text:
Do I get any reputation from being upvoted/accepted on meta?
I didn't see any change in rep when I got upvoted on meta; how does the system work?

No, you don't earn rep on meta. Your rep on meta is synced to B&CG rep each hour and so reflects the rep you've earned there.

More correctly, you don't earn rep on meta.  Your rep here is synced to b&cg rep each hour.


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Why do my badges change from beta to meta, but not my rep?
I see at the top of the meta page that my rep doesn't change when I switch views from the main beta site to its meta site.  But the badges do change.  Is there a reason why the badges are not made to "stick" to me like the rep, between beta and meta?

There are different badges for main and meta, but rep is for main only.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Get your B&CG Hats!
The hat bash is on and B&CG is participating!
Check it out via the link on the top bar, or go to http://winterba.sh/
If you don't like them, you can turn 'em off.

sooo you already have a hat.. why are you not wearing it???

@gbianchi looks like hats only show on the main site.  A tad disappointing.

I hope this will not start a meta post race to get the hat :)...

@gbianchi - fortunately I got mine before you warned against it!!

Now I've got to do something to replace this stupid looking cake...

@ire_and_curses - there's always something to do around here :)

Wow, Winter Bash does not like Chrome. The tab just loads forever (without a warning about out-of-control scripts).

Nevermind; updated Chrome, winterba.sh happy now. Obviously, I blame the cat I don't have.

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


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Beta Status on posts per day
Hi folks I have a simple question that some of you may already know the answer to.
The threshold for graduation is 10 questions/day and this seems to be all that's holding this site back from graduation.  Presently it's at 4.5/day according to Area 51.  However the thing that's also clear is that with almost 2000 days in beta our denominator is playing against the site.
For example: if the site had 1 full year of 10 posts per day, the average would be 5.37 posts/day ... 2 full years for 6 posts per day average .. 10 years of 10/day is 8.1/ppd, 25 years is 9.03/ppd, 175 years is 9.8 ... etc.
Yes, if the site moves over 10 per day the time drops accordingly (3 years of 20 ppd for the 10 average) but ... that's not the threshold, the threshold is 10.
Is it reasonable to look at a metric that captures a 6 month window of # of posts / days in 6 months?  As it stands now in order to move that number up will require years of 10+ posts per day, or have I misunderstood?

It's unclear at this point what, if anything, actually matters for graduation. Home Improvement, Christianity, Role Playing Games, and Photography graduated with around the same question rate we have now. Many other graduated sites have worse numbers in one or another of those statistics.

If you hover over the "4.5 questions per day" box, the tooltip says

4.5 questions per day on average over the past two weeks.

Ah thanks, that makes a great deal more sense.  When I was poking around I see the actual number of questions is around 6100 as opposed to my calculated number above -- I didn't know if that was due to deleted questions or what.  Your answer solves that mystery too.


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Autocard doesn't find a specific card, Sakashima the Impostor
Title. Sakashima the Impostor returns no search result on the gatherer site for some reason. Autocarding Sakashima or Impostor alone at least takes me to the search function that includes the wanted card, but any combination of 2 or all 3 words fails to deliver any result, e.g.
Sakashima the
the Impostor
Sakashima Impostor
Other multi-word autocards function just fine. "Sakashima the Impostor" doesn't even contain special characters or any of the other common autocard failure modes, my language is also set to English.
I noted that there is a Sakashima the Impostor Avatar card, a Vanguard card that is not typically included in search results. Is that the problem? However, that must be a recent change of the search algorithm, because both the regular Sakashima and the Vanguard card are old entries, and in my answer of How to clone a Legendary card legally? I linked Sakashima and it used to work back then.
Test for other Vanguard duplicate names:
Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Arcbound Overseer
Arcanis, the Omnipotent (this goes straight to the avatar page instead of the regular card)
Ashling the Pilgrim
Birds of Paradise
Bosh, Iron Golem
Braids, Conjurer Adept
Chronatog
Dakkon Blackblade
Dauntless Escort
Diamond Faerie
Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
Eladamri, Lord of Leaves
Elvish Champion
Enigma Sphinx
Erhnam Djinn
Etched Oracle
Fallen Angel
Figure of Destiny
Flametongue Kavu
Frenetic Efreet
Goblin Warchief
Grinning Demon
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
I don't feel like typing all of them out, but you get the idea.

Possible duplicate of Some autocard names don't execute correctly

Arcanis is different because the corresponding creature card doesn't have a comma in its name.

@murgatroid99 How many different posts do we need stating that the autocard feature is broken?

The previous post was escalated to the development team a while ago. The rest is up to them.

I noted that there is a Sakashima the Impostor Avatar card, a Vanguard card that is not typically included in search results. Is that the problem?

Yep, that's the problem exactly.
When a card name is two or more words, and there is another card that contains that card's name, the search will return no results at all. This is true for "Sakashima the Impostor" because of "Sakashima the Impostor Avatar", and just about every other avatar as you've discovered.
(If it's just one word, e.g. "Island" or "Recall" or the "Chronatog" you found, we're given a search page that includes the card, but not the card's page directly. This is also undesirable.)
There's two current requests to improve our Gatherer search:

A request to change the Gatherer link formula to another: Can the Autocard feature be improved (again)?. This formula was also proposed in 2014 (actually twice) to fix some issues in autocard v1, but another option was implemented for the current v2.
The alternative is switching over to a third party MTG search engine: Switch Magic autocard over to a different search engine, Scryfall

The new Gatherer formula resolves our current major problems such as this one. (There are some test cases where it doesn't work quite perfectly in either English or foreign languages.) Scryfall passes all test cases but isn't the official source.

Ok, I thought that change was already implemented. Why was it not yet?

We implemented a different change for our current autocard. There was a change, just not this one.

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


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Is the focus on Magic a problem? Is there anything to do about it?
Disclaimer - I'm the founder of Draw3Cards, originally a Stack Exchange 1.0 site. I'm not an avid user of Boardgames SE, and have recently stopped paying attention to Draw3Cards as well, in favor of other projects.
magic-the-gathering has as many questions as the next 6 tags combined. Is this a problem? That is, does it make BCG too much of a Magic Site, without really being a site dedicated to Magic? Does BCG adequately serve the MtG community?

Use the Favourite / Ignore Tags function, end of problem?

MtG has so much more published content (and rules that are so much more complicated) than any other single game on the sight, it would be absolutely shocking if it didn't dominate the number of questions. This isn't a problem, this is an accurate reflection of the real-world board-and-card-game ecology.

Also, I've (heavily) edited the question to make it seem less leading/opinionated/inflammatory. The OP sounds like he has his own answer, I'd encourage him to add it as an answer rather than put it in the question.

My intention was not to promote D3C, but rather to ask "Would B&CG viable without Magic? Is it a good idea to rely on Magic? My thesis has always been that Magic deserves its own Q&A site, and I don't know if B&CG does  or does not, but that shouldn't interfere with an independent SE Magic site. Anyway I think discussions and thoughts are good, I don't claim to have the one single answer to the questions I posed.

@PatLudwig is correct that Area51 is the place to debate an independent SE Magic site. If you have issues or comments on how we do handle magic questions here, we'll listen to constructive feedback, or even just identification of problems. Presupposing that Magic questions should be somewhere else, however, won't get you far with a group of users that happily ask and answer Magic questions on this site.

Demonstrate an actual problem instead of a nebulous concern.
"Magic is a popular topic" is not a problem. This is like complaining that Stackoverflow has a lot of questions about C#, or that RPG.SE is dominated by D&D-related questions. MTG isn't crowding out the other games.
"B&CG makes a dedicated site seem less necessary" is not a problem. Or, rather, it's not a problem for B&CG. It may be a problem for that dedicated site. But that's part of the test a focused site has to pass in order to succeed in the first place. There are lots of tech-specific little spinoffs. Chess and Poker have beta SEs but we never went out of our way to ban those questions on B&CG.

Does B&CG adequately serve the MTG community?
Well, for starters, it serves the MTG community way more adequately than a B&CG site that tried to discourage Magic questions would. Our rules answers are timely and accurate. The volume of strategic discussion here is limited, but the strategy answers excellently relate a specific situation back to theory and fundamentals — which, in my honest opinion, is much better than what I've seen on many dedicated Magic sites.
And MTG is clearly a net benefit to B&CG as a whole — not just in terms of traffic and community but in how it drives the overall culture: low-speculation answers that rigorously cite rules whenever possible. You'll see MTG pop up a fair bit in the general game-design answers, as well, because it's one of those games whose individual elements contain a lot of different examples of mechanical interplay.

No, the fact that MtG has six times the number of questions isn't an issue. BG.SE is an expert board game Q&A site, the distribution of questions has no bearing on its purpose.
BG.SE serves the MtG community well. It is rare that an answer is given that is incorrect, and when it is there are enough rules experts that the correct answers are quickly referenced (and upvoted) and the wrong answers are downvoted.
If you believe it is, it has a simple solution...
Ask more non-MtG questions.


