text:
"Blender Crashes when..." Questions
There are many, many questions, concerning a situation: "Blender crashes when..."

Just a few examples from the last 2 months...
 Blender GPU compute render preview crash,
Blender crashes when entering viewport rendered mode,
Blender crashes several times and lags,
Blender crashes when entering rendered view,
Blender crashes with GPU installed,
Windows 10 crashes using blender,
How can I avoid crash when adding subdivision modifier?,
Blender render extremely slow on Linux (+ crashes),
Ubuntu. Blender crashes when opens Shader Editor,
Always crash when I enter the rendered view in blender 2.90,
Crashing during particle bake (not from memory),
Blender crashing when using material preview or using eevee on Pop os 20.04,
Blender crashes when using any kind of normal map,
Blender won't see my nVidia GPU and 2.90 crashes but 2.91 doesn't,
Cycles rendering mode crashes the entire program AMD OpenCL,
Blender crashes when rendering cycles although using good settings,
Blender crashes when rendering cycles although using good settings,
Import STL crashes Blender
Blender 2.9 instantly crashes when I try to render in Cycles
Rendering (CPU+GPU) crash almost every time
Blender Crashes When I Open A File,
Blender crashes when I use volume absorption,
Normal maps baking crashes blender 2.90. Exact same blender file as in blender 2.83 where bake doesn't crash,
Exception Access Violation error,
Blender crashes after rendering one frame,
Cycles crashing on gpu compute (RX 5700 with XT bios)

Most don't have any answers, since the possible reasons are hard to pinpoint through Q&A format.

Should we have one dedicated Q&A post with possible reasons listed, for users to try?
Like:

Update your GPU drivers
Check if your HW meets the requirements
Make sure your HW can handle the scene
Try a different version
Pray to Blender Gods... :)
and so on...

Why it's a good idea:

It will be faster and more helpful for those asking for help (that's the point here, right?)
It will help protect our moderators' sanity :)
It will save time so people can focus on answering other questions

What do you think?

The issue I have with crash related questions is that most often are off topic here. It is either a hardware problem, an issue with drivers, operating system, or just general poor computer health; all of which are unrelated and off topic here. Some times it is actually caused by a bug, but questions are so sparse in info that I'm reticent to send people to the bugtracker for fear of just burdening the developers even more. For graphics cards related issues it is probably a good idea to have a canonical answer covering usual steps, like checking for hardware compatibility, updating drivers etc.

There are two types of issues that users commonly ask about:

Operating system crashes while using Blender
Blender crashes or glitches

The former is off-topic, since it's unrelated to Blender. The actual issue is with the drivers, hardware or operating system. While Blender may trigger the exact circumstances that makes the system crash, a user space application shouldn't be able to. Therefore, this is not something we can help with on Blender's Stack Exchange nor on the official bug tracker.
A question about the latter might be on-topic, if it is about finding a workaround for a suspected bug that could be relevant to other users. Other types of questions will likely be off-topic, however that doesn't automatically mean that it's a bug and should be reported on the bug tracker. In order to help rule out common causes of issues and to improve the report quality from users that we redirect to the bug tracker, I've written a little guide. If users follow it, then they should either be able to resolve the issue themselves or have a well written bug report at the end, that allows developers to identify the source of the issue.

Oh, that's exactly what I had in mind :). Should I then flag those "Blender crash..." questions as duplicates of this Bug report Q&A? I'm just looking for the most 'helping' way to handle these situations :).

@JachymMichal I'd say ask questions in the comments first to check if the user has considered/checked likely causes, if it isn't clear from the question. If I think that it could be a bug, I would leave a comment and recommend them to go through the guide linked above and report it on the bug tracker. Next I'd vote to close the question using a community-specific reason and choose the option that says it should be reported on the bug tracker.

Okay, and if the user doesn't react, or it isn't reportable as a bug? What's the best action then? Because that is the case in most of the aforementioned questions :).

@JachymMichal Right, in that case it would still be off-topic and I think it should be closed using a community-specific reason > Other - Add comment, where you give a (very) short explanation why it's off-topic. For instance you could write: "I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about a crashing operating system. Blender is not the source of the issue, this may be caused by an error in the graphics driver, operating system or hardware."

@JachymMichal on side note, when closing a question as Closing > A community specific reason > Bug it already links to the guide by robert

@Duarte Yeah I noticed just yesterday when going through review queue :).

@Robert Yes, that's what I was going to do :). When I voted to close this old one I added a link to your little guide so the OP knows what to do next :). Okay like this?

@JachymMichal Yes, I think so.

Great, thanks for your time :)


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Is there a site for getting help with learning to use Blender?

I have a question about my Blender Stack Exchange post: Is there any instructional/tutorial articles or videos for face mocap?

I had the impression that's what this site was for, but when I asked a question about something I am trying to learn to do, it got deleted for being "not allowed", and replaced with something unrelated. I've tried the other sites on https://www.blender.org/community/, but they seem to have nearly zero users/activity in their forums and have proven to be similarly useless. So, is there any place someone can go for help learning to use blender, or is it more like every blender user has to go into it completely blind and do their best to figure it out on their own?
Please keep in mind that this site doesn't let me make responses (it uses some obscure "reputation points" system to lock me out) so I probably won't be able to answer questions or provide further details once I post this. If you know of any site or other way that someone can get help learning to use blender, please share!

Have you tried using https://blender.chat, it is a portal into the blender IRC channel.

Hello and thanks for posting here and bringing up the issue.
Blender Stack Exchange is the place to ask questions about Blender, and learn using it.
This is no regular forum however, and there a few strict rules to help create a high quality Q&A knowledge database, rather that just casual conversation compendium.
You question was closed for being a request for tutorais which strictly speaking is not really a question about using Blender and is considered off topic. It can either be answered with a basic Google search, or if it requires a full blown tutorial, it is considered too broad and complex and as such cannot effectively be answered here. These are generally linked to a generic community approved list of resources for Blender which among other content includes links for known quality tutorials and videos by reputed authors.
I'd recommend taking the tour  to better understand how this site works. This may seem unfriendly but do come back if you have focused questions about any specific issues or difficulties you encounter using Blender.
For anything else I'd recommend using any of the existing numerous communities like https://blenderartists.org , social network groups or any other forums not focused on coding and development

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Is Blend-Exchange still active and operational?
I installed via Tampermonkey and TM says it has access to the site (Blender Stack Exchange).  However, there is no button above this question's formatting buttons.

