing this up. I declined the flag because honestly it's too technical for me to know what the right action is here. Is this a comment? Or is it a new question (and therefore should be deleted)? There was a question here before the edit by Tom Au. Or is this actually an answer to the original question, but talking about some edge case? In which case, perhaps it isn't strictly answering the question, but is still a valid point?
Bridge has a particularly technical language. For a non-player, it's really not obvious what the conversation is even about!
Reading the comment thread below also leaves me still unclear. Since I know nothing about bridge, I'm not willing to make the call.
If we can have a consensus here by more than one bridge-playing user about what should be done, and why, I'll happily make it happen.

I would say you should not decline the flag for the same reasons you gave to decline it :-).  Perhaps you can skip such flags and let some other moderator look at it? (I believe there is at least one moderator who can make sense of that question and their answers). Anyway, not a big deal.

@Aryabhata - An interesting point. My reasoning comes down to what I discuss here: http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1107/when-should-the-not-an-answer-flag-be-used This particular flag should be unambiguous to interpret, since the action is severe (normally unilateral deletion, sometimes even user consequences such as suspension). Detailed subject knowledge puts us into the realm of downvotes, rather than mod action.

@ire_and_curses: Given your stated knowledge on the subject, I think it was clearly right to not accept the flag. It is possible that skipping it would have been a wiser action than declining the flag. This is a post by a new user who is struggling to understand Transfers, and likely was coerced by even weaker players into a poor action. Until both hands are available, one cannot know for sure..

@Pieter Geerkens - So, in your opinion, should this really have been asked as a new question (with full information about both hands)?

Disclaimer: I am a part-time bridge evangelist, and this will colour my opinion to your question. I attempted to bait Martha Davis to provide more detail on the hands that perplexed her, per Aryabatha's comment, with intent of then trying to lure her into asking a new question. I would not set this as an invalid answer prior to this, as it raises a valid point in regards to an aspect of transfers  relevant to the original question. ...

Bridge is well taught by examples, but one of the most vexing concerns to the teacher is that novice fail to understand how much detail must be given about a hand to provide good answers. Saying 10 pts and balanced seems to make sense to the novice, but the expert knows that this ranges from hands that should evaluate t 15 0r 16 pts, to hands that should evaluate as 2 or 3. It is in understanding the specific cards that good expert decisions are made.

I know a fair amount of Bridge, although I haven't played much in 20 years.  I'm with @ire.  For me, the answer is close to the line but it should be handled by the community if needed.  Downvotes and deletion are available to high rep users (4k I believe).

@PatLudwig: I thought mods had the capability of moving answers to become comments to other answers and allow the person to continue the conversation whether below the commenting rep threshold or not. Is that not true? Here, the "answer" starts with "OK, But..." which indicates to me that it should be a comment on one of the answers (and likely the accepted answer). I disagree with leaving it as an answer, but don't feel strongly about it.

@Aryabhata - that option does exist.  I don't use it too much myself, especially for new users.  I like that low rep users cannot comment and need to "earn" the privilege. An answer has to be very useful for me to save it via moving it to a comment, I'm much more likely to delete them.

@PatLudwig: Well, if the poster (Martha) had enough rep to post a comment, then we would not be judging/discussing anything. I am suggesting move it to be a comment, and assume that Martha had posted it as a comment in the first place :-). Having it as a comment there would be a useful discussion to have and might even help future readers. It is not an answer by itself, and downvoting/deletion might result in the loss of such a discussion. Anyway, it just seemed weird that what was clearly a comment to me was left as an answer...

@ire_and_curses: As originally posed, the post was a "question answering a question." I changed the question to an assertion ("Is consider this a reasonable exception." s/b "I consider...") In its current form, the post asserts a disagreement with a bridge convention (evident from the rest of the post). Which I believe to be an answer to the question.

In its original form, the post was a "question in response to a question." I changed the question to an assertion, which made it an answer, or at least an affirmative statement.
I might not have done this with a post on someone else's question, but since it was my own, I considered the post "responsive," and put it into a more proper format for BCG.
Granted, it may not be a "popular" answer, because it goes against bridge convention. There are people who believe that there should never be exceptions to a convention, and there are others who believe that there should be a few exceptions. I'm in the latter camp. Which is why I encouraged this answer.

FWIW, I suggest you read ruds' comments on that. Exceptions are well and good, but you should have a very good reason to diverge from the norm. In this case, since Martha didn't give us the hands in question, I am guessing that opening 2NT would have been wrong in the first place. The fault isn't in the garbage transfer, but hand evaluation by the opener. Not bidding 3H when partner transfers in not just "unpopular", it is unilateral and to be honest, pretty silly, which I expect only beginners to do.


