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2021 Community Moderator Election
The 2021 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Did the reputation cap change for beta sites?
I noticed last night that I managed to squeak in 200 reputation by about 7:30 EST, beating the 8 PM cut-off time for the new day.  My profile for yesterday shows "200" reputation listed.
Either the system is taking almost 12 hours to hand out Mortarboard badges, I didn't truly hit 200 rep, or the reputation cap has increased beyond 200.
So, out of curiosity, did the reputation cap increase and I missed the memo, or is there nothing to see here?

It looks like some of your rep came from accepted answers. Accepted answers and bounties don't affect the rep cap; the rep cap is only a cap on how much rep you can get from votes. None of my answers were accepted, so all of my rep came from votes; thus, I got exactly 200 rep and the badge. You probably had less than 200 rep from votes alone.

That would be the case then, I did have one down vote I forgot about.  198 rep, so close!

It hasn't been changed, I got Mortarboard day 1 here.  The badge showed up pretty quickly after I earned it.

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


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Asking a question you already know the answer to; or, padding out the site with questions on confusing rules
Since we have such a low number of questions right now, and since once of the goals of the site (as I see it) is to cover all rules questions that may arise during gaming, I'm wondering -- is it alright to ask a question on a potentially-confusing topic that you already figured out the answer to?  Alternately, is it alright to ask a question on a potentially-confusing rule that can be worked out if you simply read the rules carefully enough?
Example:  I was teaching Puerto Rico to a new player the other day, and as we were playing, I suddenly started second-guessing myself on the rules to Captaining.  I couldn't remember if I could use the Wharf to ship goods already on a ship, if you could ship the same good on multiple ships, and if you were obligated to put goods on a certain-sized ship.
Re-reading the rules slowly plus reading the examples in the rulebook refreshed my memory, and I know the answers to my question now, but is it worth asking on the main site for future visitors, in case they get tripped up by the same rules?

If a question came up during a game and couldn't be answered at the time, I'm OK with it being entered here even if the submitter has already researched and answered the question.
However, I think the submitter should refrain from answering his or her own question for at least a couple days.
We should not go through and preemptively ask any conceivable question.  That will lead to low quality questions and end up turning people off.
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/area-51-asking-the-first-questions/

@LittleBobbyTables: Yes, please read the linked blog post. I have some pretty strong opinions about the wholesale seeding of questions. There's a big difference between encountering (and posting) a particularly interesting question you saw today versus trying to "cover all rules questions" to make up for a low question count. That will go badly. Non-organic participation will come across as transparent (it wont work) and may actually detract from further participation. Folks love answering questions and helping people; Nobody wants to be given busy work and homework assignments.

I did this with a few of the Settlers of Catan questions I asked when we first launched.  I had questions I knew I could answer on my own, but I put up here so the community could answer them.  I've also refrained from answering my own questions.  Some of the answers I've gotten to questions I thought I knew the answer to have made me rethink what I thought was the best solution.  (Are general 3-to-1 or specific 2-to-1 ports better in Settlers of Catan? is a simple question I got some great different perspectives on.)
I know we want more questions, but we also want things people can answer.  If you want to ask a question you already know the answer to, the question and answer should hopefully have some utility to others.  There is no easy way to measure that, so I would suggest asking them.  If it's incredibly out there, we could vote to close it as "too localized."
I also echo Pat Ludwig's opinion; don't immediately answer your own questions.

Simple, easily googleable questions seem to be a problematic issue for the SE community in general.  For me, I have no problem answering them for newish users.  For more established users, I might have an issue if the majority of their questions were overly simple.

Pat, I agree that easily googleable questions can be an issue.  If we discourage simple questions, should we then be encouraging questions about confusing rules?  Perhaps a middle ground should be what we aim for.

I'll always add on the side of encouraging questions.  Having to talk to someone about submitting too many questions (simple or otherwise) is a problem I'm willing to deal with!

I have a "rule." When in doubt, ASK. (I also follow that rule, having asked more questions in my first two or three weeks here, than most.)
The second rule follows: If you have a doubt, almost certainly, so will someone else. Therefore, you'd be doing that "someone else" a big favor by asking. That person will benefit from the ready-made answers on the site.
I wouldn't worry about using up others' opportunities to ask questions. The big reputation gains are in the answers. Meaning, the more questions, the more possible answers, the more opportunities to gain reputation from answering questions. My experience is that several people made sizable reputation gains from answering my questions.

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

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


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Can I track Tags I have created?
Question is in the title I guess. Is there any way to know which tags your user profile created? Out of interest more than anything, but wasn't aware of it.

Not really; see this question on the main meta. As the accepted answer says:

Tag -> sort by newest -> last page -> question on the bottom, should be the earliest question asked with that tag, but still not guaranteed that that question or that user created the tag.

The information is maintained for badge purposes, but it's not shown anywhere

Thanks. It is probably a good thing, so people do not try to inflate the use of their own tags. I know I created some, I just don't know which ones!

Sooner or later Wikileaks will reveal every people's votes on SE sites. It just has more pressing issues right now.


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Is this question too open?
I am thinking about asking a question, but not sure if it is too open.
I find myself always purchasing games that have similar game mechanics. I prefer worker-placement games, and railroad tycoon type games and these games borrow from each other in terms of how the game plays.
What I want to know is what other type of game mechanics really make a game more interesting, increase the strategic element and really make the game what it is.
I appreciate that this question maybe seen as quite subjective, but it is a genuine question that I really would appreciate the answer on. Any thoughts?

I would just try asking the question, fleshed out with a little more detail, and see what kind of responses you get. If your question is really too subjective, people will vote to close. If it's OK but could be improved, people can comment. And if it's good, you should start to get some good answers; if you're getting good answers, then that probably means the question is fine.
This site does have a somewhat higher percentage of subjective questions than other SE sites (at least, the ones I'm familiar with like SO). I think that's OK, as long as you try to keep in mind the Good Subjective, Bad Subjective guidelines. Make sure you provide enough detail to focus the discussion, and not something overly broad like "what are the best mechanics"; make sure your question inspires explanations of why and how, not just simple one liners for people to vote on.

This sounds like good advice.  We've still got a long ways to go in beta.  It's a great time to try out different things.  Just don't take personal offense if a question gets closed out!  I think that if we aren't closing many questions then we are probably not testing our limits enough.


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The Status of Beta
I have just been over to Area 51 to check on how we are doing as a site, as we are coming up to a third the way through beta.
The stats look like this

294 Questions. We should be aiming for over 750, but 1500 would be excellent. This reads that we are on-track, but the rate of new questions seems to have dropped off a lot since the first week. Often only a few new questions appear per day. We should be aiming for at least 10 per day on average.
94% Answer rate. This is well above the 90% suggested as excellent! Well done us.
80 users with 200+ rep. Aiming for 150. This should be fine.
3 users with 2,000+ rep. Aiming for 10. Looking at the top users, this should be fine.
1 users with 3,000+ rep. Aiming for 5. Should be okay, but may need a push!
3.5 answer ratio. Aiming for 2.5. Again, well done us.
210 visits/day. 500 is considered poor, 1500 is good.

This would suggest we have a few areas to worry about.  The number of visits/day and the amount of questions. Logically, the number of visits would mean the more questions will come. I already love this site, so it would be a shame to see this beta fail. Any thoughts on how we can try to promote this further?

I'm rather impressed with the reputation people have accrued; the main thing other sites seem to be getting hung up on is enough 2k and 3k users, and it looks like we're going to make that no problem

You raise some good points that I've been thinking about lately as well.
I don't see us failing, it just may take longer than necessary expected.  From the Stack Exchange article "When Will My Site Graduate?", the answer was "it takes as long as it takes," and as long as we keep that in mind, we'll be good.
There are some good ideas from "A Recipe to Promote Your Site".  I've been considering re-joining Facebook (I left a while back), or getting into Twitter and just signed up to Twitter, to start promoting the site.
The thing I've noticed is a general drop-off in interest.  A few weeks ago we were getting 1300-1400 visitors/day; now we're at 854 and dropping.
I think that if we have questions, any questions, we should be asking them.  Not shotgunning questions, necessarily, but asking any board game/card game questions that come to mind.  We seem to have a good solid core of Dominion, Carcassone, and 18XX questions, but there have to be more games out there than these.
We need to suck people in and get visibility -- we just need to figure out how.

We also need to get as many people as possible to participate in the advertising of this site. How, I do not know, but the announcer badge has only been gained 4 times so far.

@Codemwnci - comparatively, StackOverflow is freaking huge, and the Announcer badge has only been earned 71 times -- the badges seem to be just plain hard to earn.  And there is such a fine line between "advertising" and "spamming" -- I know when I was on Facebook, I got really irritated with the number of Mafia Wars and Farmville updates I always got, and I'd hate to drive people nuts with constant "Like board games?  Come to BoardGames.StackExchange.com!" posts.  We'll just have to spread the word best we can, and grind away.