If Blend-Exchange isn't the preferred method of hosting .blends, what is?

Why don't you go to blend-exchange and try it manually? Other than that, this might be a topic for meta.

Blend file hosting provided by Blend Exchange is a third party courtesy of GiantCowFilms, not officially part of Stack Exchange as far as I know. It was recently rewritten from the ground up and completely revamped. The script was probably not updated to the current version, as such it is likely outdated.

The extension should be working, the latest version ([2.02]

The extension should be working, the latest version (2.02) appears properly for me. Note that it currently doesn't support unposted questions, as blend-exchange requires the question URL and the extension can't know that until after the question has been posted. So unfortunately for now you'll just have to post your question and then edit to upload a .blend.

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


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I would like to post my blender when I have issue, what are people using to post?
I have been a bit of nightmare with doing normal bakes recently, and it's time that i start posting my blend. Currently each time i try to bake, only the head of my female shows up baked in the normal map, the rest of the file is filled with various colors that do not conform to the uvmap I unwrapped. Since I'm at work, i won't be able to post until later, but people use google drive, dropbox, etc or what else?

https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/


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Approve/reject edits on scripts
When I am reviewing posts for suggested edits, I frequently see edits which are attempting to edit scripts which other users have posted either as part of their question, or as an answer.
Should moderating/reviewing users be more inclined to reject or accept these edits, as small parts of changed scripts may not function as the user originally intended after another user has edited it?
If these edits are not ever going to be helpful, then should we add an info box somewhere on the website's info page warning against editing other user's scripts?

Most of these edits from what I have see are attempts at updating older scripts to 2.8+ versions of Blender I suspect. My view on this is that these edits should be made into a separate script, instead of entirely replacing the original one. Not only they may conflict with the authors original intent, there may be other adverse effects, like some users still using older versions prior to 2.8 expecting the answers to still work.

I think especially in questions it would be best to leave them as they are. Sometimes the problem for what the author tries to find a solution is caused by issues in his script, so editing that it works should rather be given as an answer, not an edit - for it would make the question obsolete. But if it's a scripting mistake others might also run into as well it would help them if they would find the answer.

Leave it up to the author
Most of the suggested code edits are actually quite useful. However, programming is all about detail, so even if the suggested edit is an improvement to some extent or the edit makes the script even work in newer versions of Blender, the author may dislike the changes for some minor reason e.g. coding style.
I'd recommend to  the review if you have no idea whether it is actually a good or bad suggestion, because the author will be notified as well and can decide in the last resort.
See What are the guidelines for reviewing?

If you aren't able to ascertain if the post is better or worse after the edit, click Skip.

... if you are not sure, skip the edit and leave it for someone who knows.


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I wanna upload Blender screenshot videos here. What are the best open source screen capture programs for Windows 11?
I wanna upload Blender screenshot videos here. What are the best open source screen capture programs for Windows 11? Is a GIF recorder good?

ScreenToGif works fine

https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/522/placing-gifs-in-text https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/963/what-is-the-process-for-creating-gifs-for-questions-and-answers/964#964


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all comments on my answer were deleted. Why?
I have a question regarding my answer here:
How to merge only the necessary vertexes?
I wrote some comments, no offense at all. All moderators should be able to read the comments.
All comments were deleted.
May i ask why?
Is that there any new policy i don't know?
May i ask what i made/wrote wrong and why all (!) comments were deleted?
Unfortunately only moderators can read deleted comments...

The deleted comments were in no way helpful or beneficial to the question or answer. Strictly speaking, the comments section is not for chatting, but should only be used to clarify questions regarding posts. Furthermore, in this specific case, there were some comments that led to misunderstandings and would have only fueled further discussion unnecessarily. By the way, naming users in the way you did on Meta.SE is not welcome. Stay objective and focused, don't take things so seriously. No further comment necessary.

@quellenform i'm curious, so if a comment or a stream of comments related to a certain clarification has also been reflected as update in the question/answer post, can a moderator safely delete them to reduce clutter? Is it also okay to delete thank you comments that are several months or years old or is it preferred to leave them alone?

@HarryMcKenzie Yes, if the question has been supplemented with content from the comments and this creates redundancy, comments can be removed. Strictly speaking, thank you comments also offer no added value in the long term and can/should be removed. "Comments are meant for requesting clarification": https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers


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Thanks And Hi's
I was going through some old files and found this:  https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/. I think that is from 2018 or 19. From my short and very good time here at StackExchange, I still find "don't use thanks" and the like. Being Latin American, this is quite disconcerting. When I travel to the U.S., I sometimes go into culture shock, such efficiency. In your more rural areas folks tend to be more courteous. Please don't misunderstand, I think your people are great. Thank for your attention. Cheers!

Hi for questions about this site and how it works please use meta https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com

Tks Duarte. I hope I'm the only one who is lost around here.

@Roberto being a rural folk myself, I have to agree :)

@ Allen Simpson I found at https://stackoverflow.com/help/someone-answers, the comment: Please do not add a comment on your question or on an answer to say "Thank you".  I say in the name of "rural folk" and others: Tar and Feather people who say such things. Smile

also this one https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2811/how-to-thank-somebody-for-editing-his-answer-or-comment-and-adding-value-to-it


text:
This question already exists
Read this first.
So I came to this point where I had enough and came to figure things out here. I've been using this site for almost a month, but recently I started getting pressure from this one mod. Today is the day, when my post got deleted for the second time, not the same question, but a different one. Apparently, it is a "duplicate" question. The post was hidden and I was provided with those duplicate questions, one was already researched before and it didn't work, the other one was obsolete so it didn't work too.
I always try to figure things on my own before I ask my teacher, just like here. But when you can't, you just ask. But things here seem different, though not sure yet. I posted a new question, providing even more details, like the protruding ring lines in the picture, which wasn't shown the first time. It's hidden again, because duplication. Well, how do you ask otherwise when those other peoples' problems are similar, but I have different outcomes and their provided solutions doesn't solve mine?