text:
2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

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

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
To that end, here is how the moderation done here on Board & Card Games breaks down by activity over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  1          6
Users destroyed                                   7          0
Users contacted                                   4          0
Tasks reviewed³: Suggested Edit queue            17      1,186
Tasks reviewed³: Reopen Vote queue                1        270
Tasks reviewed³: Low Quality Posts queue          3        792
Tasks reviewed³: Late Answer queue                0        327
Tasks reviewed³: First Post queue                 8      1,114
Tasks reviewed³: Close Votes queue                5        971
Tags merged                                      32          0
Tag synonyms proposed                            32          0
Tag synonyms created                             33          0
Questions reopened                               13         25
Questions protected                               0         45
Questions flagged⁴                                2        163
Questions closed                                 16        298
Question flags handled⁴                          89         76
Posts undeleted                                   4         16
Posts locked                                      0         30
Posts deleted⁵                                   73        470
Posts bumped                                      0        148
Escalations to the CM team                        2          0
Comments undeleted                                1          0
Comments flagged                                  1        421
Comments deleted⁶                               471        849
Comment flags handled                           277        145
Answers flagged                                   4        770
Answer flags handled                            217        557
All comments on a post moved to chat              6          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 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.
⁴ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁵ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁶ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Wishing you all a happy new year...

I am glad the site is still alive. And I think there is a slight increase in activity. But we have still a long way to go. So keep on gaming.

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


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Should genre tags be used on game-specific questions?
A recent question about Magic was tagged with both magic-the-gathering and trading-card-game. I definitely understand the first tag, but I wonder if the second one is appropriate on a game-specific question. In a more general sense, I'm asking about when genre tags should be used.
To me, a genre tag should be used only for questions that apply to multiple games in a genre or to the genre as a whole. This question is a good example:
Multi-Game Deck Building Tool
Adding the genre tag to questions about a specific game doesn't seem to be helpful: of course every question about Magic is about a trading-card game. In the past, that seems to have been the consensus ... only nine questions are tagged with trading-card-game, and only seven of those are specific to Magic (one more is specific to Pokémon), a very small subset of the total Magic pool.
It's simple enough to edit trading-card-game out of the game-specific questions, but I thought it would be better to ask first to see if the community feels it's necessary or even desired.

board-games and card-games are both banned, trading-card-games should be as well.
Big overreaching tags don't serve a good useful purpose and allow people to pick them instead of thinking a bit to come up with more precise tags.

I have to agree with Pat here. This tag overreaches.  What's actually called for is a better tag for the deck building tool question... card-game-tools?  It's already tagged 'software', but I think something more specific might be good.

Based on our experience at the Gaming stack exchange site, I would recommend against it.  It isn't helpful, and done consistently will actually cause problems with how questions are displayed (since the most popular tag is appended to the question title, and you want this to be the game name).

Interesting. Presumably this argument also applies to tags like [tag:rules], [tag:strategy] etc.

Good question. I'd had the same thought when I edited that question, but when I browsed the questions already tagged trading-card-game, it wasn't clear to me what the tag meant, so I didn't feel justified taking a positive action against it.
I agree that the tag seems pointless when the question is not general, but specific to a given game. I'd like a clearer idea of what it is for, though. For example, are all the existing questions with this tag good examples of its use?

I think there is only one good example of it, the one I linked above: it is looking for an app that works for multiple games, not just Magic.


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What's an acceptable scope for a chess strategy question?
The question that prompted this is this one: I voted to close it as being too broad, specifically because of this line from the FAQ

If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.

but also because a question about how to improve at chess can't be answered well in this format. (A good answer would take up at least a page.) However, I think that some aspect of this question does fit the site well ... I'm just not sure how best to do it while keeping the resulting question relevant for the OP.
The most recent edit seems to me to be heading in the right direction, but still doesn't supply a narrow-enough scope to the question. I think there are a couple of options that might work, but I'd like to get some input on them, as well as other possibilities, so we can get something workable out of this.

One option is identifying a particular part of the game where the AI seems to take the lead: "How can I improve my (openings|mid-game|end-game)?" This would be more of a "teach me to fish" question, looking for ways in which to improve.
Another would be to be more specific, showing an opening, series of moves, or position that seems to recur. "I'm having trouble with situation X against the computer, what can I do?" This is closer to questions on chess openings that are already on the site.
Still another would be closer to the original intent of the question: if the OP can identify specific features of the AI, or even the application and the difficulty setting, then the question could be "I'm struggling against Program X on difficulty Y; how can I close the gap?" One problem with this approach is that it could still be too broad; unless there's something specific about that AI, it could still be a version of "How do I get better at chess?" (Or alternatively, too specific because of the reference to a specific difficulty level ... maybe that version would do better on Gaming.SE.)

As has been discussed before, the original question is too broad, but there is a way to save the question, isn't there?