What's your Twitter nickname? ... I tried the obvious ;)


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Acronyms. Good or Bad?
Already in the few days the private beta has been live, the questions have already started using acronyms reasonably heavily. Some examples

BCG - "Board and Card Games" site
BCG.SE - Meaning "Board and Card Games @ StackExchange"
BGG - Board Game Geek

I have also seen a few comments asking what the acronyms mean. I assume that the people taking part in the private beta are stackoverflow regulars, and big fans of board gaming, so quite familiar with BoardGameGeek, but when public beta starts, and for the future, can we expect people to understand these acronyms?
I think we should make the site as accessible to all as possible and try to avoid acronyms, through editing and leaving comments for others to follow.
What does everyone else think?

I hate .SE acronyms, because .se is a real TLD (Sweden), administrated at iis.se

I think having a glossary on meta would be a good idea; a place for people to look up common terms and acronyms that are thrown around that they don't know. For instance, I've gotten a question on "beer and pretzels", which I thought was a well-known term for describing games.
Beyond that, I think we should try to expand out acronyms at least in question and answers; in comments, which are somewhat secondary and have limited characters, I think using abbreviations is OK. In a question or answer, if a particular phrase like BoardGameGeek has been used already, and from context it's obvious that you're still referring to the same thing, I think it's OK to use the acronym, but you should make sure it's expanded out at least once.
I don't think we should be too aggressive about complaining about every use of an acronym. There are some that most people involved in a particular thread will understand; if someone needs clarification, they can ask for it. If you really think that a question or answer is confusing because it uses an acronym, then feel free to comment or edit it, but we shouldn't try and always frown upon their use.

I'm really nervous about BCG's usage and its similarity to BGG.  People WILL create an acronym from our site name, whether everybody likes it or not, so should we try to establish that acronym as something less like "BGG"?
I'm not sure what else this SE could be labeled exactly, but even "Card & Board Games" (CBG) is a significantly better acronym than BCG because it looks a lot less like BGG at a glance.
BGG is the major existing site in this topic area, and it would behoove us to establish how we DON'T overlap with them.  Q&A is what this site is for, and is the area in which it has the most to offer, as BGG isn't ideal for the question and answer format.
Having a name that acronym-ifies to nearly the same thing as BGG just risks either pissing that community off or hurting the StackExchange site by not distinguishing it adequately from BGG.
This is a fairly time-sensitive topic, too - at some point (public beta?) the cost to a name adjustment gets out of hand.

You make a very good point.  I'm not sure of the right solution, but this should be considered.

+1 - While I'm more of a board game person, and there seem to be a majority of board-game-based questions on the site, if people are going to apply an abbreviation to the site, I think CBG is far better in terms of distinguishing us from Board Game Geek.

How about B&CG?

That might work, but I doubt we'll have that amount of control over the preferred acronym.  The community will likely pick the shortest thing that makes sense (BCG).

Another route we could go is simply BGSE; our domain is boardgames.stackexchange.com, and it's fairly well accepted that card games fall within the category of board games so I'm not sure we need to include that in the acronym. BGSE is less ambiguous than BCG, and does away with the apparent ".se" top level domain by losing the period.

BGSE is a good acronym, too.  I'm worried that the acronym won't actually be something any group of moderators or avid users can control, but will be something that just HAPPENS in the community.  I'm afraid that might be BCG.

I'm a little nervous about putting the items in this order

card
board

Based on the Area 51 proposal, the focus is clearly on BOARD first and card as a distant second.

Beta Q&A site for people who like playing board games, designing board games or modifying the rules of existing board games. Card games, too, because some games really can be classified as both.

If we put card first, we would be sending the wrong message.
We'd also be opening the door to, say, poker and the like -- When there is already an Area 51 Poker site proposal that will eventually go to beta IMO.

Yeah, I'd prefer to favor board games.  I only suggested Card & Board as a "hack" fix for the acronym :)

I like Todd's suggestion of B&CG.
It's sufficiently different from the rest of the acronyms to avoid confusion.
I also don't like the .se suffix - my tech head always thinks of Sweden first.

... and once I think of Sweden, I think of two Swedish Au Pairs I once knew .... and then, well, I forget what I was looking for in the first place ;)


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Links to BoardGameGeek (or other sites)
I'm certain that a common pattern in some answers will be a link to a BoardGameGeek page (we have some already).  What should our policy be about this, especially answers that are nothing BUT a link to BGG?
We have some overlap with BGG by design, although BGG is not a question-and-answer site so I fully believe that both sites can coexist.  We want to avoid the two extremes of:

Answers that are nothing but a link to BGG
Answers that are a copy-paste of content from BGG

How do we encourage answers that (for example) provide a brief summary and then a link to the details at BGG instead of either extreme above?

The obvious answer is "the usual way" - comment asking for a summary, vote down poor answers, vote to close questions that need closing.

+1 An answer here that is nothing but a link is not very useful and should be voted down, or at least commented on.

Answers that are simply a link are not good answers. They should be voted down, commented on, or otherwise encouraged to be improved.
Answers that are a link plus a quote may be good answers depending on the question. If the question is answered adequately by that quote, that's perfectly fine. Note that in this case, it should be made clear that it's a quote (using the blockquote markup, prefixing each line with > or using the “ button above the editing area), and the source should be linked to, as otherwise you are plagiarizing someone else's work.
In other cases, the best answer might be a link plus some extra explanation describing how that link relates to the questioner's specific situation, or a link plus a summary of the contents of the link. And it may be the case that you need all three; a link, a quote, and an explanation or summary.
If the original answer doesn't do one of the above, we can use the facilities of StackOverflow to improve the situation; add a comment requesting that the person add clarification, edit the answer yourself, create another answer yourself with better quoting, linking, or explanation, or downvote the answer.
My answer to "Multiplayer timer for board games" is an example that does linking and quoting the way I believe it should be done. The question is pretty much already answered by an existing review, but I provide a link with credit, a short quote, and an explanation that expands on some of the specific topics asked about in the question.
Another good example of the link and quote style is my answer to "Differences Between Rijndael and AES" on StackOverflow; the question was answered adequately by a simple Google search, and several people just linked to the top Google hit, but my answer which provided both a link and a quote was much preferred over the simple links.
Here's an answer by Egg of P'an Ku, provided by linking to a BGG thread, that's a good example of the right way to do it. Provide the original link, a properly formatted quote, and a little extra explanation of some other thoughts or personal experience.


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Closed trading question should be reopened
This question was closed twice.  In between I edited it to attempt to highlight the differences on why this question deserved to stand on its own feet.  It would be wrong of me to re-open it again, so here I am on meta, asking for the communities assistance.
In my mind, this question is not asking to give away cards in any way, the querent is asking to make a valid trade.  Furthermore the question has a great answer already.  In that the problem is that the trade offer received is not valid per the rules, AND the querent is not obliged to accept any offer which meets the original request.
The linked duplicates focus only on the illegality of the proposed trade.  I do not believe that was the intent of either party in this question, but merely a side aspect of the answer.
Anyways, vote as you will.  Thank you for considering this.

Maybe I am confused here, but since the trade in question is invalid how would a player be locked into it?

@JoeW Switch the wood to a sheep if it helps.  What if Player A decided "Anything but a sheep for my two wood" after he made the original offer?  Player A is still not locked in, and (to me at least) that is a valid point which isn't covered by the linked duplicate questions.

If the question was worded so it it was just about what point is a trade locked in and can't change/cancel it I would see the difference. I think it could be improved by removing the specifics about what is being traded. And I do think that a question about when a trade becomes locked in is an excellent question.

The core of the question is still answered by the duplicate - that player B couldn't even offer that trade legally - if the question was reworded to not be about an illegal trade, but instead about someone not wanting to accept what another player offered when they asked for trades, that would be different. (And yes GendoIkiari's answer covers both situations nicely)

I'd also like to point out that Ryanyuyu's edit to the question was a bad one - half of the text removed was proper (it sounds like the asker was player B in the scenario) the other half was important where it referenced the trade player B proposed isn't a legal trade.

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


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When should I use the "Not an Answer" flag?
Seems like there have been a few extra declined NAA flags lately so I would like to remind folks of the proper usage of this flag.

The flag is titled, "Not an Answer", it isn't "Not THE Answer" which is the primary issue I've seen.  Poor answers should be downvoted, perhaps commented.  Flags aren't necessary.
I've copied the below from an excellent meta.stackexchange answer.
When should I use this flag?
Use this flag when an answer is being used to:

Ask a new question
Clarify the existing question
Communicate with another user
Say "thanks" or confirm that another posted answer worked for them
"Bump" the question, as in "I have the same problem, have you found a solution?"

When should I not use this flag?
Do not use this flag when:

The user posts a partial answer
The answer makes an attempt to answer the question, even if it is wrong or inaccurate or you disagree with it
The problem with the answer is subtle and would benefit from additional explanation (see below)

But I'm still not sure if I'm using the flag correctly...
If it seems blatantly obvious to you that what you're looking at isn't an answer, you're probably using the flag correctly.
If the problem is subtle and may not be obvious to whoever reviews your flag, then raise the in need of moderator intervention flag instead, and explain in detail why you think the answer violates the site rules and should thus be removed.

