text:
Would support for Magic: the Gathering rendering make you move site?
A while ago, we had a discussion about the rationale for asking Magic questions on a separate site. Since then, the number of MTG questions here has gone through the roof. It is now the top game, by some margin, and responsible for 13% of all the questions on the site.
Since we adopted the Go site, I have been very impressed by the Go renderer, which makes really nice board images from a simple markup (example).
So, as one of your community advocates, I have been asking various people at SE about the possibility of rendering support for MTG (and chess as well). An answer I received today implied that if there were a separate site for MTG, support might be more of a priority.
I have a few questions for you:

Do you think Board and Card Games is a good solution for a place to ask MTG questions?
Would rendering support for MTG (symbols, automatic inline card images, ...) substantially improve this site for you?
Would you move to a new Stack Exchange site for MTG if it had such dedicated support?

My personal opinion is that this is a great site for MTG questions, and we would be a much poorer place without them. I also don't believe that a standalone MTG site would be successful. And I don't see why there is any advantage to implementing a renderer later, rather than now.
But it's really up to the community to decide whether this matters, or not. So - what do you think?

Snce there was an executive decision that B&CG is the MTG site, can we prioritize this feature here?

You can get the automatic inline card images on any website, including this one, by installing the AutocardAnywhere extension in your browser: http://www.pwpoints.com/extensions/

Where the Magic questions go, so goes my nation; I'm committed to the MtG proposal, but if it is determined that it isn't necessary and that Magic has a better home here, so be it. Regardless of where it is, however, what is important is that working with Magic posts is convenient - at the moment, it is not.  If it is easier to ask questions on another SE, they won't get asked here.
At 183 out of 1,421 questions, magic-the-gathering makes up nearly 13% of all our questions.  I can say personally (having been involved in said questions) that not having an inline JavaScript card preview is a tremendous pain. That particular feature is pretty much the necessary feature on dedicated Magic sites (whether they be blogs, deck builders, trade sites, etc.).  I don't see symbols as particularly important, but having a card preview is key.
EDIT: After reviewing the information @KevinMontrose added, I totally understand the legal reasons preventing this from happening at the moment. However, as a stopgap (that could be expanded to image support, should it eventually be possible), could we automatically link to the Gatherer web page for the card in question? It should just require an alteration of any however-tagged cards to http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/search/default.aspx?name=+["cardname"] (e.g. Lightning Bolt to http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/search/default.aspx?name=["Lightning Bolt"]). That way, we use official sources without scraping, and have a methodology in place to expand to images if it becomes possible later.
EDIT II: THE RETURN OF EDIT: After some additional discussion in chat today, I propose a markdown syntax of [mtg:cardname]. This would allow the regex to be fairly simple (and similar to tag replacement, as the tag syntax is [tag:tagname]) - all it would have to be is a regex replace, replacing the suggested markdown with pattern of

\[mtg:(?<cardname>[^\]]+)\]

and replacement string of

$1

Alternatively, if this type of one-off work is a pain, a structure for generalized HTML creation based on some simplistic syntax would be nice, to allow people to write user scripts to do the rest of the work. Some syntax to create a  tag with an easily-customizable class would let you move all of this into the "do whatever you want with these with user scripts" realms, instead of having to handle each of these requests as they come. Some may be more complex than others (Go, Chess, Mathematica, etc.), but others (like this) are simple.

The way of linking that you suggest is great. The next step would be automatic card recognition so if I write 'Lightning Bolt' and links automatically. I don't know what kind of development resources we have, but I've seen this feature on other sites and I really like it.

Since this has been officially declined I suggest you post your answer as a new feature request.

There's a browser extension that does exactly this - automatically recognises card names on any page you visit and links automatically, with popup images. It's called AutocardAnywhere and is available here: http://www.pwpoints.com/extensions/

I see Magic:the Gathering as one of the keystone games for this site and would hate to see the community split off from here.
Some enhancements to make the site easier to use for our most popular game are appropriate.

The MTG proposal was finally closed by Aarthi. A great decision in my opinion :).

I'm status-declined-ing this, it's not something we can reasonably implement unfortunately (I do generally like the idea, as a lapsed MTG player myself).
The rub is, Wizards doesn't provide an official API for fetching card details (in this case, images).  They have the (excellent) Gatherer site, but it's focused entirely on actual people.
The most recent reference I can find to a Gatherer API is from 2008, and isn't promising:

Q: Is there an API for access to the oracle card reference (Gatherer)?
  If not, is there a chance that there will be one? I'd love to create a
  fan site that has access to actual oracle data?   –Jay, Omaha, NE, USA
A: From Dave Guskin, magicthegathering.com Web Developer:
Hey Jay,
Unfortunately, we don't have an external API for Gatherer with our
  current system. (For those who are going "huh?" API stands for
  application programming interface, similar to the way many websites
  query Google's search directly for their own search mash-ups. External
  APIs, meaning interfaces that anyone on the web can use, take a bit
  longer to develop and put additional strain on servers, but do allow
  the community the freedom to develop their own look and feel around
  the services.)
There are no current plans to implement an API like this in the near
  future, but it's certainly something we'll keep in mind when
  developing out improvements to the Gatherer system and other tools we
  have in the works that build on top of it.

Looking around at other sites, it looks like they've either scraped Gatherer or are hot-linking it (as Draw3Cards appears to do).  Hot-linking makes me very nervous, period, unless it's explicitly allowed; content just disappearing a puff of smoke when an implementation detail of Gatherer is changed is pretty scary (I'm ignoring the conscientiousness of it for now, though that's pretty rough as well).
The Terms Of Use also seem to forbid either approach for commercial entities.  So we're out of luck both technically and legally.

What about http://magiccards.info/ ?

@AlexP - doesn't seem to have an API either, and unless they have a license from Wizards to provide one the legal concerns are still present.  Basically, we need a Wizards blessed way to do this; and there doesn't seem to be one.

Thanks for looking into it, Kevin!

Thanks for your detailed answer. That is a problem. The Gatherer site has a feedback page where bugs can be reported and features requested. I sent a quick email asking about potential API support. Perhaps I'll get a response.

If copyright and linking is an issue why are we allowing pictures of the cards on the questions?  Same with the full-text?

@NealTibrewala - there's a world of difference between individual users uploading possibly infringing content (IANAL, but I'd guess it'd be covered by fair-use) and Stack Exchange (as a commercial corporate entity) scraping an explicit non-commercial database.

It might help short term if there was a way to include hover-over images at all.  Manually linking to/uploading images isn't really an option when giving a deck of cards, but would be useful when referencing a few cards.  See the earlier feature request here: http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/491/is-there-a-way-to-make-an-image-show-up-when-you-hover-over-a-link

@KevinMontrose You really should check with a lawyer then.  As someone who's done work in this area, it's my observation that the result is what courts look at (can you see the content or not as a regular user) and not the mechanism behind the scenes.  User uploaded, linked via a third-party, or scraped directly may all be the same.

This all makes sense, and sucks really hard. :(

http://draw3cards.com/questions/7675/is-rendering-card-images-on-d3c-legal

I'm wondering about the viability of changing them to links directly to Gatherer - it would at least be more convenient than everyone having to do them by hand, and it could be used later if Wizards ends up allowing it. I elaborate a little in my answer.

Maybe I'm naïve, and this is a 10-year old post, to be sure, but does this not still work, and is it not still legal? http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/arcana/172 — see my jsfiddle

If they wanted to, they could easily block the images using the referrers. Since they aren't doing that, I'd say they are implicitly authorizing you to hotlink, even if their TOS suggests otherwise. Of course this is not legal advice.

There's a browser extension called AutocardAnywhere that will give you the hover images on any site, regardless of whether the site itself has any support built-in. It is available here: pwpoints.com/extensions

@KevinMontrose Please take a second to review http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/726/1583 and let us know if that is applicable

Do you think Board and Card Games is a good solution for a place to ask MTG questions?

I'm satisfied that it's an adequate solution.

Would rendering support for MTG (symbols, automatic inline card images, ...) substantially improve this site for you?

Dramatically, yes.

Would you move to a new Stack Exchange site for MTG if it had such dedicated support?

Yes.  Immediately.

How about an old Stack Exchange site? :) http://draw3cards.com/ (disclaimer: I own the site)

@ripper234 An old SE site? (disclaimer: I already am a member)

:) Must be a different username then. I'm sad about the situation ... about some people deciding to regulate the community and prevent mtg.SE from opening. D3C is living proof that there's demand for a pure Magic site.

Most of my questions on this site concern MTG, it was the primary reason why I joined "Board and Card Games". Nevertheless I really enjoy reading many other entries as well and I think the mix this site provides is great. Love the community and I hope it will stay the way it is.
I am sure that excluding specific games like MTG, Go, Chess, etc. will hurt our site here on the long run and that's why I will not support the MTG initiative on AREA51.
Furthermore, if all the knowledgeable Magic players should wander off, I will most likely go back the old forums where I used to discuss MTG before I was here. Hopping over to the new MTG site will only support the foul trend of shattering established sites into smaller sub sites that cannot sustain themselves. I will stay with "Board and Card Games" and support it as good as I can.
Concerning MTG rendering: Having some nifty features to support discussion won't hurt, for me it isn't necessary to discuss Magic here. I never felt like I need any additional functionality to express myself.