The issue here is that the question is just not very good. It's not really the fault of the OP, who by his own admission is inexperienced, but the question is naive and the answers are not likely to be helpful.
It really doesn't make a lot of sense to me to talk about how to beat a chess computer. To try and identify a particular 'style' associated with chess A.I. in general, or with a specific chess engine, and then to work against that style, may be possible. It's just not a very good idea. There are only two ways to go with the question:
1) Talk about classic A.I. weaknesses. You could say something about how a weak A.I. tends to be poor at sacrifices and combinations, or rook endings, or obscure openings not in its opening book, and waffle a bit about search depth. Whether or not that applies to a modern A.I. on your Mac is probably going to be pure speculation. Whether you can usefully exploit it is speculation again.
2) Talk about general chess improvement. Practically, this is the better answer, since your time would be much better spent improving at chess, than at improving against some peculiar A.I play style. However, clearly, such an answer has nothing to do with A.I. It's also a huge, far too broad topic.
Some A.I. programs allow you to 'dumb down' their playing ability, so that you can have a more balanced game. That seems like the obvious fix, if winning is actually the goal.
A more general point is that improving at chess requires being regularly beaten by good play, so that one can learn and raise one's game. In that sense, the feeling of frustration and striving is rather like learning a musical instrument. If a player doesn't find anything intrinsically enjoyable about that, then chess probably won't be a particularly fulfilling game.

Thanks for recognising my chess inexperience: I think in most games, it would be a valid assumption that a computer player would have obvious glaring weaknesses that it would be easy to attack into.  Maybe not so much in chess, apparently!  If good play can be based on sheer computational power and not really ever on imagination or finesse, then it's not the game for me.  And my question has been answered satisfactorily by the closing :)

Would it have been better if I'd approached it from the other angle?  "In what ways is a computer's chess game deficient compared to a human being's?"  Asking about specific weaknesses in a machine's game.
As opposed to my more nebulous "how do I beat a computer?", which of course has a million potential answers with the startpoint "first, get better at chess, like this:..."

I think that's a more specific question and could lead to much more specific answers ... but the issue could be that unless you ask about a specific AI, as ire points out, we might not be able to give valid answers. What might work best is to split your thought into two pieces: one SE-acceptable piece that can be reopened, and one SE-unacceptable piece to ask in chat. Hopefully here we can get you the former.

As I understand the question, it was "How can I get to a point where I can beat/draw against a computer, specifically MY computer?"
A simple answer might be, buy a computer you can beat. If Gary Kasparov can't beat Big Blue, you can't either. But there are some computers that YOU can beat. Which ones are they?
One way of asking the question is, my strength is X. What are the specifications of a computer (in terms of memory, calculating ability,  other attributes) with which I can have  reasonably balanced games, and win or draw at least some of the time?
A second way to ask the question is, I have a computer with specifications A, B, c. How strong would I likely need to be in order to beat it? Does the computer have a peculiarity that would give me a chance even if my official strength is decidedly below its?
In a sense, it's not too different from finding a human opponent. My strength is something like 1500, give or take. In order to find "good" opponents, I'd be looking for someone whose strength is in the 1400-1600 range. I remember once playing "evenly" with a 1700 strength opponent who had a particular weakness I could exploit. (But this man held his own against other 1700 opponents who easily beat me.)
"How can I beat a computer?" is an overly broad question that Gary Kasparov can't answer. An acceptably narrow question might be about how would which man fare against which computer? Or in human terms, how might Tom Au fare against Dave DuPlantis or the thesunneversets?

I don't think specs are really relevant any more: certainly for people new to chess, pretty much any program these days is capable of beating them handily. (A question along those lines might not be on topic anyway; I think we want to focus on the chess aspect of the problem as much as possible.) I think I like a variation of the last part of your second question best - how can I beat this level of the AI? - but I think we'd still need more detail about the AI itself to help, or it goes back to "How do I win at chess?"

@Dave: One variation of the question is, are there AI's that exhibit enough variation from game to game that they can be beaten by a theoretically weaker player (like my 1700 opponent)? And "I'm 1500 (no rank beginner), how I can find a computer program that's not tow challenging? might be OK. (I've found some, but they are mainly older ones.)


text:
Should we allow questions asking for a very specific type of game?
I'm thinking primarily about this question: it was originally closed because it asked for a list and SE sites do not handle list questions well, but there was a suggestion that perhaps the question was specific enough to remain open.
The practice of allowing or closing list questions has come up before. There does not yet seem to be a consensus on meta (or at least not many people have voted yet); however, there are a number of broader questions of this type that are currently open.
Are these questions on topic for this site, or are they not the sort of questions we want here? If they do not fit the site well, are there ways in which they could be modified to fit the site better?
I think it will work best if we discuss these questions in the context of the main B&CG site. It may be true that other SE sites allow or close similar questions, but ideally we would come to a conclusion that could be added to the FAQ if necessary. Adding "as allowed on SO" or "will be closed like on Gaming" does not help as much as saying "allowed because they address an actual problem the OP is facing" or "closed because every answer is equally valid."

I don't know, but that one seems ridiculously narrow, to the point that it's barely a list at all, is it? It'd be like saying "give me a list of all human beings with my DNA!"

@jeff I am sorry jeff that list of you and your evil(or good maybe) twin would be off topic as we do not allow list questions here...  Besides there is at least 2 questions open now that are actual list questions that are being allowed.  The difference seems to be people actually want to answer those questions.

As the close message states:

This question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.