Every now and then we have a new user apparently mistake this place for a forum and use the answer space to not answer but instead just opine on the topic (this deleted rant is a recent example) or go on off some discussion tangent ("this game is so great and my family loved playing this game during camping trips and here's a story about this one time we played"). We'd flag those as NAA as well right, going by that second last paragraph of yours?

@doppelgreener - I don't think that explicitly triggers any of the bulletpoints in the first section, but it does seem blatantly obvious that it isn't an answer.  Flag away in similar circumstances. Although, I'd note that the MtG tag is largely self policing due to the large number of high rep users there.  The problems I see are mainly outside of that tag.

Thanks Pat. Could you clarify in this post what to do if it is an answer to a question that wasn't asked (i.e. it reads like an answer, but it doesn't answer what the OP actually asked)? I think that comes under "the problem is subtle" and hence flag for mod attention with explanation. But it could be "downvote and comment why you're downvoting, but no need to flag".

When determining whether or not the problem is subtle, can I assume that the reviewer has at least a basic understanding of the game in question? What is subtle to you may be blatantly obvious to anyone who has ever played the game even once.


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Tag cleanup (merges and synonyms)
Please enter any tag changes you'd like to see here.
I'm not too concerned about removing little used tags as I believe that happens automatically after a period of time.
What I'd like to do is come to consensus about any tag merging or synonyms that we need.

Make alternative-rules a synonym of variants.
I don't see these two as different concepts.
Currently we have 6 questions tagged with alternative-rules and 9 tagged with variants.  Two lucky questions have both tags.
Update - Seeing no dissent, I have merged these.

I agree, I think that these are pretty much synonyms. I have suggested the synonym.

I've also recently retagged all the "variation" (2) questions to "variants" (~9).

Three tags that appear to be synonyms to me

game-balance
balance
power-balance

Any objections to settling on game-balance?

balance has the most questions so far.  And since every tag implicitly refers to a game of some sort, game-balance seems redundant to me.

@kristo - I don't have any strong feelings either way on that.  I just retagged the other two to balance.

Are the board-games and card-games tags just intended to be catch-alls that can be assigned to a question for which there is no more suitable tag?
Without a deeper understanding or compelling rationale to keep them, my gut is to get rid of both of these pretty prosaic tags (considering this is the board and card games stack exchange site you'd think every single question would be tagged with one or the other or both).
I'm sure this would leave a few questions without tags; for those, we could assign an existing tag and/or create a more meaningful new tag.
Edit: I just saw Pat's answer to this question tangentially related to the board-games tag.

+1 zillion :) What does everyone else think?

Not even mods get that many votes right? Plus, that would probably skew my rep in an unhealthy way. :)

@Adam - no rep for meta (either positive or negative) so you are out of luck there, sorry!

Concur.  These tags are so generic as to be useless.

@Pat: I just checked and there were only two questions tagged with card-games that didn't have at least one other tag. Both question were about playing cards themselves (i.e. one about cleaning and the other about buying blank cards). I re-tagged them both with playing-cards. I totally think we can blow away card-games now.

I'm not sure that you, me and @Tynam represent a quorum :) Nobody has expressed disapproval so far though.  Unfortunately I don't believe there is any easy way to mass-remove a tag.  I've seen people suggest creating a new tag delete-me with a tag wiki excerpt saying to delete the tag if you are otherwise editing the question.  Not sure we want to flood the front page with an update to 50+ questions

So I suppose that means there's no way to delete the tag at the site level, which would just remove it from any questions it was applied to? Given that, the delete-me tag sounds reasonable; flooding the front page would be bad. Would it also be possible to create a tag synonym so any new questions trying to use the tag before it gets purged would be re-directed to delete-me, which would also be an indication to anyone with sufficient rep to assign a better tag?

@Adam - yea, that's the way it would work.

Can't stand the board-games/card-games tags!

I think the only value in them is to mark questions specifically about card games (and not board games), but not any specific card game (and vice versa).  I'm not fussed if they're deleted though.

Okay it's been a while and I'm kind of excited to use my newly unlocked ability to create tag synonyms. If no one voices any objections in the next day or so I'm going to start small with pointing either board- or card-games to delete-me and make the wiki, per Pat's strategy. Henceforth, we can just assign more descriptive tags as soon as questions get asked, when it won't bias them to the front page, since they'll already be there. If the trial goes well we can use the strategy to clean out any other prosaic tags.

Is there an actual difference between variants and house-rules ?  Was thinking of combining them.
Edit - Thinking some more on this, I'm proposing the following definitions
variants - For options to games promoted by the designer or publisher.  Could be from the rule book (Optional Rules) or from a magazine, or on their website.
house-rules - For options promoted by non official folks.
For me, that would provide a clear distinction.  What does everyone else think?

I could see variants as being generally- or universally-accepted house rules.  Maybe a combined variants-and-house-rules tag?

@Little - check my edit and see if it works for you.

looks good to me!

@little - made the change, retagging now.

design and game-design appear to be synonyms.
Proposing to merge them.  I'm choosing game-design to be the tag going forward as it is more descriptive.

Strictly speaking, there is a distinction between graphics/components design and mechanics design. Both fall into the categories "design" and "game-design" so I don't think there is a problem.

Currently there is opening and openings. I don't think we should merge them because "openings" is a common term is Chess terminology and the tag openings has three answers, which are all related to openings in chess.
That said, it's ridiculous to have both tags. I propose letting Chess keeps it's term and rename openings chess-openings. The other tag can stay as-is and be used to discuss opening moves in all other games.

Proposing to merge the clarification tag into the rules tag.
I don't see what value clarification brings.  I think all such questions are pertaining to rules.
Note - I'm not a huge fan of the rules tag, but one thats a bigger question!

Newly added tag homebrew appears to be a synonym of house-rules.
Let me know if there is a good reason and consensus to keep it.  Thanks!

retagged 'em both.  no synonym at this time.

Is there a difference between game-design and game-development? From my quick glance there are only three questions in game-development and one of those I just added a few seconds ago (hence my noticing the potential duplication).

For me (and I am certainly no expert in this area) game-design is the process of coming up with a workable concept and base rule set for a game.  Game development would be the process of turning that concept into a publishable/playable game.  IE, component selection, rules balancing, etc.

I agree with @Pat.  For a concrete example, "Where can I recruit illustrators for my game's cards?" is a game development question, but not a game design one.


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Quality Recommendation/Subjective Questions and Answers
Let's try to nail this down and get some consensus on these questions and move forward.  I've definitely got some thoughts of my own, but I'd love to hear everyone else's.
For reference, if you mouse over the up/down arrows you'll get the standard guidance for all stackexchange sites.

Questions

Up - This question is useful and clear
Down - This question is unclear or not useful

Answers

Up - This answer is useful
Down - This answer is not useful

Hi Pat. What's this question/discussion aimed at? It looks like it's in response to other meta discussions - if so could you point to a couple?  Or are you avoiding that deliberately to try to start from a clean slate?

Are you talking about outlines towards subjective answers/questions? If so, this is a great guideline: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/


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7 wonders tag confusion
Looks like we have both 7-wonders and seven-wonders.
The actual name appears to be "7 Wonders".  is there any reason not to merge seven-wonders to it?

Made a synonym and merged 'em.  Use 7-wonders going forward.

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


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Are questions about boardgames-related events on-topic?
I'm talking about events like SPIEL in Essen, where many new games are shown to the public at 1st time. Mostly these questions would be not about specific game, but still related to boardgames. And I can't imagine other stackexchange site, which would be more related to this.

Yes. Definitely on-topic.

I agree with this, but does that mean "when is X game (expansion) being released" on-topic as well?.

@Egg: This kind of question should be closed as Too Localized. They have expiration date. A precise answer is hard.


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Is this site also good for miniature wargames questions?
I know this site is for board and card games but would you count miniature wargames into that group as well or are they separate kind of games? I mean games like Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40k etc.

First question that tests our feelings on this: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/274/using-quickshade-to-finish-miniatures-painting

These games are not RPG, so I think they should be accepted.

I have the same feeling, but I wanted to get the opinion of others.

Yes,
Miniatures games are board games by any reasonable definition of the term.  This should include all facets of the hobby including

preparation of figures
terrain
building an army
tournament tips

Painting figures seems to have attracted some negative attention.  I do not feel this is warranted.  There is no way to separate painting from miniature games.  It is an integral part of the whole.
We support questions on:

How to store boardgames
How to Protect the surface of your boardgames
Deck Sleeves

These are all ancillary questions that have no direct bearing on the actual playing of the game and they have found a home on this site and received positive votes and quality answers.  On the other hand, painting miniatures often has a direct relation to playing the game.  There can be rules governing what colors can be used, in tournament play usually a good percentage of your final score is based on the painting and appearance of your army.

I would count them as on-topic, as long as they are questions about gaming - questions about miniatures-painting are no more on topic than questions about corner-cutting for counters, or plexiglass systems for protecting boards (ie not).
After all, Blood Bowl is a board game played with minis from the same publisher.

