text:
Declined Offensive Flag
I was looking through my flags (mostly to gauge whether I'm flagging too aggressively), and I noticed

A - Playing Cards from Unhinged and Unglued
  flagged as offensive  declined - a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it

followed by an edit from a moderator removing the profanity from the post. If the flag was helpful, why was it declined?
Before someone asks, "Why didn't you just edit the profanity yourself?", I had recently gotten out of a heated discussion with the author and didn't want to risk another escalation. Flagging it seemed like the way to avoid conflict as well as get rid of the profanity.

You can always use a custom flag if you see something you think needs dealing with that you can't handle yourself.

@Jefromi Thanks. I hadn't considered that profanity might fall under a custom flag.

I was suggesting using the custom flag for "really needs editing but for X reason I can't do it myself" - they're definitely for any situation you think needs mod attention. I wouldn't suggest it for profanity in general. (Either it's solely offensive, so you use the offensive flag, or it's bad enough to matter, and you can edit, or it's not, so no need to bother a mod.)

I'm the moderator in question, and I declined the flag. The following is taken from What are the spam and offensive flags and how do they work?:

Even if a post is a bad post for some reason or another, it is
  probably not offensive. The Offensive flag is meant to be used only in
  extreme cases, like hate speech, or abuse.
For example, if a user posts obscene images to the site, that should
  be flagged as offensive. But if someone says something bad about your
  favorite technology, that probably doesn't apply.
As a rule of thumb, if you can't justify something as being hate
  speech, or abuse, you shouldn't mark the post as offensive. Instead,
  you should down-vote the post.
When you decide to flag a post Offensive, you will get a warning
  dialog. Take this time to decide if the post is really offensive.

I think we can all agree this post doesn't merit this flag, according to the quoted definition.
Personally, I didn't find the poster's language offensive or profane at all. However, it was also unnecessary, and sensibilities vary widely across cultures. In the interests of a peaceful life for all, I removed any possibility of upset.

Also worth remembering is that if a few other users flag the same way, it'll be auto-deleted and hidden behind a click to keep people from seeing it. Personally I would avoid flagging things as offensive unless I was okay with that happening, should a few people decide to agree. This post was definitely not worth deleting.

As I understand it (I may be wrong!), flags are essentially requests for deletion. I'm assuming a single moderator did both actions and did so because the post, although it may have included profanity, was not otherwise worthy of straight up deletion.

Can you back this up? My intent was never to help the post get deleted. My intent was to improve a post that I didn't want to touch myself. I'm very surprised to find out that flags are essentially a vote to kill button.

@Rainbolt It may not be 100% true, but it's a pretty good approximation. It's generally true for other flag types too. The "not an answer" flag definitely gets things deleted (or at least converted) if a mod agrees. The "low quality" flag actually says "unlikely to be salvageable through editing". I think in general given that we can edit, the expectation is that if that's all it took we would, so if we're flagging, saying that a mod needs to get involved, something more than a quick edit must be needed.

Oh, and also: a mod deleting a post automatically marks all the flags on it helpful, so the system explicitly regards deletion as agreeing with flags.

@Rainbolt Given your situation (not wanting to edit yourself because of previous interaction), I think you did alright, although maybe marking it as "other/needs moderator attention" with a quick explanation why you're unwilling to edit yourself might have sidestepped the question.

@Jefromi Clarifying in the comments doesn't add value to this answer. But I agree with your logic.

@Rainbolt As the placeholder text in the comment box says, "Use comments to ask for clarification or add more information." Given the choice between commenting and making a large edit that the original author might or might not agree with, I'm going to comment. If Circeus wants to edit anything in, that's fine.

@Jefromi Well, Ire has a more straightforward answer but if people think explaining how flags interact would make a good answer overall, I don't mind editing it all in.


text:
Old answered questions that have not been accepted
Is there anything that can be done about old questions that have a valid answer that has not been accepted?
For example, How many Mythos cards can be played during the investigator's turns?
This question was asked back in 2011, was answered, with an appropriate reference to the rules but has not been marked as 'accepted'
Could such answers be voted on by certain members with a high enough reputation so that they become accepted?

All the "accepted" checkmark does is ensure that answer stays at the top of the list. Having it be the highest-voted does the same thing. Additionally, as long as the answer has at least one upvote, that will keep the question from landing on the "unanswered" list. It's a shame the answer disappeared, but not having the checkmark won't hurt anything.

No, there's nothing. The very same idea was requested in 2009 (Would it be possible to have a "community accepted" feature?) and declined for reasons that are still current:
The check mark is simply a feature for the asker saying which answer might help them. Our voting is a way to rate which answers are good and useful.
Even if an answer is good and useful, it might still not have actually solved the asker's issue. The best answer to their question might be a crap one, or it might look good to us, but it still hasn't solved the user's issues, or it explains it in terms incomprehensible to them (e.g. the asker is a newbie to a game, and the answer is written exclusively to experts), or etc.
We shouldn't have an expectation that an asker must accept answers. That's why the accept rate feature got removed ages ago.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Can I make a substantial content edit to an answer in these circumstances?
Here is the situation:

A user posted an answer that was correct five years ago.
The answer was accepted.
Recently, the rules changed. The answer is no longer correct.

Someone tried to edit the answer so that it would again be correct, but the edit was rolled back and the user was reprimanded for substantially changing the content of the post. A mod suggested downvoting and posting a new answer instead.
I don't think this is the best course of action. I find it unlikely that the correct answer will ever be accepted, because the question author has been absent for over seven months.
Should we make allow editors more flexibility if an accepted answer was made incorrect by a rules change, and both the question author and the answer author are inactive?

For people looking for a correct ruling (what that question is supposed to supply) they shouldn't see an incorrect answer accepted. The original answer could be have a simple strikethrough with an "Edit: rules change on MM/DD/YYYY says this now..." It'll retain the integrity of the original answer and let people see the update.

Also, I mean to strike through the incorrect portions of the answer. Not the entire answer.

@Andrew I don't agree or disagree with the strikethrough idea. I prefer to let the edit history do its job, but I also see the value of using strikethrough to give the reader a brief history lesson.

If the amount of incorrect information is very extensive, (imagine someone asking a question about how combat damage resolves pre-m10 rules), it would be obtrusive. It would probably be better to have a separate answer. But there's another problem with that. Relying on the community to upvote the correct answer means that the people visiting that question would have to know the correct one. People shouldn't visit this site, see conflicting answers, and then have to go elsewhere to figure out the right one

Personally I don't like using strikethroughs for something like this because it would be more than about a line of text and that starts getting hard to read. I am ok with things like [new reason] prior to {date} the rules worked like [old reason] in general (I don't know if that would be acceptable with this answer though.

Seems to be an debated question network wide - http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/261817/how-do-we-encourage-edits-to-obsolete-out-of-date-answers

In general, when editing another user's post, it is not OK to substantially change the meaning of that post.
The network-wide policy regarding outdated answers is that you can edit an outdated answer to update it while leaving the original content substantially intact, but it is not OK to completely rewrite an answer that you don't own.
In this particular case, the new answer is very different from the original one and the proposed edit was essentially a complete rewrite. In a situation like that, posting a separate answer is the correct course of action.

Would it be acceptable to not remove anything from the currently accepted answer and just add between the first sentence and the rules quote something like "Rule 4 removed. Decks may now generate mana of any colour.
Prior to 1/18/2016 it would still work but for a slightly different reason:" Or would that still be considered a substantial change?

I think that would be borderline allowable, but I would advise against it. That's essentially changing a post that says "The answer is X" to one that says "The answer is Y (but it used to be X)". It's changing the primary meaning of the answer, even if the original content is technically still there.

Does it really change the primary meaning of the answer? To me the primary meaning is "Yes", all that is changing is the rules that make that true. This is more changing it to be "The answer is X for reason A (it used to be for reason B)

I guess I can see that that's up for interpretation. The question is "Do I get usable mana?", so to me, the change from "Yes, and you only get colorless mana" to "Yes, and you only get colored mana, and the reason is different" seems substantial.

I think the more important question is what would we do if someone accepted an answer that was incorrect at the time it was posted? Would we go back and edit the answer into a correct one or would we post a commment, downvote and post the correct answer?
I am not sure if I see much difference between an answer that was incorrect at the time it was posted/accepted or if it was later made outdated and in need of updates.
In the end one thing that should be remembered is that over time you will have answers that where correct and now are no longer correct and trying to keep them all up to date would be crazy. In the end it is up to each person to check the dates on the questions and realize that things may have changed since then.
After all how many mechanics have been drastically changed or dropped from magic and other games since this site has launched.

I see two clear differences: 1)  the author of a correct answer would probably be much more open to the idea of having it edited to remain correct after a rules change than the author of an incorrect answer, and 2) an answer that is incorrect at the time of posting won't get many upvotes, whereas an answer that becomes incorrect might get upvotes.