This is what should be at least fixed, if the moderator is proved to be not guilty. "If this question doesn't resolve your question, ask a new one." OK, the text obviously means that if the provided questions by the moderator doesn't resolve my problem, I should ask a new one again (at least, that's how most people understand). And like I said before, I did ask a new one, it got hidden, then I edited it, evaluating the mod's work. If it's a duplicate, then provide how is it the same, give proof not just "I pressed a couple of buttons, read this question and figure it yourself." I have never experienced this kind of situation, although I ask a lot when there's no other way, that's called activity, but here it's seems the opposite of it.

Again, as I stated in my first comment in your duplicate question and I quote: "If you feel your question was incorrectly closed as duplicate please edit it, providing additional information on the steps you took and why they didn't solve your problem so it can be reopened." Editing it will bump it up the question queue making it more visible again, will notify users it was edited after being closed, and will place it in a review queue so we can take a look at it.

Also take a look at https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/duplicates especially the last lines. Getting questions closed for being duplicates is quite common and there is nothing wrong with it except for frequent offenders or blatant duplicates. What is at fault here is your disproportionate reaction and generally offensive attitude towards others. If you keep that up other measures will be taken

nope, it says "Your post has been associated with similar questions. If these questions don’t resolve your question, ask a new one."

you're failing dude, just admit it.

@Duarte My only duplicate on a sibling site doesn't show that message. Would it be possible to contact someone to fix it? Asking a wrongly-duped question again does not make any sense to me.

@Leander I've added some related links in my answer.

Thanks Ray. So the question that remains is why is the OP seeing the notice encouraging to ask a new question rather than the one asking to edit it?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos The answer here shows status-declined and Shog9's comment below it explains why. So maybe as you closed it without letting it go to a general vote (I don't know if you can do a 'regular' vote as a moderator) it didn't trigger the 'edit' suggestion.

"I don't know if you can do a 'regular' vote as a moderator" You can't unfortunately, mod votes are always binding, hence why I sometimes refrain from close voting questions. It may also be that since the duplicate is just the identical question from the same user and has no answers (accepted or otherwise), the message differs from normal.

I understand you want to get this sorted and you're probably frustrated with this process.

The message you are seeing on your question is slightly misleading and I understand why you asked the question again.
A closed question is not hidden from anyone and it can be voted to be reopened by users who have enough reputation (not just moderators).
Drop the petty comments. They just wont get you anywhere and will make people less likely to want to help you. No one is 'guilty' or 'failing'.

I don't know if the message you're seeing on your question suggesting you ask the question again has always been like that or whether it's changed recently, but it does seem misleading. What Duarte is suggesting is correct and what we advise anyone to do when a question has been closed and they feel it shouldn't have been: edit it and explain why the answers in the duplicate don't help or why your question is different. Once edited your question will enter the review queue and if the edits clearly (and calmly) explain why the duplicate question isn't a duplicate, people will vote for it to be reopened.
To summarise:

I understand the message you're seeing is different from what Duarte suggested, but he is correct. And he has, in my opinion, dealt with this correctly, despite your comments towards him.
To proceed, use the 'edit' link below the question you want reopened to add information explaining how it's not a duplicate or how the answers don't help.
Threats or rudeness aimed at any user will not be tolerated.

This post goes over this quite thoroughly:
Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not

Some other related posts (slightly unclear which posts relate to how the site currently works):

"Please ask a new question" encourages question repetition for duplicates
Duplicate explanation should encourage improvement of original
How could we improve our planned post notice improvements?
New Post Notices rollout on Stack Overflow

slightly misleading..? This "slightly" misleading is the main reason it causes confusion, I don't know if the mods can write those private feedbacks or they are automated messages, but damn, fix it or something. It's like if I was working a sorter job where the rule is to sort plastic bottles to the plastic bin only, but then I get a message from my boss saying, that there's going to be an accidental glass bottle coming up on the conveyor belt and gave me an order to throw that into plastic bin. You'd be confused, whether you should follow the rules or listen to boss. Same happens here.


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What is the purpose of tag wiki excerpts?
The guide for writing tag wiki excerpts states:

The usage guidance, or tag wiki excerpt, is a short blurb that describes when and why a tag should be used on this site specifically.

And the guide for writing the full tag wiki states:

The full tag wiki is a detailed introduction to the topic, suitable as a destination for those curious about it.

Now looking at some of the most common tags here, the python tag has an excerpt:

Python is an object-oriented programming language. In Blender, it is used as a general purpose scripting language and to create add-ons to extend Blender's functionality.

It does not mention "when and why a tag should be used" but rather goes into explaining what python is and what it means to blender, which seems pretty similar to what the full tag wiki should have.
And the modeling tag:

Modeling refers to the process of creating 3D objects or entities using a 3D modeling application. This tag is used for anything related to modeling including techniques, tools and tips.

It also explains what modeling is even before explaining the "when and why".
My question is, when writing the wikis for a tag, should I follow the guidelines or follow the same convention as most of the wikis on the site? I also want to know if they are generally accepted or do they require updating to match the guidelines?

This is a somewhat tentative topic as we have been very lax in curating our tags. We have a quite a bit, people get the privilege to add new random ones and there are not many people willing or able to police these and occasionally we have to delete one or two here or there so the quality is very inconsistent as you have noted.
Those tags are also in our first 10 tags created, no strict rule was ever enforced when creating tags except that they should ideally define usage and give a short description and provide links where possible (notice most of these have the "this tag is used for...").
To answer your question, we'd love if users could follow the general SE guideline but this requires effort and from what I've noticed the excerpt is good enough for most cases as people readily just look for the keyword and plop it on their post. The blender manual is a much better introduction to said topics and as we are a visual learning type of site, cramming gifs, introductory material and steps into a full tag wiki takes time and a link to the manual I'd argue would suffice just as well as is done in the python tag.
So to conclude, the excerpt is good enough as a quick intro while detailing usage. In the full tag wiki, maybe a small introduction quoted from the manual and a link to the appropriate page.
There is also a small +2 for improving wikis. hint hint :)

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


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Where to put Feature Requests?
Where should I post feature requests? So that nobody tells me, that it is the wrong place and so that also developers might see it very quickly...?

See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/1190/599

Features for Blender.SE?  If so, then you can post it on Meta Blender SE or Meta Stack Exchange.

No not the sequence editor.. For the whole Blender application in general...