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Is it acceptable to copy my question(s) from Draw3Cards to Board & Card Games?
Draw3Cards is a SE 1.0 site for MtG.  I am not active there anymore, but I have asked a couple questions there that I believe would be beneficial to have asked here.  Obviously, copying every non-duplicate question from there seems unethical so I only want to ask my questions here.  Would this be acceptable?

There are no plans to wholesale import data from SE1 sites anymore.
That said, there is nothing stopping you from asking those questions here.

I am aware that there are no plans to import this data.  My main concern was if this kind of activity would be considered reputation farming or some other heinous act.

As the owner of Draw3Cards, I can say that there's nothing in our TOS to stop you from doing that. I don't know about the ethics of Board Games or SE in general though - this could be considered rep farming.
Can I ask why you would want to do this? Were the questions not answered properly on D3C? Or are you just trying to "artificially boost" the content in Boardgames SE?
I won't complain, no matter how you do this.
One thing though - right now, the way I see it, Magic is the #1 game tag on Boardgames, way past any other tag. I and others strongly think that there is room for a dedicated Magic SE site. If you agree, I think a better move would be to support the proposal for a dedicated site, and perhaps wait until it opens and ask your questions there. I'm not sure if Boardgames is sustainable or not without the Magic content - but it is my opinion that Magic deserves a dedicated SE nonetheless, even if this means a substanial dilution of Boardgames SE.

Oh, and btw - why did you leave D3C in the first place?

The question was answered properly on D3C (I answered it myself) and I am not trying to artificially boost my rep here.  The question simply addresses a mechanic that I believe is frequently overlooked and I want to spread this information as much as possible. I am already committed to the MTG proposal, but there are other places for that discussion.  I "left" D3C because I am hoping the MTG proposal moves into beta soon....ish.

@OrigamiRobot - well, if you already support that proposal ... which seems to be under way, I don't think you should start adding a bunch of questions here from D3C, only to migrate them later. But then again, migrating is relatively easy within in SE, so maybe it's not such a big deal. The larger question is will all Magic questions be migrated to Magic SE from Boardgames.

I thought about that, but it might be a while.  I only asked 2 questions on D3C and this is the only one I feel needs to be spread as far and wide as possible.

@OrigamiRobot - well, if it's only 1-2 questions, I really don't see any problem in re-asking them, especially if you feel they're important.

The only issue I can think of is that it will set a precedent for that behavior. While you happen to be the person who asked those questions (or so you say1...), what's to prevent me or another user with nefarious rep-farming intent from going and asking every question that's been posted on Draw 3 Cards?
I couldn't actually find anything about Draw3Cards' Terms of Service - IANAL, but it might not actually be legal to duplicate that content here.  In contrast, at the bottom of all SE pages there's the following blurb:

user contributions licensed under cc-wiki with attribution required

Given that it's entirely unrelated to Stack Exchange, if it does happen to be legal, the worst that can be said is that it'll hurt D3C in it's page ranking (in that the exact same content on D3C will be competing with SE).
[1]: I actually know @OrigamiRobot in real life, he's the person who asked those questions on D3C.


text:
Where can I go to learn about B&CG's specialty markup?
So, we've been talking about adding AutoCard for Magic. That brings up this question:
Where can I go to actually learn about the site's special markup features?
If I were a new poster working on my first question or answer, how would I actually know that B&CG SE has special support for go boards, chess boards, or (hypothetically) MTG cards?

It should be on the tag for the game in question.
I see that go is lacking such help.  I'll try to get that rectified shortly.  That is the only site specific markup that I can think of right now.

Thanks, Pat! Is there a way to add notes to this page as well?  http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/editing-help It seems like the easiest place to navigate to if you're starting from scratch, just clicking on help you can get from the "Ask a Question" page.

@AlexP - no, that page is fixed site-wide.  It may be possible to edit it once we graduate, but I'm fairly certain nothing would be done before then.


text:
Canonical question request: "Is it legal to play a third party's online implementation of a board game?"
Playing board games online through various tool is a huge part of modern gaming culture. Some of those tools are first-party implementations of the game by the original creators or a license-holder. A lot of them, however, are third-party works.
It's tricky territory and there are a lot of myths circulating around — which is the perfect kind of thing to tackle with a Stack Exchange question.
I think we need some kind of canonical question to cover:

Is what I'm doing legal, illegal, or a grey area?
How do I find more information about a specific situation?
What kind of trouble could I get into (as an end user, at least) if I knowingly or unknowingly use an illegal service?

They key thing is, this is a question for board-game hobbyists about their hobby. I think it's pretty much inevitable that you'll run into this issue if you seriously participate in online play.
It's quite possible that this is a question we need additional expertise to answer in full, but finding a canonical question and answer here — even if it's a redirect to Legal SE or requires extensive quotation of another source — adds value to the site. Because this is the first place I'd look for such an answer, especially if I was looking for one that correctly applied legal principles to nuanced landscape of the board-game world rather than serving up a one-size-fits-all answer.

To be clear, I think this question needs an answer regardless of whether legal questions are on- or off- topic as a whole, because it is an issue that applies to playing games in addition to developing them, and a great answer is likely to involve an experienced hobbyist's understanding of the online-play ecosystem and creator-consumer relationships in the hobby, just as much as an understanding the law. That's... maybe not the most intuitive reasoning, I realize.

Rainbolt posted a similar question at about the same time as yours here do you guys want to try and merge or do you think they are different enough?

Problem with this is that legal questions are considered off topic in general for BGSE, it's even one of our close reasons.

@Malco My point is I think this question needs an answer even if legal questions in general are deemed "off-topic" as a broader class.

@AlexP wait me or Andrew? I was just giving an FYI since it was two similar questions being posted within a min or two of each other.

I'm afraid your reasoning about having a canonical on an off-topic question doesn't make sense to me. It seems to boil down to "people are interested in this sort of thing" and "the questions are partially about board games still", which are the kinds of thing that comes up sometimes when we're discussing whether something should be on topic, but it's not really a justification for making an exception to site scope.

@Andrew What close reason mentions anything about legal questions? I don't see it.

@Rainbolt I swear it was there yesterday under off topic when I used it to vote to close https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/39900/is-untap-in-legal-to-play-mtg

Oh, if someone else uses a custom reason, then when you go to close the question, the reason they provided will be there. At least I think that's what happened anyway.

@Rainbolt i did not know that about the workings of stack exchange.

We should not make a canonical answer for the simple reason is that the answer to the question of a third party online implementation being legal depends on the game and third party in question.
There are games out there where the designer has worked with a third party source to make the game. It could also be the case where the games license allows third parties to make online implementations which could depend on what rules they follow. It could also just be plain copyright violation and not legal at all.
In my opinion what this answer would boil down to is it depends on the game and how the third party site implemented it.

This is all moot on our site if the question's off-topic to begin with, but I do agree, and these are things that are worth considering if someone wants to head over to https://law.stackexchange.com/ with this kind of thing. Specific instances of this question (with specific jurisdictions) might well be on-topic there, and would be much more likely to attract the necessary expertise to yield legally accurate answers.

Demonstrating how the question itself is a category error is an excellent answer. Thanks, Joe!


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Board and Card Games Self-Evaluation -- Let's Get Critical!
You love your site and we love your site, but there is a whole world of people out there who might not even know it exists. When they do find it, their first impression will either scare them away or keep them around. Given this, let's take a hard look at the questions and answers here and make sure newcomers see the site at its best!
Below you'll find ten questions randomly selected from this site. What do you think about each of them and their answers? Are they the best they can be or can they be improved? Would they look interesting and inviting to an outsider or are they a little embarrassing?
Upvote the corresponding post here on meta when we're awesome. Downvote when our content just isn't quite up to par.
Oh, and do comment to let everyone know your thoughts and take part in this conversation. :D
Note: This eval will be closing on 27 September 2012. Get your votes in!

I am curious as to what an up/down vote would mean with respect to our content. ie If a question is good, but the answers are poor or visa versa is that a downvote or upvote. Why are the questions never separated from the answers, or is that intentional?

@user1873 It's intentional. The best thing I do in that situation is say to myself, "If I were a stranger who had just landed on this page thanks to Google, would I be happy or unhappy with all of the information here?" The answer to that question usually is how I would vote.

Thanks for all your help, everyone! :)

Bottom card drawn during epidemic: What happens if there is already more than one disease cube in the city?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

I am torn on this one. The answer is excellent, providing references that explain why the correct answer is supported by the rules. The question while clear,should have been directly answerable by reading the rules.

Setting aside being miffed that my simultaneous (yet admittedly lesser answer) has received 0 up votes. :)  I like this one.  I've had plenty of cases where even after several careful readings of the rules I've misunderstood or just plain missed something that becomes obvious when it's pointed out.  I like that we're here to help out everyone that has problems like this.

