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Why do contributors with no experience with trick-taking card games insist on closing questions on such games?
Once again, a question on strategy for a trick-taking game has been closed by a set of contributors, none of whom have a single tag credit for a trick-taking game such as Bridge, Euchre, Hearts, or Spades.

This is the second time in a week that a strategy question on Spades has been closed by 5 contributors with zero experience with the game, or of trick-taking games in general.

This behaviour can only have the effect of driving trick-taking card games off of the site. Is that the stated intent of the community?
Should there be a community guidelines that contributors be cautious when voting to close a question on games of an unfamiliar type?
Does the community regard such behaviour as acceptable?

This question is couched in seemingly civil language, and perhaps you intended it to be fairly objective and impersonal, but realistically, it comes across as fairly aggressive, especially when you get all the way to the point of asking whether other users' behavior is ethical and whether "more severe sanctions" are necessary for those users. Let's try to keep meta discussion focused on the actual question closure issues. (If after everything is settled it turns out we need to enforce a policy, the details of that are up to moderators - so just flag.)

@Cascabel: I have flagged in the past - problem continues.

@Cascabel: I have removed the "sanctions" inquiry. However a community that cannot have a discussion on its own ethical standards, simply has none. It is only through discussion of expectations, and where the reasonable limit of the same is, that any agreement on expected behaviour can be reached. Ethics can only exist with consensus.

We can absolutely talk about policy and expectations, but I don't think we need to call it ethics. Perhaps try "acceptable" rather than "ethical". And as for flagging - please note the "after everything is settled". Expecting us to have enforced changes in behavior in response to your flags is premature.

@Cascabel: Wording change made. I inquired about the desirability of enforced changes, and have since removed that inquiry. I have not stated any expectations other than the development of community guidelines. My understanding of the meaning of guidelines is that it refers solely to recommendations for consideration, as in the online definition: "a general rule, principle, or piece of advice.".

The title says "no experience" and the body says "no tag credit [on Board and Card Games]". Do you understand that these are two different things? I have zero tag experience in Spades and Hearts, but I have over 200 hours in Spades and Hearts online.

It's a hell of a statement to say someone has "no experience with the game or with trick-taking games in general" based solely on the lack of a tag badge. TBB you don't know jack-all about my experience, and I'm a user that you're explicitly calling out. It's your kind of post that causes decent contributors to leave, not the application of standards and procedures baked into the structure of the site itself.

@Nij: I removed the call-out as suggested as that was an ad hominem, and inappropriate. Would you care to outline your experience in making judgements ontrick-taking games?

The calling out remains, you haven't changed a single thing about the post. If my experience is going to be derided as insufficient by your standards anyway, I don't see the point. You've made it clear that nobody except the users you have selected in some arbitrary hidden process are good enough to be making any form of judgement on these questions, and damn the rest that disagree.

@ForgetIwaseverhere I would strongly suggest taking a step back from this. We all appreciate your contributions and your substantial experience, but that doesn't mean the community has to let you be the sole arbiter on this topic, and it certainly doesn't give you the right to disparage others. (This is not an invitation to debate further on what exactly you have or haven't done. I'm simply letting you know that you don't want to continue down this path.)

Hmm, I'm actually not sure if I was one of those close votes, but I've voted to close several in the last month. Below one of the answers here, I saw an accusation that such users (if not me in this instance, then surely it's me in another one) are voting to close in order to hunt badges. Man, that is childish. I don't care about points or badges, or whatever.

There are two entirely separate things going on here: was it correct to close this question, and general policy about who should and shouldn't close questions.
It seems you've decided that the answer to the first is no, the question shouldn't have been closed, and have moved straight on to concluding that this means that other users are voting with insufficient experience. This is, to put it mildly, a bit of a leap.
I'm going to avoid trying to lay out arguments about whether or not the question should've been closed, and focus on the more drastic policy suggestions. If you want to debate the closure of this specific question, I'd suggest asking a separate question focusing strictly on that, without any of the pieces about users' behavior.
Experience requirements
Nope. There should be no tag reputation requirement for close votes.
You have no idea how much experience these users have with spades or other trick-taking games. You know that they haven't posted about them. But there's a pretty good chance they know something about the game, and they've been active enough on the site to learn in general about what makes questions too broad. So it is completely acceptable for them to vote to close on questions about spades.
More broadly, this site cannot be run as a collection of independent sites, one for each tag. Our policies need to carry across tags, and we certainly don't have enough active users to split ourselves up that way. We're a community.
New users
Yup, we should be careful about how we treat new users, but that doesn't mean declining to close questions. We need consistent standards. The best way to avoid driving off new users is to help explain why their question was closed, and even more importantly, what if anything can be done to get it reopened, or ask a new variation of the question that wouldn't be closed.
Guidelines
There are a few things that users with the close vote privilege should keep in mind (but flat-out avoiding tags they're not experts in is not one of them):

Edit the question or suggest improvements when possible. It's better for all of us if the question never has to be closed in the first place, or if it's at least quickly reopened.
When you do cast a vote, explain yourself, especially with new users, especially if no other users have yet. Our general rules are not always obvious, and the reasons for applying a particular close reason are often even less obvious.
Vote based on your best judgment. That may include thinking about whether you understand the question and the kinds of answers it is likely to receive. You've earned the close/reopen vote privilege, which means we generally trust you to make this judgment.
Be ready to learn. Follow the reopen queue, read clarifying edits and comments, read meta. If you realize a vote was wrong, great! You can reverse it or cast a reopen vote, and you can do better in the future.

These can be difficult things to do consistently, but we can all try to keep them in mind and see what we can do.
Enforcement
Even more nope. We can talk about what the best policies are for the site, but we're really not to the point of needing to do much more at this point. If a question appears to be incorrectly closed, we can reopen it (likely after meta discussion, especially if it's a borderline case), and that's that. Users with the close vote privilege should try to be aware of this sort of thing, and learn from the example. But mistakes happen; they don't need to be deemed unethical or punished. The best way to improve is to let people learn.
The only time when we should be concerned about users' behavior is when they've had the opportunity to learn but continue to knowingly go against site policy. If you truly think you've seen this, don't call people out on meta, just flag an example, explain in the flag reason, and let moderators handle it. (But that's not what's going on here - please don't go flag that question.)

Because you don't need to have experience with a tag in order to perform moderator type actions on it. And in those cases the questions where reopened.
You need to remember, even if you don't like it, that having a score or certain score in a question tag or area of tags is not required for someone to vote or take action on it.
I would also point out that calling out someone by name on meta is a lot more frowned upon then voting to close a question where you don't have any answers on the related tag. You could have made your point just as well without posting a screen shot of the names of the close voters or their tag list.
I will also point out that just because a user doesn't have any trick taking answers on this site doesn't mean they don't have experience in trick taking games in general. Most of the questions around trick taking games seem to be focused on bridge and there are not a lot of questions on other games such as spades. Which would mean even if someone played them but not bridge they would not have much of an opportunity to answer questions on trick taking games.
bridge 306 questions
euchre 15 questions
hearts 12 questions
spades 16 questions

@ForgetIwaseverhere The questions you are complaining about where reopened which means the community didn't agree with the closure. Also with the size of this site it is still trivial to track down the users in questions based on the tag scores that are posted and the question you linked. You really should remove all of that from your question as you can make the same point without that information and just the basic idea of a lack of answers on the questions. I don't think anyone is going to question your credibility if you where to remove the pictures from your question.

I have removed the Tag details as suggested. Two of the users are long-time repeat offenders of the practice, so I likely allowed my emotions to interfere with better judgement. I also suspect that the practice may be motivated by "*badge hunting", where the Stack Exchange rules actually encourage misbehaviour in this regard.

re "The questions .... were reopened ....". So if the community regularly disagrees with the closing of these questions, perhaps the users who insist on quickly closing these questions are blatantly disregarding community standards? Shouldn't it be possible to discourage these users from their practice of quickly closing questions on games they dislike?

@ForgetIwaseverhere You should stop that line of thought right away. Voting to close questions on this site has nothing to do with liking or disliking the game in question but if the person thinks that the question doesn't fit the standard of the site. If people are actually voting to close questions because they dislike the question that is an entirely different (and almost impossible to prove) then voting to close because they think the question has issues.

More than three years seeing the same small set of names, over and over and over, on successful Close votes for question on trick-taking games. Sure I can usually get the question re-opened, but often the users asking the question have long left the site by then. That's why I am finally asking the question here. You have asked me to redact the names and I have. But the coincidence is too striking in my mind to be omitted.

@ForgetIwaseverhere You are making this way to personal if you had an issue you could have brought it up in chat or on this site long ago without having to name names and let the frustration build up over time. But it seems you are just jumping to conclusions about the motives of the people in question because you don't like what they are doing.

You assume I'm wrong. What if I'm correct? You have asked me to remove all evidence supporting my suspicion from the question and I have. Do you have any actual evidence that I am mistaken?

Okay, you believe there is a better way to handle this. I am all ears. I thought a Meta question might be more discreet than an open Chat. If there is a better wya, please explain your thoughts.