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


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Should questions that need a new answer for 2.8 be flagged somehow?
I came across an answer that would have worked for my question, except the new layout in 2.8 has moved that item and so the answer was useless. I could ask a new question - but then, people who google the question like I did are probably going to be directed to the old question, and it won't help them. Also I've always found it difficult to effectively search for what I need on the Blender SE, and so I would hate to mess up this question's relatively good searchability.
So I daydreamed about some happy way to flag questions like this for updating. I know that only a small minority of users would so flag, but maybe that would still look after a big chunk of the issue. Do you think there is any good way to do this?
This is the question that led to this: Viewing normals in Blender?

You could flag, but who will update-answer them? Getting rep on new questions is hard enough these days, on older ones even more so. Judging by the amount of duplicates we get I assume most users aren't bothering searching much anyway. SE search engine doesn't help either, so I suspect incentive to post new answers on old questions is very low. It is probably more productive to answer on new questions  that get more visibility. Many answers for 2.7# are still valid anyway, base workflow and principles still work, save for some shortcut key changes which are easy to overcome.

Also see Also see https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2559/blender-2-8-is-going-beta-what-now which I think this question is mostly a duplicate of.

No
Flags are for things that are bad enough they need to be dealt with quicker or differently then could be using the tools given from the privileges.
Take a look at the type of flags you can cast:

PS would you flag the question or the non 2.8x answer?
Right away we know the first three flags will not work. Its not spam, rude, or it is not an answer. Or on the question side, should be closed and a duplicate... do not work either.
We're down to just "very low quality" and "in need of moderator intervention"
Hopefully the post is not LQ, low quality, but if it is that is a different issue so this flag should not be used to mark non 2.8x content either.
The custom flag "in need of moderator intervention" is not meant for this either. If I were to handle a flag that said "this answer does not work for 2.8" I would decline your flag with the either of these two reasons:

flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer

flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention

So what would be the best thing to do? Add the 2.8 answer yourself. Now in some case its ok to just edit the existing answer and add the 2.8x changes, but for some answers that would be extensively different add a new answer.
So you don't want to answer it yourself, or at least right now. then what? Add a link to the question in this chat room. The 2.8 Answers room is an experiment where hopefully we can collect and get "fixed" some of these non 2.8 questions.

I'd go against editing for anything other than very minor changes. Going forward as an actively developed software Blender is expected to continue changing, and answers would potentially evolve into some hard to follow Frankenstein with each version. Whenever possible a new answer is probably preferable, including updated screenshots

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos completely agree. Was thinking for minor things like shortcut changes, or this example.


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Are questions about the Armory game engine on topic?
Armory works only within Blender, however it is a separate product. There is a version that is an add-on, presumably that's on topic. Then the full version is a separate product, but you can't use it unless you run Blender, it works only within Blender.
So, are questions about it on topic?

I'd say yes; it's not all that different from an addon for an alternate render engine (for example). That said, it's a tricky question right now since it isn't totally freely available yet. I'll also note that there has been a project similarly developed "in" blender (microvellum), but I don't believe questions about it are on topic.

Honestly with the bge being basically dead now I don't see why not as well once it's fully open source.

Sure! Armory questions are on topic.
However, I can not guarantee that you will get answers. (But that should not stop you from trying, everything started somewhere.)
We already take blend4web questions. I'd argue this is more closely related to blender then b4w.


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Can you ask too many Questions?
My question is if someone can ask to many questions on this site or are they allowed to ask as many questions as they want?

My opinion is that - everyone can ask as many questions as they want, as long as they are good and contribute to the site.

If your question has been answered accept the proper answer as such


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Where to see the reason for deleted answer?
I've asked a question and I've received an answer, but then the author deleted the answer. Can I see the reason for deletion?

Looking at the answer in question, I think it's because the answerer didn't notice that you wanted to rotate the plane in the BGE.

Removing an answer is up to the author for whatever reason they choose, no notification or message is shown and you cannot see deleted posts unless you have the privilege (unlocked at 2000+ reputation).


text:
How do I accept an answer or start a bounty for a question?
I have asked several questions on Blender Stack Exchange and just noticed this comment on a few of them, "Have you considered accepting an answer or starting a bounty for this question?"
My answer is no to both because I don't know how to do that.  I would like to be more familiar with the procedures here.  I am proceeding with brute force through Blender, using BlenderBasics_4thEdition2011.pdf and as I learn as well as teach a class that includes beginning and advanced students I am coming across many things I don't understand.
Blender is an interesting puzzle.  I am enjoying the ride but I think that along with learning it I should also try to understand the etiquette of the Stack Exchange.
Your help would be appreciated.

just take a look at the help in this site and you'll find the answers , and questions of this kind should be asked in the meta

This must be placed in Meta not in the main site.

All being said, awarding bonuses to get answers isn't necessary. Unless your problem is an obscure/localized one that you want people to spend more than a few minutes on just try to word your question as clearly as possible. See http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/608/how-do-i-ask-a-question-that-is-hard-to-describe?cb=1

Accepting answers:
You accept and answer by clicking on the "nike"-icon to the left of the answer. It then turns green. You can only do this with one answer pr. question.
Bounty:
Bounties can be started two days after question was posted. They are a way to offer your own rep to attract more answers, since users will put more effort in for a large reward.

Naioai Studios appears to have already addressed the How, so I'll just add some clarification and some of the common etiquette here on Blender.SE.
First, accepting an answer. It is customary to accept the most helpful answer, as soon as possible (be sure to give a reasonable amount of time for other answers to be posted if it does not solve your question exactly). You can un-accept an answer and accept another at any time, just click the check-mark again, and click another one. Up-voting the accepted answer is also common etiquette, as if it solves your question it deserves the up-votes. Stack-Exchange sites are heavily reliant on active voting by all members to sort good questions/answers from the bad ones.

Now for Bounties. A question becomes eligible for a bounty after two days from initial posting, with no accepted answers. If a question becomes eligible, you can start a bounty by clicking the little text underneath the question that says start a bounty.

You can start a bounty on any question, regardless of if it is your own or not, same for all users. Notice though that the minimum amount is 50 rep, so you need to have enough reputation in order to start one.

Please use screenshots that show the site as is.

Usually I don't accept an answer unless it solves the problem, or shows that what I am looking for is definitely not possible.  So if it is helpful but doesn't actually solve the problem, I usually just upvote it in case someone in the future comes along with a full solution.  And as an aside, where did those screenshots come from?