I definitely agree with @PatLudwig, I've often been in this situation!

@Pureferret - getting 0 upvotes or missing rules that are right in front of you? :)

How likely are you to lose because Fool's Landing sinks into the abyss?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

@tttppp, answer is probably the more correct answer, and breaks it down by number of players and difficulty. The only reason I have yet to accept it is because I have yet to check the math. (The diver section is much more complex, requiring a simulation). This is the kind of question I like, statistical.

I wouldn't want the site to devolve into a constant string of these difficult statistical questions, but they make for good spice :)

I'd prefer if the summary was at the start....besides that, good Q&A

@Pureferret Done!

@PatLudwig I wouldn't want to answer a constant string of these questions either ;-)

Does Goblin Arsonist's ability deal 2 damage when there are two in play?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

I like how the answer took the time to explain and generalize things thus dispensing more knowledge concisely.

If I fail to defeat all defenders of a fortified site, does this count as a forced withdrawal?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

This is the kind of rules question I like to see. The rulebook isn't clear enough,.and it is necessary to consult an FAQ or the designers comments.

While our answer adds little more than the already existing BGG thread, I see value in presenting the answer, and clearly denoting it as from the designer.  You can get that from the BGG thread, but it takes a little work to realize that the answer is authoritative.

How long does it take to play Le Havre with different numbers of players?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

par - maybe a bit negative.  This question could use several more answers from people with extensive experience with the game so that the questioner can judge whether there is a consensus that one answer with 2 votes cannot give.  I may have to input mine...

I'm not a big fan of how-long questions. Particularly for the type of games that tend to be topics on BCG, there can be a significant variance between a "standard" time and the time a given group can expect to play; I'm not sure if there's even a factor that a group could use to determine their expected play time given a standard, e.g. our groups has rules lawyers, so we add 25% to the listed time, or we're all novices, so we add 50%.

Could player discard nearest cards to place the part of `War Machine` in proper order?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

Torn once again. Question could be answered by the rules.

par - we don't make the internet better or worse by having this question.  It is a common fallacy for folks to ask questions phrased like, "Can I do this? The rules don't prohibit it!"  We should do a better job of challenging folks to provide evidence of why they think they should be allowed to do the action in question.

I'm with Pat, but I don't think the question is bad.

Can you use Trader to gain a Silver instead of a Farmland, but still get the buy side-effects of Farmland?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

The question is fine, but the accepted answer does not provide references to an official source. The 2nd answer provides references for part of the question, but does not address the Treasury/Smuggler questions. I believe the answers are correct, but without official sources to support the answers, it is just an opinion.

The question should have been cleaned up.  It asks 2 questions and includes an answer within it.  A poor moderating job by yours truly on this one.

How long does the copyright for a game last, after it is out of print?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

Common misconceptions about abandonware exist for boardgames as well as videogames, this should clear those up.

par for me.  Legal advice on SE sites is as useful as legal advice on BB's IMHO.  The question should at least specify which country the asker is concerned about.

Trash an Estate or Curse your opponents? Full Version
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

Another good question, that lacks a good answer in my opinion. I think the lack of votes and answers reflect on the amount of expertise that would be necessary to confirm the correct answer.

Compare to the question that spawned this one.  The original dealt with a specific question that could be answered in a concise way. This question is asking for a nearly book length answer.

Good Euchre bidding strategy guide?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.

Both current answers are incomplete. One provides a reference for bidding (although the quality of the link leaves much to be desired), the other provides no reference. The best answer would probably be to sum up the general strategy, but then provide references to more in depth strategy. It might be the case that this question is too broad anyway.

I've played a lot of Euchre.  Both answers are junk.


text:
Search failing?
I can't seem to search for anything on BG.SE. I always get 0 results even for searches that I know should yield questions (e.g. because I'm searching for a question that I already know is there).
Searching for "Jund" or "Diplomacy" generates 0 results even though there are questions with those words in the title.
Tag-searches still seem to work correctly.

Yikes! Something's broken. I see the same behaviour.

I tried search on a smattering of other sites, beta and non-beta, logged in and not, and they all seem to be fine.

@ire_and_curses Wait, sorry, I'm confused: so BG.SE is broken but other SEs are unaffected?

So it would seem...

Searching by tag (e.g. [diplomacy]) still seems to be functional.

One of the team is looking into it: Searching on Board and Card Games is broken

I just searched on "diplomacy" (the word, not the tag) and got six pages of results.  (Firefox 18.0.1, WinXP)

Works for me now, too.

Just to close the loop: this appears to have been fixed sometime during the day. Hooray!
You can find more technical details in this explanation from Nick Craver.


text:
Why can I edit on main but not on meta?
On main, I can click on the "edit" link on a post to propose an edit.  On meta, it's not a link -- just text.  Why are the privileges different?  Or is this a bug?

Hey Monica! I think this link would prove useful to you: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87890/165582

Oh thanks @Aarthi!  That answers my question.  I can't vote to close this as a cross-site duplicate, but I think it's useful to keep this breadcrumb here.  Hmm.  If you post that as an answer I can accept it. :-)

Copy the answer here and accept it yourself? :D

@Aarthi, I considered that, but isn't there a two-day delay on self-accepts?  I was hoping to resolve the question.

Ha, ok. There, I fixed it!

Per this meta post:

Mostly because the per-site metas are generally low traffic -- some of them count daily visits in the dozens.
That means the moderators will have to do the work, since the 10k site users are the only ones that can even see this queue. And on many sites, like say Bicycles -- there are exactly zero users at this rep level, even after many months.
https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all
(highest rep on Bicycles as of the time I am writing is 5.6k)
We were uncomfortable adding Yet Another Queue for Moderators to Look At across every site in the network.

Short version: it's status-bydesign because metas tend to not need a lot of edits in general.


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There needs to be a tag(s) for: one-player / single-player
Since there are many games that can be played by one person, I feel it would be useful to have a related tag.

Removed solitaire from title since it was pointed out that that could be seen as specifically the card game. Removed solo from title since I think that may imply things like playing against a computer.

If you want those tags, we need to be consistent with related tags:

single-player or one-player but not solitair because that can be confusing with the game with the same name.
dual-player or two-player
multi-player

There isn't a game with the name solitaire; there is Klondike solitaire, which is the most popular solitaire card game, and sometimes people refer to it incorrectly as simply solitaire, but on its own, solitaire just means any game you can play by yourself.

You are probably right, but I still think its confusing.

 No, I think this is a Meta-Tag:

The reason meta-tags are a problem is that they do not describe the content of the question.

We should be careful when tagging using one of those tags. It should only apply when the question is about a game that could be played in solo and the question is about that. (a question about Spider (Solitaire) should not have that tag).

there's already a "two-player" tag... hmmm, with only one question... and there's no "multi-player" tag. still seems to me that it's useful to know the difference between 1-, 2- and n-player questions.

But solitaire is not a meta tag; it does talk about the content of the question. If you're asking about solitaire variants of games, then that's what the question is about; it's not a meta-tag. Meta tags are tags that are more about the style of the question, like subjective or beginner, and that's what the meta tags article is arguing against.

@Brian Campbell You are right, I edited my answer.

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


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The front page selection could probably benefit from more rotation of old, high quality questions
I've noticed that when some of my old questions get bumped due to edits or re-taggings, they often get new, good responses.  There is nothing special about my questions.  This means that in general, if we were to revive some old, good questions, they'd probably drive some fresh, good new answers.

Hi! I'm tagging this [status-bydesign] because the essence of the functionality you're requesting exists already. :)

Your observation that bumping questions often leads to fresh, valuable traffic is quite true. In fact, this was realised early on in the history of StackExchange. The idea of bumping questions that might need more eyeballs is explicitly implemented in one of the functions of the Community User. If you take a look at the homepage, it's usual to see several questions up there which were last edited by this special user.
As for how and when questions are automatically bumped, see for example the discussion here: Community should discriminate more when bumping unanswered questions. There have also been other suggestions for ways this could work.
With regard to frequency, it's a delicate balance to get the right amount of churn of old questions, without losing new ones too quickly. If there are too many old questions, or they aren't interesting to answerers (because perhaps they have been answered very well already), then these can have a negative impact on the site.
I don't know exactly what the rate of churn of old questions by the Community user is for our site, but in my opinion it seems reasonable. I don't particularly see any need to increase that. One of the things I'm most proud of with this site is that we have a very high answer rate of 98%, which suggests that most questions get a pretty good going over first time around.

I doubt that your questions are the only ones getting bumped.  A lot of old questions make regular appearances on the front page.
Questions reappearing is something that probably best happens organically, as they are discovered by new members or found by experienced members.
Trying to manage a limited promotion of old material sounds problematic.  I can tell you from experience that hits can drop noticeably when a large retag goes through.