@Rainbolt The point is if you won't make major edits to one type of wrong answer why would you to another? In a case like this there is nothing wrong with making a comment about the changes and posting an answer with the new information. If we start editing some answers that change over time that means we need to start hunting down every answer that can change over time and change those as well which becomes a massive job

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


text:
Why was my not constructive flag declined?
I left a comment on When do you check if you lose.

This question does not show any research effort. The first Google result for "prosperity mtg" has a ruling that says "10/4/2004 If both players run out of cards during this effect, the game is a draw." – Rainbolt Feb 14 at 21:06

The response I got was this:

I realize that now, but thanks for pointing out my stupidity and yours or lack there of, SENPAI – eric Feb 14 at 23:57

For those who may not know, referring to someone as senpai in this way is a form of sarcastic admiration. That sarcasm, plus a jab about someone's stupidity, makes up the entirety of the comment. Comments really don't get any less constructive than this.
I flagged the comment as "Not Constructive", but the flag was declined. Was raising a flag the wrong thing to do? Did I raise the wrong type of flag (something I've been known to do in the past)?

I think you were right in raising a flag on that comment, but you should have went with "rude or offensive" instead of "not constructive". I think a rude or offensive comment is worse for the site than a non-constructive comment. So if you took offense, I think it would be more appropriate to use that flag instead. Being rude is never constructive, so "rude or offensive" is actually more specific than "not constructive". I mean, assuming that you took offense.
On a side note... I don't mean to start an argument about who started it, but your own comment probably also came off as rude. I mean, lmgtfy on a new user seems really inappropriate.

This does not answer the question, but it might if you add an explanation as to why I should have used a different type of flag. Regarding the second paragraph, posting links to Google along with a constructive argument is considered acceptable. The real problem with my comment is that it was not phrased in the nicest way possible - something I have taken note of and will attempt to improve.

@Rainbolt I answered your first question, "was raising a flag the right thing to do?" Yes it was. I first speculated about how the mod might have looked at the whole comment discussion instead of just the one you flagged, but since that's speculation I left that out. Would like to hear that from the mod in question.

Okay, thanks for expanding your answer to include an explanation. I wasn't offended by the comment - I flag comments like these so that future readers don't have to parse through a bunch of useless information to find what they are looking for. My comment helps readers find the answer. The other comment does not. I hope mods recognize the difference between the two comments, and react with more granularity than "Keep all the comments." or "Nuke all the comments."


text:
Should answers link to their sources?
A comment discussion recently started on this answer about whether answers should link to their sources. In case the comments get deleted, here is a summary:

Bob: Links to citations please.
  Joe: Nobody else does, so I don't need to. Plus, any links to the rules will quickly be outdated.

We cite rules often on Board and Card Games. Rarely do we mention the source1, and even more rarely do we link to that source. Some would say that this is acceptable because we all know that it came from the comprehensive rules.
Remember, a large portion of the people who see our content are not registered users. They do not know how we do things here. Please make sure that your answer considers Magic: the Gathering answers and the unusually common references to the comprehensive rules.
1. Speaking from experience with mostly Magic: the Gathering questions, but there is something to be said here for all games that have rules.

@Jefromi Since I took your suggestion, I'm going to delete my comments now. If you have any other concerns, let me know.

I'm a little concerned about the fact that I had to make the same point in so many different ways before you ultimately concluded that only half of the last version of it was fair. But the question is fine, yes.

@Jefromi Just to be clear, your first comment was a bunch of questions, and every single one of them was a subset of mine. It wasn't until many comments later that I discovered that you wanted me to tack on a reminder so that answers don't accidentally miss something. I'm not usually in the habit of reminding people to write good answers, so forgive me for not understanding what you were trying to accomplish. I usually focus on writing a good question, and I just let the voters decide what a good answer is.

Part of writing a good question is making sure that people writing answers understand what they need to address. When someone starts asking questions and pointing out things that should be part of answers, it's a good bet that there's something you want to add to your question to make sure you get those good answers.

@Jefromi Your comment actually asked a question. When people ask me a question, I assume they want me to answer it. You should have just suggested that I add your question to my question, as you finally did (four comments later).

Yes...
...in general, when possible, when it adds something to the answer, when something significant is taken from a source.
Keep in mind, the really important thing is citing the source, making it clear where the information came from. Linking to it is an additional helpful thing to do in many cases. For example:

a link to a forum thread containing a response from the game designer is pretty much required. It's unique, and might be hard to find otherwise.
a link to the Arkham Horror FAQ is good. It's not obvious that it exists if all you have is the game. Similarly, if you're citing the errata from the Dunwich Horror rules, it's good link to them. Readers might only have the base game.
a link to the Arkham Horror rules is nice, but optional. I'd generally do it, because it's easy, and it might save someone the time of getting the rules out of the box to see. But if it's missing, it's not a huge deal; the OP does have a copy of the rules with the game, and they have Google to find them online if they want.
If you only used the rules incidentally, and most of the answer is about something else, don't worry about it.
If you can't find the rules online at all, don't worry about it.

As for Magic, I don't think it's really worth it to make any kind of policy. It's similar to the "nice, but optional" case in the list above. True, the rules are only available online, but that generally means that people already know how to find them, especially the kind of people actually interested in reading the comprehensive rules.
It's incredibly rare that someone asks for a source; most people are happy to either read what's quoted in the answer or use Google to find more. If someone really can't figure it out, they can ask a question. (That has happened, once.) So the potential upside is pretty low, not enough to warrant spending our time editing links into answers or commenting asking everyone to include them.
It's also a case of diminishing returns. If even 1/10 of the answers to Magic questions have a link to the rules, the odds are pretty low that anyone hasn't seen one yet. The more links there are, the less important it is that we bother adding them to more answers.
So, sure, link if you like. It certainly doesn't hurt. But I definitely don't want to see anyone getting badgered to include links.

I think that, in general, people should link to sources when quoting game rules if possible. However, I also think that Magic: the Gathering is a special case, though it is not necessarily unique
I think that answers that quote the Comprehensive Rules should not be required to link to those rules, as long as they say that they are quoting them and give the exact rule number that they are quoting. It's interesting that you mention MLA citations, because Comprehensive Rules references can be very similar The name "Comprehensive Rules" is like an author/title combination in an MLA citation, and the specific section reference (like "302.6") is like the page number reference in an MLA inline citation. Together, those are sufficient for anyone to find the quoted text themselves and verify it. And that, I think, is what's important: that anyone reading the answer can easily verify the quotation.
While I say that answer authors should not be required to give a link to the Comprehensive Rules, I also think that such a link is never detrimental to an answer, and that it would always be appropriate to edit such a link into the answer.
I think that how much that applies to any other game depends on how discoverible that game's rules are online. The MTG comprehensive rules are easy to find with the obvious Google search. If a game's rules are difficult to find, then it would be more valuable to provide a link, so that verifying a quotation does not require an inordinate amount of work. And if the game rules are not available online at all, then obviously a reference to a paper manual is all an answer can be reasonably expected to provide.

Links are not necessary, but answers should generally mention the name of their sources, so that less knowledgeable users can search for it. As some rules are only available in paper form, simply mentioning the name of the document it came from should be acceptable. I'm not saying that we need MLA or APA style citations on every post, but there should be some indication of where the quote came from.
Magic is no exception. If a comprehensive rule is quoted, then the author should state that it came from the Comprehensive Rules. For example:

Rule 46.1b from the Comprehensive Rules tells us that:

Foo fah fie [...]

Finally, if a user specifically asks for a link for a citation, that probably means that they can't find it. We should always be willing to help these users.


text:
Moderator wipes out comments (except for his)
I wasn't going to post this, but then it happened a second time over the span of two or three days. We have a moderator who keeps wiping out comments that he disagrees with. Two examples:

Yes, pile shuffling is slow play

Moderator makes a comment
Author makes a rebuttal
Some back and forth occurs between moderator and user
Moderator wipes away the comments except for his original(screenshot)
Moderator directs further comments to meta
I question the deletion of the comments
My comment gets deleted
Author makes the exact same rebuttal
Moderator deletes the entire answer

What is the Infinite Squirrel deck?

Community closes the question
Moderator makes a huge edit
Moderator reopens the question
Moderator wipes away the comments

Some of these comments explained why the question was closed

I do not have an issue with mods voting on questions. That is perfectly fine. It's not like they can turn off their mod powers and then cast their vote (I think).
I do not have an issue with mods deleting comments that are abusive, obsolete, not constructive, or otherwise worthy of being deleted.
I do have an issue with mods wiping away the comments they disagree with. Can we not do that?

Your second sentence has a false assumption.

@PatLudwig I didn't say you wipe out comments because you disagree with them. Please read the sentence again.