I'm not sure if this is really an answer, but there is a browser extension called AutocardAnywhere which will automatically transform card names into links which show the card image when you hover over it. It's available in the Chrome store (for free) and the description says it's also available for Firefox and Safari. If we're not going to have an official linking syntax, this may be the next best thing.

Very cool, works for me

Check that...memory use went way up, recommend to avoid in Firefox on OSX at least.

Card markup would be very helpful. Answers that involves a lot of options or examples of different kinds of cards can easily go to 30-40 card links, which the poster has to edit in by hand. Running into an unfamiliar card and following the link is rather focus-breaking for the reader.

I think the sorts of topics this site can cover are different from the kind you'd see on a dedicated MTG Q&A site. Ideally, a large section of the stuff posted here should be relevant to "non-hardcore" MTG players -- players who do treat it a bit like a board game rather than its own special hobby, for instance. (I'll be the first to admit I'm not always very good at actually tailoring my answers to be useful to such players.)
I'd imagine a standalone MTG Q&A site would probably have a tendency towards more very specific questions -- stuff like "What's the best answer for Inkmoth Nexus?" or "How should my Legacy RUG deck sideboard to beat Zoo?" or "How can I improve my casual four-card combo deck?" -- with more of an assumption that players would know terminology, basic strategy, and weird bits of community slang.

I don't play Magic, but I'm still occasionally interested in questions about it.  I think this site is a great place for Magic questions.
I'd like to see support for card rollovers in particular, preferably in a way they could be used for other games too.
As for land symbols etc. I'm not bothered, as long as I'm not going to type them by accident!  I like the way that go positions are handled with the "Wcm31" keyword, maybe something like that could be used?


text:
Why has the proposed Magic:The Gathering site entered the commit phase?
I was somewhat surprised to discover that the proposed SE site Magic:The Gathering has now recently moved into the commit phase. I am surprised because to date I have seen no compelling argument for a separate site for this specific card game, and some excellent arguments in favour of asking these questions here.
We have 71 MTG questions here, out of 1040, over 6% of all questions. And Magic is the most popular game on the site!
I strongly believe a second site will fracture the community we have been working so hard to build here. I believe the game falls squarely under the remit of Board and Card Games. I don't believe a separate site buys Magic players anything they don't already have. I also think running a Magic beta opens the floodgates. What about Dominion, or Chess, or Go, or Poker, or...? Should they all have separate sites too?
I don't understand the logic behind allowing this proposal to proceed.
I think that both Gaming and Stack Overflow itself provide strong evidence that multiple orthogonal topics can coexist very well on a single site. Gaming appears to work just fine, despite being dominated by questions on Starcraft 2. Nethack, a game at the complete opposite spectrum, has a healthy following and high quality answers. Stack Overflow works well, despite the fact that .net and Python programmers have almost nothing to say to one another.
So what is the rationale for a separate Magic site? Shouldn't the proposal be closed? Do the SE overlords really intend to launch a Magic beta?

I agreed with this stance until I read this excellent answer on the subject. I think you should do the same.

@adamjford - Thanks for that link. I don't buy the argument. I am unconvinced that board games are somehow more specialised than video games or programming concepts, or that board game players somehow overlap less than users of other sites. I think the issue of professionals not caring about other games is not an issue. Why not just follow the chess tag, if that's the only thing you care about?

Gaming.SE isn't exactly dominated by Starcraft 2 questions; they're a larger percentage there than MtG is here, but still less than 10% of all questions, and certainly not the hottest topic right now.

@Dave DuPlantis - I guess I don't know what your definition of 'dominated' is. It's the top game on that site, and as you say, a higher percentage than MTG here. My point is that there is an example of a site where a single topic is very popular, has a higher fractional impact than MTG here, and it still works.

@closers: Why would anyone vote to close this as 'off topic'?

Because you're asking about activity on Area 51. Even if everyone seeing this question agrees with you, it's not going to have any impact on the MtG proposal ... I think your questions are valid, but that this isn't the best place for them.

@Dave DuPlantis - Except that it is. The topic is directly relevant to this site, since it concerns a significant fraction of our audience, and our remit. The powers that be that run this network will see this question, wherever I post it. My argument is about the potential impact to this site. This argument has been well expounded already by Pat Ludwig on Area 51 (see my link). I want visibility for the users of this site to understand what is happening in the wider SE network.

To answer your earlier question, my definition of "dominated" would be a tag with a clear plurality. Starcraft 2 is a wildly popular game, but Minecraft will almost certainly pass it this year, if not before its release date, then after.

Magic is as different from Euro games as Role-playing games are.  I came on here to wonder about "all the magic questions", which, even though I used to be an avid MTG player, I haven't kept up with.  One additional point is that the answers to questions about MTG change, frequently, which is not the case for other board games, since the rules change.

I find it amusing that since I posted this question, we have been inundated with MTG questions. It feels like a snowball effect to me - more users asking more MTG questions, so more users show up, so more questions get asked... perhaps emergence has already made the decision on our behalf?

@ire_and_curses I can only speak for myself, but while this resource is the most appropriate I will use it.  I think that there are tools that could be built to make things easier (custom smilies for symbols, etc) but that's a separate topic that's relevant to Go and Chess as well.  Regardless, since I do play multiple games, I prefer an active general site to an inactive specific one.  I use the tag filters to help cut out what I consider chaff.  Even the questions I've seen over the last week shows me that it can work here (sorry if we're spamming everyone else)

@Stephen, don't apologize for asking on-topic questions! People who don't want to see them can hide the tags, or better yet, can ask on-topic questions about other games to provide a mix of questions. "Spamming" is more about posting a lot of questions that are not valuable per the FAQ.

@NealTibrewala Since when is this a Euro game site? Last time I checked, it was a site for board and card games, not Euro board and card games. And last time I checked, Magic was still a card game.

@CharlesBoyung It's not.  The point of my answer and what I keep coming back to is that we shouldn't divide sites based on Classification of the question, but divide them based on the usability of the site.  We don't have one single stackexchange site because it's too difficult to manage that much.  Programmers/StackOverflow/Theoretical CS differ not based on topic (all are computer development), but one allows subjectivity, the other required factual, and finally we have non-applied.  A site filled with 90% MTG questions will be harder to manage for people who don't keep up with MTG anymore.

I agree and view the Magic, Go, and Chess proposed sites as having a great potential to fragment our audience to no real benefit.  Several other sites were shut down after I posted to area51 previously.
Whether people agree with us or not, this should play out on area51.
Here is one proposal I can get behind.

I know, from the tone on Meta Stack Overflow, that the sub site solution is a long shot, but due to the repeated proposals for topic specific sites compared to the struggle this site faces, I believe a case can be made for large enough sub-topics like MTG or Poker.  If you agree, please upvote the Area 51 post, and we can try to make a reasonable arguemnt.

Since there is a facebook.stackoverflow.com I agree, that's the way to go.

I was about to say that there are a lot of MtG players who play no other games, as opposed to say, Carcassonne or Catan players, who generally like a more varied diet; and therefore the Magic players have a good argument for getting their own site.  But having followed your link, I think a subsite is definitely the way to go!

@thesunneversets - "a lot" is a very vague and likely localized way to put it.  At the shop I go to, MtG players have there hands in many different games.  The thoughts "Players of X tend to only like X" and "Players of X like all kinds of games." are always very subjective.

I'm moving in the reverse direction as some others. Given that board and card games is not viable in beta (in terms of site visits and questions asked)I don't see how subsets of BCG (MTG, Go, can be viable). More to the point, "hiving off" the more attractive of the games from BCG might make it even LESS viable.
We may have to move in the REVERSE direction and merge, say BCG, and role playing games. My sense is that a SINGLE game site might just be viable based on the metrics defined by the site if you do a simple addition of the two sets of questions and constituencies (i.e., if there is not too much overlap). Breaking up one or both of these two sites into subdivisions doesn't make sense to me.

I've been a long advocate of merging B&CG with the RPG (Role Playing Game) stack exchange.  It appears to make sense only to me and not many others, so I haven't pushed it lately.

@PatLudwig Yes, Gaming shops around here sell RPGs, CCGs, Board Games, Cards, Chess Sets, and Miniatures. One would think a TableTopGames merger would help get these sites out of beta.

There's probably just enough interest to have SINGLE (board and card, role-playing, video game) site. It would be a bit noisy and "cluttered," getting them all under one tent, but it would be worth it. That way, we wouldn't have to lower our standards for questions to drive "traffic." The alternative is that we all wither on the vine. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, "we must all hang together or die separately."

I think I could support merging with the RPG SE, since neither are generating the amount of activity needed to get out of beta, but both together are close.

I don't think this site is not viable. I think as Area 51 suggests it "needs work", but according to all the other statistics it is doing "Excellent". From what I've seen the SE folks only close down proposals if people are not getting quality answers.

@xiaohuzi79:There are TWO ares that need work; the number of questions per day, AND the number of visits per day. The quality is there, but not the QUANTITY>

@PatLudwig: A merger between B&CG.SE and RPG.SE would be awesome. :)

I think merging would be a good idea, since the domain is very similar. Once merged, if sub-sites are needed, then that's a different discussion. However, having rather similar games together, to me, would be a good thing for getting people to play other games. I know that I have picked up other programming languages simply because I read an interesting answer regarding a language I had not looked into before on SO.