@ForgetIwaseverhere I meta question is fine, but you didn't have to name the people in question or leave comments stating that people are closing the questions because they dislike the game. As for your statement of evidence this question shouldn't need that as it is more of a question on should close votes require a person to have a answers in that tag or certain other ones.

@ForgetIwaseverhere And my overall point was that you let your frustration build up instead of asking about this earlier and getting to a solution faster.

Experience can never be rushed - and the question rate is not high for these games. I also wished to ensure it wasn't just a temporary fad or phenomenon. The names are redacted, and if some of our comments were deleted there would be little evidence that they were ever there.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Should there be a community guidelines that contributors be cautious when voting to close a question on games of an unfamiliar type?

I do believe that sometimes not being an expert or knowledgeable on a specific topic/CG may give way to misinterpretation of the post in question.
Perhaps it's also not so tidy and with good format, or perhaps it's not the most understandable (both scenarios solved by taking an edit and asking for clarification), and that may cause not-so-knowledgeable users to think the post is unclear, or otherwise off-topic, and Vote, when a knowledgeable one could have seen the "obvious" issue in an instant.
It would help if one thinks twice before Voting on posts that are on Card Games that are not our expertise, or that we know but not so much. I think it's better to leave the post be a while, to give chance for knowledgeable users to answer or bring some light to the situation, and refrain from instant Voting.
Perhaps an example of a negative situation not doing this happened on this post: Why can't I activate Rank-Up-Magic Admiration Of Thousands on duelingnexus.com?
It was a YGO post, but not-so-knowledgeable users on that subject failed to see the "obvious" issue, and also didn't take time to help this New user edit their post to better shape. After some edit I took, the post is now much more understandable, and is now more clear that it's answerable.

Furthermore, here is a link to a Meta post on The Workplace of a similar situation, where users tend to swiftly cast votes when the post could be answerable (and even understood properly) by someone that knows about the subject... seems an analogous situation to the one on this site: Closing questions for lack of familiarity of industry/culture/nature of work

I agree in principle with most of this, but I think that the waiting to vote part is problematic. If you know enough to vote, just vote. And: don't let one expert on these games pressure you into thinking your experience is insufficient. Yes, it's possible to not understand a question well enough to vote, but folks should focus on using good judgment about whether or not they understand the given question, not on whether they're an expert.

By the way, your first example does demonstrate that we don't all always get it right, but it shows someone who just didn't know about site policy (thought video game versions of board games were off-topic), not anything to do with the fact that someone wasn't an expert at a particular game.


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Weekly email is primarily about Magic: The Gathering
All but one of this week's email was about Magic: The Gathering, and similarly last week. Would it be possible for this to be more diverse or is it algorithmically generated?

It's algorithmically generated, presumably based on things like number of answers, votes, views, post age, and so on, but I don't know the details offhand.
So unfortunately, the answer here, or lack thereof, is the same as the answer to "why is the homepage full of Magic questions?" I'm certainly all for increased diversity, but it's not an easy thing to change.
I suppose it'd be possible for us to ask SE to aim more for diversity with the algorithm (e.g. reduce the score of a question for every question already selected that shares a tag with it) but that feels like treating a symptom rather than the underlying cause, and I suspect the newsletter is not the highest-priority feature.

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Implement Autocard support for Yu-Gi-Oh!
Some background: the yu-gi-oh tag has passed the 100 Q milestone; now anyone may earn its tag badge. It is also part of our Top 15 tags on the site (currently #11 from all tags, and #8 if you count games only), so in general seems to be an important tag for the site that is growing.
I was looking at the autocard support for MTG, and I was thinking that something similar would be useful for YGO cards (as manually searching and pasting the links can be cumbersome when including several card examples). After doing some research and thinking it here is what I found and propose:

One useful site that could be the target of the linking is Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia. This site has a thorough documentation of all the cards (effects, descriptions, ruling, etc.), and even of some anime and OCG cards.
The suggested syntax could be something like [ygo:Celtic Guardian], which would lead to http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Celtic_Guardian
.
The URLs support the use of whitespace instead of underscores (the wiki automatically inserts them)1.
The URLs also support special characters like hyphens, commas, apostrophes, etc2.

1Playing a bit with that Wiki I found this could help the feature require less code and effort, as the URL link also supports whitespace instead of underscores. This means that you can type http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Celtic Guardian and still get to the same page.
2This Wiki would also be great for cards that have special characters on their names (a past problem with the MTG autocard it seems). Doing some tests I found that there is no problem in including such characters on the URL. It even supports whitespaces and special characters. Some cards I tested successfully were:

Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress: You can leave the comma and remove underscores, so the URL yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress works.
Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning: This card too, you can use whitespace and leave the hyphen, so yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning works.
T.A.D.P.O.L.E.: As we can see this unusual card name is also properly handled with the URL http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/T.A.D.P.O.L.E.
Finally Swallow's Nest: You can again use whitespaces and leave the apostrophe in place, for which the following URL works: yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Swallow's Nest

So, this is what I propose, and would like to know what you think about it. Any suggestions that could help achieve this goal?
Text transformations needed
Convert all spaces to underscores.
Further testing and discussion confirmed that the YuGiOh Wikia supports special characters, with some exceptions. The only unsupported special character that has ever shown up in a card name though is #. To handle this, remove all instances of the character # from card names whilst generating autocard links. For cards like Winged Dragon, Guardian of the Fortress #1, the name is transformed from:
Winged Dragon, Guardian of the Fortress #1

to
Winged Dragon, Guardian of the Fortress 1

and then spaces are converted to underscores, so the link would be:
http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Winged_Dragon,_Guardian_of_the_Fortress_1

Unfortunately this requires SE dev work, and they're spread pretty thin, so even if it'd be really nice to have, our odds may not be too high.

@Cascabel I see, still I'm not saying that this has to be done ASAP, but it would be indeed useful. This could still benefit from further discussion and alternatives, let's hope it does not take too much time to consider.

@Riker thanks will consider it. The fact that this is a feature request is self evident don't you think? Thus, it is a request at this moment. If implemented a status completed will appear

To be honest if we are going to get dev time for work I would rather see it to take the site out of beta or to fix the MTG auto card which has issues.

@JoeW features like these will help make the site less beta-ish. If the YGO autocard seems easier (basically same code base as the MTG which is already made, thus candidate to refactoring) then I don't see why it would be a bad idea. It also seems to be less problematic than MTG autocard, as per all the whitespace and character behavior, so perhaps may be a good feature after all.

I think it would be better to fix something that will be more heavily uses (2867 vs 107 questions) or work on taking the site out of beta which can improve traffic then add a new feature.

@JoeW again, not saying this should be done tomorrow morning, but seems to be a good idea though. I agree with those other needs you mention, but there is no reason to discard this idea just for that. Seems like the thing in common is that we are in considerable need for any dev time...

And I am not saying it shouldn't be done but that there is other work that should be done first that has been asked for for a lot longer. Also when you condenser how long sites do wait for dev time it becomes understandable to make sure what we ask for is prioritized

@JoeW I was researching on the "getting the site out of beta" you mention. I found these stats of the site on Area 51. Seems that everything is great, except for the number of questions per day, currently on 3.7 (we need 10). To get the site out of beta we should be striving for that. Don't get me wrong, but seems that "dev time" is of little use if we can't reach that goal, so this strengthens the fact that this feature request could be not so far-fetched to achieve.

FWIW, regarding special characters, Wikia uses the MediaWiki software, which allows most Unicode characters in page titles. The most notable exceptions are the characters # < > [ ] | { }; if any of those ever appear in a Yu-Gi-Oh! card name, the wiki editors would have to figure out alternative page titles for those cards.

@IlmariKaronen thanks for the info :) seems unlikely a card will have any those characters

@IlmariKaronen Unfortunately, # appears on quite a few cards, although perhaps that won't be an issue since they are almost all from some of the earliest sets.

@Thunderforge yes you are right, like the famous Winged Dragon, Guardian of the Fortress #1 ... although the YGOWikia link ommits the hash altogether and just considers "of the Fortress 1"... guess it's a matter of indicating that the autocard feature has to be used without those characters

I'm declining this feature request not because I think it's a bad idea, but because I don't know when we'll have the resources to implement it. (Insert sad emoji here.) I know the MTG autocard feature is pretty useful and I'm going to ask a developer to look into a proposed improvement. The hope is that it'll take a few minutes and not delay other work. A new feature (however similar it might be) will take more time to plan and implement. And we need to factor in the cost of maintaining it later.
As is often the case, there's a chicken-and-egg problem. Right now, there are 152 Yu-Gi-Oh questions. Presumably, setting up this feature would prompt more of them. But it's hard to justify a new feature that can be used on so few existing questions. Magic has 3207 questions, which gives us a better return on the investment. Still, I'm not sure we'd have the resources to work on MTG features if they weren't already in place.
I wish things were different and we could devote time to utility features like this.

Still YGO is in the top 10 tags... I know MTG posts are quite more, but this site is not named MTG.SE... it's B&CG.SE and seems a bit unfair to favor just one tab. Because of that, and other things exposed in my post, is that I don't agree on using the 3207 number as justification... but yeah, perhaps after the MTG autocard feature is improved (again...) replicating it for YGO will be easier.