A well made point, this should possibly be added to the site FAQ.

Couldn't agree more.

"Powertieke" posted a comment on http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/274/using-quickshade-to-finish-miniatures-painting : "This IS ontopic. If you can ask questions about game packaging, caring for pieces, then painting miniatures (For a game) is ontopic!" He does have a point. Even though I don't agree I have to admit that I cannot give a simple and clear definition of the boundary between taking care or your boardgame box/pieces and painting warhammer miniatures.

I don't think that taking care of your boardgame pieces or boxes should be on-topic, but it's a much smaller topic than miniature painting, so it will be a handful of questions.  Miniature painting risks bringing in the whole question of historical uniforms research!

Given a good enough tagging system, I don't care if we do bring in the whole uniform question.  (Not likely to happen unless we also allow questions on historical wargames.)  If Wargames.SE exists, wargames are clearly out of scope here, but that idea doesn't seem to be flooded with support at Area 51.  So possibly it's better to embrace wargames here.  (Certainly I don't want to rule out all mini painting questions, or we have to rule out mini questions for, say, Descent and Risk as well.  I agree that they're different from tactical questions... but how do they harm the site if allowed?)

I would consider them on-topic. Otherwise, what exactly is the dividing line between Warhammer 40k and, say, Munchkin Quest? (That's the Munchkin board game, which doesn't really have a "board" as such, but a Carcassone-style growing map of tiles, and players and monsters running around on it.)
One possible answer to that is that Munchkin Quest-like games should also be excluded, but that game definitely feels like a board game.


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Is it offtopic to play or anounce games through BCG?
For now it probably is, but I can imagine the following in the future (if there is a chat channel available):

Werewolf chat, I have a lot of good experiences with this. The games are mostly fast and fun.
Diplomacy, diplomacy phase by chat and email, current maps are shown possible trough the site or a dedicated other site.

In both cases I volunteer to lead the games, I have enough experience with both.
And there are lots of other games that can be played through a channel. (I have some plans to adapt Advanced Civilization for pbem. But I need to work out the trade phase).

Upvoted because this is a good question, not because I agree that the site should be used for these purposes.

Through chat, I don't think it's off topic. That's what the chat rooms are for; any sort of off topic, idle conversation, or stuff that isn't relevant to or doesn't work well in a question and answer format.
Of course, not all that many people seem to actually use the chat functionality on the Trilogy/StackExchange sites; only the Tavern has any real significant use, as far as I've seen. Also, there are no private message facilities, so we'd have to use something out of band for that. Given these issues, chat might not be the best forum for these sorts of games; there are lots of other forums in which you can play them already.
It wouldn't work well on the main site or meta. Even announcing games or asking for people interested in them on the main site should be discouraged.

I think it would be off topic. However, if there is a site where people can announce games, or even a twitter tag, then I would expect to see a question such as "Where can I find announcements for online game sessions" etc.


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Weird glitch in suggested edit review
I just reviewed this suggested edit.
Fifteen minutes later the item appeared again in the queue. So I reviewed it again and checked the queue. But I found only one instance. I found this reviewed suggested item like I had reviewed it. I am certain I haven't reviewed this one before. So I wonder if it is possible due to a glitch that I have seen the same review twice but it was recorded as two different reviews.


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Sugested edit was a rollback
Not really a question.
I just reviewed and rejected this suggested edit. (I wasn't the only one so the edit is rejected.) But I zoomed in at the question, I saw it was edited a few minutes before. The suggested edit is a rollback of this edit although the comment suggest otherwise.
In this case, the original edit was an improvement so the rollback was not wanted. But my point is, that there is no way to detect a rollback in the suggested edit review tool. Not sure if we need it.

I think that was a manual edit to put in the old text as I don't think you have the ability to suggest a rollback of a post and that ability is only available for users with full edit privileges.

I think that was an honest accident resulting from an edit collision, without being an attempt to roll back.

Revision 2 was made by me at 09:34:27Z.
That edit was submitted at 09:34:33Z — a mere six seconds later!

So we were both just editing the original version and submitted nearly simultaneously. The server did all it could.

But my point is, that there is no way to detect a rollback in the suggested edit review tool. Not sure if we need it.

Probably not. A suggested edit that effectively proposes rolling back an improvement will usually face two problems:

If it is removing genuine improvements, then the edit is actively making the post worse somehow.
It is also likely to be making substantial changes of the type editors should not be attempting to make.

Either one of these would get the suggested edit rejected in the review queue.
If the pseudo-rollback actually improves the post and isn't a substantial change, the edit they're rolling back was probably pretty bad and they're doing us a favour.

Great, thanx that solves the mystery ;-).


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Courtesy and Etiquette
We have a courtesy and an etiquette tag.  Looking at the questions, there actually does seem to be a difference between the two, which rather surprised me - I was about to do a retag-spree, but it looks like they should be kept separate.
What do the rest of y'all think?

I created etiquette, then noticed the existing courtesy tag.  I've not investigated enough to see if they're different, but my gut feeling is that they should be combined.
Obviously I think we should keep etiquette.

In this case I say make a synonym suggestion - see if it takes.

Unfortunately you need 2500 rep to make synonym suggestions

See also http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/81/should-the-threshold-for-suggesting-tag-synonyms-be-lowered


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Has there been a reputation recalc?
I'm pretty sure I was on 2467 rep yesterday. Today I am on 2436. I don't see any obvious changes in my accepted answers etc. Anyone else experience something like this?

Found the answer. Apparently, reputation has been recalculated globally across all sites. I've also raised a feature request on meta asking that users be notified in future.


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Thanks for the mod hat!
Without any warning, I got an unexpected surprise in the post today from Stack Exchange. It's... a moderator hat!

As you can see, I am wearing it with pride. Thank you very much!


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When should the 'not an answer' flag be used?
There's been a recent spike in flagging as 'not an answer'. In most cases the answers are either inaccurate, not very good, or just plain wrong. Since they don't add much, it can feel reasonable to try and get them eradicated by mod-hammer.
These flags are being made in good faith, by conscientious members of the community, and we (moderators) are grateful for the many moderation situations that are correctly pointed out every day.
However, moderators commonly reject these flags. Why?

The purpose of the 'not an answer' flag is well summarised in the meta-discussion Flagging as 'not an answer'. I reproduce it here for convenience.

The "not an answer" flag is for the following situations:

The OP...

needed to update the question with new information, but posted the new information as an answer.
wanted to reply to an existing comment or answer, but posted the reply as an answer.
posted a "resolution answer" saying something along the lines of "Joe's answer worked for me"

A user...

wants to reply to the OP, an answerer or a commenter, but doesn't have enough rep, and instead of thinking "maybe there's a reason I'm not allowed to post comments," ignores the help text about what an answer is.
posts to say "I'm having this problem too, does anyone have a solution yet?"
has a related issue and isn't aware of the "Ask Question" button.

These are common situations for new SO users who may be confused by the reputation, editing and/or commenting systems. They may be used to forums where it's normal to add a new post underneath the existing posts, and blindly click the "Post Your Answer" button.

So:

If the answer really isn't an answer, but something else entirely (see above), flag it.
If an answer is technically inaccurate, wrong, or just doesn't answer the question, downvote it.

If what you are saying is correct (specifically in regards to downvoting answers that don't attempt to answer the question rather than flagging), I feel like the wording of the "Not an answer" flag in the dialog should be changed. It currently reads "This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether." The part I have bolded I believe is currently saying that in this situation, flagging is correct.

@bengoesboom - I am quite certain that what I'm saying here is the intended usage. I agree that the wording is a little ambiguous. It depends on the intent of the answerer. I'm not sure what a better wording might be. If you have suggestions, the place to raise that to the team would be on meta.stackoverflow.com.

Re your final sentence, if it "just doesn't answer the question", isn't that "not an answer"?  For example, if somebody asks how to speed up a game of Diplomacy, an "answer" saying "play Civilization instead" is NAA, right?  (Also a silly comparison, but I hope you know what I mean...)

@Monica Cellio - The distinction is whether a moderator can and should make the call. NAA shouldn't require any expertise in the area in order to evaluate it. It should be obviously not an answer, because it's something else. The quality of that answer is a totally different call. That's not a moderator's job (even if they happen to have such expertise). The voting system is an excellent mechanism for evaluating the quality of answers. In your example, the 'answer' should be downvoted into oblivion. It can and will eventually be deleted by high-rep user consensus, if that's warranted.

@Monica Cellio - To put it another way, flagging a poor answer is a kind of privilege escalation. You're saying "Hey! This answer is rubbish! In fact it's so terrible it should just be eradicated! I'm an expert, and I am telling you it's the case. I'm not sure whether you can be as sure as me, but just trust me, ok? So just delete it, please?" You can't do that through non-mod channels, and for good reason. It needs a consensus of high-rep users, and significant downvotes, to delete posts. Mod powers are for exceptions not handled by the rest of the system. Bad answers are not an exception.