I figure the push to have a Magic.SE site instead of being in B&CG.SE is two-fold: one, people just seem to like to have their own site instead of having to share with things they don't care about (which is selfish and not how the SE network really operates), and two, people figure it's more likely to get Magic-specific custom community/development work done on their own site (which is unrealistic as I mention above re: custom dev work.)
In fact, there's already a StackExchange (1.0) site for Magic questions that has both of the above things: Draw3Cards. I can't directly compare as I don't have access to statistics for either site (other than # of questions), but judging it and B&CG's active questions page, D3C's activity looks about equal (or perhaps even greater) to the entirety of B&CG.SE's activity. So it looks there is in fact a market for Magic Q&A, but all of the users are over on some SE 1.0 site! Boo!
Now, can we convince them to move over to B&CG.SE? I think there's a few things that D3C has that are standing in the way there:

expansion tags, complete with appropriate symbols
links to cards in Gatherer that show the card when you mouse over them
lots and lots and lots of Magic-specific tags

The first could be accomplished via "sponsored" tags with icons. I doubt it would be, because it would probably just be confusing to non-Magic users.
The second, however, would need to be custom functionality written by the SE team for one SE site, which as far I know is not something that they do.
Regarding the third, I figure a lot of these tags would be weeded out according to the SE network tag guidelines, but some would probably still be useful. Even less would get the chance to continue exist in a merger with B&CG.SE rather than a Magic.SE site, I think.
Overall, I'm in favour of whichever way gets more Magic questions and answers in the SE 2.0 network, whether it be attracting D3C users to B&CG.SE, creating a subsite (portal) on B&CG for Magic and attracting D3C users that way, or creating a Magic.SE site to get D3C to move over wholesale. But all of those involve somehow convincing D3C users to move over.

To me their Q&A looks fun.  For example, this open ended list answer question would probably get modded to oblivion here.   http://draw3cards.com/questions/6477/whats-a-good-political-red-card it's nice that there aren't obnoxious image banner ads here, but if you want fun board game discussion, stackexchange is not going to give it to you.  it's explicitly not part of the gene pool.

It's important to note that the person who has been reviving the MTG Area 51 proposal is the owner of Draw3Cards, who would like to see his site migrated to a SE 2.0 site.  He's even proposed absorbing all the questions, answers and users into the new site.

While all of what's being discussed might not be possible, I think it's worth talking about.

@Stephen: That's great to hear! I really, really want to participate on D3C, but it just feels weird when it looks like an SE site, but it doesn't behave like I expect.

@adamjford - it's an old school SE site ... it just didn't get all the new cool stuff SE has done in the last two years. I'm the owner of Draw3Cards. I think Magic deserves its own site, and will be happy if it made SE 2. Until a SE 2 dedicated to Magic exists, I will continue operating Draw3Cards, by hook or by crook. http://draw3cards.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/well-lets-aim-for-stack-exchange-2-0-after-all-your-small-help-is-needed/

I don't think the question we should be asking is why proposals for other board and card games are still open. I think the question we should be asking is why those games are not well-represented here.
Pat posted a question several months ago on Area 51, making some of the same points ire is making here: Stack Overflow accepts questions about a variety of languages, so the concept can work on an SE site; there isn't a lot of support for any of the individual proposals; experts on any on-topic game are welcome here. There have certainly been individuals who've come to this site as a result of his post, but not many.
Out of 1027 questions at the time of this answer, there are 60 on Magic, 37 on chess, 36 on bridge, 17 on poker, 9 on go, and 1 on Advanced Squad Leader. We're just not getting questions from those groups, possibly with the exception of the MtG crowd (9 this week, 22 this month). Yes, they're a reasonable percentage of the questions on the site, but that's because we just aren't getting that many questions in the first place.
Obviously all of these games already have thriving communities elsewhere. Hoping to close the individual proposals on Area 51 won't force those people to choose between this SE site or none at all; it will force them to choose between this SE site or a non-SE site, and so far, that has not gone in our favor.
If this site is to get to the point where it can go live, we need about triple the number of visits we're getting now, and about five times the number of questions we're getting. If some of that difference is going to come from the games listed in Pat's post, then we need to be drawing more of that traffic here, and I don't think we can accomplish that by telling those people that they must come here to ask questions; we need to draw them here so that they want to ask questions here.

Why have separate stack exchange sites at all?
I think the most important factor isn't the on-topic/off-topic categorization of questions, those things can be solved with search tools, but it's in the people.
The question askers need to know what's appropriate, and the question answerers need to be able to establish reputation, so the answers can be trusted.
So, I propose this litmus test.  Are there questions appropriate for one thing, that are not appropriate for the other?  Second, can a high reputation for the one give you a high confidence in the answer for the other?
So, looking at Magic, Chess, and Dominion as examples:

Are there questions that would be appropriate in a "magic only" site that wouldn't be appropriate in board & cards games?  This gets into issues like the degree of subjectivity allowed.  I can foresee many questions about strategy and deck-building that may fall too far into subjectivity for the BCG site (which tried to have 'correct' answers).  Contrast this with Dominion, which, while it has many cards, has much more straightforward answers because the number of different cards is nowhere close to MTG.
If someone has a high reputation answers questions about Magic, should that mean that person is trusted to answer questions about Chess, and visa-versa?   This goes to the degree of overlap of that expertise.  In my experience, it takes a lot of dedication to be a true expert at MTG, and that would be at the cost of expertise in other board and card games.  I, for one, used to be, an expert in magic, but it's changed so much in the past 10 years that I would no longer consider myself one.  This ability to have expertise go stale isn't as much of an issue in other BCG.   If I haven't played the last 3 Dominion expansions, but was an expert in the first 2, I can 'catch up' with relatively little time and effort.  This is not the case with MTG where the game 'completely' changes due to new rules and card sets of a tremendous scope.

Thanks for the answer!  Your first point is a great one but I disagree with your second one.  In my experience, people with high rep don't get extra upvotes with no effort.  Weak, wrong answers get ferreted out regardless of the rep of the person who wrote the answer.  If a question fails to get an authoritative answer it is usually obvious by the lack of voting.  Sometimes, it can take a day or three for a true expert in game X to show up, but when they do, the whole tenor of a question can change and voting patterns shift.

I think that's true of many stack exchange sites, but due to the lower numbers and volume on BCG, I think having an answer, any answer, that 'sounds reasonable' is a deterrent for another to answer the question.  When things are subjective, it's hard to tell two well written answers apart, so rep is a big factor when I intepret answers.  My point 32 may not be a big deal, but I do believe it's a factor.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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Should the name of the game be in the subject?
I'm seeing a few questions that are specific to one game but which don't mention this in their title.  For instance.
There are quite a few situations where you can see the subject of a question, but not the tags.  Should we recommend that the game name appear in the subject line?  If so, since no-one has 2,000 rep to edit, can we just comment suggesting the author edits?

What's better?
1) When is Loan worth buying?
when to buy developments?
or
2) When is Loan worth buying on Dominion?
when to buy developments on Catan?
or
3) Dominion: When is Loan worth buying?
Catan: when to buy developments?

For me it is number 2.
Name in title should provide a good flow reading.
Name just on tag doesn't provide it.
Name as a masked tag on title doesn't too.

I would do #2 or #3.  I would also say that not every question would need this, just some.  And we would always want them tagged.

Game names should be in tags.  It would be redundant to put them in titles as well IMHO.
Reminder - tags can be indicated on a per user basis as Interesting or Ignored.  This should help folks quickly find the questions they are interested in.

Especially since we can sort questions based on tags

@tryaria Yes, and you also denote tags as Interesting and Ignored.

As Richard said though, "there are quite a few situations where you can see the subject of a question, but not the tags"; people's profiles come to mind

@michael Mrozek also in the related questions

I would say it's OKAY to put the name in the title too, if that makes the question flow well.  I just don't want "game name must be in title" enforced because it produces some awkwardly phrased questions.

I much prefer having the name or a common abbreviation in the title when possible. It helps a lot where tags are not shown and even scanning the lists where tags are shown is a lot faster as well IMO.

Disagree strongly, I think people skim read the titles for points of interest, much more than they search or use tags. You're more likely to have your question answered if you can grab someones attention. That said, I'm not sure it should be a hard and fast rule.

Game names should be in tags and in titles. You don't generally look at the tags when scanning a list of questions; you do look at the titles. Game names should of course also be in tags for filtering purposes, but if it's missing from the title, I usually assume it's a general question that applies to multiple games, and am sometimes confused. Of course, this is a "should", not a "must"; there may be some cases when it's clear, or it's awkward to fit the name into the title, but on the whole, we should be trying to do so.

@Brian - what folks "should" do is mark tags that they care about as "Interesting" or "Ignored".  Let the system help you

@Pat But if I'm interested in two dozen games, and there are many more that I haven't marked as "interested" or "ignored", I still can't tell within each category what game people are talking about until I stop scanning the titles and start peering at the tags.

@Brian - It seems that you admit that the information you need is right there for you to use.  I look at tags and titles together, perhaps you could do that?  (Erg...that probably sounds overly condescending.  That isn't my intent.  My apologies I couldn't quickly figure out how to reword it mo better)

@Pat I can do that, and I do if I don't have enough context from the title alone. But the title should be able to stand on its own. There are plenty of contexts where you see only the title, not the tags. In Google searches, in "Related questions" linked on the side, when people copy and paste the title and link into some other medium. And it slows me down to look at tags when scanning through question lists; I generally just glance at the title, and only check the tags if the title is unclear.