You are correct.  I move fast and in attempting to explain myself I made a slight parsing error, however I'm not one to spend time debating precise wording. I'll alter my first comment to retain the truth I was attempting to relate.

@Rainbolt I think it's best to cut to the heart of the issue: do you claim that Pat chooses which comments to delete based in part on whether he agrees with them? Or are you merely claiming that he deletes comments, and that comments he disagrees with sometimes happen to be among those deleted? In the former case, you should come right out and say so. In the latter case, the issue of agreeing with comments is irrelevant, and I would suggest editing out the mention of disagreement so that it's clear what issue you really do want to address.

@DavidZ He deleted comments. Among those comments were comments he disagreed with. In one case, the only comment left standing was his own (and it wasn't one of those "I just deleted these comments - take your issues elsewhere" types of comments). I can't prove that he is deleting comments because he disagrees with them. Two cases certainly does not a pattern make. I didn't lie - I just presented the facts and hinted at how I interpreted them. Interpret them how you will rather than asking me to interpret it for you or remove it entirely.

The fact of the matter is that you can't see the comments that were deleted and so it is necessary for me to point out that the content of said comments contained information that disagree with Pat. If I had just posted "Our mod is deleting comments." then the vast majority of people would respond, "Ok, who cares?" Heck, I would too.

@Rainbolt I didn't ask if you can prove anything, I'm asking if you are claiming (or in other words, you think) that he deletes comments because he disagrees with them. Also let me reiterate that the truth of anything you say in your post is not in question; I never accused you of lying. This is about improving the clarity of your meta question.

@DavidZ I very clearly stated in my first comment that I am not claiming it. I do think it. We can argue linguistics all day if you want, but you understand the post and I know you do. Make a suggestion for improving the post, make an edit yourself, ask a question that has not been asked already, write an answer, or move on.

@DavidZ I think what Rainbolt is trying to say (and what I want to say either way) is that whatever Pat's intentions were, the end result was that, from the comment thread he deleted, he left his own comment intact but deleted the rebuttal to that comment. And no matter why he did that, it looks bad, and I think it was inappropriate.

To be fair, murgatroid99 was the author of that question and might be biased. I've had a rather snarky disagreement with Pat on meta in the past and I might be biased. If the rest of the community doesn't think it's an issue at all, then great. I'll get over it, and I'm sure murg will too.

Imagine if Pat erased this comment thread but left his original comment, "Your second sentence has a false asumption.", totally intact. I'd be infuriated by that. Is everyone else cool with that?

I don't think this is exactly analogous, but yeah, I'd be cool with that. It'd be inconvenient, sure, because then we'd have to restart the whole comment discussion from the beginning, but "infuriated" seems like a significant overreaction. @murgatroid99 not to say it couldn't have been handled better, but I don't think it was really inappropriate, for basically the reason Jefromi gives in his answer.

@Rainbolt (5 comments up) your first comment clearly stated that you're not saying Pat deletes comments because he disagrees with them, but it wasn't clear whether you wanted to imply it. I'm going to go with your later statement that you're not making this claim, and edit accordingly, per your suggestion. (And no, you do not know that I understand the post. I don't appreciate it when people claim to know better than I do what I am thinking.)

@DavidZ Your suggested edit outright stated that I have an issue with moderators wiping away comments and leaving their own. That is patently false, so I rolled it back.  I see now that you don't want to understand me, so I suggest you just leave the question alone.

@Rainbolt I'm confused now. 7 comments up you explicitly said that you are not claiming that your problem is with moderators deleting comments they disagree with. The only other issue I can identify in your question is that moderators delete comments, but not all comments, while leaving their own comments. Hence my edit. So if it's neither of those you want to ask about, what is it?

@DavidZ I said no such thing. And I definitely didn't say it explicitly. Do you know what explicitly even means? All this tells me is that you are trying extremely hard to not understand me.

@Rainbolt your apparent attempt to insult my intelligence is not helping anything, but anyway... "I very clearly stated in my first comment that I am not claiming it" referring to "I didn't say you wipe out comments because you disagree with them." Would you care to explain how that is not an explicit statement that you are not claiming that your problem is with moderators - or at least this moderator - deleting comments they disagree with? (And again, I don't appreciate it when other people think they know better than I do what I'm trying to do.) BTW we can take this to [chat].

@DavidZ Do you see the difference between "Foo wiped out Bar." and "Foo wiped out Bar because it was Bar."? I bolded the part that you appear to be having trouble reading.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

tl;dr It's okay for moderators to wipe away comments and leave a conclusion (which they provide) and defer further discussion to meta. Often this will include comments they disagree with (and ones they agree with), and that's fine.

One of the recurring tasks for moderators is the need to clean up a huge chaotic discussion and leave behind a single conclusion. That is, moderators at some point have to make a decision and act; it can't always be discussed to death/consensus, especially not outside of meta.
There are of course gray areas sometimes. When the conclusion isn't entirely clear, moderators still have to pick one, at least for now. It can be further discussed later on meta, and decisions can be changed, but there's not always the luxury of leaving things there, starting a meta thread, waiting for a conclusion, and then going back - by that time you've left a mess in place for days. And it's also not moderators' job to start a meta post for every disagreement in which they're forced to intervene; that's something the rest of us can do too.
So I think broadly the right thing happened here: the comments disappeared, a possibly reasonable conclusion was posted, and there's even a "discuss further on meta" comment. We can debate about whether the conclusion was the right one in this case (in yet another meta question!) if we like, but I'm not too worried about what happened here. The absolute worst case is a moderator made an error in judgment about an honestly not that critical issue.
The sole issue I see here is that there's no short "here's roughly what was deleted and/or why" comment. I do think those are often a good idea, and would've helped a bit in these cases. That said, I don't think we should assume bad faith on the part of moderators: if they delete a discussion that we're all fully aware was too large (should've been on meta) and possibly less civil than ideal, and leave some sort of summary comment and a suggestion to discuss on meta, we can all read between the lines.
Remember, comments are temporary "post-it" notes. If we want a discussion to stay on the site permanently, we should move it to meta as soon as it becomes clear it won't be a simple, short back-and-forth. If we instead have a giant meta discussion in comments, we shouldn't be surprised if it gets wiped away, regardless of whether we happen to share the opinion of the moderator who leaves behind a "here's the deal for now" comment.

Hang on a second. The comment that remained in this case was not a "I deleted these comments because Foo. Please take your discussion elsewhere." kind of comment. That one came later, and was posted in addition to the comment that was left behind. I understand what you are saying, but I don't know if you understand the situation fully. Just take a look at the screenshot in the question and you'll see that there are two comments (the one I'm talking about, and the one you're answer was written about).

In the other case, the moderator reopened a question (which is a statement in and of itself) and wiped the comments about closing it. So in both cases, the statement left behind was not that of an explanatory "I deleted your comments." kind.

@Rainbolt Okay, well, so we can say "please leave a comment explaining deletion" - I agree with doing that in most cases. I'll edit that into my answer. But I stand by the rest as a response to your "wipes out comments except his" question. I think often it is appropriate and correct for a moderator to wipe out all comments, leaving only one of their own.

You are missing the point. I have said repeatedly now, leaving one mod comment of a certain genre is totally fine. Your response misses it entirely, and you can blame me for being unclear if you like, but you and I both know what kind of comment it was that got left behind, and it wasn't the type your answer addresses.

@Rainbolt I'm not missing the point. There's more than one kind of statement to leave in cases like this: there's the "this discussion was insane, deleting, discuss on meta" and there's the "here's the decision for now (can be potentially changed via meta, etc)". I'm saying that moderators are fully justified in doing both. The comments left behind in these cases are the latter, with the former left implicit. Yes, the former could've been explicit instead. But nonetheless, I think Pat's actions here were fine.

To be blunt: when a moderator cleans away everything and leaves behind a tombstone and/or a decision (possibly to be changed via meta), by definition they will have deleted comments they disagreed with and left one of their own. That's part of their job. We can't just tell them not to do it. We can discuss things on meta and avoid the need to have all those comments deleted in the first place. We're the ones who created the situation where comments needed to be deleted. Let's not blame the moderators for it.

Pat created the situation that sparked a comment war. He threatened to delete murg's answer in a comment, and the threat was totally unwarranted. You're saying we should bring our questions to meta? It's already been to meta! It has +42 votes. Our community probably can't even hit 42 unique visitors on meta in an entire week. Why should we rehash this? A simple "Hey Pat, here's a post that says I can do this." should suffice. All he's doing is deflecting anyone that disagrees with him.

@Rainbolt I don't think it's quite as simple as "this old meta question resolves it"; this isn't quite the same "two different solutions to one problem" people were thinking of in that question six years ago, with only SO in mind. It's certainly justified for mods to ask people to consolidate answers (or do it themselves via edit + delete) when they are confident it's not a case that justifies multiple answers; I don't remember the comment you mention, but if it was that sort of thing, I don't think I'd construe it as a threat to delete, but rather again a moderator trying to do their job.