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How could I set up a question that collects Blender+Python tutorials?
I know how to program somewhat well, but am completely new to Blender. I need to use Blender to generate some geometry, and had a bit of a tough time finding tutorials that give me the quickest (i.e. not the most in-depth) route to get going with some simple modelling using Python.
This is something useful I have found so far (you'll have to scroll down for tutorial 0 -- the first tutorial):

http://science-o-matics.com/tag/how-to+blender+python/?lang=en

However, I am sure there are other such tutorials (each with their pros and cons), and I am wondering if there would be interest in creating an updateable list of them that can be generally referred to? So, this would be a community wiki type of thing.
How can/should I best title/form such a question on the main Blender SE?

Collecting useful links is well outside the scope of stackexchange sites. [http://www.slant.co] started recently and is intended for this purpose.

Such a question will be closed, you'll have more luck on BlenderArtists.org, where the community guidelines are less strict.
Furthermore, I have found that there is a general absence of Blender python tutorials. Here are some good ones though: https://cgcookie.com/blender/category/tutorials/scripting/.

We've had a discussion like this already, and it was decided to make one big post with answers for each category.
I think a list of python tutorials would fit right in as an answer there.
In addition, we also had an older post of a similar type on meta, which may also be of interest.


text:
Why can't you upvote a comment after you've undone your upvote?
I accidentally upvoted a comment, and I un-upvoted it (are there better words for vocabulary like this?). Blender StackExchange gave me an alert via my web browser that I wouldn't be able to re-upvote it after I un-upvoted it. I was wondering why this restriction exists.

This is explained in this answer:

We do not want flip flopping, nor do we want people to un-upvote stuff from the past. The only use case is undoing a mis-click.


text:
Updating off-topic questions in help center
I recently asked a question that was voted off-topic. This, and similar cases could be avoided if there were a description of blender-related off-topic questions in the help center (this is the first destination that is recommended by the site for info on the subject).
I see that similar attempts have been made in the past to make the help center more informative about undesirable blender-related questions, such as here and here. It looks like they were never implemented however.
Anyway, I wanted to suggest from my own experience, and for the benefit of future answer seekers, to include in the help center a sentence saying something along the lines of:
"Questions about unreleased versions of blender are off-topic".

"looks like they were never implemented" but why this list https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6/1245 isn't counted as implemented? There isn't unreleased versions, but your case can fall under techincal questions; also related discussion was there in comments.

@MrZak, by not implemented, I meant that the goal of those questions  was to add info to the help center (the one you linked has an update where the person suggested to edit the help center). But at present I don't see any of it there. I don't know what exactly happened, I wasn't present back then, but I can talk about what I (don't) see now.

FYI we are discussing whether 2.8 questions are on topic or not, so until that is decided editing the help center (at least on this point) would not help.

Oh, I assumed it was pretty much settled here


text:
moderator tools
I want to know what tools do the moderators have ?
 the goal of this question is to aid a university project in which we think of a programming idea and implement a senior product, we're thinking of something like the tools needed to moderate a website, I can't tell the details for personal reasons.
So how do moderators do their job ? how do they maintain  and in particular how does the website help them ?

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/

That's classified. (I'm kidding, btw. iKIsR could you post that as the answer?)

I think you will get better answers if you ask on http://meta.stackexchange.com

@iKlsR is there a way to migrate it ?


text:
How can I insert videos into my Q&A?
Some people give visual appealing answers with a video/gif.
I saw that those link to i.sstatic.net. How can I use that service to automatically transform my blender screencasts (avi jpg) into gifs? If I try to use the site directly I need to provide a link instead of a local file for conversion.
Since stackexchange partnered with imgur (as the above link suggests) there should be an easy way to convert local files to gifs right?
I cannot find it at the moment.

As far as I know, there is none. This would be a pretty expensive service to provide anyway, so I doubt that would happen very easily.

Stack-Exchange does not provide such a service, however some sites online do provide this.
One site you could try would be ezgif.com/video-to-gif. This site will let you temporarily upload a video file and convert it to a GIF, which you cn then download and upload to the standard image hosting service that Stack-Exchange uses as a whole. You can also do this for individual images as well.
However, I would strongly discourage making a video or image sequence and then converting it online. You can use a local program like LiceCAP to record directly to an animated GIF file, which can then be easily uploaded directly. To insert them into your question and/or answer you just upload them like a standard image file. Notice that the maximum file size is 2mb.

I'd advise you to just use Youtube videos for video files, especially if your instructions are extensive. Gifs should be for very short, easily remembered actions, such as a clicking a few buttons or so.


text:
2024 Community Moderator Election Results
Moderator election #5 on Blender has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are:

They will be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for volunteering and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes!
For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here or view a summary report online.

Thank you both for participating and congrats on wining. Also thanks to Allen Simpson for nominating

Welcome on board and thank you to all candidates and voters!

So where do i deposit the hush money?

Congratulations to you both! And thanks to @Allen Simpson also.

Congratulations !

Congrats you two


text:
2023: a year in moderation

It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.
So as we say goodbye to 2023 (and January 2024… ahem) and move into 2024, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Blender over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community User¹
Community²

All comments on a post moved to chat
16
0
0

Answer flags handled
1,233
244
0

Answers flagged
28
704
744

Bounties canceled
0
0
0

Comment flags handled
244
65
10

Comments deleted⁸
1,411
28
2,599

Comments flagged
3
1
315

Comments undeleted
54
0
0

Escalations to the Community Manager team
2
0
0

Posts bumped
0
8,199
0

Posts deleted⁷
1,185
4,542
1,736

Posts locked
0
76
0

Posts undeleted
32
0
172

Posts unlocked
0
0
0

Question flags handled⁶
251
175
0

Questions closed
2,583
42
2

Questions flagged⁶
73
12
381

Questions merged
0
0
0

Questions migrated
3
0
0

Questions protected
5
29
0

Questions reopened
185
0
1

Questions unprotected
0
0
0

Revisions redacted
0
0
0

Tag highlight language set
0
0
0

Tag synonyms created
3
0
0

Tag synonyms proposed
2
0
0

Tags merged
1
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue
2,484
0
1,065

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue
816
0
1,064

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue
3,310
0
4,055

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue
293
0
693

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts" queue
314
0
319

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue
165
0
103

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue
431
85
389

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue
0
0
0

User banned from review
0
0
0

User review-bans lifted early
0
0
0

User suspensions lifted early
0
0
0

Users contacted
0
0
0

Users deleted
1
0
0

Users destroyed⁴
927
0
0

Users suspended³
1
41
0

Footnotes
¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² This refers to the membership of Blender without diamonds next to their names.
³ The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
⁴ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁵ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2022: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2024! ^_^

Wow, there really were 927 spam accounts that had to be destroyed ;-)

@quellenform That really shows the burden you've been silently carrying all this time. Great work, thanks for the commitment

I was gonna say the same. that's like 2.5 per day. not massive, but not tame either.


text:
2022 Community Moderator Election Results
Moderator election #4 on Blender has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are:

They will be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for volunteering and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes!
For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here or view a summary report online.