I've bolded "polling" as that was my main objection.  A question that encourages polling should typically be closed.  We could have endless lists of games on every other question, awarding reputation for being the first one to mention "Dominion" on a poll.  This is not a good use of the Q&A format here.  At it's best, it would still be a collection of reviews on related games.
Instead, rephrase the question.  Turn it around and ask how to solve your actual problem.  Instead of

"Give me board games like XXX" (a potentially endless list with little differentiation.  Voting will be based on popularity and tend to favor the first few mentioned)

Use:

"How can I find more board games like XXX" (a small number of answers that can be ranked according to usefulness by voting)

If this is the case, some of the top-voted questions out there should be flagged as "Bad Subjective" (example) so new users (like me) know not to ask similar questions. I came to the site, saw this question as the top-voted one, and immediately thought my question would be accepted here.

@Pat Ludwig: I have reworded (the first part of) my Mah Jong question along the lines you suggested here. Does that improve the question? And does the second question about how such a rule affects your game play add or detract from the first one?

That question was fine.  There is a factual answer - any game that features Caesar in gaul.  The narrowness of the question means it won't be useful to many people and won't get may upvotes.  But it could be useful to some people and is a good fit for the SE format.
Contrast that good question with this poor one:
Good travel games for two players, especially for playing on trains?
The answers are going to be almost purely subjective and there is going to be an endless list.  That question (unfortunately) remains open, and has upvotes, and many upvoted answers.


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Questions about a board game that was ported to a video game
I recently bought Elder Signs: Omens on my iPhone and I wanted to ask questions about it. I've never played the actual board game equivalent, so I don't know if the digital version is as similar to the original as say Catan on my iPad (which is almost exactly like the original).
My question is, should any questions about a game like this be asked here or on gaming.se?

Yes, questions are fine about that game here.
I believe everything talked about in this previous question still applies:
Should questions purely about online versions of a game be allowed?
In short, if your questions are about the game, they are on-topic.  If your questions are about technical issues (The game crashes, or won't start) then they should be directed elsewhere as we do not have the expertise here to answer.
Thanks!


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Do green m&ms have summoning sickness? or Many questions, one answer
Going through the review queue I hit a swarm of questions all asking about summoning sickness in magic
All these questions are different, but it all comes down to
Do green m&ms have summoning sickness?
Do red m&ms have summoning sickness?
Do brown m&ms have summoning sickness?
...
They are all answered with the same answer, all m&ms have summoning sickness
I am exaggerating the similarity of questions a little bit, but not by much
Do we close these questions as duplicates, or leave them open?
Examples
Does a creature returned by the Undying effect have summoning sickness?
Do creatures summoned by a Planeswalker have summoning sickness?
Do creatures who come into play tapped have summoning sickness?

@Rainbolt oops, i feel stupid, i was sure I was on meta

I kind of figured you might have just accidentally not noticed where you were, with your 2k rep. I've done it before.

So, the reason all of those questions are in the review queue is because I wrote http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/25234/what-is-summoning-sickness-and-how-does-it-affect-my-creatures. And the reason I wrote that question is because of the problem you describe. The whole point was to have a duplicate target for those questions.

You have to realise that some Cards in magic are very vague in their description of putting monsters on the field it can be open to misinterpretation. I have a question myself about summoning Sickness, its more about what the card suggests as opposed to the Set rules of Summoning sickness. Granted they all have the same outcome so could really be closed as duplicates. But then again the rules could change in Newer versions and the closure as duplicate may not be valid idk... I do find your Question somewhat condescending... but in a funny way

@murgatroid99  My opinion is the questions should be down-voted and closed.  To me they seem similar to asking made up rules like "If I have no creatures, can my opponent attack me with multiple creatures?"  But we can see some disagree, so voting on the best answer to this question may form the best policy for the site

@Andrey You're free to vote however you want. And if you're suggesting that they should be closed as duplicates of my question, I agree.

@Andrey I just realized: you went into the close vote review queue and found a bunch of reviews for closing these questions as duplicates. And then you went to meta, and suggested that they be closed as duplicates. What exactly was the point here?

@murgatroid99 Here is the actual story.  I went to the close queue and started reading questions.  The first one seemed OK and i voted to keep it open.  The second one was similar, not enough to be a dupe of the first, on it's own still ok.  When i read the 5th question trying to find a loophole in summoning sickness, i realized something more complicated is going on

@Andrey Closing as duplicate makes sense - that's the point of writing a canonical question. But I'm confused, why are you suggesting downvoting? Those were all posted before the canonical question was written; there's nothing wrong with the questions.

@murgatroid99 One reasonable thing to ask would be "is is appropriate to close old questions as duplicates of a new canonical question?" (since it in some sense seems unfair to close a question that was fine before) but I'm not sure if that's actually what's being asked here.

@Andrey In the future, when you are reading the review queue and get to a question that's voted to be closed as a duplicate, you should also read the duplicate so that you know what you're voting on. They even provide a tab near the top labeled "duplicate" for doing exactly that.