At least you could have deferred the request, not completely declined it if you say it's a good idea but lack the resources... but :) guess it's just a formality. Thanks for taking the time to look at this post at least, even though it were 6+ months after... seems that indeed there are few resources (and will?) to spare.

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Are computerized versions of board and card games on topic?
With the proliferation of tablets, there have been several board games ported to the medium, that either by hot seat play, or using the tablet as a board, can be utilized in place of the actual game.  These games sometimes have adapted rules that are different from the rules of the physical board games.
Is it OK to ask questions about the specific rules of such games?  And should they be tagged with the same tag as the physical game if so?

Related: Gaming has recently brought up this topic as well. It may be of interest to try to coordinate our policies in this case so we don't end up with unacceptable migrations in either direction.

This is addressed directly in our FAQ,

Questions about computer implementations of board games are fine.

I don't see any reason for separate tags in the general case.
Computer implementations for board games are most likely on topic both here and and Gaming, and that's OK.  I wouldn't be encouraging migrations either way.  Whichever site the questioner uses is fine and folks will likely get quality answers wherever they ask it.

I guess the reason I ask about separate tags is that the computer implementation can be subtly different than the physical one, and I thought it might get confusing in that respect, especially when searching for an answer.

@wraith808 - I guess the question I would ask is "Are both groups (computerized and regular) likely to benefit from questions in the other group?"  In most cases I think the answer is positive.  If so, then we shouldn't seek to split the groups, especially prematurely before either one gets a significant number of questions.  Instead, we can note differences/problems on the tag wiki.

Yes, they are on topic and are a great fit for the site.
Yes, they should be tagged with the same physical board game tag, and they should also use the computers tag.
If there are any differences between the computer implementation, and the physical implementation, when users answer the question they should use knowledge of the computer implementation if possible, or should note that their expertise comes from the board game not the computer.
Answers can always be corrected in the future if it is found that the computer implementation is different.

I'm not sure how this site treats secondary tags, but I know on Gaming we would definitely frown on using the computers tag to modify the board game tag like this.

Gaming only allows 1 tag? Why? For example, what if a question was about 2-player strategy for Street Fighter II (fireball trap), specificly and not about playing against the computer. Wouldn't you tag it 2 player or multiplayer. Visa versa, wouldn't you tag a question about beating a computer opponent differently, with computer or AI, etc.

There's lots of discussion about this on Gaming's meta.  This is a good summary, http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/3320/how-should-i-tag-on-gaming-se-are-genre-tags-used/3321#3321

@bwarner, I don't think the link post applies. Computer implementations marked with the computer tag help identify several key differences between a physical implementation. The linked post is more analogous to publisher (what specific differences are there when playing Cosmic Encounter by Fantasy Flight). I would argue that rules changes are the heart of many questions, and if rules differences exist between a PC and board game a tag denoting the difference is useful.


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Can anyone qualified look into the [mtg:] tag?
In this question, the "mtg:Searing Spear" (Searing Spear) doesn't work for me, and it sometimes doesn't for other cards either. It gets me to Gatherer, but it can't find any result, despite correct spelling. It can't be about multiple matches either, because e.g. Lightning also works. Most other cards work fine, including card names with multiple words, such as March of the Machines. I tried with Chrome and Edge, so it's probably not about the browser. Right now I suspect Gatherer as it's been wonky in the recent past, but just to be sure, is there anything on our end that can be done about it?
For example, could someone try to change the url to
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+[searing]+[spear]
i.e. to put every word in its separate pair of brackets, preceded by the + sign?

Are you using a language other than English for your device or for Gatherer?

Searing Spear and Searing Spear Askari are both possible results as well as plenty of other cards with one of the two words which I would guess is the problem in this case and not language.

I use english. As I said, I suspect Gatherer is at fault. If the search result is a substring of at least one other card, as is the case here, that might be the problem. But again, if we change the search string, we might work around the problem.

Can you at least tell me if you can repro the issue?

I got the same issue which is why I made the comment.

This has been known to be partially broken for quite a while, and the issue is just that it takes dev time to fix it. The most recent proposed fix: https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1652/409

Yep, I can repro this (now that I turned off a userscript that was fixing it, whoops). There is also this proposal which sticks with Gatherer and works perfectly: https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1727/can-the-autocard-feature-be-improved-again

Possible duplicate of Can the Magic card auto link feature be improved?

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Are Hearthstone Questions allowed here?
Plain and simple, are Hearthstone questions considered "off topic" here?
It's a card game, albeit a digital one.  I often hear it talked about side-by-side with Magic the Gathering nowadays.

They are off-topic because they while it is a card game it is a purely digital one. They are on topic over at Arqade however.

Is that just a general rule-of-thumb for this site then? Anything purely digital, even a digital board or card game, is to be considered for Arqade instead of this site?  I'm fine with that - I'd just like to know for sure.

@EthanTheBrave From out On Topic page: "Questions about computer implementations of board games are fine." and "We're not the right place to ask questions about: Computer games" So if you are asking about an electronic version of Chess it would be on topic here, but if it is a game like Hearthstone that doesn't have a physical version it is not.

Not that I think this would ever happen, but if, in theory, they ever somehow made a physical version of Hearthstone, would I be correct to assume that this answer would change?

@DanHenderson - I think it would yes.  Hearthstone is a definite edge case that points out that our line is arbitrary.  However, the line is fairly clear and serves as a reasonable guide most of the time.

The World of Warcraft TCG was the physical version of Hearthstone

@Neil The World of Warcraft TCG was not at all similar to Hearthstone and was developed by a different company.

While I understand the sentiment, I can't help feeling like this is a fringe case. Let's take the hypothetical where WotC decides it's losing money on printing and distribution of physical MTG product, so for all future sets they are going to be released digital only (I know this sounds crazy). That would mean any questions regarding mechanics in these sets would be off-topic on B&CG.SE because there is no longer a physical implementation of the game. However, given the structure of MTG as a game, it fits more closely with this community than Arqade. This would also seem to hold for HS.

@SocioMatt If WotC did that MtG might still fall under the 'computer implementation of board games', we'd probably have to talk about it if it ever did happen

@diego I assume that would spark quite the conversation in Meta. My basic point is that the strict delineation of games based on where they're played (physically or digitally) might be less useful to users than the mechanics of how they're played. As we, as a society, move more into digital space, games that may have been produced as physical products may be created digitally instead. What we're essentially saying here is that we are separating the sites based on distribution rather than game mechanics, and I'm unsure if that is the most logical separation.


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Should you edit answers to contain the [mtg:Card name] link instead of a direct link to the gatherer?
Currently we have the future to create card links to magic card using the following format[mtg: Card name] and this should be used instead of creating a link to the gatherer yourself, but should we edit all the gatherer links in older posts to links using the current mtg: format.
I know this will take a lot of time to edit, but I am sure some people will help me with it.

You really should wait longer then 10 or so hours so more people have a chance to see the question and weigh in before editing and bumping so many old posts to the front page. All the posts you have edited recently and bumped to the front page are really not that much better. Honestly it seems like you where just looking for an answer that supports you doing mass edits and really don't care what others may have to say.

Moderators are not the only people who's opinion matters on this site. Also as of right now there are only 12 views for this question so very few people have seen it. I would also argue that from what I read in his question editing a post where the only change is the gather link isn't something that is really needed. Especially on dead questions

@JoeW I read it as preventing them from breaking in the future, but I will let it rest for a few days. Thanks for the feedback

@IvardeBruin The answer says to not bump more than a few questions at a time with edits. Most of the front page is currently your edits. The answer also says to fix other things when editing the question. In many cases, you didn't do that.

@murgatroid99 alright point taken, my bad read it wrong

Break in the future? When both links go to the same place I don't think that is likely to happen. Since they are linking to the official site and changes that would break the old link would break links across the web I don't see that happening soon.

@JoeW the diffrence is updating the mtg: ai or all the links if something changes

As for your comment on reputation, you should check out the user base closer and you might see that there are not a lot of high reputation users here. My rep might be low when compared to a lot of other sites but is enough to place me at 32 in terms of overall reputation on this site.

If they where to break it would become quickly known and then we can ask for developer help to get them fixed.

You have 1k reputation on this site and nothing but the association bonus on other sites so wouldn't that mean you know even less? The point is that more people matter then just moderators on a site. The community as a whole is in charge of how it runs and currently you have 28 edits on the front page most of which are pointless and did not make the posts better or easier to read. I would also point out that my reputation is a lot closer to 5k then then 4k that you keep claiming I have.

@JoeW Well, Ivar didn't exactly listen to me either (I said "only a few") so I don't think this was really a matter of listening to a moderator over you.

@Jefromi I see few as under 10 you see it as 3 or so I guess. I learned something and you learned that using numbers instead of a few is better in these cases

While I also do definitely agree that if you're unsure about the correct way to go, it'd be good to wait longer on your meta post, this is also something that if done correctly doesn't require a meta post: anyone with the editing privilege is totally free to edit a few questions a day, whether it's disconnected general improvements, or focusing on fixing a common issue, as long as they do their best to improve everything they can in each edit. I don't want people to feel they need to ask permission to do that.