Congratulations! Looking forward to see both of you join our moderation team.

Congrats to the winners and welcome to the team. And thanks to Allen Simpson for participating as well.

Duarte: agreed: a special shout-out and thanks to @Allen Simpson for volunteering.

Congratulations @quellenform and Robin! I apologize for not running in the end, but figured there were enough candidates who also seemed to be a lot more in their element.

Thanks @Joachim. Counting on you for the next election ;)


text:
Community Promotion Ads — 2020
2020 has come! But… oops, where did the time go? It’s already March! Belated as it is, it’s time for a refresh of Community Promotion Ads!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

interesting Blender addons, tutorials, and other resources
relevant events, conferences, or meetups
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

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

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

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

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

Image requirements

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

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

It's been a while that the following posts have more than 6 upvotes but I have never seen them being shown on the homepage. Why is that?

Just double checked on an incognito window, and can see these — try here, @Amir (that special link forces one of these ads to be displayed).

Interesting/weird, I still don't see any of the ads using that special link even in an incognito window.

Is it possible there's some addon on your browser blockin' 'em?

Yes I think the browser (FireFox) is blocking the ads somehow but I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything to block ads. I tried with another Browser (Chrome) and it worked.

A week back I tested it in a fresh install of Firefox and was able to see 'em, but my regular FF install is also blocking 'em somehow (I can't pinpoint how, though).

@JNat Community Promotion Ads display as normal, but Google's JavaScript is disabled so the “force show community ads” link actually results in no community ads at all.

Sorry, @wizzwizz4, what is this “force show community ads” link? I feel I'm missing something here :)

copied from 2019


text:
2021: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2021, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Blender over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Users suspended²
3
9

Users destroyed³
8
0

Users deleted
2
0

Users contacted
8
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
470
1,354

Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
389
562

Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
423
1,218

Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
329
1,069

Tasks reviewed⁴: First questions queue
605
2,560

Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
2,156
4,850

Tasks reviewed⁴: First answers queue
133
764

Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
3,230
2,937

Tags merged
27
0

Tag synonyms proposed
21
0

Tag synonyms created
27
0

Questions reopened
257
16

Questions protected
0
51

Questions migrated
16
0

Questions flagged⁵
57
745

Questions closed
4,211
359

Question flags handled⁵
496
290

Posts unlocked
0
4

Posts undeleted
17
243

Posts locked
2
50

Posts deleted⁶
1,673
9,833

Posts bumped
0
8,259

Escalations to the Community Manager team
1
0

Comments undeleted
12
0

Comments flagged
69
289

Comments deleted⁷
1,172
5,094

Comment flags handled
288
70

Bounties canceled
1
0

Answers flagged
324
2,423

Answer flags handled
2,518
230

All comments on a post moved to chat
30
0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Blender without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2020: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2022! ^_^

I would like to thank the moderators for doing an excellent job in 2021.


text:
Why there is no button for attaching a .blend directly in the editor?
I hope I won't be penalized that this is the question related to this site, not the Blender.
My question why there is already no button in the post editor that would allow to attach a .blend file using http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com, something like this?

I don't find handy to repeatedly paste the link into comments for almost every new question that needs more investigation of the scene.
I believe the implementation should be really easy... or is there a reason why the button (or just a simple link) is not already here?

Jan, I see you realized that this type of question is off topic on the main site (its only about blender). However this is exactly what the meta is for, questions about the BSE site.


text:
My Issue with Reputation
Reputation: the lifeblood of the community.
Except it really isn't. I had to struggle to get to where I am reputation-wise. I couldn't answer questions for the longest time, even my own. And when I did do so, both the answer and the question got downvoted into oblivion. I'm frustrated by how new user-UNfriendly this site seems. I want discussion!
Commenting on questions, even if it's just to clarify: 50 reputation. Not an easy task if you are bad at writing answers, look at things very differently, or need more information and are new on the site. I can understand the requirement for the religion sites and Puzzling, but things like Blender and Worldbuilding? I don't care if it costs me, but 50 reputation is too high for some folks.
Even if it takes 50 rep to comment on another person's answer, it shouldn't take 50 rep just to ask the author "well what do you mean when you say that x is y-ing z?" or "Could you clarify that for me please?"
And before you edit this, please keep in mind that I do have Asperger's Syndrome and thus look at everything in a very different way. I'm okay if you downvote this a little, just... don't bash me on it, okay?

Regarding comments, I too always thought 50 rep seemed rather high.. For any users reading this who really really want to comment and can't, it's okay to leave an answer and make a note that it's intended as a comment, one of our mods can convert it. But spamming such answers will likely be frowned upon.

Except nobody even seems to care. I've literally had to add 'this is just my thought process, please don't ban me' to many of my answers to stay safe.

@Nefer007 you'd need to do a string of stupid antisocial things to warrant a ban. We do care about visitors, and new users, we care about this site enough to continually make decisions that may seem mean but are really only an ongoing effort to streamline the information here. Almost all questions get edited, it's the way things work here, and the reason is to make the content easier to read by reducing verbosity, spelling mistakes, and improve structure and formatting and fixing tags.

Also saying "please don't ban me" is not likely to have any affect on whether or not you are banned (and you are not likely to be banned, as zeffi said).