Did a bit further research on stackoverflow, found this -> http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10647/howto-writing-good-titles which I think I can get behind.  Would that be a good compromise for here?

I just tried checking StackOverflow, which I'm most active on, and I do glance at tags, but the best questions that are most likely to catch my attention all do have enough context within the title alone. As I said, I think this is a "should", not a "must"; it usually improves questions to include enough context in the title, but sometimes it doesn't make sense or the title is in a specific enough topic so as not to cause confusion.

@Pat, Brian: Also see my link below. It's been discussed on Meta before, but there's no clear decision.

@ire, Brian: yes, the more I look it seems we are on well traveled ground here.  I'm not going to be vehement about this either way.  I find myself agreeing with Jeff Atwood that putting tag info in titles in tag form should be discouraged.  But if the tag info is included organically then it is acceptable. Of course, there won't be much editing going on here for a bit, so it doesn't matter too much what we decide :)

I have to concur with Brian here.  There is one context that matters highly where people are certain to see the title and not the tag: Google.  A game question site, perhaps far more even than Stack Overflow, should be easily accessed by people who aren't members.  But Pat's right in that we're on well-discussed ground here; I'd rather see a habit of organic title and appropriate edits when called for than duplicating tags as such in the title.

I came here to "vote", as it seems like this issue is continuing to be controversial.  I think game names are fine to be kept in tags, unless confusion would otherwise arise.  What's wrong with people catching sight of an intriguing title and then having to scan down a couple of centimetres to check the tags for what game it is?  Hardly seems like an onerous burden or a massive waste of anyone's time to me; and it just feels neater and less redundant.

@thesunneversets, an old disagreement between moderators before they were moderators :)  I don't know what the answer is here other than to discourage folks editing a question just to impose one view or the other.  Perhaps a fresh start is in order for this question.  I certainly don't feel bound by something discusses last October...not that a clear consensus was reached here that I can see.

Definitely it should be, and I guess a comment is the best way to fix it for now. I think the rep limit to edit is way too high on the betas (especially here, where it's 2000 for some reason instead of 1000); I'm going to ask about lowering it on the main meta later today

Should is for me a keyword in what you write, there are some really long titles that could be abbreviated or shortened. Also think it would be a preference not a requirement.

I think it's helpful, but not necessary, depending on how vague the question is.
I strive to be specific in my questions, but sometimes they wind up too long, in which case I rely on the tag and the text of my question (ie not the title).  If it's not it the question title, it should definitely be in the first sentence or two of the question proper.

In general, game names should be in the title.
If someone asked, "How do you turn houses into hotels?" probably MOST people might recognize that as being from Monopoly.
But more obscure games, that the majority wouldn't know, should have a name in the title. That way, people can quickly decide for themselves whether want to read further.

I'm not sure - gaming.stackexchange.com is not all consistent about whether the name of the game appears in the question, and that seems to be working fine.  Since the name of the game should ALWAYS be a tag, it's easy to see what a question is about either way.
On the other hand, forcing the game title into the question title will easily produce some awkwardly phrased questions.  Some questions are quite wordy and complicated enough already without trying to shoehorn "Carcassone: Inns & Cathedrals" in there too.

Months later, I think gaming is pretty much in the same situation as B&CG. Some questions would look weird if you added the game to the title; other questions can be confusing without the game in the title.

You can argue this both ways, and indeed, on Stack Overflow, there is no clear consensus:
Is the programming language not allowed to be part of the title?
I personally prefer having the game as a tag, not in the title. I agree with Pat that it is redundant information. You can still see the tags even when skimming the titles.

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

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


text:
Per game tagging and new users
Now that we're in public beta, you need 150 rep to create a new tag.
We recommend that any question that's specific to a particular game should have that game's name as a tag.
If you're a new user and you ask a question about a game that's never been mentioned before, then you can't create the tag for that game - @matiash had this problem here with trivial pursuit.
Can I suggest that we have a tag for "Game that doesn't have a tag yet and I don't have enough rep to create one" so that 200+ users (500+ when we go live) can easily spot these questions and retag them.  Any suggestions of a good name for that tag?

Wouldn't it be better to ditch this rule and allow moderators to see a list of all recent new tags? Then they can retag accordingly.

@Michiel - users with access to the moderators tools at 2k rep do have access to a list of all new tags.

What about: request-game-tag or request-tag.
We could even add more request-* tags if there is need for them.

There's been suggestions in the past of letting users flag posts for things like "needs editing" or "should be closed", but they've never really taken off; a set of request-* tags (OMG meta tags!) for it seems the best way

While I think adding request-* tags is a viable option for newer users, it seems to me like the newer users may not really know to look for a request-* type tag.
Best answer may be for a person with high enough rep to just add/re-tag it when they find it.

That would be the solution in the end. But then they can comment on the use of the request=* tag.

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


text:
Can we integrate software to show Go and Chess positions?
From area51:
Would it be possible to get something that would allow us to display Go and Chess positions on this site?
This has been raised as a possible objection towards integrating the Go and Chess StackExchange proposals here.
At this time, I don't know what exact software is needed, but I can research if necessary.  If anyone who sees this has an opinion on it, please let us know!

Uploading images wouldn't be sufficient? I know there's plenty of sites that let you drag and drop pieces onto a board and generate and image for you.

It would be good to use one of these on this answer: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/3379/curious-chess-situation/3388#3388 The uppercase/lowercase style is easy to read when there are only a few pieces, but with a whole board full of pieces...!

@tttppp, I've submitted an edit with a diagram. You're right, for complex positions, it's difficult. At least in this case, it helped to know that all pieces were on the board and were both attacking and defending other pieces.

I've read that this sort of support is also requested by several people wanting to make this a Magic the Gathering friendly environment. From the very simple :p: displaying a plains symbol sort of support to more involved :Atog: showing a picture of the Atog card. Is there substantial overhead or other issue involved with including these types of features?

Of course standard playing card smilies (or whatever) would be helpful too.  Slippery slope, where do you stop?

@stephen - I don't know.  If a strong consensus develops here on particular solutions then hopefully the devs will weigh in.

As a stopgap, for Chess there is a board image builder here which works quite well. It's linked from the [tag:chess] tag wiki as well.

Just as a quick update on the current state: @balpha provided us with an excellent diagram renderer for Go. I'm quoting his answer from mGoSE:

I doubt anybody working at Stack Exchange is going to take time to learn how to write an SGF parser just for a private beta site.

Sounds like fun -- challenge accepted :)
No, I didn't write an SGF parser, but the arguably most important thing – Sensei-style diagrams – will work now. It's not feature-complete (e.g. arrows aren't implemented), but at least you can see normal board situations.
$$Wcm31 This is the example diagram from the L19 forum thread http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=226
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ? ? ? ? ? |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ? ? ? ? ? |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ? ? ? ? ? |
$$ | . . X X X . . . . * . . . . O O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . B . . . . . C . . . . . W . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . # . . . . . S . . . . . @ . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . Y . . . . . T . . . . . Q . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . Z . . . . . M . . . . . P . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . a . b . c . d . x . y . z . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------

Indent the markup by four spaces (i.e. make it a "code block", using Ctrl-K or the "{}" button). My renderer uses the HTML5 Canvas, so your browser needs to support that – but these days, all of them except IE8 do. And even without the rendering, the diagrams in code blocks are of course still reasonably readable.

(doesn't work on met apparently)

@balpha - Any chance this could be adapted to implement Chess positions in a similar way? Much of your code looks reusable, and us poor Chess players need some love too...! ;)

For go refer to my older post:  https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/792/about-related-existing-sites/1913#1913
On lifein19x19 we have three different go specific features:

Sgf Diagrams
A Sgf diagram represents a game tree that can be navigated.
These are based on Eidogo which is an AGPL licensed piece of javascript. The essential features require no server side support. There are some other in browser sgf viewers, but I think this one is the best. License might be a problem though.
Board diagrams
Renders a one time snapshot of a board. The text describes the stones present on the board. There is no game tree.
We use http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoWiki%2FSLtxt2PNG which is written on php 5. But if necessary I can write something similar in C#.
Go specific "smilies"
These are short strings that the bbcode parser replaces with go specific icons such as numbered or marked stone. For example ":w10:" becomes a small image of a white stone with the number 10 on it.

Since the accepted answer gives relatively little detail, it may be useful to see my more detailed answer to How do we enter Go Boards on this site?


text:
Glossary of game and site related terms
Question acronyms-good-or-bad mentioned a glossary of game and site related terms. So here is the start.
Maybe this can be made CW so anybody can add to it. In the mean time, feel free to add an addition as answer and I will edit them into it.

A

B

BCG, Board and Card Games site
BCG.SE, Board and Card Games site at StackExchange
Beer and Pretzels, a category of games that are generally considered to be light fillers. Beer and Pretzel games Source
BGA, Board game Arena, biggest online board game site
BGG,  Board Game Geek, a site loaded with game information
BSG,  Battlestar Galactica

C

CW, Community Wiki

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

Meeple, Wooden people in wide range of games (for example Carcassonne)

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

You used CW in your post and didn't add it to the list. ;)

This looks like this should be split into a question and answer instead of just posted in the question.