@murgatroid99  What made me uncomfortable about all this was closing older questions as dupes to a newer question.  I now see that there is a precedent for it http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254782/a-long-list-of-possible-duplicates-c-memory-allocation-and-overrunning-bounds

Do we close these questions as duplicates?

You should close duplicate questions if they are duplicates. You didn't need to be told that...

How do I determine if they are duplicates?

There are no hard and fast rules. You have to decide for yourself if two questions are asking for the same thing.

I am on the fence about this one, which is why I came to meta to ask for other opinions.

Okay, here's mine.
My goal is to make the Internet a better place. I do that by filtering users to the best question. I do that by closing lesser questions as duplicates of greater ones.
I tend to favor

Broader scope
Elegant writing
Clarity
All else equal, I close the newer one

This new summoning sickness question is general and clear. I would vote to close the older ones as a duplicate of this newer one. However, I encourage someone to write a shorter answer. The current self-answer is too long.
Somewhat related rant: I want to encourage the community to stop labeling questions "canonical". If the voters can't tell that your question is canonical, then you didn't ask a very good canonical question.

re the rant: Sure, canonical questions should and generally are obvious to anyone who's been around for a bit. That doesn't mean the label is a bad idea, though. They're rare enough that plenty of people see them and don't realize what's going on, so an explicit hint is helpful. Maybe the best place for the note is in a comment instead of at the top of the question, but I don't think there's any harm in nudging people to remember it as a potential duplicate target.

@Jefromi Good idea. I would be happier with a comment.


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Is having a losing condition sufficient?
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/4389/allowed-to-re-use-a-word-in-travel-scrabble was closed because it was deemed not to have a "winning condition". Is having a losing condition sufficient?

FWIW, "Travel Scrabble" is a common name for a travel edition of Scrabble ... definitely not what the person who started this chain letter had in mind.

With enough losing conditions, so that in the end a winner would be the one that didn't lose, it would probably be sufficient.  It may be "play" if there is no way of ever determining a winner, but it's not really a game.  It would be an infinite loop, with the only end in sight being people getting bored and quitting.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice
  game of chess?

I'm not prepared to answer this question in the general sense.
However, for this particular case, I really don't know how you determine a winner or loser.  Each person is instructed to send it to 11 people.  If there is no further response, is the sender a winner?  Does each person receiving it get declared a loser?
Or does it just mean that this group of 11 people are not interested in answering it for whatever reason?  Is the sender obligated to send out more emails?
The vagueness leaves me calling this an activity rather than a game.  Perhaps more firm rules would help, I'm not sure.  It is distinctly possible that I am just overly biased against email chains.

This is basically what I thought: it's not so much a game as an activity, and in that sense, there isn't really a "winning" or "losing" condition because no one really enforces the rules. (I believe I have received at least one of these where someone did break a "rule". I can't tell you when or confirm for sure because I break chain letters.)

It definitely wasn't a "board or card" game.

I think that potentially a 'game' with a single loser could be an interesting game.  A couple of examples of games that aren't quite as strict as being asked for here:

In Diplomacy it is possible to end the game with an multi-way draw.  The draw could potentially exclude a single player (although I doubt this happens in practice).  On the other hand Diplomacy also has a clear winning condition.
In some games (e.g. Pandemic with bioterrorist) there is a single player who plays against a team of all the other players.

I consider a game that allow Team winning to be just fine, there's only one winner, the team.  Draws are certainly a fact of life, but the goal of winning is achievable.


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Is there a way to make an image show up when you hover over a link?
Questions are often well-served by embedding images. For example, many Dominion questions benefit from showing a picture of the card(s) in question (example).
However, sometimes it would be awkward and unhelpful to show a picture of every card listed in a question or answer (this Dominion answer is a good example).
In a question or answer, is there a way to link to an image such that the image shows up when someone hovers of the link, but otherwise just displays as a word and link?

This would also be great for Magic: The Gathering rules questions.

I was just about to ask the same question.  I guess from the lack of answers that there isn't yet!

It's been well over a year, but I'm going to have to status-decline this due to one major issue:
There's no officially supported Dominion card index. The best one we could find is the Diehrstraits encyclopedia, but that's not officially supported by the makers of the game. We can't use that to create an SE-endorsed auto-linker like we have for MTG.
As for the pop-up hover window, since we can't autolink (and thus, can't automatically grab an image) you'll have to make do with altering an existing jsfiddle script for MTG to use the Dominion index I linked above. However, bear in mind: if the load gets to be too large, they might start blocking that script!

I don't get this answer. The question doesn't state that there has to be a card repository, or that this is Dominion specific. Just a way to include an image that is only shown on mouseover.

This is now available for magic-the-gathering card links. I've written HoverCard, a userscript that does this for you.


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It is bad form to radically change question titles if the original one was useless?
Would it be considered bad form to completely change the title of a question if the original title is essentially worthless? Specifically I'm thinking about curious chess situation. A much better question title (in my opinion) is the question content.
I just wasn't sure if a complete title change would be considered out-of-bounds and didn't want to do it without asking the community.