We might get some, but I doubt the ratio of good new answers is that high for Old questions with previous Accepted or Upvoted answers.
First, let's clear what Community user actually does.

Randomly poke old unanswered questions every hour so they get some attention

The Community user does not bump questions with an accepted answer, nor questions with an upvoted answer. You probably won't get many useful new answers by bumping old questions with accepted answers or upvoted answers. I only have my limited experience to base this on, so my sample size is too small (yours is too). You could run a query on data.SE for some more concrete data. Unfortunately, Boardgames.SE is in beta so you cannot run queries against it's database. Games.SE or other SE site might serve as a good alternative.
I am not sure exactly what should be compared. You might want to examine the total number of questions that a creation date of 1 year+, that have an edit within the last 3-6 months. Then look at the ratio of new answers to no new answers (determine how likely you are to recieve a new answer, or examine the total up votes for those new answers versus the highest answer older than 3-6+ months (determine how good new answers are). My guess is that you will find that new/late answers are pretty poor in general.


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Editor tool to link to BoardGameGeek
Can we have a special Link button in the editor to make links to BoardGameGeek?
I see I should have explained it a little more... What I'm looking for is a button where you just have to enter the name of the game and it creates a link to bgg.

One option would be to just have it link to the search results for that name.
A more elaborate goal would be to fetch the list returned by the search and let the user choose a game to link to.

I am aware that you can use the normal link tool for this but I think it would be more convenient this way. Similarly like MtG.SE has a way to easily link cards...

What would this get you vs. using the normal link button?

@Kristo: I've elaborated the idea to make it more clear...

After a year of waiting, I'm going to status-decline this. I don't believe a majority of questions on this site would be improved by having this functionality added, and I believe the technical limitations of BGG depreciate the value of this even further. Feel free to reopen this discussion if you feel strongly about it, but I personally don't see the merit in it. Better luck next time. :)

I'm going to disagree here, for two reasons:

Board game titles are not unique.  One would have to know how BGG names certain games (and their expansions!) to get the link to work.  That's at least as much work on the user's part as a normal link.
BoardGameGeek is not necessarily the canonical source for game info.

It's a nice idea in theory, but I just don't think it buys you enough over a standard link to ask the SE people to implement it for us.

I already expressed my view in that thread that I think BGG is most likely to provide a good first overview for any given game.

I think this would be a great idea, since I'm always having to open up another page to get the BGG link.  We would definitely need the list to choose from though.

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


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Please synonym 'opening' and 'openings'
I think we need to make opening a synonym for openings.
Plural seems the better way to go, and we don't need these two separate tags.

I've submitted opening as synonym for openings.

Thanks, I'm just one upvote away from being able to vote on it.

Well, I have the votes now, but it looks like one of you guys pushed it through, thanks.

@Lance - yeah, it wasn't immediately obvious how to approve it, but I stumbled my way through :)

While it shows as a tag-synonym on the openings page.  If you try to add it to a question, it doesn't have the (s), and it didn't migrate the tags over, so there are still 11 questions with 'opening'.

ok I tried to take care of them all.  Since you can't search for a synonymed tag, I can't be sure.

@LanceRoberts Its over 3 years since this issue was raised, questions can still have one or both of the tags. Please see if more attention needs to be raised.

@ghosts_in_the_code, no, it did get synonymed.  Notice that when you search for either you end up with the same number of questions.  I found no questions with both tags.

@LanceRoberts Then why do I still get an option to use both tags on a new question?

@ghosts_in_the_code, there does appear to be a bug, see my larger meta question that I've just posted.

@ghosts_in_the_code, ok, got the answer and fixed it.


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Do we still want to switch to using Scryfall as the autocard service?
This 2017 post makes some compelling arguments for switching over to Scryfall.
But it's 4 years (and a change) out of date.
Before we commit to mass-fixing the currentlybroken gatherer links, can we double check that:
a) this is a super-simple no cost batch update; or
b) we wouldn't rather switch search engine to Scryfall at the same time
If the mass-fix is a simple low-cost low-risk batch update, there should be no reason to wait. If it's more complicated/costly than we realise then I'd rather wait.

I think the mass-fix request is not relevant here. That request is just to update old links with the current link rendering template to fix broken links. It's something that we want on a shorter timeframe than how long we should take to decide whether to switch to a different site for card links.

It should be noted that a big fix was done to the auto card feature in the last year and it should have fixed most of the issues we had in the past. Just need the mass update to fix the older links. Can the Autocard feature be improved (again)?

@murgatroid99 I think if we can come to a conclusion before the mass-fix it's very relevant. There's no point wasting effort on the mass fix if we're going to switch over in the near future.

The mass-fix is a simple batch update and it should happen ASAP. If we add in implementing and testing a rendering change, it will take longer, which is undesirable.

@murgatroid99 if it's that simple then it shouldn't matter, but I'm happy to hear either way from the devs

In my opinion, we should not switch to Scryfall.
The main thing Gatherer has going for it that Scryfall can never match is Rule 108.1 of the Magic: the Gathering Comprehensive Rulebook:

Use the Oracle card reference when determining a card’s wording. A card’s Oracle text can be found using the Gatherer card database at Gatherer.Wizards.com.

Gatherer is the official source of truth for card text, and we should respect that by linking to Gatherer by default when providing card text in questions and answers.
In addition, in the time since the linked Scryfall suggestion was posted, a different suggestion to improve Gatherer links was implemented. That change fixes most if not all of the problems originally referenced as reasons to switch to Scryfall. As a result, our Gatherer links are good enough now that we should not switch and lose the value of linking to the official source of truth.

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


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Tabletop miniature gaming modeling and painting questions?
Since BCG allows questions on tabletop miniature games (e.g., Warhammer 40K and Flames of War), does it also include questions on activities integral to (some) tabletop miniature games? Specifically, modeling and painting questions?
Revised: added example painting/modeling questions.
Example painting question: How to speed-paint a mob of Ork Boyz?
Example modeling question: How to indicate a mob of Ork Boyz all belong to the same unit?

Take a look at http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/a/311/50.

Thank you. I am embarrassed I did not perform a better search before posting.

Not knowing the games (only saw them and know the general flow of gaming) I think if you are asking a particular question (one that doesn't sound like, should I paint this red or blue?) would be ok. At least I don't see anything that will break the faq. Particular questions are ok, but don't ask for opinions, that are better on a poll. But this type of question, besides all I said, should be validated,because are not gaming per se questions...
edit:
I just open the faq and it said that among the question that you can ask are

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

Thanks! I realized from your rseponse I should include example questions and will revise my question.

My apologies. I should have re-checked the FAQ.


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Retag suggestion: [mtg-duels-pc-game] -> [magic-duels]
We currently have the tag mtg-duels-pc-game to refer to the video game Magic Duels. This tag name is not accurate, because the title of the game is "Magic Duels", not "Magic: the Gathering Duels" or "MTG Duels" or similar. In addition, as this question shows, it is not exclusively a PC game. I recommend that we change this to magic-duels. That will match the name of the game, and it will not conflict with any other existing product that we support, as far as I know.
Any issues, concerns, etc?

That sounds logical, especially since duels is available on mobile devices as well.

I created the mtg-duels-pc-game tag a while back.
I added on the "pc-game" bit because of a related issue I've observed on another site. On RPG.SE, we have a [dnd-encounters] tag. D&D is a popular game, and it prominently features fights we call "encounters", and sometimes a person asking about encounters in D&D will use the [dnd-encounters] tag. However, the [dnd-encounters] tag is actually for a specific official organised play program called "D&D Encounters", so we retag these questions to use another tag like [encounter-design].
I added "pc-game" to head off this kind of situation from the outset. MTG is, after all, regularly played using duels.
That said, calling it "mtg duels" when it's called "magic duels" is definitely wrong. (At the time I thought it was called "Magic: the Gathering — Duels" or something.)

I'd agree with magic-duels now though. That sounds OK. We might have to do some retagging but probably not very much.
If we find ourselves doing a lot of retagging, we may want to rename it to magic-duels-video-game.


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Can we get an exception to the graduation requirements on account of our age and other good stats?
In 2016 we were told that the following hard graduation requirement had been instated, preventing this site from graduating:

When a site starts to consistently receive 10 questions/day, we’ll consider it for graduation.

In the four years since that rule was established, the following sites have graduated with fewer than 9 questions per day on average:

Quantitative Finance
Philosophy
Aviation
Japanese Language
Musical Practice and Performance
Anime & Manga

Given that these sites did not meet the stated requirements, I can only assume that they met some alternative requirements or otherwise got an exception to the requirements. This site has been in beta for 8 years and most of our other stats are very strong. Does this qualify us for these alternative requirements?