@Rainbolt if you're going to appeal to [meta.SE] on the question of whether a person can post multiple answers to a question, you should also see what that site has to say about the appropriateness of poll answers. Though this is getting a bit off topic; I don't think this is the place to discuss whether those answers were appropriate. It'd be a matter for another meta question or perhaps for [chat].

I'm the moderator in question.  You can use my name, it's totally OK!  It sounds like you disagree with my style of moderation.  That's cool too.  I've been pretty consistent over the last four years, but have been known to learn new tricks.  I haven't been as active over the last few months, but I'm here now.
What do I do around here?  Primarily respond to flags and take the action that I think is necessary.  We don't get a ton of flags here compared to other sites, but there are enough to form patterns.
What the types of flags I deal with?

New users generate flags.  Mostly very short answers or substandard questions
Disagreeable comments.  There have been a rash of these lately.  If you saying something that is in the least bit negative about another person, someone will flag it, and I will likely delete it.  Please make your points in a positive way, or not at all.  Most of these seem to start by wanting to improve a question or answer.  That is awesome, but in many cases, people ... keep ... going...  I'm totally on board with the original poster becoming frustrated right around the third "helpful suggestion".  Soon after that, tempers fray, things are said, flags are raised, nobody looks good.
Too many comments - The system flags any post that gets 20+ comments.  This happens a lot around here.  Take that for what it is and know that a moderator will show up and likely prune any long comment thread.  If you need to have a long discussion, feel free to take it to chat.

The bottom line, when a flag goes off, I'm probably going to annoy someone with the action I take (even if I take none...which happens a bunch too).  If you don't want moderation, avoid the situations mentioned above when possible.
What can you do to help?
If you have high rep, please spend some time in the review queue if you're able.
Other than that, if you see a problem, fix it. If you think a question can be improved, edit it instead of commenting. If the poster reverts your change, just walk away, leave a comment if you think the error is egregious.  You do not have to "win" every time you disagree with someone.
If you have an answer to a question, post an answer not a comment. Even if its just part of an answer.  Answers are not likely to be voted down unless they are factually wrong.  Put it out there, that gives other people a dedicated place to comment on your ideas rather than you hijacking the original posters comment thread.  Nobody wants to try to wallow through a long comment thread that is really three different conversations interweaved with each other.
Thanks for listening!

Why was this specific comment left alone while the author's response was deleted? I didn't find his response to be negative. He was defending the very existence of his post (which you threw into question) by linking to meta. Seems like the reasonable thing to do would be to either a) delete the entire back and forth between the two of you, including your original comment or b) leave it alone. You chose possibly the only bad option.


text:
Delete the "reference" meta tag
There are four questions on main with the reference tag:

Where can I find D4 dice that are truncated tetrahedrons?
Where can I find a chart or diagram explaining Magic's turn structure?
Where can I find the rules for 7 Wonders and its expansions?
Where can I find the most reliable information on upcoming boardgame releases?

The tag is clearly a meta tag. It doesn't describe what the questions are about. It basically says "The information contained within can be used as a reference." Well, everything on the entire main site could be used as a reference.
Should we get rid of this tag? I understand that the last question would need to be retagged. I propose something to do with board game releases. That's what the question is about.
Note that I did just retitle three of the four questions.

Yes
We should get rid of the reference tag because it is a meta tag. Three of the four questions that use it simply do not need it. The last can be retagged with something more relevant (such as releases).

This answer has a triggered ability: When this answer reaches +3, if no dissenting answer exists, the plan shall be carried out.


text:
Conflicting meta posts concerning game recommendations
I'm a little bit confused by the close vote reason "Questions about Game Recommendations are off topic".
This meta post says they are On Topic. It has a score of +20:

Should we allow game recommendations? (Answer - YES, but...read on!)

This meta post says they are Off Topic. It's the one that is referenced in the Close Vote Reason, so I assume it reflects the current policy. It has a measly score of +6:

Help transform recommendations questions, desirable?

Can we clean up meta so that the older, far more popular posts don't cast a shadow on the current policy? This could easily be done by editing the older post, or by deleting it entirely (except I'm sure that someone will attach a misplaced historical significance to it). If they are on topic, then can we clean up our close vote reasons?

Note that we also have http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/656/should-we-ban-game-recommendation-questions-done asked by the same person as the first question you linked, two years later. We also have http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/663/game-recommendation-questions-are-banned from the same person.

@murgatroid99 Wow, I don't think I titled this right. Where on earth did "questions about merchandise" come from? Sorry if that was confusing.

Oh, I wasn't confused. I was just pointing out that questions after the first one you linked to very clearly show that recommendation questions are off topic.

@murgatroid99 Ok, that's good (because I voted to close one today). I don't really care, but I think it would be cleaner to bury the old one.

The second question I linked is tagged [meta-tag:faq], and is therefore official. The site FAQ is also official. A random 4 year old question that nobody references is not official.

@murgatoid99 There are two parts to this question: 1) What is the current policy? and 2) Should we take action to make the current policy clearer? I understand that #1 is a duplicate, but #2 has not been brought up or addressed before.

The policy is very clear. The FAQ says game recommendation questions are not allowed. The answer linked to by the FAQ says that they are not allowed. The only relevant question in the [meta-tag:faq] tag says that they are not allowed. The fact that a 4-year-old discussion question expresses the opposite opinion does not invalidate that.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Close Should we allow game recommendations [...] as a duplicate of Game Recommendation questions are banned.
Anyone reading the first post could potentially be misled into believing that Game Recommendations are on topic. Closing it as a duplicate preserves its content while also directing users to the newer, updated policy. Everyone wins.
My vote has been cast (and has since expired).


text:
Moving the answer from the question to the answer
Sometimes people ask questions like this:

Here is how I think it works. Here is the rule that says it works this way. Is my understanding correct?

When I answer questions like these, the only original part I get to add is:

Yes, your understanding is absolutely perfect for all the reasons you described. Here's an exceptional situation that almost never happens but might be relevant. Here's an example that's exactly like the one you already described in your question.

I want to strip the question down, moving the rules and the explanation to an answer. I'm not advocating for everyone to start aggressively picking questions apart. I'm just wondering if it's poor practice for me to do this.
Real examples
This question:

Does the attack or defender decide the order of damage assignment to blockers?

If it were up to me, I would move the rules quote to an answer and change "Is this accurate?" into a real question (like the title). While I wait for feedback, I've compromised with little (CR 123.4) notations in the answer. But I'd rather just have the rule. The answer would then be complete and self-contained, and the question would just be a question.
A completed example:

Template For Challenges

Look at the revision history. I wrote the original question with an answer in the question itself, and the community improved it by relocating the answer. This is exactly the behavior I want to imitate.
Would the community consider this poor practice? Overly aggressive? A step towards improving clarity?

Funny, I was just reading this recent question about MTG: Can Skullcrack's damage be prevented? and was wondering why the question was asked in the first place.
The question starts with a rules citation which answers the question. So where is the ambiguity? Exactly what is being asked here? I think this is an example of a poor quality question. Should we then take the rules citation out and put it in an answer?
My first reaction would be no, if we do that it encourages simple questions about how specific cards work. The damage prevention question didn't even seem ambiguous enough to warrant a Ruling entry on gatherer.wizards.com.
My second reaction was well, why was this person unsure about their interpretation in the first place? Maybe it's useful to dig into that. If the person who posed the question explained why they were unsure about their interpretation of the rule, maybe it would be useful. If all that could be said in an answer was essentially "Yep, you got it right." how is it a good question?
I think that in general, moving the answer out of the question (Am I right?) is good practice, especially if the question is then improved because it's not "polluted" and can be formulated more precisely. Ultimately, if the possible confusion can be explained (as the confusing "blocking order" terminology was explained in your example) then I think it's a good question. If it's simply regurgitating a rule without explaining what needs clarification, (as in the question I linked above) then it's a question that should probably be flagged unclear what you're asking.

Downvoting a question that you think is poor is fine, but since when do we flag for deletion just because we think it is a poor question?

@bwarner Sorry, mistake in my terminology. I meant "put on hold." In that particular case the reason would be unclear what you're asking. I'll change it. Also note, if a question is so poor or trivial that it can't be improved and is of very low quality, we certainly can and should delete them.


text:
Why is logic treated so harshly?
In most board games, the default assumption is

You cannot do something unless the rules say you can.

That might seem obvious, but in another universe the default assumption could be

You can do something unless the rules say you can't.