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


text:
Use specific game tag when question is not directly about that game?
Some questions are not strictly about a specific game X, but about other games like it. They may be tagged with that game's name. E.g.:

Card Games with clear cards similar to "Gloom"

Others don't have that tag.
I'm conflicted about whether these questions that don't directly address a particular game should carry the game's tag. On one hand if I'm interested in game X, I may not care about other games like it and just want to read about X. On the other hand it could sometimes be useful to find relationships between games I'm interested in and others like it...
What do you think?

If your specifically talking about the mechanics a game has, I definitely think it should be there.  If there is a strong relationship between what the question asks and the game, I think the tag should be included.  Example:
Games with features like Battlestar Galactica's “Traitor” Mechanic?
If the relationship between the game mentioned and the question is vague, I think omitting the tag is fine.  The more specific our tagging is though, the better.  When in doubt, I would suggest adding the extra tag to the question.


text:
Games-specific tagging convention.
We already have lots of tags for specific games, but if we generate the levels of traffic we'd like to generate, then we're likely to find that for the most popular games people will want/need game-specific tags.
Where there is a lot of traffic relating to a particular game, it would make sense to have multiple tags for that game that would enable users of the site to separate and manage the traffic.
I suggest that we adopt the convention that a tag that is specific to a game should have the name of the game or an abbreviation of the name, then a . and then the tag, so for instance we might have asl.movement for movement in the Advanced Squad Leader games.  Game tags should continue to be the full name of the game, so advanced-squad-leader.
The reason to do this is that it puts them into separate namespaces so you can have asl.movement and wif.movement instead of mixing up everything relating to that phase.
I'm not sure that "movement" is necessarily a good tag, it's just the first example that came to mind!
This came out of a discussion in the comments to this answer, for context.

@Dori I think It would be useful for people having the full-game-name tag as one of their favorite tags. They could still view all questions from one game together.

@Dori - I would think that using the full name should attract more folks from Google.  ASL -> American Sign Language to most of the world.

@Dori - That would only select all questions with a specific tag. There might still be questions for a game without such a specific tag. Selecting them together is not possible while, please correct me if i'm wrong, OR-ing favorite tags is not possible.

@Dori - Did not know about the tag sets feature. Thanx.

You are absolutely 100% right that tagging should focus on using the forms of the tag that are found in Google! This is extremely important.
However, I must say I am not a fan of this "let's smush two things together with a period to ghetto up a tag hierarchy" approach.
I think advanced-squad-leader should suffice, really.
Considering there is all of one question in this tag at the moment, perhaps it would be a good idea to table this and wait until there are a bunch of questions that might need additional categorization? (Though I'd say you would need 250-500 to even begin needing anything beyond a simple single tag).

Agreed on the "table until there are lots of questions" proposal.

Concur.  It's dangerous to solve problems you haven't encountered yet; it means you can't test your solution and find out what you didn't think of.

I think in the question's example that you would tag it, advanced-squad-leader tactics.movement, though I'm not sure that will work well in practice, since tactical considerations tend to overlap a lot.
I think more specific game tags should be based on game versions, like napoleonic-wars and napoleonic-wars-2.

I have no objection to tagging versions of games.  Over at RPG, there are a plethora of Dungeons and Dragons tags.

and Gaming has a ton of game-version tags: we don't tend to get too many questions about a series, but rather questions about specific games in the series, so you can follow fallout* but also know from the tags which game (or games) are applicable for a given question.


text:
Taxonomist badge with only 14 questions.
I saw the first silver badge was awarded. It was a taxonomist badge awarded to the tag card-games. But there are only 14 questions with this tag. Is this a bug or has there been a lot of retagging going on?

I suspect this is when Svisstack spammed the forums with his poker questions.  There are a few of his questions still around, and they use the card-games tag.
I know Svisstack got a few Taxonomist badges before he was suspended and deleted, and while it looks like someone took away his Taxonomoist badges, anyone else who earned one from his tag use still has them.

Ok, sounds reasonable.


text:
Should we ban game recommendation questions? - Done
We've discussed this before, but I think it's time to put the final nail in the coffin of Game Recommendation questions.
Take a look at the recommendations tag.  The most recent stuff is first.  Look for the items marked [closed].  You can see that all recent ones have been closed.  Since August, none have survived.  The recent open questions tagged with recommendations should probably be retagged, as they are using the term "recommendations" in a different way.
There hasn't been a lot of pushback during this time despite what some would surely call heavy-handed moderation.  The big question is "How is our traffic?"  Is the site growing?
YES
Traffic doubled from 9/1 to mid December.  Christmas bumped us up again, we are now running at 3x of September's rate.  I don't think we'll hold onto all of that bump in the short term, but Christmas did introduce a good number of people to the site for sure!
Board & Card Games is currently the fourth most traffic'd StackExchange Beta site! and is getting more traffic than two previously launched sites.  This has been a great few months and I don't want to lose the progress.
While I wouldn't state that the rec game policy change is solely responsible, I believe it is a big part.  Now I think we should formalize it.  Update the FAQ, close the rest and move forward.
Why aren't Game Recommendation questions desirable for a Q and A site?
They seem so harmless, people love them, everybody can participate, let's enjoy them, right?  They're awesome questions .... for a forum.
This is a Q & A site, Real Questions have Answers!  Game Recommendation questions are asking for individual items or games, not really answers.  People can earn a lot of rep just by being the first to mention a popular game.  After all Dominion is probably a great answer for most any question that starts with "What's a good game for ...?"  Folks then vote for the answer which says Dominion because they know it and agree that it's a good game for the purpose.  There doesn't need to be any substance to the answer.  Nothing is learned, no experience needs to be shared.
Votes should indicate quality.
Too many answers
It doesn't take an expert to recommend a game, anyone can do it.  And will.  Game rec questions can quickly grow to many answers.  After a certain point, any new answer has virtually no shot at rising above the existing answers no matter how good it is.  We can't expect folks to pick out the diamond in the rough when it's the 15th answer on a page.  A great question will have upwards of 5 answers that we can evaluate and vote between.
They attract more recommendation questions
When people see these questions they think that they are allowed and acceptable here.  We can't really fault them for this.  Let's clean things up so that we avoid that confusion.
If you've read this far, thank you for your attention!  I should note that we would be far from the only StackExchange site to make this decision.  Sites that I know of that prohibit shopping or game-req questions include.

SuperUser
Gaming
SciFi
Fitness & Nutrition
Andriod

In the case of this particular question, which is so specific I can't imagine that there are many answers--but I'm sure there are some--would it work if instead of asking for recommendations it asked simply if any other games exist meeting this criteria?

@shujaa - for me the answer would be no.  I imagine the answer for any reasonable set of criteria is "Yes there is such a game"  There's a ton of games out there!  Next someone will say, "don't forget YYY, also ZZZ is close - you should try that".  I see recommendations as a slippery slope.  By far the easiest line to draw is "No recommendations"  Once you put some exceptions in there, the line gets blurry and arguments will ensue and we end up right back where we started.

You've got me pretty well convinced. Related: do you know if there's a way to withdraw a vote to re-open?

@shujaa - not that I'm aware of, but they do expire (like close votes) after 4 days or so.

I think we're looking at the wrong aspect here.  Any question that solicits too many answers is because it's too general.  We should close questions that are too general, which would include many rec questions.  However, consider this counter-example:  "What board games can be played and enjoyed with both my seeing children and my blind son?"  I can't think of any off the top of my head, but there may be some.  The specificity of this question is what should allow it to survive.

@NealTibrewala - assume there is one game that meets the criteria.  If there is one, there is probably more.  How do people rank the answers at that point?  Votes should indicate the quality of the answer, not be a popularity contest for games.  Questions where every answer is equally valid is not valid per our FAQ.

@NealTibrewala - a better question would be along the lines of "How can I play games with both my seeing children and blind son?" Then (hopefully) you'd get answers from people who have gone through that situation and can give you some solid advice - including games that they were able to play with both kids.  Maybe a few commenters would chime in with "Yes, I agree with this answer, we did the same things but also with game XXX, XXX".  Same basic set of games from both questions, but the addition of the advice and tips makes all the difference

Andriod is misspelled.

@icirellik - fix it, if it bothers you, everything is editable.

I think they should be banned, mostly for the reasons you cite. I think we've gone through a similar situation on Gaming, as you can see in the FAQ entry there, with a longer explanation here.
It's very difficult to get a recommendation question to work in this format, and even if we manage to get one that does work, it then leads to a series of closed questions, frustrated users, and "Why was my X closed when Y is open?" questions on meta. Of course we'll get that to some degree with any type of question, simply because we're no different than any other online community in certain respects: we have standards which we expect all users to follow, and all internet sites experience a sort of entropy, in that their content will naturally tend to degrade over time, requiring constant effort to keep up quality.
It's certainly worthwhile to do that for cases where it's the question itself that needs help, but when the topic is also a problem area, we can end up spending a significant amount of mod and user time just to end up with well-written questions that still don't fit the Stack Exchange format. We can spend a lot of time talking about the differences between "what games are like X" and "what is the best game like X", for example, but that won't change the point of the question: tell me about a game like X.
And it's not as though we don't have a place where those questions can be asked. It's possible to have forum-like discussions in chat, and honestly, I think that's the best place for game-rec questions anyway. The best recommendations, in my opinion, come from people who a) know you well or b) know the type of game you're looking for well. Those attributes can be hard to identify in a Q&A format ... but they can be teased out with the back-and-forth nature of chat. (We also avoid the additional problem of extended discussion in comments: another area where it's hard to allow exceptions, because otherwise we spend a lot of time explaining the difference between an exception and a particular case.)