Writing (another very old site) has been asking to graduate for about a year and a half.  So far we have been rebuffed because of the 10 QPD rule, much to our frustration.  We usually average around 5-6; we had a question drive and topped 10 QPD for a few weeks, but they want to see a sustained level.  We'd be happy if they would just drop the "beta"; our site, like this one, isn't provisional or in flux, which is what "beta" usually conveys.

So the question becomes basically how to get above 10 questions a day? Is crowdfunding some BGG advertising out of the question? One of the problems I see for this stack is the overlap in BGG's function and ours. But BGG very much is a discussion site, so perhaps trying to pull some of its question and answer traffic across could work?

I have written about this before; essentially it is my belief that this site does not have the potential to sustain 10 questions per day. I strongly suspect that if you added in every on-topic question from every competing site, and filtered out duplicates, you still wouldn't consistently reach 10 questions per day.

More of an observation than an answer.
Our average questions / day is 3.3.  Well below all the other sites you mentioned.  The lowest of which was 5.7, most above 7.0.  Most well above twice what we generate per day.  The stated requirement is 10/day.
All our other Site51 statistics are excellent, especially as compared to the sites you mentioned.
So, your question comes down to, is it okay to graduate, if we have a very low number of questions / day?

That's basically accurate. The goal of the question was in some sense to say "Other sites graduated without meeting the requirements we were given. Did they meet some different set of requirements, and if so are we also meeting those?"


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Synonymize [magic-the-gathering-arena] into [mtg-arena]
We have currently two tags about Magic: The Gathering Arena:
mtg-arena, 8 questions
magic-the-gathering-arena, 9 questions
Obviously, these tags are duplicates; can somebody with ♦ powers merge/synonymize them? Since all 'specialized' Magic tags start with mtg- I prefer the former.
I have also submitted an edit to the excerpt stating that it should only be used for questions about situations specific to Arena, not just because they happened during an Arena game.

I have set up the requested synonym. mtg-arena is now the canonical tag for this topic.


text:
Rename [priority] to [mtg-priority] and [stack] to [mtg-stack]
Some Magic: the Gathering mechanics have their own tags: Do specific mechanics in MTG need their own tags?
They all start with mtg-, so can one of the ♦ moderators rename priority to mtg-priority?
Even though the stack tag excerpt and wiki mention other games have that concept as well, it's currently not used for anything but Magic: the Gathering so perhaps it needs to be renamed as well (and the tag wiki/excerpt adjusted).

Watching, seems like a fine idea.  Will revisit next week if opposing views are minimal.  Thanks.

So this means we'd have a stack tag for non-MTG question (should the need ever develop) and a stack tag for MTG questions? Is that really a good idea?

"Priority" in MTG doesn't refer to the common meaning of priority --it means "turn" as in "turn-based"-- so that makes sense.

Even if there ever is another game with a stack, that game will probably have its own specific mechanics, so it's likely that questions about the MTG stack will not help you understand the other game's stack and vice versa. So I think it would make sense to have multiple [*-stack] tags if that happens. And the [stack] tag has existed for close to 8 years without being applied to a non-MTG question, so it's unlikely that we will actually have to address that situation.

This is done. I have renamed priority to mtg-priority and stack to mtg-stack. In addition, following this pattern, I have renamed bestow to mtg-bestow and heroic to mtg-heroic.

Thanks, I've updated the [mtg-priority] tag wiki & excerpt.


text:
Community Promotion Ads — 2020
You lost your “beta” label in 2019, so welcome to your very first edition of Community Promotion Ads, for the year of 2020!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

review blogs and research websites to keep on top of the latest releases
events, meetups, and conventions
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

Hi Board & Card Game community - The Arqade community spent a bit of time building some ads to share on different SE sites. We welcome a cross-post/collab on our community ads post as well :)


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Request for tag synonym [the-struggle-for-catan] → [struggle-for-catan]
In 2011, The Struggle for Catan was released as a spinoff game in the Catan series. In 2016, the game was re-released as simply Struggle for Catan. You can see the different versions here on BoardGameGeek.
Could we please create a tag synonym of the-struggle-for-catan → struggle-for-catan? That way, both game names are covered.

@murgatroid99 Thanks for doing this! Do you want to create an answer so that I can mark this question as accepted?


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Rename [star-wars-imperial-assaul], it's missing a T
star-wars-imperial-assaul is missing a T.
I've created a star-wars-imperial-assault tag and added the same tag wiki and excerpt to it. Could the former be merged into it? I don't want to spam up the front page with edits if it can be avoided.


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Should we keep [specific-card]?
Do we really have have a need for specific-card? It seems like an extremely broad tag that could apply to most questions on the site involving cards.
Currently it appears to only be applied to one question and I think it should not be used at all.
This has now been applied to a question with no other tag to support it so I think there is strong evidence that this tag will be misused.
Mini Rogue - What player get After defeat Boss Monster at area 11,12 and 13?

I've added the mini-rogue tag to that question. I don't think that was a problem. The mini-rogue tag didn't exist beforehand, and that's actually better than what they would've done before -- just pick any random tag at all because it's a new uncovered game.

@DarkCygnus I was not talking about the edit since that introduced the correct tag but the initial posting which just included specific-card. Also  the edit wasn't made by a mod but a normal user who is helping keep the site maintained.

I have removed the tag.

No, specific-card should be removed.
The tag "specific card" divides all questions on the site into two categories: questions about a specific card, and questions not about a specific card.  Neither of those categories is useful.
Furthermore, any guidance on when to use this tag will be extremely dicey.  The majority of questions about individual cards get resolved using the comprehensive game rules; i.e. the real question is about the rules, not the card.  There is a very fine line between a question about a specific card and a question about the rules that happens to apply to a specific card - too fine to justify a tag that delineates it.

"The tag "specific card" divides all questions on the site into two categories: questions about a specific card, and questions not about a specific card." - This binary interpretation can be made of any tag. The MTG tag divides Qs into Magic and non-magic posts, so stating that it just splits questions into 2 categories is an understatement. Specific cards mean about 1,2 cards, there are questions about ruling (and not cards), deck builds (many cards), card archetypes (maaany cards)... and those are not binary partitions from specific-card tag...

Agreed, every tag splits questions into two categories.  My point is that some of those categories are useful and some are not.  A grouping of questions about deck builds or card archetypes might be useful.  A grouping of questions based on whether or not a specific card is involved is not.

I completely disagree with you and have written an answer explaining why.

No, the tag specific-card should not exist. The purpose of a tag is to label a category or topic that someone would either search for or watch. This tag does not do any of that, so it should be removed.
UPDATE: I have removed the specific-card tag.

Well, people could search for specific card questions... as well as subscribe to such tag, as some users may be interested in specific cards, instead of general ruling or similar

To add another reason to the other 2 answers... the primary way I use tags (and I would guess most people do as well) is to know if a particular question is one that I might be able to answer. Oh, this question is about MTG, Dominion, Catan? I know those games well, I should read this and see if I know the answer.
Subcategories of MTG succeed in helping with this as well... Some people might know MTG rules pretty well, but don't know much about Commander. However, it seems very unlikely that anyone out there would be able to answer a question that's about a specific card, but not a general one. Or that would be able to answer a general question, but not one about a specific card.

I disagree with the others!

Furthermore, any guidance on when to use this tag will be extremely dicey. The majority of questions about individual cards get resolved using the comprehensive game rules; i.e. the real question is about the rules, not the card.

"specific card" is not a tag I search for to see if I can answer questions. But it is useful to get a feeling what the question is about, and if I am likely to go the extra mile to make an effort. True, often questions regarding specific cards can be answered with a reference to the rules, but this is because the card is part of the game!

The tag "specific card" divides all questions on the site into two categories: questions about a specific card, and questions not about a specific card. Neither of those categories is useful.

This is your personal opinion and not a fact. Counterexample: "reality-check", "science-based" and "hard-science" on Worldbuilding SE. Divides the questions on the side into 3 categories and it works good for them.
Nice quote from relevant question on meta:

Tags that no one cares about are not harmful. Removing a tag that someone cares about is harmful.

See also.

The specific-card tag fails the first, second, and fifth (and arguably the third) bullet point on the second meta link you posted, and according to the first link is probably a meta tag.  The Worldbuilding case is a great example where broad categories divide a site into useful groups, unlike "specific-card."  The fact that those tags work well has no bearing on this tag being bad.

I understand that you disagree with other answers on this question, but until the matter is resolved please do not add the tag to more questions.