When I tried to explain this in an answer, it received negative attention. I intended to explain, but perhaps did not communicate well, that if the rules do not allow you can continue playing, you cannot continue playing.
This approach to answering "Can I [...]?" questions places the onus back on the asker to find a rule that allows it. The alternative would be to actually prove that no rule allows it. Proving that no relevant rule exists would be like attempting to prove that Russell's teapot does not exist, but on a smaller scale.
One of the commenters believed that shifting the burden of proof to the asker was equivalent to not addressing the question at all. That is not true. Answering the question and proving that your answer is correct are two different things. I did answer the question.
I understand that my answer stood next to another that quoted the official FAQ. However, FAQs are simply a collection of questions that are frequently asked. The FAQ didn't even mention why the answer was correct. I decided that "Because the FAQ says so." wasn't good enough, and wanted to post a more logical answer alongside it. "Because the FAQ says so." is simply a false pretense of proof.
Why did it receive such negative attention? Was the answer logically flawed? Could I improve the wording such that it may be better received next time I use this approach?
Note: If a rule did exist which stated that you cannot do something, that would clearly be preferable. I only want to discuss the case where there is no such rule.

For what it's worth, I'm not sure that your title is the most constructive question to ask. The real question is why your answer got downvotes, and why people seemed to have a problem with it. I wouldn't assume that those things happened because your answer contained logic.

@Jefromi This is why I hate linking to actual examples. People spend seven paragraphs talking about the specific example, and pay almost no attention to the concept. I only want to know if some questions are better answered by shifting the burden of proof back to the author. Murgtroid99 believes that every question has an answer straight out of the rulebook. I disagree with his answer, but at least half of his answer directly addresses the question.

My answer (and murgatroid99's) are trying to say that the reason you saw a negative reaction was details of the specific example. In general, logic is not treated harshly. You yourself asked in the body of your question "Why did it receive such negative attention? Was the answer logically flawed? Could I improve the wording such that it may be better received next time I use this approach?" and our answers attempted to address this. There's no point in trying to address the concept of "why is logic treated so harshly" - it isn't.

One thing to remember is that rule books would be much longer and harder to deal with if they had to include every edge case of what you can and can't do.

@JoeW Agreed. Which is why rulebooks generally state what you can do, and assume that you can't do everything else. It's almost as though your comment was the point of my entire post.

@JoeW I think everyone here agrees about that. The issue is why Rainbolt's post received negative attention, which likely has to do with the actual content of the answer, which was fairly different from your statement.

I don't think this has anything to do with logic. The original answer is one of the most smug, implicitly self-congratulatory posts I've read on SE. Walking the OP through axiomatic set theory (or whatever) is worse than worthless; just say what the rule/ruling is, slap a link to the rulebook up there, and call it a day FFS!

@TheChaz2.0 I don't think that pointing to an absence of rules is "self-congratulatory". I just don't know how else to explain that "What you are trying to do is not covered by rules." and that anything not covered by the rules is inherently illegal. Another user did find a relevant rule after the fact. When I answered, Phil Summers had not yet posted his finding, and I found the FAQ quote to be unconvincing. It basically said that "It works this way because the FAQ interpreted it that way."

"... is not covered by the rules" - except you are making a ruling, using some cobbled-together syllogisms (and condescending tone of voice). I appreciate the robotic approach as much as the next math hobbyist, but that just doesn't fly with most people.

@TheChaz2.0 Are you suggesting that "say what the rule/ruling is, slap a link to the rulebook up there, and call it a day" is less robotic? When someone asks a trivial question about Magic, what drives someone to write an answer that math hobbyists find interesting? I'm not sure where you found the "condescending tone of voice". I was careful to avoid saying anything negative about the question or its author. If arriving at an obvious conclusion is an inherently negative act, then I suppose I was being condescending.

I'll start with the current/final form of the answer. I know the longer argument has been removed, but I'm not sure whether you got your downvotes on this form or the old one.
I think that it's not necessarily logic that's being treated harshly here. It does also matter how you say things. Although I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, your answer in its final form might come across to some people as being a bit derisive: it sounds like you're saying to the OP, "you're just making up rules". Perhaps you could present your proof without saying "made up rules" - for example, you could say "there is nothing in the rules about having to announce your score."
Beyond that, I think that you haven't necessarily presented the argument itself in the most convincing way. You've just asserted that this isn't in the rules. You've left it as an exercise to the reader to go through the rules and make sure that the rules really don't say anything about this. You could instead just quote the most relevant passage of the rules:

If you have 10 or more victory points during your turn
  the game ends and you are the winner! If you reach 10 points
  when it is not your turn, the game continues until any player
  (including you) has 10 points on his turn.

and then point out that it doesn't say anything about revealing, simply that you must have the rules. You could also consider quoting the section about Victory Point Cards, though admittedly it says "You may only reveal them...to win the game" and is not really clear that you must do so.
In any case, it doesn't make as much sense to readers if you instead present a logical argument about made-up rules that appears very isolated from the rules.

As for the original form of the answer, I think that your attempt at a logical proof unfortunately was unnecessary and confused the point. Keep in mind, the OP's question boils down to "I know I win at 10 points. Is that 10 points including things that are in my secret hand, or do I not actually have those points until I show them to people?"
In your answer's original phrasing, you used as one of your assumptions "You have ten points", and interpreted the rules to say that you have the points whether or not you've revealed them. ("Assumption 1 is simply true. You have 10 points. This is an observable fact.") That interpretation is the core answer to the OP's question. Once you make that point, you don't really need to prove that it results in winning and ending the game; everyone was fully aware that the game ends when someone reaches 10 points.
As a side note, there was no need to formulate the proof as a proof by contradiction. You danced around it, but you essentially said that assumption 1 (you have ten points) plus assumption 3 (if you have ten points you win) plus assumption 4 (the game ends when someone wins) implies that the game has ended (assumption 2). Nice, simple, direct logic.

Let's be clear: you made two different transformations to my proof. 1) You inlined the entire proof. 2) You wrote a direct proof rather than a proof by contradiction. Number 1 saved you a ton of lines. Number 2 saved you one line at best. Anyone can write a summary and say "Look how short I made your entire argument!" Literally the only difference between a direct proof and a proof by contradiction is "Assume true. Arrive at trainwreck, so assumption must be false." and "Assume false. Arrive at logical." My choice of proof had little to do with the clarity of the answer.

@Rainbolt I'm sorry, but I disagree. "A implies B; A, therefore B" is far clearer than "A implies B; A, assume not B, but B is true, contradiction, therefore B". In any case, I did call that a side note. The main point is that what you proved wasn't the core thing that needed to be answered (is revealing optional/are secret points still points).

Re: "is revealing optional" I'd argue that no rule forces you to reveal, and that an omnipotent arbitrator could simply declare that you won without revealing. My answer attempts to disassociate winning and revealing. In other words, winning does not depend upon revealing. The two are totally unrelated as far as that question is concerned.

@Rainbolt The way you've phrased things is another way of saying "revealing isn't optional": you're saying that you win whether or not you reveal, i.e. you do not have the option of not revealing. Your proof states/assumes this to be true by making "you have ten points (and therefore win)" equivalent to "you have ten points, some of which are/were secret (and therefore win)" - and that's the core of the answer, not the proof that this subsequently causes you to win the game.

"You have ten points, some of which are/were secret (and therefore win (and therefore the game ends))" The first part in bold is totally irrelevant. The second part in bold was a glaring omission. The reason that the first part is totally irrelevant is that the game has already ended, you won, and you got 10 points. Would revealing change any of that? No. You know as well as I do that author's don't always ask the question that needs answering.

@Rainbolt The fact that the first part in bold is irrelevant is part of your answer. The OP didn't know whether it was; they thought that possibly the fact that they were secret meant that you didn't win until you actually revealed them, and thus he could possibly wait to win. Saying that it's irrelevant (and explaining why) is an answer to the question.

That's the issue: I can't explain why it is irrelevant. The burden is on you to explain why it is relevant. And until you do, the default assumption should be that it isn't. I feel like a broken record. You need to read about absence of evidence. You simply can't use absence of evidence to demonstrate that evidence does not exist altogether. To explicitly write "revealing is irrelevant" in my answer would be a lie (and I'm a little sad that I slipped in my comment). I can only write "Nothing shows that it is relevant, so it probably isn't."

@Rainbolt So your answer should say something along those lines ("Because there's nothing in the rules that says X matters, it doesn't matter."), and indeed the final form of your answer does! Awesome. I'm just saying that the proof didn't add anything to that; if anything it confused the issue, and that's what garnered some negative reaction. But the final form is reasonable; it says what needs to be said. I think maybe you could've said it better (see the first half of my answer here) but it does say it.