Edit away, the OP can always roll it back if it displeases him/her.

It is very good form to completely change the title if it improves the question!
We <3 editing here, so as long as you can make a reasonable case that your edit makes the post better, go for it!
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-editing/


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Should we black list the cards tag?
The board-games and card-games tags were officially blacklistsed. I noticed that the tag cards has recently been added, with all the questions in the tag being added by the same (fairly new) user.
Since all these questions have other, better tags, and since cards is so close to card-games, I suggest we blacklist it as well.
Agree?

Thanks for pointing that out.
I'm removing that tag now.  If it keeps coming back, we can ask for the blacklisting.  As long as we keep usage of the tag low and sporadic, I'm hopeful that it won't be necessary.


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Does accepting answers and offering bounties on survey questions make sense?
The community (via meta) seems to have decided that certain subjective, survey-type questions are allowed on the site:

recommend a game
recommend a game #2
games like __.

Furthermore, we have several well-formed questions of this type on the site that seemed to have worked well and have prompted interesting answers:

What cooperative board games are there that I could safely play with my wife?
Board games for two players
Games to Introduce “Non-Gamers” to Board Gaming? (Gateway Games)

So this question isn't a rehash of this decision, but I am wondering if the Stack Exchange concepts of an accepted answer and bounties make sense for surveys.
For example, a bounty has been placed on Recommended Axis & Allies alternative rules / variations?. But a question like this functions on Stack Exchange by putting each major idea in its own answer and letting people vote for the ideas they like the best (i.e. the votes serve as the community's recommendations). In this context, the concept of a single best answer doesn't make sense--and by extention offering an bounty to encourage the OP to accept an answer doesn't make sense to me.
Do people agree, and if so is there anything that should be done to discourage accepting answers and offering bounties on survey questions?

If accepted and bounties don't make sense on survey questions, then perhaps we should ask if they should be here at all.
My answer to the most recent such meta question has received the most upvotes.  Jeff's answer should also be read.
We know such questions get a lot of upvotes, but that doesn't mean that they are quality questions.  Asking people to vote for list items like individual games instead of complete solid answers does not lead to greatness on the SE platform as it distorts reputation.  That accepting questions and bounties don't work well either is just another symptom.


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Should we use the tag delete-me or remove-this-tag?
Based on a discussion about how to remove prosaic tags, I implemented the delete-me tag as suggested by Pat. Right after I suggested the first delete-me tag synonym (starting with card-games) and proposed an associated  wiki I got to thinking.
Would it be less confusing to name the tag delete-this-tag, rather than delete-me? My concern is that someone might mistake delete-me as an indication that the question should be deleted, rather than the tag itself, whereas delete-this-tag is much more clear.
FYI, as of this writing neither the synonym or delete-me wiki have been approved. (In case you're wondering why you can't see any evidence yet.)

This is really not the correct approach. Two wrong tags does not make a right.
I can remove whatever tags you want, and we typically have "ambient" implicit blacklisted tags such as:

[apple] on apple.se
[wordpress] on wordpress.se
[programming] on stackoverflow.com

etc, etc.
so I removed board-games and card-games and blacklisted those.

Thanks!  I wasn't aware that option was available.

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


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Very odd spam from user "true"
The user true has one point of rep and one answer on a question about games for uncompetitive groups. The original post seemed like a totally reasonable answer but embedded within it was a link to a commercial website apropos of absolutely nothing (it's since been edited to remove the offending link). The user's name matched part of the web address, which makes it seem like the account is fraudulent (as opposed to the answer being hacked).
Is this sort of thing relatively common-place? Other than editing the answer to remove the inappropriate link are there other actions that should be taken against the user account (perhaps for now just wait and see as it's only one offense).

This was the original source of the post:

Shadows over Camelot or Pandemic and Agricola, [true religion jeans][1] the game comes with rules for a family version, which is much easier to pick up than the full game.
[1]: http: //www. true religion jeans discounted .com

This human-driven spam is coming from a chinese IP and posted similar things across many sites in the network. Usually it's text copy-pasted from another answer in the same question, this text actually appears unique, oddly enough.
Anyway, we deleted this user and banned the entire 1.2.*.* IP range this came from.

That's such a crazy amount of effort to go through to post a link that got deleted in a couple of hours. So weird.

you banned a /16 network? wow

Just because it only gets one or two views doesn't seem to stop spammers from spamming a variety of sites.
Until the collective political will comes around to make it an international crime (or to isolate national networks and make it a national crime), various groups will continue to pay people to post spam.
Someone is paying the jerks to continue to post adverts. Until that stops, expect more to come.
As for action: SE has a flag mechanism. Sufficiently reputable users may flag particular posts as spam. When enough flags accrue, the post automatically disappears. Further, the leaders of a given SE site can zap offensive posts, as well.