@IvardeBruin Yes, I will be more clear in the future, for sure. That said, the common definition matches what I said: "a small number of. ... synonyms: a small number, a handful, one or two, a couple, two or three; not many, hardly any".

@Jefromi I normally don't but as this is about edits that look like they don't change anything, but actually might be important, I thought I would ask

@Jefromi seeing as there were over 500 questions with these links i see a few as less then 10 in this context

@IvardeBruin The context is the front page, not the number to fix. The whole point is not to overwhelm the front page, and "less than 10" is still enough to fill everything you can see without scrolling on the front page, and a good fraction of the total. Go have a look at it and see whether it looks reasonable.

@Jefromi alright thanks for the information will remember it in the future, still learning about this site and how everything works

Just so you know when it comes to updating direct links to using out autocard there are sill some bugs/issues with the autocard that require the use of direct links. One recent one is Platinum Angel seems to just not work for as far as I can tell no reason. And if you want to link Sun Titan it will display a search results page with it and Sundering Titan. In the past any name with an apostrophe also would not work, but this issue has been fixed.

It's okay to do mass editing projects as long as you do it carefully:

Make sure your plan is clearly an improvement before you start.
Don't bump more than a few (let's say 3) to the front page at any given time. (Editing all answers on a question at the same time still only bumps one question.)
Be sure to fix other things in the posts as you're editing.

I think this seems like a small but reasonable improvement, if done carefully. There are a couple concerns:

Some links may deliberately point at an older printing of a card, while the automatic link always points at the newest.
Some auto links don't actually work, including apparently card names that are substrings of another card's name. Make sure the new link actually works.

Outside of those corner cases, I don't think old gatherer links have broken in general, but replacing them with [mtg:...] links does prevent breakage in the future. It also standardizes the way the links are presented.
So I'd say go for it if you want, with the above things in mind. The slow rate means that organizing help isn't exactly necessary, but encouraging people to change links if they're already editing something else seems good. Or if it all seems like too much trouble at that point, just forget about mass editing and only edit the posts you come across otherwise.

How many do you think is best to do at the same time

If the only change in the post is changing the links from the standard link format to the mtg popup style? We are now getting a few bumps to the front page where the only change was to fix one link in the post.

@IvardeBruin A few. Looks like you bumped 8 just now, that's not a few.

@JoeW Yes, it's fine to just fix a link if the other conditions are met: there is absolutely nothing else to fix in the post, and only a few posts are being bumped. I definitely did not intend to support the mass bumping that just happened for such a small improvement, but if things like this are done in moderation, well, any improvement is an improvement. We'd encourage people to fix scattered misspellings too.

I would add: Be sure the answer does not rely on a specific printing of the card. As another user helped me realize today, the auto generated links always take you to the latest printing of a card. If an answer discusses a change in terminology that occurred in 2009, then the author might intentionally link to the 2009 printing of a card on the Gatherer. Changing the link to an auto card tag would be detrimental. This could maybe be a sub-bullet under your first bullet?

Sorry for the back to back comments, but I also just realized: Don't use auto card tags if the card's name is a subset of another card's name. For some reason I thought we solved this issue a while back, but I guess I'm misremembering. You can see the problem in action on a new post here: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/posts/38304/revisions

No, you shouldn't edit all the older posts that are using different links to the cards as that is a trivial edit and would unnecessarily bump the post to the front page.
If you run across a link during normal use of the site I don't see a problem with editing the post to correct the link. But to mass edit posts that have working links just to change the format and to flood the front page with old posts doesn't make sense.
You need to remember that any edit to a post, even to add a single character bumps it to the front page which for older posts isn't really needed.

No. Use [mtg] to save time while posting, not to create more work after the fact.
Look at the difference between [mtg] and "hard-coded" Gatherer URLs.

From a reader-facing perspective, they're almost always identical. Click a link, see a card.

When they aren't, it's usually because [mtg] has introduced some quirk. E.g. [mtg:Sun Titan] sending you to a disambiguation page.

[mtg] is, chiefly, a convenience for writing questions and answers. It reduces workload and errors when you're linking to 20 different cards in a single post. If someone's already done that work, however, and it's free of errors, then going back in and changing it doesn't save any work retroactively.

Your updates can easily introduce new errors! E.g. for a long time, apostrophes were broken. (Somehow, they're still broken, but only in old posts?) So when you tried to "streamline" a card link with an apostrophe, you'd just break it instead. Pretty sure a few more minor quirks like that still remain.

What about "future-proofing?"

You're not actually saying any work. If the old links ever break, it's not hard to do the work then: automate a search to find all Gatherer URLs, and we still have the card names in the link text to help us update them. Planning for how to avoid information loss now (while we have all the information) is important; doing more than that is wasted effort since you don't know exactly what form that possible future breakage will take.
As it stands right now, [mtg] links are actually less stable: WotC can break a few of them at a time by introducing a new set. (See the [mtg:Sun Titan] problem, above.) So you're actually increasing the possibility that a perfectly-formed answer will get more cruft because of future sets.

In summary, [mtg] is actually a little bit less stable and reliable than "hard-coded" Gatherer URLs, but we accept that because it saves tons of time and effort when writing answers.
As a mass editing project, this is either value-neutral or strictly value-negative: you actually risk introducing a lot of new errors and degraded functionality unless you very carefully check all your links and include manual workarounds for the ones you break.

This answer might be a little outdated. Maybe they used to be identical back in the day, but now, the auto card link opens a little window in front of the page, whereas direct links actually take the user to that page (and away from stack exchange).

Also, if the Gatherer ever makes a change that breaks all links across the board, then you are saving work by using the auto card tag. A single update to the mechanism that generates the links could fix every auto tag on the entire site, without even bumping the posts (so no first page spam, no mass notifications to the authors, etc.). On the other hand, all of the direct links would have to be edited individually. I understand your point about not planning for a specific breakage, but we can certainly benefit by planning for an entire category of breakages.

The Sun Titan vs Sundering Titan problem has been resolved. You can test this out in the site chat.

I generally agree with Rainbolt here; I don't know if vanilla Gatherer links will break, but I would not be at all surprised if they do at some future point. Wizards isn't always exactly the best at web sites. So it'd be nice if the solution at that point were "fix the [mtg:...] implementation" rather than "mass-edit all the manual links".

@Rainbolt Perhaps targeting a new window should be an option for all links? An identifier like ! for images that renders the html differently. Also issues like Sun Titan still happen, I got it for Fling still in a question just a week or so ago.


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Why are the card links broken?
I've seen here many people use a specific syntax to have a link added automatically:
example: Lightning Bolt
The problem is that those links, pointing to Wizard's website are broken. Who's in charge of fixing that? This could be done either by fixing the way the searches are sent to Wizards, or by using another source like magiccards.info of scryfall.com?
Is there some source code available for the whole thing?
This is annoying, as if you don't know the cards, you have to search separately and do multiple copy-paste.

The issue may be that the card name is not spelled correctly as I have run into that in the past where fixing the spelling fixes the link.

This is not the case. In the example I gave, Lightning Bolt is correctly spelled.

What is broken about that link? It directs to the Lightning Bolt Gatherer page just like it is supposed to

The link works for me.

Which browser are you using? I'm on Firefox and the link doesn't work for me

It works fine for me in Chrome and Firefox. What sort of error are you getting? And are you able to get to Gatherer normally? http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Advanced.aspx

This is the URL I get, and the gatherer answers "Your search returned zero results;": http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%2b%5bLightning%20Bolt%5d

It all boils down to +[Lightning]+[Bolt] versus +[Lightning Bolt] in the search. The first works, the second doesn't. When I look to the web page source, that's the second that is here, so I don't understand how it can work for you.

That link works just fine for me, so I'm not sure why it isn't working for you

Could you please right click on the link, select "copy the URL" and paste it here please?

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=%2b%5bLightning%20Bolt%5d

This is the link that works for you? It definitely doesn't for me.

This is what I get with your link: https://i.sstatic.net/QCO2U.png

Does this link work for you? http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name="%2b%5bLightning%20Bolt%5d"

In a comment below, I posted a link to what Wizards advices to use in link construction, which is the +["Card Name"] syntax. You're using "+[Card Name]", which has the same effect, but is less standard. Both have the same drawbacks. If you know programming, I've made some unit tests to check the syntaxes and their limitations. The code lies at https://github.com/liberforce/mtg-urlcheck and is under developement.

All in all, the only way to fix this correctly is to use the official API to get card information. The "find card by name" use case is documented there: https://docs.magicthegathering.io/#advancedcards_get_by_name

@liberforce did the link I posted in a comment work for you?

Yes, but that's not the preferred link notation. One should use +["Card Name"] instead of "+[Card Name]", but they give the same results, and have the same limitations.

The most common cause of a failure like this is Gatherer operating in a language other than English. On the Gatherer Settings page, the bottom option allows you to set a preferred language. Setting that to English may fix this problem.