The primary flaw in your premise is that you seem to assume that a game rulebook is primarily a list of things that players are allowed to do, which implies that demonstrating that a player is not allowed to do something can require enumerating the rules. However, rule books are primarily definitional. If we look at the Magic: the Gathering rulebook (which I have the experience), the first five major headings define the parts of the game. The first one defines the fundamental concepts, and the next four give more detailed definitions for some of those concepts. Because these rules are definitions, they enumerate what relevant actions a player can take, and the player cannot take other actions by definition. If someone asks "Can I do X when I have priority?" the response is "Rule 116 defines priority. You can only do the things it lists." If they ask "Can I choose purple as a color for some effect?" you don't need to scour the rulebook to find a rule that allows it, you just need to quote the definition of color in rule 105.
There are a couple of issues here. First, the fact that your question was downvoted. For that, we have to consider the revision history, since people were voting before you edited to your current version. If we look at the original version of your answer, you had this "proof by contradiction" that had these assumptions:

You have 10 points.
The game has not ended yet.
You win when you have 10 points.

This assumption is taken directly from the rules.

The game ends when a player wins.

This assumption is taken directly from the rules.

The problem I see here is that according to the arguments you used, the rules quoted in points 3 and 4 (or even just point 3) are sufficient to conclude that if a player has 10 points, then the game is over. In other words, your argument is logically equivalent to ""According to [rule from point 3] and [rule from point 4], the game ends when any player has 10 points." Unless I am missing something major, that conclusion is also the conclusion of your answer. Everything besides those two rules is unnecessary to the argument and just makes it more convoluted. The strategy of using "proof by contradiction" was completely unnecessary and made the logic harder to follow.
I just want to make this clear: the argument you originally gave was bad because it had an unnecessary step (contradicting a made-up premise) and, for the conclusion you seemed to be "proving", two or three unnecessary premises.
The second issue is the more general one of people asking for rulings that may not exist. The fact that I mostly answer MTG questions probably biases my view of this, but in my experience the rules don't just allow you to do some things or disallow you from doing some things; they specify exactly what players can do. The point is that every situation should have a definitive ruling from the rules, and as I said in my previous paragraph, that seems to be the case for this question.
As a final note about FAQs: rules in games are not like rules in math or science, which must be discovered and/or proven. They are true because they are the rules of the game. Any official rulings therefore come from the highest possible authority and are therefore as true as the rules themselves.

The only way to write a proof by contradiction is to start with a premise that, upon failure to prove, will result in it's opposite being true. So I made one up. Are you saying that every proof by contradiction should start with something that isn't made up? If so, why do you think that?

Re: "they specify exactly what players can do" That's exactly what I said. Your fourth paragraph implies that our views differ on this topic, but they do not. What part of my meta question led you to believe that we do not agree on this issue?

Re first comment: I see that I did not explain myself clearly. What I was trying to say with my second paragraph was that proof by contradiction as a proof method was unnecessary. The argument you present in your original revision is logically equivalent to "According to [rule from point 3] and [rule from point 4], the game ends when any player has 10 points."

(Sorry for so many separate comments - the answer is kind of long.) Re: "Everything besides those two rules is unnecessary to the argument and just makes it more convoluted." The problem with the proof was that point 4 isn't actually written in the rules. I didn't like the fact that my proof relied on an assumption that I pulled out of thin air, so I removed it. It was a reasonable assumption, but it wasn't as set in stone as I wanted it to be. Also, a moderator found the entire proof to be overkill.

Re second comment: You say in the question "Proving that no relevant rule exists would be like attempting to prove that Russell's teapot does not exist, but on a smaller scale." I said in paragraph 4, last sentence, that "every situation should have a definitive ruling from the rules." If my statement is true, then there are no situations where "no relevant rule exists."

Having now explained yourself more clearly in the comments, can you edit your answer? Make it clear that issue #2 is not with the assumption or the conclusion that were made, but with the form of proof used.

Re third comment: I hope you can understand how quoting a rule that doesn't actually exist might be confusing. And you continued saying that it was from the rules through all revisions until you deleted your argument entirely. If you're looking for an answer to "was the answer logically flawed?" look no further than "one of the premises was made up."

Re fourth comment: I added a couple of sentences to try to clarify that.

That's just it. Your statement isn't true. "Every situation should have a definitive ruling from the rules" is a false statement, unless "the entire rulebook" counts as a definitive ruling. The rulings cover everything that you can do. What you can't do is a negative of that. Therefore, quoting a relevant rule for something you can't do would require quoting the entire rulebook. The exception is when a rule is written that explicitly states that you can't do something, but in this case, there was no such rule.

OK, if you think my statement isn't true, I don't understand "Your fourth paragraph implies that our views differ on this topic, but they do not." And I still disagree with your statement. MTG, for example, has a list (spread across a few rules) of everything you can do when you have priority. If someone asks "can I do X when I have priority?" the question is always answerable without "quoting the entire rulebook." Similarly with questions like "can I draw at the end of my turn?" or "can I cast spells while others are resolving?" There is always a definitive answer from the rules.

I was mistaken. "The game ends when a player wins" is in fact taken directly from the rulebook. I still find it unclear, even after your edit, that your issue in paragraph two is specifically with the chosen proof method. You appear to take issue with "everything besides those two points". That sort of broad issue is not something I can possibly address.

@murgtroid99 PERFECT! I needed a great example like that. "Can I do X when I have priority?" Assuming that the answer is "No.", what rule would you quote? Every single rule regarding priority?

But that is the point. You could reduce your entire argument to the sentence I put in quotation marks, and it would have exactly the same logical conclusion. Everything else--the made up rule, the proof by contradiction, the other premises, the formal proof--is completely unnecessary and distracts from the actual argument. The fundamental problem is the proof by contradiction, because everything else was introduced to contribute to that proof, but the other stuff is still part of the problem.

For the priority question, I would quote rule 116.1, which is the list of everything a player can do with priority. Since that is the definition of priority, it is by definition an exhaustive list of what someone can do with priority.

@murgtroid99 And you know for a fact that none of the other 2007 rules (in the latest revision anyway) expand upon that list?

I think in the second sentence you meant "your answer was downvoted"?

Magic rules are perhaps a little too complicated for this discussion. Let's consider a simpler example. A game has two thousand rules that say "You can do 1.", "You can do 2.", ..., "You can do 2000." I then ask "Can I do 2001?" What do you do then? Do you quote all 2000 rules in order to provide evidence of absence? I hope this finally demonstrates a need to shift the burden of proof back on the asker.

I do know that there are no additions to rule 116.1, and even if I didn't I would know that that rule defines priority and is therefore the authoritative description of how it works. And regarding your last comment, I would much prefer not to argue about a vague description of poorly written, hypothetical rules. Game rules aren't just a list of things you can do. They are primarily a collection of definitions of state, structure, and components, which provides a perfect framework for determining what a player can and cannot do depending on game state.

I added a paragraph expanding on my previous comment.

@murgtroid99 "I do know that there are no additions to rule 116.1" You can't just break my argument with "I know you are wrong." Nice try. Also, just because something is an authoritative description does not make it a complete authoritative description. There could very well be other rules that expand on it. For example: "Rule 1. X includes A, B, and C." "Rule 548. X also includes D, E, and F." In order to answer "Does X include Z?" negatively, you would have to prove that no rule in the rulebook allows X to include Z.

Re: "The primary flaw in your premise is that you seem to assume that a game rulebook is primarily a list of things that players are allowed to do or are not allowed to do" Never once did I mention the part in bold. You are clearly making things up at this point.

You asked a question and I answered. The fact that you don't know I'm right doesn't make me wrong. And I am still not going to argue about hypothetical rules.

You're right, you didn't mention that. I was trying to interpret your claims generously, and apparently I failed. I've removed that clause. And I've decided that I don't actually care about this argument any more. I doubt it will affect site policy, and people will still get good answers to their question, even if you don't give them. I'm just saying this so you don't wait for me to respond to any future comments. I probably won't respond to this thread again.

"The fact that you don't know I'm right doesn't make me wrong." I love that you are shifting the burden of proof to me, while simultaneously picking and choosing which counterexamples you will wave your hands at. I suppose that's the difference in our philosophies: I think that absence of evidence should shift the burden of proof to the author. You don't believe in absence of evidence, and claim that there is evidence of everything.

I've provided two counterexamples to your theory using rules that are much simpler than Magic. Your only response thus far is that the rules were "vague", "poorly written", and "hypothetical". Yes they are vague, intentionally devoid of details not relevant to the problem at hand. Yes they are hypothetical. You failed to explain how they were poorly written. They were written to suit my example, but that does not make them poor. As we all know, it only takes a single counterexample to disprove an entire theory.

I know I'm guilty of it. I respond harshly when I didn't logically think of something. It seems like someone is putting me down because I didn't think of it. Doesn't make it right, but it happens. When down-voters don't explain themselves in the comments I don't worry about it too much.
I know when I was still playing MtG, the first thing that anyone said when we had a new player was the caviat "Unless the card says otherwise". I tend to lean toward the second option. I am allowed to do something unless the rules say otherwise.
The answer was not logically flawed. It made perfect sense to me. I think the negativity may have been generated because you didn't back your answer up with quoted rules. Not a requirement for an upvote, but your answer certainly didn't garner downvotes either.