+1 - Thanks for linking the discussion on video games - I find the logic there hard to argue with, and I don't see any distinction with our situation here either.

This is what killed the site for me. Used to love to come here for recommendations. Now, I hardly log on.

it is unfortunate that SE's Q&A format isn't designed to handle game recommendation questions. BGG is better suited for that, and this site is better suited for rules clairification.

Direct people placing recommendation questions onto the chat room unfortunately give the restrictions they couldn't place a question but someone could place it for them.

I want to disagree with this statement.
I think a lot of people here are in factacting a bit too much like police officers, following the letter of the law and not its spirit. I can see how vaugue questions like "I like Settlers of Catan. What would be a good game to buy next" are basically a popularity poll and have little value, as we couldnt really rate answers.
But there are recommendation questions that make sense. I feel mine was one of them. I was very specific. I pinpointed the mechanics/game dynamics I disliked. I stated what do I consider a game similar to Eclipse. This leaves room for easy evaluation of answers suggesting some games as the solution of my problem. Does the game fix the issues I find in Eclipse? What mechanic is supposed to do that and how? Does the game fufill the requirements of being similar to Eclipse that I posted? The specificity of my question eliminates the answer flood problem - if there were so many games meeting my criteria, why would I even bother asking? Lets not ie to ourselves here - using the BGG mechanics search engine I had trouble finding games I know well and know percisely what mechanics they use. And im quite a tech savvy guy, being a programmer and all.
Cutting out the rules lawyering part, almost everything on the topic of boardgames is subjective. Some design solutions in a game may influence the gameplay experience of different individuals in different ways. Everything in a game depends on our perception. One might say Race for the Galaxy is solitaire, others might find a lot if indirect interaction in it. Can we objectively discuss design solutions used in the game? Not really.
Stack exchange started as stackoverflow, and many of the faq's and rules are a modified copy of stackoverflows faq's and rules. While for SO they work fine, they are not the best choice for all topics. Take programmers SE! Take Role playing games beta! Take parenting SE! All these could be argued to be totally subjective, but they worked out their own sets of rules and they are functional!
I also disagree with @user1873 comment on how BGG is better suited for game recommendations. Well, for the ultra broad ones, like the "Settlers..." example i gave earlier, that might be true. But for qeustions that are concrete enough to have answers that can objectively be rated? I dont think so. Asking on BGG I'd have to dig through 200+ answers, most of which would be clueless, jokes or off-topic chatter. SE format would spare me that and leave me just the few best answers at the top, each a enclosed whole, not referring to what someone said 37 pages earlier in the topic.
As for the argumentation provided in the link to the Arcade SE site...

First, Repositories are often non-finite; many will continue to be updated as new information comes up. Building from that, Repositories also tend to be non-static; the other question classes have a far less frequent rate of change over time.

well guess what... Most questions on StackOverflow have exactly the same problem! With new technologies showing up at every corner, questions on how to deal with a specific problem will indeed raise a list of answers, each proposing the usage of the new, cool and shiny tool. As the tools proliferate, so will technically correct answers. Some will get outdated, others wont. Taking it all into account, we still see that StackOverflow is doing pretty well, right? And lots of other concerns about the "repository" thing look like problems with the answers not following any discipline, and not the questions being bad themselves.

There is no motivation to excel and be an expert in building Repositories here. Otherwise, these Repositories should be filled to the brim with pages upon pages of contributions. So we are really just providing a small subset of qualifying content, namely the subjectively and currently popular content. Including myself, there are many people who continue to state that game recommendations can be founded on knowledge and that there exists expertise, but these past two months have shown quite clearly that nobody seems to care about making a good quality repository that is founded on knowledge.

Sooo... we only accept questions that are easy to answer in the correct way instead of fighting to have good answers to all questions?
Also, I would like to point out that our field is quite different form computer games. In boardgames, you directly interact with the games inner workings, and its a LOT easier to intelligently discuss them. We can for example reasonably compare games of the same genere, while in computer games it would probably get reduced to "which game looks better or has a cooler storyline!"
I do agree that it is quite easy to wirte a bad recommendation question, but I feel there is a knee-jerk reaction to recommendation questions. Something like "So your looking for a game that... wait wiat. Alert! Alert! Vote close!".
I am fully aware I wont sway your opinions, but I wanted to express what I think and state my point of view.

game recommendation questions require a lot of work for moderators/privileged users. Allowing them solicits lots of bad questions and bad answers. There can be good questions and bad questions can be salvaged through discussion about the actual concrete requirements. I think the RPG stack exchange community does this well, but it is not without great dedication from the high rep/mods of the community. Work/dedication the people of this community have decided they do not want to do or does not add enough value. Sorry your question got closed, it looked like it might have been a decent one.

I agree that as recommendation questions go, yours was a good one. But I still think this isn't the place for it. On a BGG forum or Reddit's r/boardgames I bet you'll get a warm response and a lively discussion.

I can't resist pointing out that after rephrasing your question to not ask for a recommendation, you received a thoughtful and excellent answer from @Pow-lan. His answer suggested house-rule tweaks to help with the learning stages and your perceived weaknesses of the game, while keeping the mechanics you enjoy about the game intact. In my opinion, this makes your question as it stands far superior to a simple recommendation question, which would have simply "given up" on an excellent game.

@ghoppe touche!

@K.L. Thanks for taking the time to post this.


text:
Game Recommendation questions are banned
With the agreement of the other moderators and the unanimous consent of the voters here on meta, game recommendations are banned.
Plan of Action

Update the FAQ (done)
Close all questions (done)
Clean up comments on rec questions (in progress)
Delete/fix/keep recommendation questions (TODO)

Note - Not every question is cut and dried for closing.  I've posted a few in chat, if you wish to jump in and give us some feedback on them, that would be great!
Some questions need to go (delete), some can be fixed and others we may want to keep for posterity locked with a moderator note saying something like, "This question is from long ago, and no longer meets the quality standards of this site.  Do not use this question as a template to form your own questions."

Heh, 4 of the 6 top voted questions are closed for this reason.  Perhaps delete them?  It looks really bad.

I think it might be nice if the FAQ would point to the previous meta discussion, which provides justification for what might seem like an arbitrary (and even unfriendly) rule to users not familiar with Stack Exchange.

@mattdm - hmmm, it's a fair point.  I'm thinking of linking it here, which links to the previous discussion.  Sound good?

@PatLudwig - Sure, whichever. :)


text:
Meta tags 'R Us!
Background info on what meta tags are is on the StackExchange Blog.
The Story so far:
We've had a meta tag problem for a while.  Perhaps since the origin of the site.
Over the last few months I've been proactively removing certain meta tags from any question on the front page. The majority of those have been rules and strategy.
Why these tags are bad:
One of the defining characteristics of a meta tag is that it can't stand on it's own.  If these tags exist, then people can, and do use them as the only tag on a question.
Next Steps:
Build consensus - I've spoken to the other mods and a few of the more active members of the site and I think there is consensus on removing these tags.  It'd be better to have that consensus be explicitly stated here on meta.
Remove the tags on older questions - Over the last few months, due to normal front page rotation, the count of rules has decreased over 10%.  However that still leaves 438 as of this writing, and another 161 on strategy.
If you agree with me that these tags should go, feel free to join in on my effort.   Ideally we don't want to flood the front page with old questions.  But something like 5 at a time is cool.  Then pause for a few hours, see if those old questions get pushed down again and do 5 more.
Alternatively, you could note a couple new questions that need editing, but first, clean up some older questions, then edit the new ones to put them back on top.
I believe slow and steady will win this race.
Identify other meta tags - I'm sure there are more.  For new nominations, please put them in an answer (1 per) to allow debate.  If we get consensus, we'll edit them in here on the question and open season on them.
Removed meta-tags:
I'm deleting the answers for the below to focus attention on the open discussions.
two-players suggested by Shujaa
setup suggested by bwarner

Closing this.  rules and strategy are GONE!  I think it's a good time to close this question.  Any future tag discussion should stand alone as a new topic.  Thanks everyone!

Just wondering, did you hassle the developers and they wiped the tags? I didn't see a massive Q flood on the front page.

@user1873 - Shog9 pitched in and cleared the rest for us.

Get rid of them.
As I've discussed before every game question is essentially a rules question already.
I'm a little more wishy-washy on strategy.  But if a question isn't a rules question I'd say that it's very likely to be a strategy question.  That would lead to 90% of the questions on the site being tagged rules or strategy.  That would make them not terribly useful.

The main problem with strategy is that while I'm pretty good at, say, MTG strategy, I'm pretty crappy at Risk strategy. It's unlikely that someone following the strategy tag would be able to offer 'generic strategy advice' that would follow from game to game. There is some, but its much less likely to actually be useful as a tag.

@corsiKa should we have separate tags for [tag:mtg-strategy] etc then, do you think?

@Pureferret I think "mtg" is enough. If it was a particular strategy, like "mtg-control" or "mtg-zoo" then yes. But not "mtg-strategy".

I've been trying to tag things with formats if they're strongly format-dependent -- mtg-modern, mtg-commander, &c. -- and avoiding other subtags. My reasoning for this is that any question about Zoo should probably include Zoo in the title, to make it clearer what you're talking about, whereas you could compose a very clear question about EDH that doesn't say "EDH" in it a bunch of times.

tactics
I deleted a couple of instances of this tag earlier, before realising that it wasn't the strategy tag.