The rep system favors skilled users, which is exactly the point. Reputation next to your post, is like having a PHD co-author your article. It adds credibility, and you have to know what you're doing in order to earn that respect. As far as privileges go, I think the 50 rep limit (which I do think is tad high) is implemented to make sure people who have no idea what they are doing don't keep adding their two cents worth into the discussion. I earned my first 50 rep in a few days (its a bit longer but I didn't visit the site for a week), experts are not chased away.

The first few privileges (such as the 50 rep for comments) are mainly to prevent spammers and bots.

While the reputation system may seam unfair to you now, I hope to help you see that it is actually a well balanced privileges system.
First off nearly anyone with at least 1 rep can ask or answer any question. (So I don't see how you "couldn't answer questions for the longest time.")
It is not hard to gain 5 up votes on a few answers, to get to the comment privilege (anyone can comment on their own posts).
If SE did not have the barrier for the comments then we would have all kinds of spam trouble with the comments. (As it is now comments do not go through any review process, low quality or spammy looking question and answers do.)
Don't take it personal, but if you are having trouble gaining rep and are question the system, there probably is a reason your posts are not being up voted.
Take your mushroom question, the way you first posted it, it would be likely to get down votes; because of the title and the first sentence.
Looking through your answers, I see that you have only received one DV on all your answers (remember one UV equals out 5 DVs).
See gaining rep does more then let you do more on the site, it is a measure of how much the BSE community trusts you, and of what quality the posts you write are.

The issue was that I was so bad at answering questions. Originally, I was posting incomplete answers/guidelines that somehow prevented me from answering any other questions, including my own questions that I myself posted... which is a problem and should, in fact, be allowed if you actually did solve your own problem on your own. You shouldn't have to wait for a stroke of luck or some project to be able to answer your own question. That I see as a problem.

I cannot agree with this answer. The reputation is definitely not a "well balanced" system. It has many flaws, including high-rep users abusing the system because they do not know about the subject.

@Joehot200 what you describe is not a flaw in the rep system (voting on popularity), it is in fact a flaw in how people vote.

@David Taking StackOverflow as an example - So it isn't a flaw in the rep system that people who got a lot of rep from python are then able to upvote/downvote/modify java questions? I even once had two unrelated questions closed as duplicates of each other by a high-rep abuser. Despite the issue not being so prominent on blender (since it is about a single piece of software), it is still an issue that should be thought about and fixed. People upvote/downvote questions/answers that do not deserve that upvote/downvote because the voter doesn't know what the subject is about.

if you  think it is a problem worth mentioning, ask a question on the SE meta.

Those of us who have been around for a while, or have plenty of Blender experience, are tooled up to answer questions fast and effectively. It is  by no means easy for a newcomer to compose an acceptable response at the same speed. Feel less bad about that! :)
This reputation threshold is by design. Only people (such as yourself) who for some reason feel an affinity to this 'cause' will stick around and gradually gather reputation. Without that rep barrier you have no idea how much spam we'd get, it would be fun for no-one.
It may seem less easy now to ask novel questions, since we've been around for 2 years, and have amassed 11.000 questions. Questions are frequently marked as duplicates, not because the question was asked exactly that way before, but because the answer of another question also answers that new question. This is to some extent because new people are less intimate with the search feature, partially because the search isn't very fuzzy yet. (ie requires you to spell stuff correctly, and has only limited contextual understanding)
But if you look at the questions that get upvotes, look at the top 20 questions and you might see a pattern. If you want to game BSE ask modular questions, spread them out, make sure the question can be answered (shows clarity and thoughtful composition) and doesn't require a tonne of work to answer, provide .blends or screenshots.
Every day we get around 20 questions, a rough estimate is that 15 of those  are unique/novel to some extent, we are not at 'peak' question yet :)

Expertly answered.

Indeed :) Small addition along the lines of duplicates: duplicate questions aren't bad, having your question closed as a duplicate doesn't mean you did something wrong and are being punished. One of the advantages of closing duplicates is that content about a given question is all redirected into one place, where it can all be found by other people without searching through piles of separate questions.

Duplicates which by their title alone aren't obvious duplicates are great and indeed help site users to get 'redirected into one place'.  I find a lot of original questions don't have perfect titles to begin with, and we should and (do!) edit titles whenever we think "this question is more general than the person asking it realizes, let's give this question the right keywords that it deserves".

Some questions are "cash cows" and generate an unexpected amount of points, but for the rest, for anyone with a lot of reputation points, I think we can all agree that it was a lot of work, time and effort to get them, point by point..day by day. braincell by braincell.

Then why haven't we developed folders? By making folders, we can organize the duplicates!

This is what tags are for. I'm not convinced it would be practical to group duplicate questions or if that would make searching any easier, it still takes experience to know off the top of your head that the question already has an answer somewhere.. this comes back to the weak contextual search of BSE.

@zeffii, sorry. I got carried away.

@Nefer007, tags work nicely as folders. And adding a tag which belongs on a post where it does not already exist, is a valuable edit.

BTW, duplicate answers shouldn't really close a question.

Personally, this is something that I felt like I struggled with when I was new, but I didn't have it as bad as you. Think about it like writing a paper for school: it's about professionalism, and respect.
Now I think you realize that, but your profesh is a bit lacking. (mine is too. :-) take a look at my first question
Projectiles in the BGE
Using verbal quirks and similes make a question very interesting to read, but sometimes they make it hard to understand at the same time.
Now lets annalize some parts of your question Trying to restrict movement of player without causing it to fly off the screen.

I'm trying to restrict the player's movement so that someone can't just barrel through the level.

^^That one made me laugh, and it explained your problem well: Good

So I'm making a three-dimensional danmakufu game in Blender

This one not so much. You started with "So" which indicates a conversational tone, great for chat, but for questions it detracts from the quick-informational asking feel. Too boot, not everyone knows what a danmakufu game is.

AND STOP POSTING ANSWERS IN THE COMMENTS

putting stuff like this in the middle of a question breaks the flow of information.
Over all, I think people need to stop DVing you, and suggest edits, or help in another constructive way. The only thing for you to do though, is maybe cut back on the conversationallism until you're a more solid member of the Blender Stack Exchange community.

They never downvoted me unless I asked a question that I solved on my own, and then they blasted it. Also, danmakufu was the game engine.