Your friends misinterpreted one of the Golden Rules of Magic. The rule allows the card to have priority over the rules when a conflict occurs. It by no means allows you to "do something unless the rules say otherwise". MTG rules are definitely permissive rather than restrictive. There was some debate about whether the rules should state that explicitly.

Just in general I mean. This is after we go over the rules. And was a long time ago...I started playing in 1997.

Unfortunately I disagree a bit. I'm not sure which of the forms of the answer you're talking about, but downvoters did try to explain in the comments (though not to Rainbolt's satisfaction). The answer was at the very least unnecessarily convoluted, which makes it less useful (and downvotes do mean "not useful"), and not actually backing up your answer with rules makes it less useful as well.

@Jefromi Please see the part of this question that states "Note: If a rule did exist which stated that you cannot do something, that would clearly be preferable. I only want to discuss the case where there is no such rule." You can't back up your answer with rules that do not exist. The best you can do is quote the rules that do exist, and then claim that what you are trying to do is not among them.

@Rainbolt Don't worry, I understood that. But nonetheless, it can be helpful to reference specific rules. By quoting the portion of the rules where the rule in question would appear if it did existed, you help show the reader that it doesn't exist. If someone says "my friend told me that when I buy a development card, I have to put on a hat" you might say "No, you don't, here's what it says about buying a development card. No hats!"


text:
I think you guys should turn off the script that deletes single-use tags
I don't really use this site much, but I happened to have a gander through your untagged tag, and wow are there a lot of questions there! It looks like the script that deletes single-use tags has been doing a real number on your site.
Arqade has requested that it be turned off, and I think you guys should do the same, since this site is like Arqade in a lot of ways - in particular, you have a really long tail of infrequently-played games, and it's totally reasonable for you to have a lot of tags that only get used less frequently than once in six months.

Single use tags will not be deleted if someone has given it a tag wiki. That's the fix here. We no longer disable the deletion script, since it has been updated to ignore single-use tags with tag wikis. So, if this community wants to clean up its untagged questions, all it needs to do is write a couple of lines in the tag wikis.

I see. Will the deletion script be turned back on at sites where it is turned off?


text:
Is an online game that is totally playable as pen and pencil or card game allowed?
Strategic Tic Tac Toe is a computer game where you effectively a game somewhat similar to Tic Tac Toe- the computer aspects of the actual game as totally replicable as an offline game. And there are others where the computer games are totally doable as offline. Judging by this question the answer is yes.
 Are questions specifically about the computer version of a game on topic?

That version isn't just a computer game: https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-toe/

Yes, questions about that game would be allowed. Our criteria for whether something counts as a "board or card game" for are purposes are that the game must

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

Be playable by hand, by human players implementing all of the rules

It doesn't matter whether you actually play the game by hand on a table and implement all of the rules. As long as it's possible to do so, asking about the game and any software implementation is allowed.


text:
My votes are wrong but are now locked
My votes on the answers of this question: What happens if I have two Pledges of Loyalty attached to a creature? are wrong.
But they are now locked in and can only change if the answers are changed. Can someone unlock my votes or remove them so I can correct my mistakes?

Two out of three of the answers have been edited since you asked this question, so you can already change your votes there.

Except the correct one :p


text:
How should we be tagging questions about custom Magic cards?
We recently reached agreement that questions about custom cards were OK: Are well-defined theoretical or custom Magic questions on-topic?
And we've received a few questions on the topic:

How could you change what creature a creature with soulbond is paired with?
How concise can I get the Soulbond boilerplate in a homebrew card without functional changes?
Can I make a card that places a +1/+1 counter on an enchantment that isn't a creature?

So far I've been tagging these questions with custom-game-pieces but that feels like kind of a janky name to apply, considering it's largely been about physical crafts, and considering we're largely also talking about game-design (which also seems appropriate but which I haven't been using yet).
What tags should I be using for a question about creating custom cards for magic-the-gathering?

We already have a number of tags about some aspect of Magic: The Gathering such as mtg-online, mtg-cube, mtg-drafting, mtg-commander (most of these are related to Magic formats).
Given that, I'd like to recommend we tag such questions as mtg-homebrew or mtg-custom. Another option would be mtg-homebrew-cards or mtg-custom-cards, but I think that a broader tag would be good in case we get questions about homebrew rules and such not specifically related to homebrew cards.
My personal preference is mtg-homebrew as that is an unambiguous term, but I'd be okay with mtg-custom if that seems too niche.

[tag:mtg-custom]? Shorter and makes more sense to people who aren't acquainted with the term homebrew as applies to gaming.

@Nij "Custom" doesn't mean much specifically though, leaving [mtg-custom] an ambiguous and weirdly phrased tag. As an adjective, custom what -- custom decks maybe (as opposed to premade ones)? Or is it "custom" as a noun, as in "etiquette"?

I would have to agree with @doppelgreener said. With the game as it stands there are way to many different aspects of it that could be considered custom. Even at the basics custom could refer to all the different counters, pay mats or storage solutions that could be used.

Since it's been about a week with no other answers, and this solution seems pretty functional and has decent support (+6/-0), I've added the [tag:mtg-homebrew] tag to these questions.

mtg-homebrew is simply inaccurate - mtg-custom-cards is far superior =p

@corsiKa Would you like to leave an answer advocating for that tag?


text:
Why aren't answers-in-comments I'm flagging being deleted?
From our comment privilege help page, comments are not for answering the question:

When shouldn't I comment?
Comments are not recommended for any of the following:

Answering a question or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer; instead, post an actual answer (or edit to expand an existing one);

As it suggests, you're meant to instead submit an answer. Answers actually have our full rigorous quality assurance process applied, comments have almost no QA at all: we can't edit them if they need correction/improvement, we can't downvote low quality comments, we cannot cast delete votes or flag them for review queues, they don't bump the question to draw critical attention by reviewers who might vote or take action on it, and so on.
I've encountered some comments like this one which are just an answer in comments, and also redundant because there's an actual answer available. I've flagged these for moderator attention with the reason "answer in comments, delete" or something like that. The recent occasions have been declined. (I would flag such comments even if there wasn't an answer to make it redundant, since whoever wrote it should have submitted an answer instead for proper peer review.)
Why are these flags being declined instead of the comments being deleted?
I request they actually get deleted, as a matter of site quality maintenance. I don't expect the mods to hunt them down around the site, but if someone (anyone) takes the trouble of flagging them for mod attention, I'd prefer the mods delete them rather than leave them lying around.

I flagged an answer-comment once on Board and Card Games. It was deemed helpful.

You raised the same type of flag, and it was rejected. That tells me that our moderators probably handle these types of flags differently. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case I think our moderators need to be consistent. I expect answer-comment flags to be handled in a consistent manner, be it "helpful" or "declined".
You mentioned the Help page. There is another far more obvious sign that answer do not belong in comments. If you click on the "add a comment" anchor:

Avoid answering questions in comments. The text has been there since before I joined eighteen months ago.
I asked about the extremely high quantity of answer-comments on English Language and Usage (ELU) Stack Exchange, and I was pointed to this meta post. I realized that ELU is unique in that a large portion of the questions have a multiple correct, extremely short answers. It makes sense for them to bounce ideas around in the comments. It makes sense for them to be less strict.
We primarily deal with questions that have a single correct answer. It makes sense for us to enforce stricter quality standards. Answers belong in the answer box, where the remainder of the community can mold it into something better.

In practice, "no answers in comments" is not enforced in the main StackExchange sites (like StackOverlow), and what is done there is what most people get used to.
It can be difficult to decide if some text is worthy of an answer or if it should be just a comment, and since answers are heavily moderated and can be downvoted, comments are less restricted.
Sometimes an user wants to give a quick answer and he or she just writes a comment because they don't want to spend time with a thoroughly written answer.
Deleting a comment that gives information that is not found in an answer would be detrimental to the question. If the comment is included in some answer, you can flag it as obsolete.

I will disprove that sweeping negative: it is enforced on RPG.SE. I don't know if there might be others though, not using other stacks much. The others I use often where I'd notice this stuff are sites like SO where the moderation burden is too great to enforce such policies. (The moderators there are dealing with a hundred thousand more questions than RPG.SE has.)

@doppelgreener OK, I don't participate in that site, I'll fix the wording in my answer. It is not enforced in StackOverflow, where it is quite common to get a quick answer in comments to a question. Usually, what is done in StackOverflow is also done in most sites.