I've done that myself :)

Another nominee: version Used 4 times, never as the only tag.

multi-player
Per our definition of a boardgame, multiple players need to be involved.  I'm not seeing a use case for this tag.

comparison is sometimes used when people ask the difference between two games or a game and expansion.

learning looks like a candidate as well.

11 questions here.  Once we achieve consensus, go for it.

@PatLudwig about how long do you want to wait / how many votes to achieve consensus?

I'd think the minimums would be a week and a +5 differential.  There's no rush, we have our hands full with rules and strategy as it is :)

This one I'm unsure of: teaching. My gut reaction for learning is that it's a meta-tag and should be removed. Then teaching came up and I like it, which is terribly inconsistent. Maybe they're both okay after all.

Those seem to be the flip side of "beginner" which was one of the original 3 meta-tags discussed in the SE Blog post.  As such, I wouldn't be sorry to see them go.

I don't know if this is a meta tag or not, but this doesn't warrant its own question when we have a depot here for it.
Is house-rules too much like rules? I try to use the criteria "Can someone be an expert in X? If so, then X is a good tag, and if not X is a bad tag." So someone might be an expert in MTG Rules, but you can't really be an expert in "rules".
So, is house-rules considered a meta tag?

That's a more difficult question for me.  I use the house-rules tag to filter out questions I do not want to look at.  That use of tags isn't necessarily enough justification on its own to continue using the tag.

I can't imagine a good question using only this tag. I'm still not totally convinced that that should be the only test of what a good tag is. I like the house-rules tag as well, it's nice to have a consistent system for identifying these types of questions. Similar tags include [tag:variants] and [tag:versions].

Is a tag a good tag just because it's useful? I know that sounds like a dumb question but I mean it 100%.

I don't think house-rules should ever appear alone.  We can't really talk about house rules in the abstract; we pretty much have to be talking about a particular game (or game family), right?


text:
What can you do for B&CG? Winners Announced!
Winners
Thanks everyone for participating!  The site looks a lot better than it did a couple months ago.
I've compiled the results and rolled some dice.  Per the contest I owe 2 games, but I'm awarding 3 as the third challenge was pretty darn close.
The winners are

beam022
Monica Cellio
Pureferret

You three have a choice of the following games

Thunderstone: more or less complete.  All expansions included, although I don't have any promos that might have been released.  All the sets fit into 2 boxes, the other boxes have been repurposed so you won't be getting those, just the cards & rules.
Lord of the Rings
Armada - Now you can own one of the worst rated games at BGG!
Munchkin:  Pretty sure there is an expansion set or two in there, but I can't identify them.  It's been too long, so no promises!
Shark (Ravensburger ed):  I dug this game out of storage to answer a question on this site.  Next time, you can have this pleasure!  Actually this is a pretty cool game.
Lost Worlds collection:  I have about 12 books, most still shrink wrapped.  You get them all.

If the 3 winners could drop me an email at havoc@boldo.com that would be great.  Include your postal address and the top 3 choices and I'll get them in the mail as soon as I can.  If I don't hear from you in a couple days I may not be able to get your game to you until after Christmas, things are getting busy around here!
Thanks again to everyone!
Folks, it's go time!
The six weeks between mid December and the end of January have been very good to us over the last couple years.  How good? Try 2x!  Visits have doubled during each of those periods.  Better yet, we've kept that level of traffic each year and continued to build upon it.
I see Christmas is being held again this year so I have no reason to suspect that it won't happen again!  That gives us 60 days to put our best foot forward.
The Goal
Get launched!  Take a look at all of the StackExchange sites sorted by traffic.  At a high level I notice a couple things

Above 5k visits/day most sites are launched
Below 4.5k visits/day most sites are not launched
Our traffic is currently 2.3k visits/day

I haven't spoken to and SE staff about this, but it looks like that if our traffic can double we will be right in the sweet spot where the question switches from, "When are we going to launch?" to "Why aren't we launched already?"  I'd like to force the question, who's with me?
Sounds good, what can we do now?
Here are my ideas, please comment and expand!
Vote early, vote often!
One slightly disturbing trend I've noticed this year is a decrease in voting.  Since the end of January we've increased traffic by 2x.  Unfortunately, during that time, voting has decreased by 50%.  Taken together votes per visit was 4x higher at the beginning of the year.  I think we can do better, lets reward people that contribute to this site by asking good questions and giving great answers.
Note - I'm not encouraging anyone to blindly upvote everything they come across.  Take a moment, evaluate the question or answer and then up or down vote appropriately.
Badges:

Electorate: One of the easiest gold badges to receive.
Sportsmanship - Vote for answers that aren't yours.  Only one person with this hard to get silver badge.
Vox Populi - a copper badge that only 13 people have.  Anyone can obtain this with one day's worth of voting.  As a bonus, if you haven't got Suffrage yet, you'll obtain that as well!

Challenge - Can we double the number of people that have these badges by the end of the year?
Spread the Word!
Not everyone has great social media connections, as I well know!  That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.  Share an occasional link on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc.  I think it works best if you share one that you were involved in or that helped you directly so that you can relate your personal experiences.
If you're active on Reddit or similar sites, go ahead and drop a link where appropriate.
Badges:

Announcer - Bronze, we only have 14 of these.
Booster - Silver, we have but 2
Publicist - Gold, we have 1

Challenge - Booster and Publicist are pretty hard, but can we double the Announcers?
Improve/Elaborate/expand
Editing is a largely thankless task.  Fortunately we have many people who have been eager to improve posts, even ones that aren't their own.  Of course there is always more we can do.
Most of our hits come right from Google.  This means that people are ending up here looking for answers to their questions.  This is awesome, we have to make sure they get the information they need and hopefully plant a seed of curiosity that will bring them back here when they have a question they can't find the answer to.
I believe that almost any post can be improved.  While fixing spelling and obvious grammar problems have significant value, we stand to gain a lot more when a good editor strips a post down and rebuilds it in a clear, concise manner.  I encourage everyone who may enjoy this to give it a try.  Turnover on our front page isn't too fast and almost every edit will have other people looking at it quickly.  If there's a problem, any edit can be reverted.
Badges

Copy Editor, 500 edited posts is a lot, I'm only a bit over half way there.  Can anyone beat me to it?
Excavator - a reward for one act of helping out an older post.
Proofreader - review other's edits.
Research Assistant - help out our tag wikis
Strunk and White - Edit 80 posts.  3 have been earned.

Challenge - 20 more Excavators, double the Proofreaders, S&W.  Get at least 2 Research Assistants.
What do I win?
A better site for Board & Card Games.  The more traffic we have, the better the answers will get.  We'll also get more questions and some of them will be more interesting.
Making the world a better place.  Several times over the last year I've googled questions and ended up right back here.  People all over the world are doing this on a daily basis.  A lot of them end up here and get quick, great answers to their questions.
Games! - Yes, I'll be giving away at least one game.  If you earn one of the badges mentioned above by December 15th @ midnight CST you will be entered to win a game from my personal collection.  I'll spend up to $25 shipping it to you.
I also listed 3 challenges above.  For each challenge that is achieved in the same period I'll add another game to the pot.  There could be a maximum of 4 winners (1 game each).
Other rules

Rules can change at any time at my discretion. The only rule that can't change is that I will give away one game to a member of this site.
Winner(s) to be determined at my discretion.  This will likely involve me rolling dice at my desk. There may be no independent verification of results.
Each person can only win one game
Achieving Silver or Gold badges improves your odds of winning.
Anyone who gets a mod message from the other mods will be disqualified.  IE - don't game the system, earn the badges legitimately.
If SE staff object to this "contest", I'll end it.

The Die is Cast.....

A game to promote a gaming site, with the prize to be a game, you say? Sounds ideal. :)

I want to play, I want to play!

@mafutrct - looks like the Vox Populi badge is open to you, that's an easy way to "play" :)

@PatLudwig: Yup, I'm going to, and not just this one badge... ;)

@mafutrct - now we're talking!

THIS IS AN AWESOME POST. :D

@Aarthi - I'll take that as a blessing from SE Staff then :)

@Aarthi Welcome to StackExchange!  This site works a bit differently than other forums you might be used to.  Things like posting in all capital letters are frowned upon. ;-)

@bwarner :P I do what I want! (Kidding, kidding.)

Regarding the [badge:Sportsmanship], since the number of users with 100+ answers is 6 or so, and the average answers per questions is 2.5, is it any wonder so few people have this badge? Usually the reason you might have more than 1 answer is that the quality of the other answer is poor, or you happened to answer the question simultaneously. I had to go through nearly all my 250+ answers to find enough good answers to upvote.

@user1873 - it is a hard to get badge, especially for this site.  I appreciate the effort you put in.  As you noted, you were one of a few people who could obtain that badge without answering a lot of questions first.

BTW, on the way to Electorate you pick up Civic Duty (silver).  Should that factor into this?

@MonicaCellio - wish I'd noticed it :)  Adding a new requirement now would just make the challenge tougher so I'd be adverse to doing that.

Today's lesson: proposing 50 edits to tag wikis - even if they're accepted - does not grant Research Assistant.  You need to actually have the upwards-of-1500 reputation required to edit them yourself.