@murgatroid99 No problem

I would say it also fails the 4th bullet point since searching by specific-card alone will return results for multiple games unless you refine the search to also include which game(s) you are looking for,


text:
Are questions requesting objective data on-topic, and does the motivation for those questions matter?
A question came up asking for recommendations and the most played card games so they would have an idea what to play. I edited the question to ask only what was most played because I didn't see how the motivation mattered.
The question was closed because "Questions asking for game recommendations are off-topic". I really don't see how that's valid. Even though that's the motivation behind the question, that question actually solicited data about board games, and this doesn't suffer the same problems (endless, opinion-based answers).
I would love to see more such questions about data about board games (especially if they include the research they've already done). I know that my local store and BGG provide data about sales and games played, and I find that useful.
Even if the ultimate goal of getting the data is to use the answer as a recommendation, am I mistaken in thinking seeking objective facts about board games is a good thing?

The question was closed as a game recommendation question before it was edited to remove the explicit request for recommendations. If you want to discuss the current form, or some more ideal form, great, but let's not mix that up with why it was closed, and let's not omit other reasons people had and noted.

If that's your question, then I think you're doing yourself a disservice by using this question as a test case. It has other issues, and so establishing that the overall category of questions is on topic doesn't mean we will reopen this question.

No, I did not add it. Your original question referred to it before I ever edited (I only added the link), and much of it was about the arguments people made for closing that specific question. I would strongly encourage you to take a step back at this point, because you have through the course of this process pushed uncomfortably far in misrepresenting others' actions and statements (not just mine) and shown a lack of willingness to listen to others (not just me). That's not good for you or your admirable goal of encouraging data-related questions.

tl;dr Questions about data are on topic, but still subject to site standards, and this particular question likely falls short. The motivation matters insofar as it is necessary for us to understand what constitutes a good or bad answer from the OP's perspective, which is relevant for both editing to clarify and answering. If, on the other hand, the question is sufficiently clear and objective, to the point that motivation won't affect what constitutes a good or bad answer, we don't need to worry about the motivation underlying it.

I think that questions about data are a great category, and the site would benefit from having more of them, but they do need to be well-written. There should be a clear, specific question. If there's potential to get side-tracked into debates, that's a bad sign.
Unfortunately, this specific case seems dodgy. First off, it was asked as a recommendation question, where the OP would've pretty clearly been happy with answers about popular games, without a lot of solid data. Yes, that was edited out, but what's left is fairly vague. I think we would be better off starting from scratch, with an OP who's clearly looking for data, and writing a clearer question that's less likely to solicit opinions and debate.
For example, there's the question of what counts as a card game - are we including things like Magic, or just standard playing card games? Are we talking about time spent playing, in which case casino games will likely rank highly, or number of people who play/have played the game, in which games played at home will have more of a chance? Different countries play different games - is this a global question, a US question, or what?
And on top of all that, the OP clearly was interested in this for the purpose of discovering games to play, which means that however this all gets clarified, it needs to match the OP's preferences. This is where the motivation bit comes in: the only information we have to help refine the question is the fact that the OP wants to use it as recommendations, which makes it pretty impossible to clarify the question without either making a total guess or turning it right back into a recommendation question.
So if you, or anyone else, wants to go ask a clear, specific question asking for data about popularity of card games, awesome! It'll be on-topic, we won't close it as a game recommendations question, and it will be good for the site to have questions like that. On this point I think we're all pretty well agreed.
But this question hasn't gotten there yet, and we can't force it to, because some of that is up to the OP. Keeping it closed doesn't mean we won't ever take questions about data, it just applies to this particular question.

What about the original form of the question? It's a recommendation question. It said:

Recommendation, card game
Could you make me recommendations for card games? Whatever type it was. I just want to know what is most played at this time with respect to card games.

It's asking for recommendations for a set of games, with some criteria that aren't terribly clear or objective. It meets the literal definition of recommendation questions here, so it's off-topic. It was absolutely prone to turning into a poll (X is popular in this context, Y is popular in this other context, etc etc).
Yes, it could conceivably be salvaged into something that's no longer a recommendation question. The edits made are a start. But that doesn't change the fact that the original question absolutely solicited recommendations, and since it's not trivial to edit to avoid this (in large part due to the original motivation, as noted above), the voters were right to vote to close.

@ikegami Overall what I'm saying is that the process of turning this from a broad recommendation question into a specific question about data is not complete. Sure, maybe the literal "recommendation" part is gone. But the vagueness that leaves room for all kinds of things is still there. So, sure, maybe it's slightly more accurate to close it as unclear. But I don't think it's a terribly productive use of our time to discuss that and possibly change the close reason. And it was closed for being a recommendation question before that part was edited out.

@ikegami I've edited in some things to address the general question of whether data is on-topic (it is) and whether the motivation matters (roughly it does if it affects how to ask/answer). This specific question does still have issues, and I think that is important to note in an answer to your meta question, because it is asking about this specific question, and implying that if data requests are on topic then this question's closure is invalid - and that is not the case.

@ikegami It was closed as a recommendation question while the question contained "Could you make me recommendations for card games?" because that is a recommendation question. Yes, it narrowed it down by asking about popularity. That was not enough to stop it from being a recommendation question. Substantial edits are required to turn it into an objective, on-topic question, and the edits thus far only partially accomplish that.

@ikegami Could you make up your mind which you care about? The general idea of (sufficiently clear, specific) data questions? Or the original form of this question?

You said in your comment "Re "And it was closed for being a recommendation question before that part was edited out.", Yes. Why???" -- you do seem to be asking about that too. And yes, I have addressed the issue of motivation. In case you're having trouble finding it in the answer, the summary is that if the question is objective then it's all good, but once there's fuzziness, the motivation is how we figure out how to clear it up - and how people will decide what to answer before it's cleared up - so it unfortunately does matter.

Even if the ultimate goal of getting the data is to use the answer as a recommendation, am I mistaken in thinking seeking objective facts about board games is a good thing?

I also think there is nothing wrong in that.
However, the problem here is how to guarantee that objectiveness. As that question is phrased, it could give space for many speculation or "hunches" on what are the most played games. Answers given should indicate some justification or evidence to support them (even more perhaps than other type of answers).
I think that, (1) those kind of questions could be allowed, but (2) this question needs a good edit to be worth it; it has no research effort at all, nor other details to tell it apart from a Google query.

Note that this specific case sounds like it's asking about games played with a deck of playing cards, which means no sales data, no manufacturing data, and so on. The only way to know would be surveys, which makes it even harder to guarantee objectiveness.

@Cascabel Yes, that is why OP has to give more information as to be able to frame or narrow down the search, for it to be objectively answerable.

Right, my point is that the most likely intent here is the one with the least hard data available (including home play, no per-game purchase) so even if it's clarified it's not the greatest example of a good objective data request - the examples of BGG and sales data in the question don't come into play.

I would argue that if they really are looking for new card games then data showing which card game is the most played (or even top 5) will not reveal any new games since if they are popular enough to be the most played game then they are also popular enough to be well known.

I'm trying to discover new card games. What are the most played card game at this time?

If this question was more data oriented such as asking for most popular based on number of players, number of hands played, age of players, area of the world or something similar it could be an interesting question. But as it stands it is just asking for popular games with no criteria so different answers may all be correct based on what the person answering thought they meant by most popular.

I don't see what the first half of your answer has to do with my question, and the second just repeats my question. Maybe you could indicate why you think the motivation behind asking the question is important in evaluating whether a question is on-topic or not. Questions that directly ask for recommendations are off-topic because they are subjective and elicit an open-ended list of answers, but questions requesting objective data don't suffer from that problem, even if the motivation is to find a game to play. So why do you think the motivation matters?

@ikegami Because the question is literally asking for new games to play even after your edit to try and make it on topic. If it just had the second sentence then it wouldn't be a recommendation question as it would just be concerned with the most popular game and not a new game to play.

Yes, we're all well aware of the motivations of the OP of that question. I didn't ask that. . Maybe you could indicate why you think the motivation behind asking the question is important in evaluating whether a question is on-topic or not

@ikegami The motivation does matter when the question clearly states they are looking for new games which means they are asking for recommendations.

"It does" is not enough of an answer (and certainly thoroughly unconvincing). I'd love to hear why you think it does. Keep in mind the existing Meta page on the subject say recommendations are good if asked in a way that solicit objective answers. Is this not such a question?

Joe, to me it seems you're saying that this question doesn't actually solicit objective answers, it still obviously wants recommendations and asks in a vague enough way to solicit them. (That is, the recommendation-ness is actually part of the question, not just motivation.) Maybe all you need to do is edit to say something like that?

And as for how/why it solicits recommendations, I mean, look at it. "I'm trying to discover new card games. What are the most played card game at this time?" It doesn't even say data. It doesn't give any context. Someone can say "judging by the folks I've played with, the most popular games are X Y Z" and it'd be an answer. It's absolutely possible to make an objective data request here, but this question doesn't do that.

@Cascabel The problem I see if I was to edit it into what I considered a good question I think the question would have changed enough from what was originally asked to make it better to ask a new question.