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


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Should references to other posts include the author name or topic name and link only?
A recent question about alternative rules in A&A lists references several other posts in the body. The referenced posts are apropos and the links clearly belong, but credit--by name--is given to the original authors.
Citing previous works by author name is clearly the standard in technical writing, and it is practice in forums and discussion boards as well, but it seems much less common in SE sites where references to individuals by name is typically restricted to the comments area and then usually only when directly responding to a comment or when asking a specific person a question.
In the body of questions and answers, should references to other material on the site be discouraged in favor of linked titles? Would this change help the site seem less like a discussion board and more like a permanent internet artifact intended to outlast it's "creators"?
Similarly, are references to seminal works or famous people appropriate? (I think so.) For example, references to Don Rae in A&A posts, or Chess Grand Masters, or World Poker Tour champions, creators of games, etc.

I think there is a risk in referring to the "author" of a specific answer: on a number of answers, multiple people have contributed in various ways to the current state of the answer, and in some cases, that answer may be edited after the question or answer that references it is posted. In most cases, it's likely only a risk of misattribution.
For example, someone might ask a question like "Are there other games for which a matrix like the one in Dave's answer here can be created?" (Ignore the potential off-topic-ness of the question for the purpose of the example, if you could ...) While it's nice to have a personal reference to the answer, in fact it wasn't I who put the matrix there, and thus the credit is misplaced. (It was a very helpful addition, however, so thanks!)
I would think that references to game experts are certainly appropriate, although perhaps more valuable if there is an appropriate citation ... if someone asks a question about how to play K-10 offsuit in Texas Hold 'Em, an answer that says "Chris Ferguson prefers to ..." is more valuable if it includes a link to a page or a video or something that actually shows his opinion, as well as some explanation of it.

I'm confused about what you're advocating. I don't think there's any question that it's appropriate to link to other SE answers (and that's definitely not my question). I'm also not asking about mentioning game experts by name (as in your Chris Ferguson example). My question is about the convention for referring to other SE answerers by name. What are your feelings on this practice?

@Adam, I may have misread your question - re-reading the first part of your question, I think you were asking more about "as Tom says here" vs. "as this answer says". Re Ferguson, I understood the last paragraph of your question to be about game experts, but perhaps that isn't what you meant? I'll edit my answer to cover what I now think your main point is.

You're right that the last part of my question was asking if the convention we apply to "normal" folks like us should be extended to the famous. Your edited answer addresses everything I was trying to ask. (And NP about adding the table, I realized I couldn't understand your answer until I had the table to look at and the referenced paper only showed the code to generate it not the final result). That answer was a thing of beauty.

"Citing previous works by author name is clearly the standard in technical writing." I think such a practice on Stack Exchange would make the site more respectable. Ditto for references to Don Rae,
I wanted to give the "props" to you (and Scott) for having been critical (not just influential) in the development of how I think about the AA game.

Oh I understand your reasoning and appreciate the sentiment, but I wanted to open a meta question because I don't think there's an established best practice and figured the community would be interested in weighing in.

@adam: I don't always agree with your points on this, or other posts, but always appreciate your efforts to search for "best practices" on the site. Just is in the AA game.


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Why was "What should I buy to teach Magic: The Gathering to someone?" closed for being "too localized"?
Here's the question:
How should I approach teaching Magic:The Gathering to a new player?
11 upvotes, been around seven months with some good answers. I just posted an answer to point out a new inexpensive way to try the game. The question was closed for being "Too Localized" about the same time as I posted my answer.

This question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet.

Sure, Base sets change every year, and maybe this product won't exist next year, but certainly the question can be answered, will have valid answers for a long time (at least a year's product cycle, the computer games will certainly be on the market a long time as well); the audience of the question is fairly large (ie. anyone with a passing interest in learning about the game); and furthermore the question itself is very similar in nature to:
How much would it cost to get started with Magic: The Gathering?
And it is also the same sort of question as this Go-releated query:
What do you recommend to learn Go?
Before I start a reopen/close war, thought I'd pose the question here. ;) It's a good question, isn't it?

I re-read it and think it's a good question, perhaps it should be worded more "how do I teach" and less "what do I buy" to make it more palatable.

@Stephen Not sure why "what do I buy" would be not palatable. It is a Collectible Card Game after all… like any board or card game you either have to buy something, borrow something, or — if you're hardcore and handy — handcraft something to play.

Unless @Pat Ludwig posts, we'll have to speculate.  I don't think it's a localized question, nor more subjective than http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/563/1583

@Stephen Nice pull. You found a mirror question that Pat asked. ;)

I've taken a kick at editing the question to make it less sensitive to this moment in time.
I don't yet have the ability to vote to reopen, but if you do, please take a moment to consider the edits.

Great edit, I added a bit more and reopened it.