Hmm, ok.  I would have thought that a question about game X that's answered with "play game Y instead" would be unambiguously NAA.  (I should also note that this is theoretical; I haven't cast any flags on this site recently.)

@Monica Cellio - There's clearly a grey area, but the problem with grey areas is the edges. One could argue that your example is fairly 'obvious' from a quality standpoint. But if that answer explained in detail the reasoning, then this could be perfectly valid. We see this all the time on StackOverflow. "How do I write a script to do foo?" "Don't do that! Use tool bar instead! It's safer/more reliable/what everyone else does." All I'm saying is such judgements are best left to the community, not individuals, even moderators with the best of intentions.

Moderators aren't supposed to be the deciders of correctness, and the bar for deleting answers as not an answer is fairly high.
You should only flag an answer if it is not even intended to be an answer.
These often take the form of clarification question, thank yous, and "I'm having this problem too" answers.
Even if an answer is an answer to a mis-understood question, so long as the writer intended to write an answer to the question he/she thought the OP was asking, than the not an answer flag is not appropriate.

If only moderators understood this before deleting answers.


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Are there any plans to migrate poker questions to poker.stackexchange.com?
I sort of assume that this is all in hand by TPTB, but it would be nice to have confirmation.

No.
Migrations to and from beta sites are discouraged anyway; migrations of on-topic questions to other sites where they might be on-topic are even less popular.
And as bwarner notes, doing so could unbalance a site that's already a bit... iffy.

I think we should first make sure that the Poker site can stand on its own.  Shotgunning a bunch of already answered questions over there isn't going to do them any favors, and will cause confusion if the site doesn't survive.  Once it looks to be in a stable place, it would probably make sense to migrate questions to that site.
As a corollary, it is my understanding that poker questions are still on-topic here, though it would certainly be encouraged to ask them at the Poker site instead.


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Diagrams next to question captions
This is in regards of the subtopic Go and an extended copy of a post asked on the now-defunct meta.Go.SE.
In the long run, there will be a lot of questions in the form of "Question about some move in some game". To make sure users have a basic understanding of the actual content of the question, I'd suggest to add little diagrams next to the questions.
To a Go player, those diagrams will usually immediately tell about the content, helping them to decide if they can answer. At least it would encourage them to have a look, since noone likes to click on the umpteenth "What are properties of and rationale behind this fuseki move?" or "What's the status of this group?".
This is linked to removing diagram code from question excerpts, which makes the excerpts unreadable and basically useless.
The previous statement from the official side was to put this up as a feature request, so here it is again. It was also said that it would be a major change, so this is more of a reference.


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Dominoes is it on-topic?
Games which has no cards or boards but it is played like a board game over a table should be on-topic?
For me it should be. Games like that has the same mechanics.

"Board and Card Games" is a handy descriptor but we should not limit ourselves strictly to games with actual boards or actual cards.  Anything that plays like a board game, regardless of components, is on-topic here.

Yes,
Dominoes is to scrabble as Dominion is to Agricola.  Just a different form factor IMHO.


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Scrabble like board games are they on-topic?
It has a totally different mechanics but still a board game.

Yes, I think we should allow these.
The world in general admits to an interpretation of "boardgame" that definitely encompasses those games.


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What should our FAQ contain?
One of the big 7 questions.

To start generic:
- A list of questions that are allowed and what not.
- Some guidelines on how to ask and answer a question.
- Of course the standard SO mechanics.
- Names and task of the moderators.

@Gamecat has some good suggestions. I'd add (I'll update this if i think of more):

When a question should be in meta.
When a question should be in gaming.stackexchange.com.
Profanity policy, if any.


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How do we promote our site?
One of the big 7 questions.

One sugestion per answer, please

If people here are very active on board game forums, they could put a link in their signature.

"Stump the Stack"

Contact convention organizers.  See if they'd like one of us to attend and volunteer to field any board game questions.  In exchange, we will publicize the event here and drum up "support" to answer their questions quickly.
Have our volunteer assist folks in signing up for an account here, or just enter the question directly.
Make sure each person leaves with a business card containing the url https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/X (where X is the question number).  Ask them to check that URL later on, or swing back in an hour.

That's the basic plan, I know the larger conventions would definitely want $$ in order for us to participate in any official fashion, but there are a ton of smaller conventions that may be open to this plan.

When public beta will be launched, every meta user must post about this site in Twitter. I can bet that at least 3 new users will come from my followers.
Facebook is also welcome (my Twitter account is synchronized with FB).

Twitter was my plan also.

When a new game comes out, we should immediately make an effort to post a bunch of questions about that game, and then take the time to post good answers.  It will help us capture the "opening-weekend" crowd of people trying to settle arguments with their shiny new games via google.
"Can I use a froob in conjunction with a squark?"
"Dunno, google it?"
"According to this board games site, you can only use a froob with a squark if you fleech it first."
"Cool.  Hey, they have a bunch of other answers here too!"
"Oh, sweet!  Send me the link!"

What about designing a game featuring the site and distribute that.
The SO concept has been compared with mass player games. But It can be turned into a boardgame too.
Of course the system must be simplified, but the bottom line is to collect rep points and use the new privileges. (And no rep is not the main part but you can compare the game to the site as munchkin to rpg's).

Participate in PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) forums (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/).  The content of this exposition is very much user driven.


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Who should the moderators be?
In weeks, this community will receive some provisional moderators to help get this site started prior to the elections at the end of the beta. Please read this: Moderators Pro Tempore.
Please suggest some members of this community you feel would make excellent moderators (self nominations are okay).
Here are some basic guidelines:

Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity.
The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.
Self nominations are okay, and even encouraged. Most sites have not had sufficient time for many users to stand out. Self nomination is simply a way to say, “I’m interested. Let my record speak for itself.” Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.

Here is what we are looking for in a Moderator...
We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:

Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.
Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.
Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.
Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.

Bonus points for:

Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).
Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.
Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community.

I'm not sure it isn't a little early for this question.  By the end of the private beta we should have a better idea who some of our big users are going to be.

@ICodeForCoffee: It's never too early to post one of the big 7 questions. The decision will be took independently of post date. Posting early we have more time to eval candidates.

While self-nominations are OK, I'd be more interested in people nominating someone else. A self nomination gives you a little information, from how someone describes themself; a nomination of someone else says that you've seen them in action, and from their actions, are willing to put your own reputation on the line by nominating someone else. That's a much bigger commitment, and thus statement about their qualities, to someone than an upvote is; no one knows who voted for whom, and people may upvote without having looked at someone else's track record. So, let's see some non-self nominations!

@Brian: Both has pros and cons. Have been nominated by pairs or by himself (or herself, although this seems to be another Marlboro land :-) ) can be used when you are analyzing the candidates. Know how a user see himself is a good thing too. To me both are equally valid.

@bigown They're definitely both equally valid. I'm just saying that I would prefer some non-self nominations; all we have now are self-nominations. We need to be thinking about who in the community would make a good moderator; looking around for someone else who stands out is a great way to do that.

@bigown And now I've put my money where my mouth is, and nominated you!

@BrianCampbell cough link cough

Out of curiosity, it looks like someone downvoted everybody's posts except for Gamecat and John Hadley... any particular reason for the mass downvote?

It was not me. I haven't recieved any vote yet. I probably remove my nomination if nobody is interested.

@LittleBobbyTables I wouldn't worry about it; some people will have their reasons for downvoting or upvoting. It may not have been one person; it may have been a few people that each saw someone they disagree with. I would encourage people to share their concerns publicly, but it is fine to keep votes secret if you want to.

Locking this as I believe the temporary moderators have been chosen.

@Pat Ludwig -- unlocked to ask this -- yes, temporary moderators have been chosen, but isn't this question for picking permanent moderators?  If so, this shouldn't be locked.

@LittleBobbyTables - moderators will not be chosen again until the site leaves beta (2-3 months).  I suggest that any data gathered now for that contingency will be stale when it is needed.  I think we should start fresh nearer to that time.

@Pat Ludwig - that's fine, I'll defer to you on this one.