@PaulMarshall - Really?  That is really weird.  Is there a source for that on meta.stackoverflow.com?

@PaulMarshall, did you edit the wikis themselves or just the summaries?  (I ran into that surprise on another site.  Only the expanded part counts.)

@Monica Ah, that would be it.  I was editing summaries.  So I now have about two credits instead of the ~sixty I thought I had, but at least I know what I'm doing now!

@PaulMarshall - yep, Monica got it.  Check the Badge FAQ - http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67397/list-of-all-badges-with-full-descriptions

Useful for pulling up random questions diceStack

Huge kudos for the competition @PatLudwig, and good work to everyone who helped improve the site!

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks for organising this Pat!  I can recommend Shark - it's a game my family have played many times now, and is always exciting.

Thanks for organizing and sponsoring, @PatLudwig!

@PatLudwig, belated feedback (gosh, is it really May already?) -- Shark is a cool game!  Thank you for introducing me to it.

Contest Entries
I'll be keeping track of who achieved which badges on 10/22 or later.  Badges are grouped into the 3 challenges.
Challenge - Spread the word!
Announcer (Bronze - need 14)

Pureferret
Pureferret
beam022
Johno

Challenge - Vote Early, Vote Often!
Vox Populi (Bronze - need 13)

Monica Cellio
mafutrct
Matt
Paul Marshall
tttppp
beam022
corsiKa
wax eagle
Pureferret
Dave DuPlantis
sitnaltax
unor
Dan

Sportsmanship (Silver - need 1)
 1. user1873
Electorate (Gold - need 3)

Monica Cellio
beam022
Johno
user1873
tttppp

Challenge - Improve/Elaborate/Expand
Excavator (Bronze - need 20)

tttppp
Monica Cellio
corsiKa
beam022
Daenyth
aramis
OrigamiRobot
Paul Marshall
unor

Proofreader (Bronze - need 1)

user1873
ire_and_curses
tttppp
hackworth

Research Assistant (Silver - need 2)

Pat Ludwig (Not eligible for any prizes)
beam022

Strunk & White (Silver - need 3)

shujaa
beam022
Monica Cellio
user1873
Johno

Oh, just to clarify: As a mod I'll obviously not take part in the lottery ;)

@mafutrct - as we're not employees of StackExchange I don't see any ethical issue, but I can certainly withdraw you from the lottery if that is your wish.  What do others think?

I don't have a problem with mods being entered to win - you're just special users, after all, and the work that you do to improve the site for this contest helps just as much as a non-mod's work.


text:
Can we get a renderer for Cards?
I see that the Poker site now has nice card markup support.  Could that be added to this site?
In addition to poker being on topic here, we also have significant questions in bridge, euchre, cribbage, rummy and hearts that could benefit from the enhanced graphical presentation of pictoral cards.

Here I was thinking this was about Magic: the Gathering again...now I'm sad.

@IanPugsley - well, we got an answer for that.  Unless a public legal API emerges, it doesn't seem likely that things will change there.  I understand the reasoning, but it makes me sad too!

"They never run out of ink for their no stamp" -- Col Potter :)

Agreed, that makes a lot of sense. But: It's not as easy as just enabling the renderer from the Poker site as is. I've looked at several card game posts on boardgames.se, and there are a few differences between the way the poker people mark up the cards and what happens here.
On the poker site, there's pretty much only one way – {face}{suit}. I.e. 7:clubs:, J♦, A♥.
On your site, there's more to it:
Ten as ten
Examples: What is the best lead when calling next on a declined bower?, Take out double at first opportunity to double?
The poker people pretty much unanimously use a T to denote a ten; bg.se also likes to use 10. This isn't a big issue, since there's no 1 or 0 card, so there's no ambiguity.
Suit first
Example: What is the best lead when calling next on a declined bower?
Poker always puts the face first – Q♣ –, bg.se also uses the other way arround ♣Q. This isn't a big issue either.
Multiple cards per suit
Example: Take out double at first opportunity to double?
On poker, it's A♦ K♦ Q♦. Here, it's often ♦ AKQ. This has a higher chance of ambiguity, but I don't think there are any real-life issues anyway (this seems to always be written in a suit-first manner, which is good; allowing both directions would create ambiguities).
Face wildcard
Example: Should I Use A "Negative Double" Over a Possible "Short Club" Bid And Overcall in Bridge?
♠ AJxx meaning "Ace of spades, jack of spades, and two unspecified spades".
My plan is to render this as . Thoughts?
Bridge over troubled water
(sorry for the bad pun)
Example: Should I Use A "Negative Double" Over a Possible "Short Club" Bid And Overcall in Bridge?
This is a real issue that I'm not sure how to handle. Here are two sentences that may very commonly appear in a post about Bridge:

Obviously the first one shouldn't be rendered as a card. But there's no way for the renderer to distinguish between them. What do we make of this problem?
In closing
Please give feedback, comments, solutions, and other possible issues I haven't thought of. In particular it should be noted that most of your example tags don't have any questions with cards in them, so there may be problems with other games that I didn't consider.

For the bridge bid of 2 clubs, why wouldn't the format proposed for ajxx work as well?  someone would say I raised to 2 x:clubs: to get the blank?

@Stephen Note that the renderer uses an image of a card (even when representing the ajxx).  I think bridge bids should either be left as text, or possibly converted to unicode symbols (2♣).

@tttppp Yes of course ... so then it could be that 2:clubs: is converted to unicode and 2:cclubs: is a card with the 2 of clubs?  2:cdiamonds: etc?

@Stephen That sounds good to me.  Maybe there could be some notation for hand listings too: :cclubs:{AKQJ52} :cdiamonds:{A} etc.  I'm interested to hear more ideas around this too :-)

Maybe too much to ask, can we do something for things like these: a declarer play problem could just show North and South, like here: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/what-is-the-purpose-of-a-ducking-play-in-bridge/5169#5169. A defensive play problem could just show West and North etc. A common way to write a single bridge hand is spades,hearts, diamonds, clubs (without showing the suit symbols). So something like AKxx,Qxx,Kxx,Axx. btw, x is a card smaller than ten, showing an empty card is quite weird.

btw, if you are willing to use this handviewer from BBO: http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/hvdoc.html, it might solve all the bridge related problems. This handviewer can also shows tricks as they are played etc.

I guess I misunderstood what was done for the poker site.  I wouldn't recommend trying to transform free text into card picture on this site.  I would like a way to denote cards with markup so that they get rendered as an image.

The reason being is that, yes, I totally understand that we have X different ways to parse things due to supporting a variety of games.  However, for most of them, it would be great if we could edit in [[4C]] and have it render as an image (for example).

@balpha - Could you take a look at my (closed duplicate) proposal for this?  http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/825/677  I think a system which requires specifically-defined tags (as Pat has also suggested) to trigger card image generation would bypass most of the concerns you've raised.


text:
Recent site changes that anyone can use
The devs are always working on the software that drives this site and all the other stackexchange sites.  There have been a couple recent changes that I wanted to highlight to make sure that everyone is aware of them.

There is a review page.  On this page you can view recent questions and answers that could use more eyes on them.

First questions and answers - This is an easy way to help welcome new people to the site.  Take a look at their posts, comment and vote as necessary.  Please be polite as we want to ensure that everyone's first impressions of the site are positive.  If you see something that is totally wrong (spam/offensive) then flag it and a moderator will be along shortly.
Low quality:  An ongoing metric.  I think this is mainly looking at the length of a post now.  If the post is short, take a look and encourage the poster to flesh it out if you think that is necessary.
Late answers: These are new answers to older questions.  Make sure the new answer is really needed

Anyone can edit  I think this is a great change, and the blog post goes into the full detail, but in short

Low rep and anonymous users can suggest edits to all questions/answers/tag wikis
These go into a queue which higher rep users can view and accept
An accepted edit is worth 2 rep, with a max of 1000 gained per user from this function

Please give them a try!


text:
"Where to buy" questions
See https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2522/looking-for-mare-nostrum
Is this something we want to support here?

No,
These questions should be closed as too localized.

The answer is only valid for a limited period of time
The need is specific to one person.

When the question is "where do I buy this particular game", I agree. But the more generic "where do I buy out of print games" should have a question with some useful answers (i.e. look for sellers/traders on boardgamegeek, amongst other answers).

I would say in the general case no:
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/
However in extreme circumstances -- say, the game is extraordinarily rare or very special in some way -- it might be OK, but that should be super rare.

I think that sounds fare.

The last thing we want is a million questions "where can I buy game X" with exactly the same answer.  Is there a FAQ with links to boardgamegeek and other such useful places?  If not, maybe someone could create one, and point all "where to buy" requests there, before closing the question.

I think you and @Viktor are heading down the same path, and I agree with you.  It sounds like a good use of community wiki to maintain a list of OOP boardgame sellers.  If a question gets created, I'll CW it.  (Or if someone flags an old question that might fit)

I'm 100% with Viktor and TheSun here; I've created a community wiki question for users to update.  Do we want to migrate the Mare Nostrum question there, or close it and point to our question?

@little - yea, perhaps we could dup all such questions to the generic in the future?  Then delete them after a while, I don't see a need to keep individual game queries around forever.

@Pat -- duly noted.  I've gone ahead and closed the original question, and pointed Xavier to our new question.  I've also included my original answer as a comment so he has somewhere to start.