Thanks for finding the root cause. The problem is that this seems to be set by default depending on the locale preferences of the user, so that means all non-english users have a broken search by default :(

This is especially annoying as websites like magiccards.info handle the searches in multiple languages. I wonder if there is a way to force the en-US in the URL ?

you can always link directly to the cards, ie Bear Cub. But I believe most people link using the [mtg:   ] shortcut

In fact I saw on Wizards site. They explain how to setup quicksearches on firefox, and how to forge the search link from a card's name. And the way they use it is clear: the name of the card must be enclosed in double quotes characters. This way you don't rely on the cookies of the user. This means boardgames was broken for all non-english users that didn't configured their cookies on the gatherer : http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Help.aspx#firefox

So, I go back to my questions: who has the code so he can fix it? It's a 2-characters patch!

@Malco Even if you do link directly to a card page, there are editors who will go through and change the format of links. That has happened to several post I have seen, particularly an issue for cards with names that match other cards, since the API uses a search.

@Andrew did the edits go through, or were they only in the suggested queue? If someone replaces your direct gatherer link with a broken autocard link then unfortunately you will just need to go in and edit it back leaving your reason for doing so in the edit reasons. If they replace it with an autocard link that isn't broken then I would recommend you leave it as there is a chance that autocard might be getting tweaked/fixed in the foreseeable future. Drop into chat if you would like to discuss this a bit more.


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Bug: I Can't Post Comments
I can't post comments, whether they're on my own posts or another user's posts. When I try press the 'Add comment' button, nothing happens. I'm also not using any script blocking browser plugins like NoSpace. I meet the reputation requirements. Why is this happening?
Is it something to do with the web browser I use? I use the Amazon Kindle Experimental Web Browser. Thanks!

Things not working in unsupported browsers is not a bug, which is why I removed the tag. There's no need to bother the dev team with things like this.

The browser you are using is not in the list of supported browsers, or even in the list of browsers that are not officially supported but seem to work anyway. As this seems to be a client-side issue, it is likely that there is simply some incompatibility between Stack Exchange's code and your browser.

Yeah, I think "experimental" might be an important word in that browser's name.

We do not support browsers in beta/alpha or experimental states.
Please use one of the supported browsers.


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Deck-Building tag too broad
The tag deck-building applies to two very different things:

The act of deciding which cards will go into a TCG/CCG/LCG deck to be played (IE MtG, YuGiOh, Android: Netrunner)
A genre of game in which a deck is built and used as the game progresses (IE Domninion, Ascension)

Should these tags be separated as they are two very distinct meanings for deck building?

There are currently 78 open questions tagged with deck-building. Of those, approximately 70 are questions about the processes, strategies, card choices, rules, etc. involved in building a deck. This basically corresponds to your first point. The rest use the tag to either refer to deck building games as a category, or in place of a specific game tag in that category.
So, I propose that the best solution here is to keep the deck-building tag for questions about building decks in any game (and modify the tag wiki accordingly), and to retag the other questions as appropriate, either by simply removing the tag, replacing it with a specific game tag, or replacing it with a different type of tag (such as identify-this-game if relevant).

I think this is what we should do, how exactly does it work on meta, do I accept this answer?

I think a simple move would be to separate the tags. In other words, it would separate them into deck-builder and deck-building.
However, those names might be a bit too similar, especially when you take ESL users into account, so something like deck-builder and deck-advice might work?

Perhaps deck-construction and deck-builder? And of course the content of the wiki in the tooltip will help.

I don't think a tag about the deck building genre of games would be useful

Do we have questions, aside from [identify-this-game], that are about deck-building games as a genre? If not, then adding a tag for it seems unnecessary.


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Should a "Poker Dice" tag exist?
Recently, I posted a post about Poker Dice, but I had to resort to the combination [poker][dice]. Poker has nothing to do with this. Dice barely has anything to did with this. Therefore, I think that there should  be a new tag for questions regarding this game. Or does one already technically exist?

Assuming that the game of Poker Dice is on-topic at all, then it is reasonable to have a tag for it.  After all, it is normal to have a tag for each game.
Dice games are on-topic, according to this earlier discussion, so Poker Dice qualifies.
At your level of reputation, you can create a new tag.  So you could add it to your question and see how it is received.
Incidentally, the only other question I can see that references Poker Dice (here) is tagged with just dice.

Go ahead and create the tag, that reasoning is perfectly solid.
If we do have a tag for this, it's not very discoverable to either of us. Were we to discover it later we'd probably create a synonym. We can cross that bridge when we come to it.


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Are questions about software simulating card games still on-topic?
Almost posted a question because of this answer, but in my case I still have

We're not the right place to ask questions about:

Computer games, try gaming.stackexchange.com
...
Game Recommendation/Shopping questions, this includes all questions that could be phrased like:
      Best game for ... ?
      Which game is like ... ?

My interpretation goes like this:

First bullet point means no questions about computer or console games that have nothing to do with card games
Last bullet point is only related to card games per se. As long as I don't want an explicit shopping list, the question should be okay.

Since I'm not the authority here, I wanted your thoughts, given the examples. Note that I used Yu-Gi-Oh! in the examples because I'm familiar with it, but it could just as well be [insert card game here].
Example question I

Is there software to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG for free?

Possible answer:

Yes, it is called YGOPro and is open source.

Okay (in my eyes). Note that I'm not convinced if this question would be on-topic for arcade.
Example question II

Can you list me all software to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG for free?

Possible answer:

[Incomplete list]

Not okay.
Example question III

I'm having a bug in YGOPro, can you help me? [Further issue description.]

Possible answer:

This has been fixed since [random version number].

Not okay.
Example question IV

I thought [a card] was played like [this way] but YGOPro plays it like [that way], which is right?

Possible answers:

You missed something in the description of [a card]
There is [a ruling] that states [that way]

Okay.
Example question V

[An official ruling] says [this], but YGOPro does [that]. What is right?

Possible answer (for all kinds of these questions and my reasoning why therefore not okay).

Software that simulate card games would basically need a proof that they execute the rules as the rules should be executed, this is no immanent feature of card game simulators. As such, a specific implementation of the game should never be and usually is not used as an official rule reference.

Question
I would like a community consensus about asking such questions. Further examples are welcome. A clarification of the text in the help center may be a good idea because not every new user looks into meta before posting a question.

For questions 1 and 2 they are both shopping questions, therefore they are off-topic. "Is there X?" questions may not look like a shopping question, but as your answer shows it really is. The problem is that as your answer shows people aren't just answering if it exists, but the real question of "What are examples of X?".
For questions 3, 4, and 5 are all on topic. For #3 we have established previously that we allow questions about electronic versions of games as long as that game has a physical version as well (so YGOPro questions are allowed since YGO has a physical game it is based on). Given that #3 is on-topic I can think of no reason to think that 4 and 5 would not also be on-topic.

I think of existence questions as "The answer is yes, and too support my claim I give you an example." A single example suffices and hence it is no shopping question. If the OP would insist on other examples, it would be clear what he meant was your version and then the question would be closed.

@SK19 In theory that can happen, but what happens in practice is we have lists of people with answers that say "Another thing that does that too is Y". I would suggest reading this: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad

I would point out for the 3rd point going to the games developer is more likely to get you the answer you need (or even get the bug fixed)


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Negative rating questions with positive rating answers
I found it bizarre that negative score question can be answered by a positive answer.
Today, someone asked an identify-this-game question about go-fish (or Happy Families in the UK), while this is a bit odd question it looks o.k by me.
What I don't get is how come the rating for the question was -2 while the rating for the answer was +3?  And in particular, the person that writes a long, detailed answer, isn't it right for you to make a thumb up for the question?  I mean, you "wasted" some part of your time on this question so it least in your mind it was worth the effort?
I understand that I might be in a minority opinion here, but would love to hear why.

In general, trying to understand or dictate how people cast their votes is an exercise in futility. People can and do vote based on anything, from rational evaluations of post usefulness to grumpiness from missing breakfast. Or a mod lost their keys.
The particular case of a negatively-voted question with a positively voted answer is not exactly unheard of. A bad question can have a good answer. And people can feel compelled to answer a question without feeling that it is good. Or they may just forget to vote on the question; I myself don't remember to vote on every question I answer.

I answered that question...
As a general rule I do upvote any question that I answer.  I usually answer first, then vote.   That one seems to have slipped through the net, I must have been distracted.
But I agree with the other answer.  Don't seek logic in voting patterns.


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If answering and closing a question takes about the same time, why not just answer the question?
There is a trade-off between being a welcoming community and keeping the site in high quality, leaving only good questions and answers.
A new user has asked an off-topic question here, I found an answer to his question in 5 sec, so instead of voting to close I answered his question.  Is that bad?

If you found an answer in 5 secs, does the question show any research effort? As noted in our how-to-ask a good question has already been thoroughly researched, and the effort is shared in the question.

"If breaking and following the rules takes the same effort, why not just break the rules?" This is your question made much more general, more broad, and I think asked this way makes the answer pretty clear.

@PatLudwig, Andrew, first I think that you both right. Second, if you agree about the trade-off between welcoming and quality, then I think that answering the question gets more welcoming value than reducing quality value.  From your comments/answers I get that you think the opposite: that the welcoming value is less than the damage in the quality value.