I nominate Brian Campbell (meta) because of his obvious enthusiasm, excellent meta posts, and experience with the SO engine.
Brian, if you accept, please give us some more information about yourself and your experience.
I accept the nomination to be a moderator pro tempore. I cannot commit at this time to being a moderator beyond the beta period, but I am willing to accept the duties of a moderator until the official election, and at that time I may decide to run again, but I may step down.
I have extensive experience with the StackExchange platform. I have been a contributor at StackOverflow for over a year and a half, and am among the top 250 users in reputation there. I am familiar with all of the moderator tools available to those without a ♦ next to their name; I am relatively frequently involved in discussions about whether to close or make a question CW. I have also been involved somewhat at meta.so, to try and make the platform as a whole better.
As mentioned, I've participated pretty heavily in boardgames.se, as well as meta, to try and definite what this site should be about. I would love to see this site succeed, as I find it one of the best formats for asking and answering questions on any given topic.
I have participated in BoardGameGeek in the past, though it's been a few years since I've been active there. I also host and administer the Looney Labs Fan Wiki and Icehouse Games Wiki.
As far as games go, I like a wide range, but tend to lean towards abstracts, Euros, and game systems like playing cards and Icehouse, while I also play a lot of word games and party games. The game I play most seriously is Go, though I'm not all that good (double digit kyu, for those who are familiar with the game). I also do medieval recreation in the SCA, and so I've learned and teach a good number of medieval board and card games.
In my professional life, I'm a programmer, as you might guess from my StackOverflow reputation. My education is in computer science, though I studied math and linguistics fairly extensively as well. Other hobbies of mine include juggling and archery, and I commute to work by bicycle.
And finally, my approach to moderation. As a moderator, I would take the consensus of the community very seriously. If there is a community consensus on an issue, such as what is on and off topic, then that is what I will try to uphold. I am aware that the ♦ next to your name will make people take what you say and do more seriously, and so I would be very careful to be even-handed, and not take action unless there is a clear community consensus, or there is an emergency and no consensus immediately apparent. For instance, I would be very reluctant to unilaterally close a question, unless it was very clearly inappropriate and needed immediate attention.
That said, part of the job of a moderator is to help lead the community. In cases in which consensus is not readily apparent, the moderator can be a tie-breaking voice, speaking with more authority. Our discussions are not votes; I may choose the slightly less popular choice, if I believe that it is more consistent with the mission of the community or more likely to lead the community to a better place. I will not act against a clear consensus, but I will make decisions when no consensus can be reached and no further discussion is likely to be productive.
Please let me know if you have any questions about me or my approach to moderation. Thank you for the nomination!

Good call, I support this nomination!

Thanks for the nomination! I'm thinking about it; I will get back to you in a few days. I don't yet have enough rep on meta to edit the post; perhaps you can make it CW like I did with Bigown's nomination so I can edit it?

@BrianCampbell Done.

Having just read Brian's excellent 'Anyone know more 'social' games like 'Werewolves"' answer +1 for leading by example.

He has my total support! No one deserves more.

Just to add to the praise: I think Brian's answers are the most interesting ones on the site, both parent and meta. I strongly support his nomination.

I nominate bigown (meta). He is in the top 10 users in rep so far, demonstrating that he's contributing actively. He has participated quite a lot in meta, and has shown an even-handed approach to many of the topics. He is already a moderator at programmers.se, where he contributes heavily and actively, demonstrating that he has at least some experience with moderating this sort of community.
bigown, do you accept this nomination? If so, please edit it to add some more information to this nomination about yourself, your approach to moderation, and the like.

If @bigown thinks he can handle two sites I'm all for it.

My only concern is that he has 9 questions open, a number of them with valid answers, and a 0% acceptance rate.  Bigown is certainly contributing actively, but I think a few of the questions have valid answers worth accepting.

@LittleBobbyTables some of us like to leave questions open a few days, to give others a chance to compete for that accepted bonus.

@C. Ross - Fair enough, I guess I just have a different way of using the site, and I accept that.  Last you'll hear about it from me.

Sorry, I had a lot of work these days. First I wanna thank to Brian. I can't say anything now. If my nomination has support I will think seriously about it. Thanks to C. Ross and up voters. @LittleBobbyTables: For me accept any answer before public beta doesn't make any sense. This is just my personal opinion. Anyway I am waiting to more answers from new users. I didn't accept by negligence, I choose that way.

I would like to nominate Pat Ludwig/meta. Not just because he has the highest reputation score currently, but because of the activity, detail of answers and commitment to the site.
Well, 2 negative votes already so this may be wasted effort, but nothing ventured, nothing gained right? :)
I accept this nomination.
I'll state up front that my qualifications in terms of stackexchange/stackoverflow experience are slight.  I'm currently the #2 rep'd user of rpg.stackexchange.com (3500 rep), plus #1 here.  While I haven't actively participated in previous SE sites, I have been reading Joel Spolsky's blog for many years and I did witness the founding of stackoverflow.com.  It seemed a great idea, but in my work I didn't have a pressing need for the answers offered there.  Periodically I checked back in and discovered the RPG SE in August.  I jumped in with both feet and committed here as well.
I've been playing games all of my life.  I think first "real" boardgame was Risk, but I progressed into various SPI games, D&D, Star Fleet Battles, Battletech.  Then I was introduced to Civilization.  Wow, that was an eye-opener!  My favorite 3 games of all time still are:

Advanced Civilization
Empires in Arms
Age of Renaissance

I've been deeply involved in many facets of the game industry over the years.

Owner of Boldo's Armory game store (We've been in business since 1995, store opened in 1997, I've been a mostly silent partner since 2000)
Competitive chess player for over 10 years
Taught chess, ran tournaments (including one for nearly 200 kids)
Ran dozens if not hundreds of games and demos at conventions
Majored in Bridge at college (this is not what I told my parents!)
Leader of the Austin BoardGame Group for 2 years

I have read, and agree to the Theory of Moderation.  Almost all of the time, the community will be able to self-moderate this site and do it well.  There will be a few occasions when a moderator will need to step in and quickly address a situation.  I stand ready to take action when appropriate.
If there are any questions I can answer, please let me know.
--Pat

I accept this nomination.  @Codemwnci, could you CW this answer so that I may edit it and state my credentials for the record?  Thanks!

Done. Edit away.

It's a good nomination.

I'll go ahead and throw my hat into the ring as well.  I'm interested in moderation because I like to help make sure that sites I'm very interested in can run as smoothly as possible, and think this would be a great learning experience as well.
While I'm relatively new to the StackExchange sites (been here just over five months now), the great attitudes of everyone here, plus the ability to help people, is what made me stay.
I contribute to both (StackOverflow as well as the Board Game beta, and while I don't have very high rep on SO, I feel it's because I answer in lower-traffic areas.  I visit both sites every day.
I have moderated a community in LiveJournal in the past (which can be like herding cats some times), was a moderator for a MUD waaaaaay back in the day, and actually find moderating to be fascinating and rewarding.
I have been playing board games for as long as I can remember -- my wife and I don't have cable TV, and instead opt to play board games (and video games to some extent) as entertainment.  I love Puerto Rico and Power Grid, and also play Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Chez Geek, Munchkin and Scrabble with regularity.  I've picked up Chaos in the Old World and Horus Heresey, and will get to play them some day.  I used to play tabletop games as well, but have switched over to board games for their accessiblity.
I would describe my moderation style as "slow-to-provoke, quick-to-respond".  In the case of the poker spamming yesterday, I tried commenting on the user's questions to no avail.  If I had been a moderator, as soon as the Spam and Moderation Required warnings came in, I would have most likely suspended them as well due to spamming and ignoring requests to stop.

I know the question discouraged self-nominations, but I'm the only one who knows me so - I'm throwing my hat in the ring.
I am active here (top 5 rep) and on rpg.stackexchange.com. I've only been boardgaming for about 4 years, but I've played more games than anyone else I know personally.
I really enjoy this SE and would love the opportunity to take on a moderation role - especially in a pro tempore capacity, because I have no moderation experience excepting that for my own, much smaller sites.
I game with a broad variety of people, including my wife, my son (14), his friends, "couple" friends, and more stereotypical "gamers".
I am the rules authority in my group - called upon for fairness in rulings as well as quick lookups in large manual.
Thanks for welcoming me to this SE, and I hope I'm able to participate as a moderator.

And another shameless self nomination.
As a 2 year+, 20k+ member of SO, I have some experience with the site mechanics including the mod tools. And I'm mostly aware of the (un)written rules on site behaviour. Besides I am a game addict. (hence my nickname which I carry for more than 5 years now).
I have been a moderator/administrator on some internet fora and a channel operator on an IRC channel. Experience with trolls and ill behaved users. The later are hard to cope with because you like to teach them how to behave but sometime they and the community do not fit together.
My primary goal is to be part of a great community for (board and card game lovers). The task of a moderator is to be like the oil in the machine. You don't see it often, its used to keep things going, and if you mess with it you get dirty ;-).  And don't forget, you have to replace it when its no longer functional.
On the personal level. We have recently moved from the (small)city to a vilage called Nootdorp in the Netherlands (just 5 km east of Den Hague where I work as a software developer). I have a family, two sons. The oldest is becomming a game addict too which proves the investment finally pays of ;-).
I collect games for 20 years now. We like to play games if we have time and energy but that is not to often. And of course I'm a dungeon master for 20 years now (I know OT, but experience can be relevant).
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I will check the site several times a day.

Why the downvote?  If somebody thinks I'm not qualyfied, fine but please tell me why.