@JoeW I mean editing your answer here, not the main-site question :)


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Why was the question asked first marked as a duplicate?
On July 20, this question was asked:
What is Majestic Myriarch's power and toughness if I "eternalize" it with God-Pharaoh's Gift?
Then, on August 17, this one: Token copies with Scarab God
Why was the earlier asked question closed as a duplicate rather than the other way around? This may be a targeted Meta question at ikegami, since they made the close by themselves.
Disclaimer: I asked the original question. I'm not concerned about one of my questions being closed, but I am curious why it was done in the way it was.

I don't see any good reason for your question to be closed, so I have reopened it. I think the other question should be closed as a duplicate of yours, but I haven't done so yet because I would also like to know the rationale for the original closure.

The banner directs traffic from the closed question to the open question. It would benefit the site to direct traffic from lower quality questions to higher quality questions. Therefore, we should always choose to close the lower quality question. In the rare case that both questions are of equal quality, then maybe age can serve as a tiebreaker.

And in this case I would have chosen the older one, because it seems to be of higher quality. But that's just my opinion.

I generally agree with Rainbolt here: although some elements of the UI/description do suggest that new questions will be marked as duplicates of the old, the actual goal is to send people to where they can find good answers. Frequently that does mean new to old, because old questions have had time to be polished and get good answers, but there are exceptions. Sometimes newer questions are formulated better, and attract better answers, for example.

I've only ever seen (in practice) an old question be a duplicate of a new question in the case of canonical answers.


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What is the meaning of [designer-board-games]?
We have a tag called designer-board-games, and I'm not sure what it means. There is no tag wiki and it is currently tagged on a question about game design, and question about physical vs computer implementations of board games, and a question about Agricola.
Best explanation I could find for a designer board game is an About.com article, but it is still pretty vague. I get the impression that there is no universal definition.
So does designer-board-games have a clear meaning? And if not, should we delete it?

Weird. I have no idea what it'd be referring to.

I think we should get rid of the tag.
It refers to the distinction between mass-market board games (Monopoly, Clue, etc) and less widely published/sold board games. Think of things that might conceivably have the designer's name on the box. (See corsiKa's answer for a more detailed description.)
As far as the tag goes, I don't think it serves much purpose, and we could easily get rid of it. Most of the games we get questions about are designer board games by this definition, and there's not much point in a tag that would apply to most questions on the site.
We have game-design to cover most higher-level questions, and it's seen plenty of use.
There were three questions actually tagged designer-board-games when I wrote this answer. One was just about Agricola, so I removed it. The other two are:

Do physical implementations of single player board games have any advantages over their electronic counterparts? - the key here is really that it's asking about computer versions of games, so I removed designer-board-games, leaving it with just computers. (That seems like it should be computer-versions or something but oh well, this is what the tag wiki says it's for.)
How does the cost of designer board games compare to other forms of entertainment? - I'm not sure how to tag this. It's really about costs. But it doesn't seem like it's more about board games than anything else on the site. We could tag it prices or something, but given that it's closed now and that'd be the only question with that tag, doesn't seem worth worrying about.

The last question about the cost of designer board games had a meta question where the highest rated answer was that it was off topic and should be closed. I went ahead and added a close vote to it.

A designer board game is one that costs signficantly more than your mass produced board games.
You can usually buy a box of Monopoly in the box for around $20. It might have a special edition that pumps that up a few extra bucks for the licensing fee, but it's normally around there. Most common board games (what people think of when you say board games) are in this price range.
Designer board games usually cost at least $50, and sometimes as much as $100. And just like designer jewelry, the consumers of these games are usually both wealthier and more knowledgeable about the games. In some cases, the extra cost is because the game itself is more complicated, but this is not usually the case. Consider a game like Risk which has hundreds of pieces and is still usually available for pretty cheap. The real cost is because the print runs are much lower, and the design costs are much higher.

Is this definition from your own observations or do you have some source for this? Either way, it doesn't seem to match the current usage of the tag (which may mean it's not a good tag).

Is this answer implying that there are essentially Gucci board games, where you could look at it and say "That's a Gucci!" For example, you can look at a GMT Games game and pretty much know it's made by GMT Games. And if that's the case, it doesn't seem like a useful tag because it doesn't generally help organize the site, which is generally tagged by the name of the game, not whether I should be jealous of your handbag.

@Thunderforge It's directly in line with the original usage of the tag back in 2012.

@SocioMatt It was originally used to ask about the genre of game. And yes, it is implying that there is a "class system" to games. And yes, most designer game players I know will strongly look down on budget board games with a very snobbish attitude.

@corsiKa I guess my joke didn't hit right. What I was getting at is that the tag doesn't help organize questions any better than the board game name tags that get attached to every question anyway. Anybody who only plays designer board games would know which game questions to avoid and which ones were up their alley. Hence it seems like a deprecated tag.

@SocioMatt So what if someone wanted to discuss the philosophical differences between stock board games and designer board games?

@corsiKa I would think that question would fit under [tag:game-design] or something related (assuming it wasn't closed as primarily opinion-based or off-topic). Not to mention that the tag wiki should have the information about what defines a designer board game, so any differences would be defined there, making the usefulness of that question pretty small. That question would also need the tag "stock-board-game," and if we create that, we run the risk of every Ticket to Ride question being marked with an additional tag that doesn't add value to how questions are organized.

Agreed: game-design seems to cover high-level questions about categories of games, and for everything else, this smells like a meta tag. If you're asking about a specific game or even a specific group of games, it's not really that important to categorize them as "designer" or "mass-market".

The way I see this tag possibly being used is when a game has multiple editions where the difference is the quality of the game materials. A couple of exmples of this is. Hanabi which has a normal card based version and several deluxe versions where tiles replace the cards. Takenoko where there is a normal version and a   deluxe version that is made of better material and is larger in size.
Overall I am not sure if this is a needed tag but when I think of it as the same games but made out of better materials then the normal game and with possible extras that you can't otherwise get. Or in other words a collectors edition.

If we wanted a tag for that purpose I don't think [designer-board-games] is what we want the tag to be. Something like [collectors-edition] or [deluxe-edition] would probably be better.

@diego That is why i said possibly used that way. Not sure a tag for this would be valuable anyway.


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Why have the tag [timeline-cheapass-games] instead of renaming it [timeline]?
Does anyone know a reason why we should have timeline-cheapass-games instead of changing it to timeline? I see one question and it already has a wiki but not sure why the publisher should be in that tag.

There's another game called Timeline that's more widely known (nearly 1000 reviews on BoardGameGeek, sold at mass-market stores) that's not by Cheapass Games.
I can't find a BoardGameGeek page for the Cheapass Games one, and it's not easily searchable as "timeline card game" so it seems reasonable for the OP to have wanted to disambiguate.
That said, we don't seem to have any questions about the more popular one, so... not sure it matters an awful lot.

That makes perfect sense to me and sounds reasonable to me. It might not matter now but we could get some confusion later on if we switch it up at this point.

CA published Timeline game is listed at BGG here: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7182/timeline


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Are gamebooks on topic?
Are gamebooks eligible for discussion in the board and card games topic?
They can be construed as a game but they clearly do not use a board or cards. Specifically, there was a style that fundamentally relied on a minimum of two players and the outcome depended on what the other player(s) did.
If this is still not valid, is there an alternative SE?

I don't really understand what you mean by gamebooks, can you provide any examples of one?

The Fighting Fantasy Series would probably be the most popular from yesteryear,  by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. However,  the book I'm referring to is more restrictive in that it was specifically a combat game but the interactions of both (or multiple) players affected what happens and which page to turn to. I.e. If someone charged, the other player had a number of moves they could perform. Depending on what they chose to do affected both themselves and the opponent.  I'm trying to locate the name of these books, hence my original request.

Going by Wikipedia's description of the books I agree with murgatroid, these are probably off-topic, I would suggest rpg.stackexchange.com since they sound more like single player RPGs

As a general rule of thumb, if there is no existing variant of a game that involves a board or cards, then it is most likely off topic on the Board and Card Games Q&A site.
If I understand correctly, a gamebook is a Choose Your Own Adventure-style book where you turn to certain specified pages to make choices. In that case, I would say that it would not be on topic. The criteria for whether a game is on topic is defined by these criteria:

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

These game books fail one key criteria: they do not offer dynamic challenges. Every outcome is defined by the structure of the book, and if you know enough about it, you can predict the outcome of every choice.
I also think that, even in the case where multiple players are making choices, it is questionable whether the game is "playable by hand, by human players implementing all of the rules". Since the outcome of the game depends on hidden choices made by the writer that are represented in the structure of the book, then arguably those choices are part of the rules of the game, and human players would be unable to play the game without the book.

Thank you for such a considered answer. I have augmented my post

The OP's edited post describes a book that is on topic. I would revise this answer to "It depends. If a gamebook meets these criteria, then it is on topic. Otherwise, it is off topic." The important part of the answer (the on-topic criteria) remains the same. This allows you to defer judgement, which is appropriate given that the OP has not actually named a specific book. Otherwise, you risk the OP continually editing his post to create a more and more on-topic gamebook that may not even exist.