@Cohensius - you ask us to choose between being welcoming and having high quality.  I would submit that the goal should be both.  This may not be the easy path, and I would agree that this site can be less than welcoming at times.  How can we improve without sacrificing quality?

You should not answer questions that you know are off topic, and you should vote to close them.
The policy on these site is that we accept some questions but not others, and the rule is that we close questions that we do not accept so that they cannot be answered. Among other things, this serves to ensure that other readers of the site will only find on-topic questions, and to ensure that we do not incentivize people to ask off-topic questions.
We should be welcoming to new users, as you say, but that does not exempt them from following site policy. What it does mean is that we should make an extra effort to help them understand how the site works, including the rules that apply to their posts.

O.k, I agree, however how closing and -1 a new users question is an "extra effort to help them understand how the site works, including the rules that apply to their posts"?

Closing does help. The close message contains an explanation of why the question was closed, along with multiple links to help topics with further information. Down votes are more complicated. It may seem like an unwelcoming experience, but downvotes also serve an important content curation purpose.so I'm reluctant to say that people shouldn't use them at their discretion. Plus, they're anonymous, so there isn't really a way to address that behavior directly.

why this meta question gets a down vote?  What have I learned from that?

I didn't say that downvoting directly teaches anything. People cast their votes as they choose, and I have no power over how others choose to use that ability.

@Cohensius - voting on meta is a little different.  Some users vote to express agreement or disagreement with the question.  This is supposed to be restricted to things tagged [tag:feature-request] but in practice, I think it gets used a bit broader.

Because it makes it appear as if those questions are on topic on the site when they are not. Even if the question is closed future users can point to it as an example of why they asked their off topic question that may not be as simple to answer as the other one. In the end questions that receive answers are a signal to other users about what kind of questions they can ask and expect answers for even if they are off topic on the site.


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Strategy questions
Should we make a Strategy tag that will allow questions to have more than just a single correct answer?
Since strategies in unsolved games tend have more than one right answer.  I my mind, the best site to get board games-strategy discussion is still not exists.
The problem in Board & Card Games S.E is that questions are not open to a discussions, while the on BGG the strategy forums attracts low-quality posts and a lot of chit-chat nonsense.  I view the best discussion as a bunch of strategies that the best once gets more votes, thus go up and viewed first.
Related to:

How can I structure questions appropriately to learn more about
strategy for the games I enjoy?
Should we close question that are just “what are good strategy tips
for such-and-such game”?
Are questions about statistics, math, analysis, simulations, numbers, chance, etc discouraged?

Something of note, I know in the past after winning a game I have heard you didn't play correctly which leads me to believe we would get debates over which answer is correct even if both may be valid

Sure strategy questions can have more than a single correct answer but is that what we really want at this site? The problem is we are a question and answer site and once you start getting into multiple different answers for strategy that will tend to attract a lot of discussion and chit chat about the pros/cons, strengths/weaknesses and various other issues about each of the different strategies. I don't think that we would escape the chit chat that you are complaining about on BGG if we where to encourage this type of behavior on the site.
However that all said I would disagree with you about this site only being for a single correct answer as I have seen plenty of cases where there are multiple answers that disagree with each that could both be correct because there is nothing to state one is correct or wrong for the game in question.
In the end the problem with these question is they can tend to be overly broad and attract a lot of opinion based answers.


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What are the use cases for Preformatted Text?
I like to edit questions. Sometimes I look at a perfect question and make it a bit more concise, placing things in list etc. One thing that I like is to mark game states and actions in Preformatted Text. For example: "player1 placed a meld of joker, R4, R5 then p2 added R7 to that meld"

Is Preformatted Text reserved only for code? if not, is there a list of use cases that can/should use Preformatted Text?
What would be a better alternative in order to highlight text? Should I use bold/Italic instead?

context: question with comment by @Nij that say use Preformatted Text only for code.
I looked at the Markdown help but not sure what is the answer.

EDIT: @VLAZ edit the Preformatted Text into bold, but @Ronkainen rejected the edit.

There have been many occassions on other sites where I have removed preformatted text that has been indiscriminately applied to a post.  I would happily see it eliminated from this site.

I think there are legitimate use cases. I have used preformatted text to format search strings for Gatherer and Scryfall (MTG search engines) because those strings have a code-like structure, especially when they include regular expressions.

@Chenmunka, could you please have a look at the question I linked and say if you think it is better to remove the Preformatted Text?

I've looked.  Yes, I think it is better to remove the formatting.  It detracts from clarity rather than enhancing it.

I think there is some confusion about what is being used in the post and what you are using is actually referred to as code formatting. Not sure why they are calling it pre formatted text when you click on the button in the editor.  I could be wrong but I think some of the concerns is how that markdown impacts screen readers.

Based on your last edit I would 100% of the time reject it as a suggested edit as no improvement but I likely would leave it it alone as a post or edit from someone with edit rights, Suggested edits generally get treated more strictly then other edits because they take other peoples time to review.

@JoeW, so you say it is better to use Preformatted Text and change it to Bold is not an improvement.

I don't feel that changing something from Preformatted Text to bold is enough of an edit for someone without the edit privilege to be doing as it requires multiple people to review and approve the edit. Now if they had made other changes in the edit it would be different but as that is the only change I don't see it as improving the post overall.

@JoeW There is no "minimum bar" for edits. The goal is to improve a post. If there is nothing else to improve, then no extra effort is needed. The preformatted text is terrible and should be removed. If you disagree, leave an answer explaining why code formatting should be used on text which is neither code, nor needs to be formatted like code. If you feel my edit missed out on things that could be improved, feel free to either improve it or reject and edit to address these concerns. But "it's a clear improvement, I just feel there should be more effort" is not a reject reason.

@VLAZ There is a difference between edits from a user with the edit privilege and users without it and the reviews need to be approved by 2 other users or the person who wrote the post in question. When submitting an edit that requires a review they are expected to fix everything in the post and not just fix minor issues. Just because preformatted text shouldn't be used doesn't mean it is anything more then a minor issue.

@JoeW Again, if you want to propose that inline code formatting is acceptable, feel free to leave an answer. However, "The edit is a clear improvement, however, it takes too much effort to click accept" is not a rejection reason. I did not see other clear improvements to do on that post. If you did - then you have the opportunity to apply those fixes.

@VLAZ I am not saying that it is acceptable, just that a suggested edit to change it from preformatted text to bold formatting alone is a minor edit and should not be a suggestion.

@JoeW No, the goal of editing is to improve the site. That is the aim of any improvement. It's not to change enough. By rejecting the edit and especially not making any further edits, you're signalling that using inline code formatting is acceptable. If you did not think that the post would not be using inline code formatting right now - you'd have either accepted or made an edit yourself. "too minor" edits are ones that change things without clearly improving a post, e.g., changing from British to American spelling.

@JoeW also, I'd really appreciate it if you stop using inline code blocks for text which is not code. It is exceptionally annoying to read that and you've so far used it in every single comment. Again, you've used it so much that I feel you should write an answer that it's acceptable. You clearly feel it is throughout your comments so far.

@VLAZ I have been using them to make it clear what I am talking about, but I will stop doing it. As for an answer most of my comments have been on the suggested edit side of the question which isn't really relevant to the question.

Inline code formatting (also "preformatted text" or "fixed formatting") done with backtick characters ` should not be used for emphasis or otherwise visually distinguishing regular text.
Code formatting can interfere with accessibility as it overrides font and style choices a user has made. It is also is plain annoying to look at when the content is simply supposed to be highlighted and not interpreted differently by the reader.
Reserve its usage for code or code-like text. Examples of something which is not code include:

having to show markup like <html> or **markdown** without them being interpreted by the editor
text where monospaced font and/or visual distinction between otherwise similar characters is important. For example

keeping the number of spaces: ###   # vs "###   #"
distinguishing between capital "i"/I, lowercase "L"/l, and/or number one/1 : Il1
distinguishing between the uppercase letter "o" O and the number zero: 0 : O0

simple mathematical expressions might also benefit from being enclosed marked as code: "This move scores 5 + 11 - 4 = 12 points"

As a rule of thumb, do not use inline code formatting unless needed. As opposed to trying to use inline code formatting just to use it.

For emphasis/drawing attention use italics (_italics_ or *italics*) or bold (__bold__ or **bold**) but do so sparingly. As a rule of thumb, less is more - a paragraph with just a few usages of highlighting markup will draw more attention to the emphasised text. A paragraph that is entirely bold will seem less important, especially the longer it is.

See also on Meta Stack Exchange:

Inline Code Spans should not be used for emphasis, right?
How do I write an accessible Stack Exchange post?

Exactly. Stop messing with people's accessibility and readability because of a fancy highlighting trick (which is not that fancy and does not highlight at all anyway).


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Are game copyright issues on topic here?
The question Can one effectivly copy a game without infringing copyright? was recently closed by a moderator with the comment that

legal questions are off topic. See Card Game Legal Questions are off topic (apparently) can this be added to the of topic FAQ?