Thanks, appreciate the feedback

I think one thing that separates the recently-closed question from Pat's question about 18xx games is that the 18xx games are static: 1830, for example, was published in 1986 and hasn't changed since then. New variants may be released, but nothing will change about old variants, so answers that refer to them will be just as good in five years as they are now.
The Go question is more static, in one respect. Go is go; it always has been, as far as any of us could possibly know. Tools to learn go may change over time, but the game itself does not, and so some learning tools will remain constant. (This question may require occasional maintenance if some of the links rot, but that can happen on any question with references.)
MtG, on the other hand, has gone through a significant amount of change, and in all likelihood will continue to do so. Valid answers now may become invalid answers in a year or two ... as adamjford points out in a comment about the old Shandalar game for the PC:

Problem is there would be a HUGE learning curve when you transition to modern rules (the stack, no interrupts, combat), and there would be no familiar cards whatsoever (except maybe Giant Spider and Lightning Bolt.) I say this even though I loved Shandalar to bits back in the day. :)

So I think the closure reason here is that the question is relevant to "a specific moment in time". I'm not sure whether it would be sufficient to change the question to ask what to buy to teach 2011 MtG to someone, nor whether this is the line of logic that Pat applied, but it seems like a starting point to me.

Though rules are updating constantly, there hasn't been a significant overhaul that would invalidate what you teach to a new player since the introduction of the stack, the elimination of interrupts and damage off the stack.  The answer that references Shandalar has 1 upvote compared with 14 for the accepted answer.  The OP says that he would both buy a starter deck and wouldn't buy a starter deck, so I can see there is room for cleanup, but the basic approach to teaching the game is still relevant.

Additionally the Portal product is still floating around, so an edit asking whether it's a recommended approach instead of saying the OP can't find it online (I found it in 1 query for $10) would keep the question relevant for future searchers.


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Should we mark an older question as a duplicate if a newer question is formulated better?
I noticed today a new question: Exiling Creatures: When is the card face up and when face down?
Very well formulated question (generalized) with a specific example. (Although it has some minor spelling issues.)
Clearly this older question could have been given the same title, but it wasn't. Are cards exiled with Ashiok revealed?
The answers to both questions with different examples but essentially asking the same thing will of course be the same.
Should we reword the older question and mark the new one as a duplicate or "reward" the new better crafted question and mark the older question as a duplicate?
EDIT: Just realized the new question still requires a bit of tweaking, as it says exiling creatures not exiling cards.

Yes in this case, and often yes in general.
The requirement is that the new question must thoroughly and clearly answer the older one. (But that's always the case for duplicate votes.) In the case you've discovered, this is satisfied because the older question is asking about a very specific application of the behaviour that the newer question asks about more generically.
This is not not the most common use of duplicate closure, since we usually prefer to close newer questions as you've acknowledged, but is an extremely useful way to use them. Specifically, it's the way we create canon questions — consider we have three or four questions all brushing up against a topic, like whether exiled cards get exiled face down or not on various different cards, but all the answers are different and none are duplicates. Someone can come along and create a canon question on the topic, and we can close all of those questions as a duplicate of it. If we universally only closed as duplicates of older questions, we'd be robbing ourselves of an opportunity to have a fantastic canon question.

I suggest changing "[...] the new question must thoroughly and clearly answer the older one." to "[...] the new question must more thoroughly and clearly ask the same question that the older one does." Changes emphasized in bold. The "more" is self-explanatory. The other change is because duplicate-ness is not determined by whether one question answers another, but by whether is is the same as another.

@Rainbolt Thanks for catching that, that's a pretty important thing to point out too. I think when we're closing an old question as a dupe of a newer one the answer quality's also relevant, so I'd like to still mention that too. (Or maybe it's always relevant, and our normal sort of dupe closure is no different, but usually the results end up favouring closing the new as a dupe of the old... food for thought.) I'm going to think about how I need to reword this and get back to it in a few days when I'm not so busy moving house.

You could think of it as a series of trade offs. Generality: Covers a mechanic versus covers a single card, the former being more canon. Clarity: Clear versus obfuscated, the former being more canon. Answer Quality: Has high quality answers versus doesn't have high quality answers, neither of which is more canon but it is a consideration when deciding which question to close. Finally, Age: old versus young (asked recently), the former having priority if all else is equal. I don't mean to explode your answer, so maybe you can find a simpler way to put it.

"All other things being equal," I would give priority to the older question. That doesn't seem to hold in this case.
The newer question appears to be about exiling creatures in general. The older question appears to be about exiling creatures in one special (Ashok) case. Based on this factor, the newer question is an order of magnitude better.
I don't want to see a "pretty good" question (which may have several answers with upvotes) supplanted by even a "great" one. But in this case, I'd consider the Ashok question kind of "borderline." So if the issue is, should we replace a borderline question with something decidedly better, by marking the first as a duplicate of the second, I'd say (emphatically) yes.


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How do I suggest migrating a question from here to another SE site?
Playing Risk in an arbitrary graph
Looks like it might be more appropriate on the theoretical computer science stack exchange site.
What's the process for suggesting these types of moves?

Please notice that in this case this question is completely off-topic for [cstheory.se]: We welcome research-level questions in theoretical computer science.

Game theory and Graph Theory combined?  Are you saying Mathematics is better?

You can flag it and the responding moderator could do it. This will normally involve the moderator talking to the mods of the destination site to see if they agree with the proposed move.  This can take some time to resolve.