I'd like to nominate myself, as the meta area of this site has engaged me more than any other SE site. My reputation in both sites hopefully supports this.
I'm a grizzled freelance web developer of 10+ years experience, as such I've been involved in (and built) many web forums and moderated many of the arguments and personality clashes that occur within them. My first experience of moderation was as an #ircnewbies channel operator, back when my Windows 3.1 machine didn't have enough oomph for Mosaic!
I am an active user on Stack Overflow and also (most usefully in relation to this site), gaming.stackexchange.com. I've also submitted and contributed to a number of other beta sites on Area 51.
Stack Exchange is, in my opinion, the best Q&A system to appear in the last decade.
I use my full, real name on all sites and I'm happy to carry my professional reputation with me as a result.
Board/Card game wise I am a big fan of Diplomacy, but can also be found playing Chess, Poker, Scrabble and more recently, Carcassonne.
I'm UK based and so able to care for the site when the US moderators are asleep.
I am a married father of a 2 year old son, so I can display patience and tact in the face of provocation and immaturity, regardless of my energy levels ;)
Finally, above all else I'd like to try to keep to the central tenant of A Theory of Moderation:

We intended Stack Overflow and Server Fault to be mostly self-regulating....
Moderators are human exception
  handlers, there to deal with those
  (hopefully rare) exceptional
  conditions that should not normally
  happen...

Your accounts on SO and gaming.se don't seemed to be linked to this one. That's how I originally tried to check out where else you were active. Not a problem, just something I thought I'd point out. I like your emphasis on moderators being the exception rather than the rule. I'm concerned about the fact that you don't have enough rep on any trilogy site to even have privileges to edit other people questions and answers, let alone moderation tools. That indicates a bit of a lack of experience with the communities and tools at hand.

@Brian I think my lack of high rep on one SO site is probably due to spreading myself rather thinly across them all - as I say, BG has engaged me more than any other, hence why I wish to become more involved. (I oticed the odd linking too (it's the same OpenID), had a warning e-mail from the Area51 system pointing it out too. Looking into it. )

Good answer, thanks for responding.

Ok, we obviously need moderators, so I'll start by nominating myself. I love boardgames, play them a lot, and have been active here since the beta of stackoverflow. I'd love to help making this community a success. I'm not a deletionist but I hate spam and badly written questions.
That said, there are many fine people here who'd also make great moderators.

How you would deal with bad written questions?

Have you ever modded another site?  Any relevant experience?

@bigown Edit titles, prod repeat offenders to be clearer and close hopeless questions.

@C.Ross None whatsoever :) But how hard can it be?

@Michiel Pushing the buttons is easy.  Knowing when to push the buttons is hard.  I'm not saying you're not qualified, just seeing if there was anything you left out.

If you're opinion is "how hard can it be" then you probably don't really understand the post very well. :)


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Vote Early, Vote Often
Jeff Atwood post new article about voting. Read: Vote Early, Vote Often.
Voting is the secong thing most important to SE sites. Don't waste your votes and incentive new user to vote.
Jeff also post an article about Asking Better Questions. Please read and help us enforce the quality of questions.

if you see a great, thoughtfully asked, well researched question, vote it up — please! Great questions are an art!
if you see an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended question that you feel was asked in bad faith … vote it down.
anything in between that’s salvageable, edit it — if you have the requisite 1,000 reputation.

Please use your votes.
Quoting RobertCartaino from chat:

Vote, vote, vote. Encourage others to vote, vote, vote. On good content, leave signposts ("If you like this, please vote it up. It's important for the community!")-- in both meta and the main site. Maybe a few meta posts informing the users of the important of that type of participation. You are empowered a lot more than you know.

Agreed, I used all my votes yesterday to get some rep into the site.

And especially look for new users' questions/answers to vote up. They're much more likely to stick around if they get some nice fast positive reinforcement.
One easy way to do this is to use https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/review

I agree about voting up quality content from new users. We want to encourage quality from the very start so that new users (like existing ones) know that their good contributions won't be wasted. I don't agree with simply voting up whatever new users post, though (not that you necessarily meant this). New users may need more guidance with respect to the FAQ and meta content, but we don't want to reward bad content just because it comes from new people.


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Board & Card Games Meetups
What is the consensus on organising B&CG themed physical meet-ups? Along the lines of Barcamps or, indeed, BoardGameCamps.
It might be a great way of promoting the site to a larger audience (and of course, at the very least, sharing favourite games).
I'm based in the South West U.K. - I'd be happy to organise one for my area.

Love the thought.  I'm unsure if we have enough active users now to get a quorum in any one place.  If you do get one going, we can probably insert a link into the site banner to promote it.

I'd love to participate in a boardgames meetup.  I run a small weekly group in Victoria, BC, and used to run one in Seattle.  As the site grows, it would be wonderful for it to start putting members in touch with others in their area.
Boardgames are such a fundamentally social activity, it would be crazy for meetups not to happen!


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Possibly redundant tags: catan and settlers-of-catan
We've got a few questions in each... though it's arguable that they both are necessary, settlers-of-catan referring specifically to the basic Catan game, and catan referring to the entire franchise in general.  Should we combine these?  The distinction sense in my head, but I foresee problems keeping that clarity as time goes on and our population grows.
(Either way, this distinction isn't in use and some retagging needs to occur regardless)

For anyone reading this nowadays, note that this topic is obsolete. Several years after this meta topic was written, the official name of the game was rebranded to simply "Catan". We had a meta topic on this and now [tag:catan] is the official tag and [tag:settlers-of-catan] is a synonym.

I think settlers-of-catan is a better tag then catan.  Settlers-of-catan refers to the original game, but, catan could refer to any of the myriad of Catan games.  A question that pertains to the Catan universe could be tagged as Catan, but I think those will be very rare.  While our current usage basically only mentions the core game and thus one tag, more detailed tags would be better for if we get significant number of questions about the Catan games.
While I agree that when you first think of Catan, you're probably going to think of the original game, that's not gonig to be the case for everyone.  Settlers of Catan has had three major expansions and other game series like "Starfarers of Catan", and "Catan Card Game" have been launched featuring the Catan name.  If all the Catan games could be played together, I think one tag to encompass them all would be a viable solution.  Since these are actually distinct games, multiple tags would be more precise.
Even the base Catan games plays very different then when playing with the Cities & Knights expansion.  That's why I think settlers-of-catan is a much better tag then just catan.  Now, do we need seafarers-of-catan tags and catan-cities-&-knights tags?  Maybe not.

Along the same lines, there is a board-game tag and a board-games tag.
Probably want to merge these once we get some Mods.

While I think we have to wait for merging, we all have the ability to retag questions until the end of the private beta.

...and boardgames


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Large number of seed questions?
I've noticed a large number of "seed" questions on the site.  The questions don't have much content to work with themselves, just a question in the title.
The topics seem ok, but the questions themselves don't encourage answers.  What can we do to make these questions better?

Related:  http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/92/texas-holdem-shotgun-questions

People should be encouraged to improve their questions.  Leave comments asking for clarification and vote down questions that are very vague and lack merit.  I'm very sparing on when I actually vote things down, and prefer to encourage people to post better answers.  If they're an established user, I'm much more likely to vot ethem down.
If the questions are obvious spam, flag them and vote to close them.

I think this is a different issue. There we talking about the flood, rep gathering questions and here we talk about legitimate good intention but bad written question. And this should be a comment not an answer.

Those questions were part of what I thought of, but I really think there are some other questions that fit.  On topic, but just poor quality.

I've updated my answer.

+1 I've voted down / voted to close poorly phrased questions. However I've resisted doing the same for string of questions from the same user, it's early days ...

Good observation.
We need change this before go public. We can review our questions and post a suggestion to OP improve the question where we find a poor on-topic question.


text:
Does the site cover "party games"?
Does this site cover "party games" like Pictionary, Taboo, or Cranium?

I see no reason why it shouldn't.  I'm guessing that we won't see that many questions on these games since they're generally less complex overall - we're not likely to get complicated rules clarifications.  But if someone has a question on it, it should be welcome!

How about games like 1000 blank white cards, mafia/werewolves/charades? Does this apply to them as well? I've been wanting to ask a few questions on these regarding a bit of game design and rules but they're obviously not board games or card games.

I would say 1000 blank white cards is a card game :-)  Anyway I'd be interested to see questions and answers on all the games listed above, and it seems doubtful they will fit on any other Stack Exchange site better than this one.

Oh, just saw the comments on the other answer.  Maybe they'd class as RPG??  I'm not really sure what the scope of RPG is.

As far as I'm aware, this site should cover all types of games that aren't done on a Smartphone, computer, or video game console/handheld.
For the types mentioned above, there is gaming.stackexchange.

I'm not sure this site should cover sports either... though the dividing line between board games and sports can get a bit fuzzy (crokinole? carrom? pool?). Also, RPGs are probably off-topic.

@BrianCampbell RPG has its own site.  It doesn't make sense to duplicate scope.

I think online games (that could played be on a smartphone, computer, or console) that are direct digital versions of a board or card game should be allowed, as long as the question being asked isn't about some technical problem, like "I can't see the game on X site, instead there's this little blue Lego piece looking thing with question marks on it. What do I do?"

@C. Ross Yes, I'm aware. That's part of why they're off topic. I was just pointing out that saying "any game that isn't on a smartphone, computer, or video game console" isn't the only criterion we need; there are other types of games that are off topic too. Whether RPGs are on topic in board gaming forums is something that comes up often, and is often answered by "no, they should have their own forum", so I figured I'd just mention that now.