But in that thread, the most up-voted answer (6 votes as opposed to 2) states:

I ...  think that we should be explicit that legal questions are off topic if that is the stance that we are going to take. [Emphasis added]

No addition to the help center on this matter was ever made, so i do not think that thread establishes a consensus that such questions are off topic on this site.
As I said in a comment to the closed thread:

Isn't this stack about designing & creating games as well as playing them? If so, aren't the copyright issues that may face either designers wanting to protect new games, or those wanting to clone them on-topic here?

I went on to say:

This started as an answer to a meta thread, but I thought it was too potentially useful to those concerned with such issues to leave in the relative obscurity of meta, so I edited it to make it, I thought, proper for this site, removing the meta-specific aspects. I often post at law.se, and I will delete it here and re-post it on law.se if there is a consensus to do so.

I would be looking for a consensus for or against that in this thread.
It seems to me that questions about the legal issues of game design ought to be on-topic at bcg.se, just as copyright issues are often on-topic at writing.se (I have answered a number of questions about copyright there. I note thsat we do have a copyright tag with a tag summery and 7 q2uestions on the main site. Not a huge number, but enough to show that people do think this a proper place to ask such questions from tiem to time. I suggest that we make such question explicitly on-topic here.
There are now two votes to reopen the question first linked above.
Do people want such questions to be allowed here, or not?
If the answer is "no", then I urge making this explicit in the site help center.

I would say they are not on topic here as the legal issues can be very tricky and users on this site are not expected to have the required legal knowledge to properly answer those questions. I can very easily see that an incorrect answer is given due to some misreading of the exact situation involved in the question and it could cause anyone reading and taking advice from the answer some serious legal and financial trouble.
I think a better place to check for these types of legal questions would be law stack exchange where they seem to be on topic as they regularly are expected to answer these types of legal questions.

It is certainly true that such questions are on-topic at law.se, indeed I have answered several hundred questions on copyright issues on law.se. But questions can be on-topic on more than one site in the SE network. Indeed I have answered several copyright questions on writing.se.

@DavidSiegel I have some participation on the site so I figured it would be good for them but I wasn't 100% certain that they would be welcome.

It may be worth noting that we handle such topics just fine at RPG, here is our list of questions in the [intellectual-property] tag. For our reasoning behind allowing such topics, see SSD's answer to this question on our meta: We are not lawyers. Why do we allow law topics?. The answer there addresses some of your concerns, and may be applicable in some fashion to this site as well.


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What is the current consent on version-specific tags?
This question from 2012 asked about adding specific version tags to warhammer-40k, such as warhammer-40k-8e.
The accepted answer uses an example from StackOverflow, where it was brought up that the "Java" tag is much more popular than the "Java-ee-6" tag.
I personally see this reasoning as way too specific to StackOverflow. Differences in versions of programming languages are generally related to available features. Code written for C# 5 will most likely work perfectly fine in a C# 7 compiler.
Games such as Warhammer 40k are vastly different. The entire game system is overhauled from edition to edition, and answers will be completely incompatible, depending on the version in question. For instance, this question would have completely different answers, depending if it is played in eighth edition or seventh edition.
One example of this being used is RPG.se, where specific tags are created for specific versions of games, such as Dungeons and Dragons, because a question asked by a player intending to play 5th Edition may have a radically different answer than someone playing 3.5E.
As such, I am asking if the view on game version tags has changed over the past few years? Does the community consider version-specific tags to be valuable or add clutter?

Edit: In regards to confusion when using multiple tags. I suggest the following info for warhammer-40k:

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. Warhammer 40,000 is a detailed futuristic table-top battle simulation. Use this tag for questions about the tabletop game. Consider including version-specific tags, such as warhammer-40k-8e, if your question is about a specific version of the game.

And likewise for warhammer-40k-8e:

The eighth edition of warhammer-40k. Use this tag when asking questions specific to the eighth edition of the game. If your question is generic enough to be applicable to multiple editions, do not include this tag.

I would strongly disagree with your assumption that the entire game system is overhauled from edition to edition and there are things that remain the same across all editions of a game.
The main issue and argument against those tags is they are not always needed and can be confusing as when to use and may cause users to use an incorrect edition version or use multiple version tags when it is not needed.
As for your example question I am not knowledgeable to know if there is a difference due to different editions but the user who asked the question provided no information about which one they are asking about so for all we know it might not even been 7th or 8th editions.
If you have a question that applies to a specific version it can be added if needed but as was said in the past it should be avoided if not needed.
Think of it this way if you are looking for warhammer-40k information it becomes a lot harder to find the more edition tags that are added.

I personally assume that when someone provides no information regarding edition, the most recent edition is meant. The problem is that this information shifts with time, so if someone has the same problem, but three years later and a new edition later, the answer is effectively obsolete.

@MechMK1 That is a bad assumption to make as they may not even realize that there are editions after the version they have. I personally have been surprised some of my games are not the latest version as I expected. Sure you can and probably should answer based on the latest but that may not be the version they need.

Yes, in which case it would make sense to write the version in question either in the question, or as a tag. Writing it as tag has the advantage that it makes it more easily searchable. I personally don't agree on the fact that adding tags makes it harder to find. A question tagged as [warhammer-40k] and [warhammer-40k-7e] is perfectly reasonable. A question tagged just as [warhammer-40k] seems a general question about the game, not specific to one system.

@MechMK1 Writing the version used in the answer would work. However adding the version to the question if the OP did not indicate it somewhere could prevent others from answering with a different version  that turns out to be what they want. A good solution is to ask the OP what version it is especially when it makes a difference.

Yes, I agree with you. But in my opinion, tags serve the purpose of making questions more searchable. Information added in the question body is not as neatly structured as in the tags. As far as I understand your point, you believe that it adds more clutter and confusion from people using the wrong tags. My experience from other sites is that that is not the case.

This is the policy on the RPG SE, and I think it should be the policy here, as well, for the same reasons.
I was actually about to ask this question myself, when I saw this one pop up in the "related questions" box. I think that having a policy that is so different between such similar SE sites is likely to be confusing to new users, as is the fact that the "Related Questions" sidebar in Warhammer 40k includes questions about radically different editions; the rules of Warhammer 40k 7th Edition are vastly different to the rules of 8th Edition, to such an extent that they're almost entirely different games.
I also think it might be worthwhile to discuss whether or not we should adopt RPG.SE's policy of closing any new questions that lack the appropriate edition tag - there are arguments for it (e.g. optimizing for good questions), and also arguments against it (e.g. new user inclusiveness). You can see their most recent discussion about this policy here.
Of course, the vast majority of questions here are about Magic: the Gathering, where this wouldn't apply, but I think that this would be a useful way of explicitly defining questions for games where it does.

How would we know if it lacks an appointee edition tag?

If it's clearly asking about rules, and it doesn't include a tag that specifies an edition, or if it lacks a tag specifying any system at all.

My point is how do you know that edition is needed? Most games on here it won't matter for so having editions for those tags are pointless.

@JoeW We'll know that it's needed because they're miniature wargames, or other games with significant differences between editions.

So we would have to have a predefined list that we agree on needs version specific tags? Considering this question has gotten 43 views in 10 months I am not sure we can get a list we agree on.

@JoeW "So we would have to have a predefined list that we agree on needs version specific tags?" Yes, that is basically what I'm proposing. I'm proposing that we make a policy that all systems with significant rules differences get different tags for them, and then we can agree on what those systems are on a case-by-case basis.

I would note, the reason warhammer didn't get one back in 2012 was because it had 21 questions. in 2020 it only has 132 questions questions so I think it still doesn't warrant version tags.

We should have to have a good reason to close a question from a new user because of a lack of version tags and there doesn't appear to be any tags on the site where this is a problem


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Asked a Yes/No question on mechanics, but Closed for Opinion Based?
This was my question on utilizing a common token change to a commonly played board game (which has recently been voted into deletion):

However, a Meta question on the topic of "Are Questions on Balancing Mechanics  On-Topic" (that is in reference to a much more open-ended mechanics question, which included the query of "is this mechanic too 'weird'") was answered by a moderator with a positive "Yes".
Perhaps I'm new, and there's something I'm missing, but the example question seems to be much more opinion-based than my own.
Could someone help me understand why?  I'd like to make sure I don't repeat this mistake in the future, but I'm not seeing enough of a pattern to learn from this.

I disagree that this is a simple yes/no question as it seem pretty clear that it does have a big impact on the balance of the game with the question being what kind of impact it would have (positive/neutral/negative). Each group based on how they work together overall might rate each of the impacts differently.
In my opinion I think a better question would be to ask what the impacts from this rule would be as those are less likely to be opinion based.

It wasn't a yes/no question at the time it was closed.
Being yes/no doesn't make a question immune to being closed as primarily opinion-based anyway. “Are these mechanics cool?” is a yes/no question. Anyway, let's dive into this case.
If you visit the question's revision history (accessible by hitting the "edited X time ago" link at the bottom center) you'll be able to see when it was closed:

In this case we can see it was closed after revision 2. We can click the "2" to and expand to see what the revision looked like at that stage.