I disagree. I tried to address OP's edit with my own edit. I don't think multiplayer variants of these "gamebooks" would be on topic either.


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Drastically edited question
There was a question that at first was very unclear asking about discarding cards and tagged with magic the gathering. It was gathering close votes for unclear questions and an answer explaining that you don't discard cards during your turn.
After it got closed and a few downvotes it got edited into a question about a phase 10 and discarding in that game. Since it already had an answer and the edited question was drastically different then what was asked and answered shouldn't the edit be reverted and the op directed to make a new post with the question they intended to ask?
When you lay down cards during your turn, can you change them if you haven't discarded yet?

I think that the question should stay in its current edited state, and that it should be reopened.
That question was closed as "unclear what you're asking", so it is reasonable to assume that edits made by the original poster are intended to clarify the question. The single edit by the OP expanded on the original question and specified a game name without modifying the tags. The simplest explanation for this is that the current question is what they intended from the beginning, and that they simply did not understand how to use the tagging system.

If there wasn't an answer already posted on the question I would agree. But there is a question on the question and I know a lot of other sites have policies about drastically changing a question after it has already received answers. In this case there should be no issue with reverting the question so the existing answer is not invalidated and having the op ask a new question that is more likely to get better attention then a closed  question with several down votes.

Answering an unclear question always runs the risk of your answer being invalidated after clarifying edits change how you interpret it. The correct course of action in that case is to not answer at all. We should not hold this question hostage to an incorrect tag just because it was answered. And besides, the existing answer was deleted long before you even asked this meta question, so its existence is really a moot point.

I understand that but we also should encourage people to ask a more clear question to start with so they don't have to be closed and downvoted before they are fixed enough for a proper answer.

The primary purpose of closing a question as unclear is to get the asker to clarify it. It may not be the optimal operation of the site, but in this case it worked exactly as intended.

@JoeW Policies about changing after receiving answers really only make sense when the question was clear and on-topic to start with. In that case, yes, editing into a different question is a bad idea, especially if there are already answers. But if people answered an unclear question based on their guesses, and then the OP fixes it, well, we should be trying to help the OP, not the people who guessed wrong. If they want to preserve their answers, they can go ask a new question where their answer fits.


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New Tag Wiki - approval critera
When a new tag wiki is created and getting approved should it be approved it is just stating the name of the game and the manufacture? It seems that the wiki and excerpt should have more information then a statement of which game it should be used for.
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/19528
pandemic-iberia
Excerpt

Use for questions specific the new game from ZMan games, Pandemic Iberia.

Tag

Use for questions specific the new game from ZMan games, Pandemic Iberia.

ZMan Games
Official Rules
Amazon
BoardGameGeek

Yes, we should approve that.
Sure, the information is minimal. If you think we should have more, revise the tag wiki and add it. However, "minimal information" is a whole lot better than "no tag wiki excerpt or usage guidance whatsoever", including because having a tag wiki prevents tags from being deleted if they are only on one question (which is the case for a lot of tags for a long while).

is a tag that defines itself as itself actually providing any usage information? If someone is going to make a tag it doesn't take much work to add a little information about the game, which in this case could as simple as it is a co-op game where players are trying to prevent plagues from destroying the world.

Clarifying the publisher and date (in this case "new"... which will probably need changing one day) is usage information, albeit minimal. I'd decline that wiki excerpt as useless if it just said "use for games about pandemic iberia", but it says more than that, which is good. Usually I do like to summarise what the game is essentially, but that's something to prompt revision.

@JoeW Stating the name of the game can also be useful since we have some games where the tag doesn't match the name of the game exactly due to length (and possibly other reasons), though that reason doesn't apply in this specific case

What you're looking at there is the tag wiki excerpt. This is the description that shows up when you are adding tags to a question. It should be short, and its primary purpose is to indicate how the tag should be used.

I added more info and I still question that just putting the games name, publisher and some links in the wiki is not enough information for a tag to be added. There should be at least some basic information about the game in them.

@JoeW We're not trying to recreate Wikipedia (or BoardGameGeek) in tag wikis. The most important thing is that we can tell how to use the tag, which in most cases means clearly referring to as specific game. Sometimes it can indeed be helpful to add more details, but that doesn't mean (as doppelgreener said) that the basic description shouldn't be approved.

@Jefromi I guess my point would be what is the point what is the point of a tag wiki if you still have to google the tag for basic info about the game?

The general expectation is that people are asking questions about games that they have at least a passing familiarity with. The game name and publisher should provide enough information to determine whether the tag matches the topic of the question. If you have to do further research, it probably indicates that that's not the game you're asking about.

@JoeW To make sure that we know exactly what game it refers to (you never know when there's going to turn out to be some weird naming thing), to provide information about how to use the tag (usually a nonissue, but when there's overlap, sets of games, etc, can be helpful) or how to ask questions about it (also usually a nonissue, but sometimes helpful for FAQ, formatting issues, etc), and perhaps a link to find more information if we want to be helpful. Again, we're not trying to build a new repository of information about games.

The most relevant comparison on Stack Exchange would be the tags on Sports SE. Tag excerpts regularly state exactly the name of the sport, any common other names, possibly clarification (e.g. the variant or disambiguation from sports of similar names - compare with tags for expansions) and key usage guidelines (e.g. some tags must include a specific sport tag alongside them, others must include a country tag). These never and should not include a history or an encyclopaedic description of the thing they tag for. That is where the full tag wiki comes in, but even then.


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Tags for wargaming
Currently there is a tag avalon-hill, but no general tag for wargaming.
Also, AH was only one of hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, companies publishing board wargames.
Could somebody add a tag for "wargaming"/"wargames". and perhaps "spi" at least (they were probably bigger than AH).
Edit: and also a tag "maps" or "wargame-maps" would be nice.
More: needed for this question.

The question you provided is an example of a question that is a bad fit for the site because it is looking for a list of games which would be ever growing.

You have not received any answers because it put on hold for being to broad.

On meta down votes do signify disagreement with a post

@TomasBy That question fall under the category of shopping questions. We have a few questions/answers on here about why they are banned, and there is also this Meta.SE discussion about them too: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad

@TomasBy You are asking for a list of games that fit a certain criteria, on SE those are classified as shopping questions, even if you aren't actually looking to buy something. If you want to know about mechanisms for combining multiple maps in the same game there may be a way to do it here, but asking for a list of games that do it is not the right way. If you want help with writing a question in a way that will stay open feel free to create a new meta question for that.

Tags are created only because a questions needs it, Stack Exchange doesn't provide for a way to create a tag without it being on a question.
If there are specific questions that you think should have those tags and you don't have enough reputation to create tags yourself you can either make another question here on Meta, or comment on the question asking for the tag to be added.


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How do I correct a misspelled tag?
A user has posted a question concerning a game.
The user seems to have created a tag with the name of the game, but it is misspelled.
How do I correct a misspelled tag that is in use?
The tag in question was camibo which has been corrected to cambio

What tag are you referring to? Please edit that into the question and a mod might be able to help.

I was referring to «cambio» written as «camibo». The misspelling has since been corrected. I now see that there is an «edit» link next to the tag - I hadn't seen that.

I added that information to the question.

You have enough reputation to edit the tags of the question and make sure the tag is spelled correctly.
If a tag isn't used on any question, it's automatically deleted after 24 hours. See How can we get rid of misspelled and unused (or "zombie") tags? on Meta Stack Exchange.
As a demonstration, I've changed the edit and tag tags on your question to the more commonly used editing and tags.


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Why are there two different tags for gin-rummy
Wouldn't it be better to have a tag called gin-rummy instead of the two tags gin and rummy being used today?
Or is there a difference between the tags gin and rummy so that there should be  added a third tag called gin-rummy instead?

We don't actually have two tags for Gin Rummy, we have just one:

gin is the tag for Gin Rummy, because it's sometimes known as simply “Gin”.
rummy is the tag for normal (non-Gin) Rummy.

It seems incorrect to use both tags on questions about Gin Rummy.
Let's remove rummy from Gin Rummy questions, and rename gin to gin-rummy to increase clarity and make it clearer you don't also need to use rummy beside that tag. (The rename should probably be done by a diamond moderator, who can do tag renames more cleanly.)

Who is fixing this?

@OlaStröm Nobody yet; the meta is less than a day old. We tend to wait a few days before actioning meta to allow time for other voices and for votes. The diamond mods might do the rename but I could just drop the rummy tag off gin-rummy questions myself. (Or you could suggest edits to do so.)

I like this suggestion and will perform the necessary adjustments in a few days assuming the vote doesn't change drastically.

@PatLudwig What was the final decision on this?

@JoeW - thanks for the reminder, this is done.