There is no comment flag for "this is an answer".  I don't see every such comment as deserving of deletion and will respond accordingly.
The consistency you seek is there.  It is the same that it has ever been.  When you flag, a moderator will respond to your flag in the best way we can.
I tend not to delete newer comments that are not harmful to the site.  This comment was upvoted a couple times, it's from a newer user.  I do not see the harm in its existence.

I explained the harm of the existence of answers in comments. We as members cannot do a thing to moderate them, at all, except turn to moderators, who can only do so much. Whether it's a new user or not, whether it has a couple of upvotes or not, change nothing. Whether there's a flag reason for it should also be immaterial if two separate places say this should not happen. I would just flag as Too Chatty, since it's not using comments for their intended purpose and is being too chatty, but these kinds of flags are better with a brief explanation of the specifics.

@doppelgreener - I understood your point, I just don't agree on the harm.


text:
Is it appropriate to delete all comments to a question once they have been acted upon?
In the following question:
In Ticket to Ride USA, does obtaining longest continuous path of routes highly correlate with winning?
I got a few comments on my question, the first of which was 2/3 of a great answer from thesunneversets. The rest of the comments were in response to this 2/3 of an answer, with a request from Pat Ludwig to move it to the answer section. Then sunneversets did expand the answer and move it to the answer section.
It's a great answer but now the comments on the question are distracting and irrelevant IMO, adding nothing to someone reading this Q/A for the first time. Is it appropriate to delete all the comments, leaving nothing but a nice clean Q/A?

Yes, and this is something that moderators can and often do. It's usually considered polite though to leave recent conversations around for a little while before taking actions like this - it allows any further conversation to conclude naturally, and the discussion itself is often helpful for other users, to provide information on community norms. It's also less jarring when you return to a question and you know it looks different, but you can't see why (comment deletions don't appear in the history).
I think that particular discussion has some value as it points out that the comment was acceptable as an (expanded) answer. Personally, I'd give it a week or so before cleaning it up, since your question is still relatively active.
You can always flag a post containing a comment conversation you think is no longer necessary, and we'll take a look.
Relevant meta discussions:

Should moderators delete obsolete and resolved comment threads?
Add possibility to remove comment noise (fancy edition)
Etiquette for explaining removed comments?
Deleting comments after a fix
Allow moderators to see deleted comments
What is an acceptable answer?

Your (clear and helpful) answer is not in the Board and Card Games FAQ. Perhaps adding a section to the FAQ describing the purpose, best use of, and deletion timing of comments would be appropriate?

@JoeGolton - This is a general issue, affecting all sites, but the FAQ, even on StackOverflow, is not complete. Instead, meta has been used to build the detailed FAQ for all SE sites. I see that a new proposed FAQ question on MSO covers the purpose of comments quite well: What is an acceptable answer? I think pointing users here and at that link is a good solution for now.


text:
What to do if you have a much different (and potentially better) way of asking a question that has essentially already been asked?
From the standpoint of developing the highest possible Q&A database quality, is it best to post a good answer to an old fuzzy question in order to avoid duplication? Or is it better to come out with a competing question that could be viewed as a duplicate but is more tightly scoped (and better described) and therefore likely to lead to better answers?
Here's the real example I just faced:
There's an old Settlers of Catan Question that wasn't tightly worded enough to lead to great answers, IMO:
What are common contracts in Catan?
The exact mechanisms for contracts were not laid out which led to lots of comments and the top answer essentially saying that the rules variations suggested were not worth trying (without giving any playtested reasoning). I discovered when I was about to post a similar question that was more tightly scoped and explained in a format that I suspect would have lead to better answers and better learning. I didn't post this, because I figured it would be considered an exact duplicate, like this one was:
"House Rules" in Settlers of Catan
Seeing this mess, I simply posted my answer to the original question, as that seems to be the encouraged behavior on stack exchange (keep in mind I've only been using the site a month, so maybe I've got this wrong). But this answer was really to another question I had in mind (see below) that would have framed the issue in a different way.
Here is the Question that I did NOT ask:
Title: What are the best mechanics for including future trade promises without departing from Settlers rules? (Play-tested solution described, alternatives/comments requested)
Expanded: When making a trade in Settlers of Catan, there is no official rule encouraging or prohibiting making a promise (to make a certain type of trade in the future) during a current trade. Assuming the group you play with decides to allow such promises (we call them "future trades"), what mechanisms can be used to ensure this occurs smoothly?
I provide one such answer below that we've used in many games, but I'm totally open to suggestions for improvements on my answer, and/or alternative play-tested systems developed by other Catan enthusiasts.
[Note: The answer I provided to the contracts question was inspired by the answer I intended to the question I intended, but with an introductory tie-in sentence]

There's a Stack Overflow meta question that covers this:
What to do when your question has an old, stale, unanswered duplicate?
It's not precisely the same question but the answer seems reasonable to me and applicable to the specific example I cited in my question. Experienced stack exchange members - please tell me if you think this answer is appropriate to the Board Games community as well:

Firstly consider why the old one hasn't been answered (is it badly
  written, is it unanswerable, is it in the wrong place, etc).
Ask your question, making sure you avoid the mistakes the old one
  made.
Make a note of the old question on your new one, (and explain why any
  answers that the old one has are no good to you).
If appropriate (and if you have enough rep), vote to close the old one
  as a duplicate of your new one, and add a comment on the old one
  stating what you have done with a link to your new one.

This isn't unreasonable.  I've duped questions both ways (old->new) and (new->old) depending on which I thought was better.

@Pat Given Pat and Dave's encouragement and the stack overflow precedent, I did post the new question, here: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/6448/how-to-include-promises-for-future-trades-or-other-actions-as-part-of-legal-tr

If the fuzzy question has a good answer, just simply edit the Question.
If it's a recent question, and the question has more than one good breakdown, you can also suggest the breakdown in a comment, so the OP can only ask the one they're interested in asking, or ask it as two questions.

In this case the rewrite to this old question would be really extensive, which would make me wonder if: (1) This might be offensive to OP (2) Make some of the wording and vote counts to the old answers seem confusing (3) create far more work and confusion than just asking a new question, as this might also to several answers being rewritten and a number of clarifying comments. I'm new to the site and my impression is you don't radically rewrite Qs or As, even if it mostly preserves the main point. Am I wrong about this?

@Joe, I don't think you're wrong. Editing existing content is usually fine, as long as you're preserving the intent of the OP. Rewriting a question beyond the original point is usually a problem, even if there aren't existing answers, and if there are, any substantial edits run the risk of invalidating existing answers. (Of course if the question is closed, it may be necessary for the OP to rewrite it significantly, and in that case, the answers might need changes too.) There's nothing that says that the newer duplicate should be closed; ideally I think we'd close the weaker duplicate.

@DaveDuPlantis Given Pat and Dave's encouragement and the stack overflow precedent (see other answer above), I decided that posting an entirely new question was a better option in this instance than making extensive edits. So I did it: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/6448/how-to-include-promises-for-future-trades-or-other-actions-as-part-of-legal-tr

Ah, I misunderstood your intent.  My suggesting for editing the question was for this scenario:  1) A question isn't well asked  (2) There are no answers, because it isn't well asked.  -- In that case, the question should be edited (as a consumer of the final product, I don't care if it's by the OP or by the answered after some comment communication).  Once editted, the proper question can be answered, and all is good.


text:
What's the best way to handle questions that generate multiple answers, each of which has only part of the answer?
Several times I've received multiple answer to a question I asked, with each question having good information but only a portion of the answer. For example, in this recent question:
Which tournament format best emphasizes winning (as opposed to avoiding last place)?
After reading the three answers and various questions/comments to the answers, I now have a good answer. But it wasn't any one answer or comment that provided the answer. It was all of them collectively.
Here are other examples I've run across (the last Q is not mine):
What is optimal end play in Settlers?
What is a good resource to discover new games?
So how to handle this? Do I need to improve the question? Is it best to work with the better of the 3 answers and see if I can get that person to incorporate information from the other 2 answers and various comments? Or is it better practice to try to write a completely new answer that tries to pull together all the other answers and comments into a more complete and coherent whole?
NOTE: I suggested in response to the blog idea that content with multiple answers could be reworked into a blog post. The above 3 Q&As cited are examples where rewriting into a blog post would likely be better than the original Q&A - especially if it were done by someone with specific expertise.

When you have questions that lean towards the subjective side, It's more likely that one answer won't cover the whole solution.  I think that's ok.  You can vote up as many of the answers as you want. So if you end up with several answers with high scores, a reader should be able to tell that there's not a single consensus on the subject.
Alternativly answers can be made into community wikis.  This is a good built in feature to make more inclusive answers when we need to.

The only thing I would add to this is that you can (and probably should) select as "accepted" the answer that is most useful to you at some point.  Maybe a week or so after the question is asked.  If an answer improves, you can always switch the accepted mark.  The answer shouldn't have to be perfect to get your approval IMHO.