@kchau Yes, that's true. There is a separate thread on meta about that http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/34/should-questions-purely-about-online-versions-of-a-game-be-allowed. I agree that questions about online or computer versions of board games are OK.


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How to ask about games with "impolite" names?
Several common card games have "impolite" names.

Bull $...
Egyptian Rat $....
Pimp the Backhanding

How do we want to address this on the site?  Should we not list the full name of the game as I have here?

I completely miss the point. I can't even remotely understand the kind of people who gets "offended" by things like that.

I think this is one of those points where the actual owners of *.stackexchange have come down with a "no impolite words" policy, so discussion is academic at this point.

(I continued to bowdlerize in this post until we decide, even though I'm arguing that it's silly)
SO had this argument with Brainf*ck, and I generally think they came out on the wrong side -- it's patently not offensive if it's part of the name, and people should be able to deal with it in that case. There's a difference between:

What are the rules to the card game Bullsh*t?

and:

You are a f*cking idiot if you use that strategy

The only good arguments I've ever heard for censoring are:

The people that do care care a lot, and it's easier to just avoid the edit war and cave
Some people are accessing the site from behind a proxy that will block sites with cursing

So, I think it's a personal problem that people should deal with on their own (get a userscript that censors websites if you want, rather than trying to get the whole Internet to censor itself), but unlike on the English.SE we can function without them if we really have enough users that can't handle it

I think the big argument is the proxy.  I don't want to limit availability.

There really aren't that many proxies that block on the mere presence of a word - some might black out the word.  Much more likely is that a site that is, after all, about games will get noticed for having rude words in, then get added to a "gaming" category, that a lot of filters block because it mostly consists of on-line flash games that eat bandwidth and users' time.

So if a game had the N word in it, you'd be ok with that.

@Lance I don't think that game would sell very well, but I'd be ok with calling it by its name, yes. I don't think that's a case we're really going to need to deal with though

The most likely source of those types of proxies / blacklists are (I think) corporate sites and kiddie blocking software.  People shouldn't probably be visiting this site on company time anyways, and I expect eventually there will be more mature content on this site and explicit game titles are just one part of that.  In either case, having this site blocked for those users is an appropriate response.

I just read the SO question you linked to. Really interesting read. wow. Just with all the give and take going on there, every beta user on this site should probably read it. I do think some of the arguments there are not as applicable here - SO is a source for programmers, who are arguably at work.  This is a recreational site, so one of the best pro-censorship arguments (by Pollyanna: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/24079/is-the-language-brainf-ck-offensive/24153#24153) doesn't hold much sway with me.

@DaveParillo for those of us with interesting work schedules there's a difference between company time and company hardware.

If the name is obscene it should be allowed, how else could it be searched for after all.
However, offensive or obscene language used out of context, or to attack of abuse somone should be deleted - this is pretty obvious i think, as the answer would probably already be voted down / not useful.

I think this boils it down rather nicely! If Wikipedia can do it then so should we.

My main vote for no is a fairly basic one: how to you ask a question about what might be a fairly obscure game without referring to it by name?  Do you call it the 'Game That Must Not Be Named' and link to an external site with the moxie to call a spade a spade?

I went right to the source and asked the horse: BGG does not appear to censor game titles. Go there and search 'p*mp' or 'sh*t'.
If the geek can live with being inaccessible behind some proxies, so can we.

So if BGG jumped off a cliff, we should too? :) We can't risk having the entire *.stackexchange.com domain put on corporate blacklists because a few people want to talk about profane board game titles. Ain't worth it.

@Jeff Do you have evidence of proxies that blacklist sites based on occasional curse words on sibling subdomains? Censoring four-letter words will be a lot of manual work, and make it harder to discuss certain games, whose names are said four letter words, without any demonstrable benefit. You can't exactly censor curse words on http://english.stackexchange.com, so they will already be appearing on other subdomains. In fact, many show up on StackOverflow: http://goo.gl/At5E (Google search for various inappropriate words on StackOverflow); is StackOverflow already blocked by said proxies?

@Jeff - Well, I suppose you can drag out other parental chestnuts, so I'll beat you to it: Your roof, your rules. :) But BGG has chosen some excellent cliffs to jump off of when it comes to running a boardgame community site, you must admit. And I must admit, I wasn't thinking about *.SE.com, I was thinking about boardgames. What forest? All I see are these trees....

I actually agree that censoring is unnecessary, but I don't agree with your rationale. -1 if I had the rep.

@JeffAtwood So even wikipedia is using words as they are. Does that mean they are blacklisted?

Don't.

Could you expand on that answer a little?  Or perhaps a lot...

Don't...ask about them at all?


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Game Specification Posts
I was thinking it might be useful to have a question that would read something like:

What is Advanced Squad Leader?

Maybe asking as a CW question, then have a CW answer that people can edit to list out the details of the game.  This would eventually give us an in-site place to link to instead of BGG (though you might have a BGG link in that answer).

If a game is important enough to merit its own tag, that would seem the logical place to have a full write-up on the game. If you look at the tags page you can already find:

dominion
settlers-of-catan
battlestar-galatica
carcassonne
chess
magic-the-gathering
And so on.

If a game is missing from the tags, ask a question about the game. Then edit the tag-wiki.

Good Idea......

Exactly - this is what I tried to do with Arkham Horror, for example.


text:
Extra Question Votes not working
I've tried for two days now to reach the new 40-vote limit (10 for questions).
The first day I voted for all things and got stopped before 40.
Today I voted for only answers until I hit 30, then tried to vote on a question and failed.
Is BCG not being updated?

I have just now tried this myself, twice in the last two days, I am above the 30 votes showing on my profile, but I still am not getting Vox Populi, it's freezing at 34/40..

The answer is that SE/SO decided to program in a little trick whereby you have to vote for the questions early, or you don't get all your votes.  You have be focused completely on balancing your votes or you'll get hosed.
Here's the reference: Cannot vote on question although 40 votes limit not reached.
I finally got it by making sure I voted for only questions (actually one answer vote slipped through).  It was so hard not to vote on a lot of the answers, what a sucky badge mechanism.

It's working.  Or at least was working.
There are several folks with the Vox Populi badge.

I didn't even know there was a badge for that until I logged in one day and found it waiting for me.

@Little - it's less than a month old I believe.

maybe it has something to do with me not being in the commit for this site and being added in into the Private Beta, after the fact.


text:
Are game review questions appropriate for BCG?
A game review would be highly subjective, however, it would also be useful for gathering thoughts on a game that the OP or readers may not come up with on their own. They could be useful community questions.

Exactly what sort of question do you mean? Do you mean, a request for a review, as in "Are there any reviews for [Game X]"? It would be good to include such an example question in your question, or maybe link to a question on the site if you have seen one.

@Erik, I haven't seen one yet. Basically, a request for opinions and insight (such as a particular angle, as per @Brian) on a game. I understand the need for questions to be directed at some particular problem, like @Brian said in an answer below. However, with general reviews on other sites, I don't think they can accomplish what you could here on an SE site. With votes, you can weed out reviews and also keep context of comments with an answer (without having to read an entire forum topic like you would on BoardGameGeek).

If you're just soliciting reviews for Game X with no additional information provided, that's probably not a good use of the site. BoardGameGeek already has a "reviews" section for each game, as well as ratings and comments that many people write for many games, and there are lots of other places that people can find game reviews; Googling for "[Game X] review" will usually find them.
If you want a review from a particular angle that you haven't seen covered before, that's acceptable. For instance, if you ask "[Game X] says ages 7 and up. My 10 year old son has [such and such mental handicap]. Will this game be appropriate for him?" or "[Game X] appears popular among hardcore gamers; how does it play in a family setting, with a few precocious children?", then those are soliciting reviews from a specific angle that may not be adequately addressed by existing reviews.

Exactly. The problem is not the question but the poorness of the question.


text:
Please leave comments or a meta thread when voting to close
At this stage of the beta (currently, the private beta), we're still trying to define the boundaries of what is on and off topic. Close votes for off-topic questions are a good way to do that, but they don't impart that much information, and they don't provide very good precedents. At this stage, it's much more useful to get discussion out in the open about whether and why certain questions should be closed, so we can come up with good rules of thumb about certain circumstances, and when people wonder in the future why their questions are being closed, we can link to the discussion demonstrating the community consensus.
The SE close/reopen system is somewhat weak; it only gives a way for people to support keeping a question open after it has been closed, and it leads to back-and-forth close/reopen cycles for debatable questions, since it takes only 5 votes either way to close or reopen it. A thread on meta with well-thought-out arguments, and an answer voted to the top by the community, can provide a much more definitive answer, and can help come up with a rule that can be applied more generally.
So, please, at least leave a comment if you are going to vote to close, and preferably start a thread on meta (and link to it in a comment). Of course, if something is obviously and blatantly off-topic or trolling, you don't need to do that, but for questions that are closer to the grey zone, this will be very helpful for the future.