“Any pros out there able to give some advice?” being the operative question makes this a discussion question fitting our questions to avoid asking criteria. It won't attract a best/correct answer; instead it's chatty and open-ended. Every answer will be equally valid, because every answer will ostensibly contain advice. Naturally this would be closed as opinion-based.
The question has since been edited, but it will remain closed until enough people decide it's worth reopening.
(My observation: never ask for “any advice?” or “any tips?”, because we will get exactly that: an endless list of advice and tips of arbitrary quality, instead of actual solid answers. Always directly request a comprehensive answer or solution to your problem.)

I suspect that the original "too opinion based" was related to the wording of the question as asking for advice. With the edits, the focus on mechanical conflicts makes it looks a lot more objective to me, and I think it is now an acceptable question.
I have undeleted the question. You can now vote to reopen it, which will push it into the reopen queue if it doesn't go there automatically.


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Recent Yu-Gi-Oh questions reaction - seems overcritical
I'm surprised, and a bit concerned, at the reaction given to two recent questions with the yu-gi-oh tag:

Can I go down to half-a-life-point?
How does Keeper of the Shrine work?

I find it unwelcoming, a bit heavy-handed, and not consistent with the stack's reaction to similar questions on other games.
The first was closed as duplicate to Halving points in Yu-Gi-Oh, but:

That question asked how paying half your life when at an odd number worked.  Yes, you can work out from there (as the comment from a closer did) that 1 - (1 / 2 = 0.5, rounded up to 1) = 0, but neither the question itself, nor the answer, considered specifically the 1-life case.  [EDIT by OP: This paragraph is in fact wrong.  It is 1LP - 1/2 = 0.5 rounded up to 1LP.  Which does, in fact, change the case significantly.  But note that a very experienced game player - world-known for his referee-skill in one game, suggested to train for Judge in another, plays (by himself, badly) YGO - read the "duplicate" answer three times - and the so-called "obvious answer" comment, and read it backwards.  Interesting that. See conclusion.]
Because it didn't consider that case, it didn't give an answer to "can you do this, even if you will then go to 0 LP?"  Which I'm sure has an answer, is definitely relevant to the closed question, while being not relevant to the "duplicate" question.  Which, to me, is sufficient difference to not be a duplicate.
[EDIT: this is still an interesting question, but not relevant to the interaction, because of misreading above.]
There are many questions on this stack and others that are "specific interactions of general cases previously asked" that are considered valid and useful questions.
M:tG tag in particular has many questions that are much closer to being duplicates than this, that get kept open and given answers, because they are different enough that people might not automatically get from "here" to "there".  One of recent note even claimed to be a duplicate in the question - it specifically stated "I've read the explanation and I don't get it [therefore please answer it again/here's what I didn't get]".
I think this question could very easily, relevantly, and helpfully be answered with the comment DarkCygnus gave (and a small note about whether doing this is even legal, and whether there is a timeframe before one loses because of 0 LP that one can get out of it/cards that would allow you to win/keep playing at 0 LP).
[EDIT: I still think this would be an excellent answer - not only "you can do this, but here's what actually happens, it ends up costing you no life at all!  That's an interesting issue in the rules, and could also be used..."]

The second isn't closed, but was downvoted - and the comment is effectively "you don't know the rules.  X is not Y."  Which is totally true (if a bit brutal), but how many "a triggered ability is not an activated ability is not a spell is not a loyalty ability is not a creature is not a creature card" questions do we have on this stack?  Many of which are considered good questions and are happily answered - again - perhaps with a link to a general/canonical question or the CR section.
Again, the comment could be straight up a valid, useful answer to the question (with some additional explanation, and perhaps quoting of some relevant rules).  The question is definitely as valid as How does Clarion Spirit work? (yes, that's not the title, but it might as well be).
One could argue that we should come down as hard on M:tG "duplicates" and "don't understand the basic rules" as has happened with these YGO questions.  I would prefer that we go the other way - especially if we want to encourage this stack to be more than "M:tG CR Q&A" and "Identify this game".
Therefore, I shall cast a vote to re-open the closed question, and have upvoted both questions (they may have not shown any research effort, but they are both clear and useful).  I ask that the community consider where we wish to put the line on these, and watch to see if the line is different for some games than others.  We certainly need to promote good questions and limit duplicates; but we also need to promote "questions", straight up - especially from "New contributors", with whom we are asked to "Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering."
To clarify my question, which seems to have been misread as "complaining about two specific cases, both of which were read wrong/had potentially flaggable comments" (note that my concern was with the reaction, not from the correctness of the questions or the responses thereto:
Do we want to be the "IOTTMCO with basic searching, close"/"RTFM" stack, or the "Yes, it works, and it's an interesting usecase of [this general question] why it works"/"Tribute Summons are not the same as Special Summons. So it doesn't work that way..." stack?

There is no difference in rounding up to 2 if you have 3 life or rounding up to 1 if you have 1 life. Either way the answer and the results are the same and you round up.

The second question you linked got a single downvote. It's not worth being concerned over one downvote. And if you believe that a comment is rude or inappropriate, you can always flag it.

Joe: there is a very big difference - I don't lose if I'm at 1 life.
But also: what is the closable difference between "I don't understand how this works in this specific case" and all of the Magic questions that are effectively "these two cards have different names than the other 30 questions with the same interaction", which don't get closed?

I shall do that.  My question here is to raise it as a "I've seen this difference in responses to questions before, these two examples are just new and obvious"; to see if why view of the world is biased somewhat (as "my game" is another non-WOTC game, I could easily be biased) or whether this is a discussion that should happen/reaction we should be more aware of.  If the appropriate response to "new contributor" questions are "bad question: didn't search exactly right/RTFCard", then fine; not my speed, but I am only me, fine.

There is no difference at all, if you lose half your life at 3 you end up at 2 after rounding up and if you lose half your life at 1 you end up at 1 after rounding up. In both cases you don't lose the game. Both of those questions can be answered with the same answer so the details you are talking about are not important.

If you want to convince people that it is not a duplicate you should be providing an answer that shows why it is different then the question it was marked a duplicate of.  From what I can see in your question there is no reason why the same answer doesn't apply to this question. As a side note you can also add a new answer to the duplicate question to address the differences brought up in this question. The point of marking it as a duplicate question is to consolidate the information in a single place and make it easier to find.

Apologies for my cat eating the last paragraph of my edit, clarifying my focus.  For the extra confusion, I apologize.  What I could do with this specific issue (and all suggestions here are very good); but not the point.

There are a variety of factors here, and some of them might be actionable.
First, it's important to recognize that duplicate closure is not intended to be a punishment or anything like that. Closing a question as a duplicate should show the question author and any later visitor who has the same question where the answer to their question can be found. Ideally, it should only be used when the linked question and its answers clearly and completely answer the closed question.
In reality, it is not that simple, because question closure is determined by vote, and the voters are making a judgement call based on subjective criteria. People don't all agree on the general threshold of how close questions have to be to be duplicates, and on how close individual questions actually are. And because users tend to focus on specific games, we end up with separate pools of potential close voters for different games, which can result in different trends in duplicate question closure for different games.
Regarding Magic: The Gathering, I think it is true that we close questions as duplicates less than the rest of the site, and maybe less than we should. There is definitely a strong case that this question that you linked should be closed as a duplicate, and the other question's answers should be expanded and clarified to address it. Part of the problem is that a lot of questions describe interactions by card names, which both makes them unsuitable duplicate targets, and makes it difficult to search for duplicates. There are also a lot of subtly different interactions, which makes it harder to find exact duplicate targets. Occasionally we have created large "canonical" questions that aggregate information otherwise covered in many separate questions, and then close the others as duplicates.
Regarding the other question, I agree that we were not very welcoming, but I think that issue is not as specific to one game vs another. For example, this recent MTG question, also by a new user, has a similar issue, and had a similar reception. It would be better for us to more effectively discourage answers in comments.

Thank you.  This is the issue I wanted to raise and the analysis I wanted to get.  "Where should this stack be, and are we there?". The "similar" M:tG quesiton you linked, while downvoted, doesn't have (now, not sure about history) snarky minimalist comment and nothing, it got a nice edit to clean up the question, and a "No, this isn't that, here's what happens, and here's how you can tell this from that," answer.  All I wanted to raise was "do we want to recommend this course of action, or what was done in the other  question, or something else entirely?"  Your answer here starts that.

I think you are looking at this as a site culture problem, when the basic reason for the things you describe is that more people on this site know about MTG than about other topics. You're making this comparison that one question has an answer and edits, and the other does not, but some individual person has to do each of those things. If nobody does it, it doesn't get done. Obviously we don't aspire to be an unwelcoming site that doesn't answer questions, but we can't force people to interact with any particular question.

Sure, and I'm one of those people (although my familiarity is with bridge).  But both of the comments on the YGO questions could easily have been answers - and it's clear that the writers of them were knowledgeable enough about it to do so,  They just thought what they did was appropriate.  Absolutely this is a "site culture" question - hence, on meta - in "where is the line", "are we consistent across games with that line" and "how should we get to the desired line and consistency".  Again, thanks for understanding and considering - and pointing out where non-diamonds can do our part.

Questions across all topics get comments that could have been expanded into answers. Sometimes people want to respond in some way, but don't want to take the time or effort to write a full answer. It's not ideal, but it happens. We can't force people to write answers when they don't want to.