With respect to the comment in another answer about more experienced users being able to answer more quickly, even if someone else has provided an answer to a question before you were able to, if you have a good answer, post it anyway. You never know when another user will find your answer more useful than the answer of a member with more reputation, and vote up you answer instead of the other. In some ways, the experience of a power Blender user can be a hindrance in forming good answers useful to novice users, either because they have become fixed in their workflows, or because some of the steps are so ingrained in their work habits that they get ignored when forming their answer, while less experienced users are sometimes more careful to include all the steps when composing their answer. Also, adding a tag to a question counts as an edit.
One way of gaming the system is suggested in another answer, but there are other ways to game the system, too. For example, having a suggested edit to another post (either question or answer) accepted gains two points of reputation, though the edit has to be more than a certain number of characters until one reaches a certain reputation. A suggested edit expanding BSE to the full form Blender.stackexchange might be useful, as new users on the site might find the acronym unfamiliar and hindering their understanding. On the other hand, correcting to to too won't work by itself to gain reputation, as the number of characters is too short. Reviewing old posts, you'll notice some with awkwardly worded titles, or common misspellings, such as using one of there, they're, or their where one of the other two is intended. A side benefit of such reviews is that you become more acquainted with the content of older questions, and will soon start to identify yourself when a post is a duplicate, or is answered by a different question which is not a duplicate.
Also, if one is a known member with sufficient reputation on another stackexchange site, joining a different stackexchange site under the same login, generally results in a grant of 100 reputation points on the new site upon joining. Finally, when you attains the reputation that earns the reputation of voting questions or answers down, use the privilege  sparingly, as downvotes cost you a couple of reputation points every time they are cast.

Yes multiple different answer to a given problem are always welcome. I would not recommend "gaming the system" or posting about ways to do so. Edits are not "gaming the system" SE gives rep to new users that make a post better, it helps them learn what to do, and what is not a good edit. Last you only get the association bonus if you have 200+ rep on any of your sites.

@David, "gaming the system" was not my invention; I got that from the post of another member. I don't think any of the methods either he or I gave are actually gaming the system.

they quite probably are not. So why use the term?

@David, it's not a particularly adult answer to say "because he did" but in this case it's the best available choice.

If someone is struggling to formulate a well received question, they should look at the style and content of those questions that have done well. consider which qualities it makes sense to emulate. The phrase 'gaming the system' was not chosen to illicit misuse, or abuse, but rather to emphasize the importance of how we perceive questions as an audience. The list of high scoring questions is public record and can be studied. In the end questions which zero real applicable content won't get much attention, it still comes down to substance dressed in presentation.


text:
When comment is upvoted, can this be in notification?
When my comment has an upvote, can this be shown in my notification?

no. but you can every once and a while you can use the data explorer to see all your UVed comments. (note that there is a delay of about a week for the data there)


text:
Is it possible to show the number of views precisely?
Is it possible to show the number of views precisely? (the number of views from each question or answer added up individually)

Note that general stack exchange questions/feature requests will likely get more attention on the global meta.

Yes, if you wan't to include bots, and double views... otherwise no.


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When to use 'scripting', when to use 'python' tags?
In case I have a question about How can I use python to ...., should I use the tags 'scripting' or 'python'? What are most important differences?

See Should 'scripting' and 'Python' be made tag synonyms?
In addition, here is my interpretation of the differences:

scripting is for questions involving automation of tasks via scripts.
These could be shell scripts calling blender with various options, or python scripts running within blender.
I've also seen this tag used for osl when the question is more about the language itself, rather than accomplishing a specific something in it.
And since we don't have a glsl tag at the moment, opengl + scripting seems to be used when glsl code is involved.
python is for questions pertaining to the python api.

These will often overlap, in which case both can be used.

Great answer, clarifies it quite well


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Should we edit a question title that's too vague?
Sometimes the OP is trying to describe the problem with terms that can't be said usual, maybe because he's expert of another application or maybe he's not expert at all. The result is a maybe well written question, with picture showing the problem, but lacking of those keywords that are immediately capable of exposing the issue.
One of the latest example could be:
I have a face that is causing me a lot of trouble and I do not know the technical term of this.
From now on I will refer to the title, but the same can be said for the content in the body of the post too.
The title doesn't give any help in describing the problem itself, it just mentions a face. It can be almost anything, and I may guess it will be shown in the seach page when someone will look for a solution to a problem related to faces, with all the other question with titles like that.
Should I edit it to better specify what the post is about? Or should I leave as the OP wrote it?

The editing page of the rules says to feel free to edit...

... any time you see a post that needs improvement ...

but I'm not sure that editing that way would be an improvement of the post in global terms.
I personally don't find titles like that useful, because they are not saying much about the issue. I'm not inclined to look into the question (but I was curious.. eheh), I would change them all believing that this would make it easier to anyone to choose where to spend our time in aswering or finding a solution to our problem.
But maybe for someone who don't even know those keywords, someone who shares the same level of knowledge of the OP about the topic, those are the right words, those are clearly describing the issue the way he would have done himself. Also, knowing what the problem exactly is about, is half, if not more, of the solution. Heavily editing the body in this sense would be basically answering the problem, but there's a dedicated space for that.
Here's some links I visited while trying to find an answer:
How do I write a good title?
Micro Editing, does everything need to be perfect?
Add content to make a post easier to find

Yes, of course you should edit the title. Put forth the improvement and see if others agree. There is no edict to the contrary. Edits can be rolled back. You can put the old title in the body. What is the worst that will happen to you if there is disagreement?

Do not sweat it. Improve and edit.

People who ask questions here are somewhat expected to have some previous tutorial knowledge of Blender. These tutorials can introduce them to Blender terminology, mistakes and triumphs. The OP may want to know such terms. You can place you edits at the top, and leave your older text nearer the bottom. Never touch the .... I am a newbie, I need it done today and I was just browsing the entire internet and saw this incredible mind boggling CG3D effect. This forum typically happens in the English Language so some people may (quietly) appreciate the assistance to their 2nd or 3rd Language.

You are 100% right, edit away (but read this answer first).
I remember maybe a year and a half ago (or longer) having this same question. I came to the conclusion that there is no reason to not edit a post when a few things are true.

You understand the question enough to make it clearer.
There is something to fix.

About point one, if the question is so unclear that you have to guess what the OP wants just to make your edit, then you are most often better off simply casting a close vote as "unclear" then trying to edit it.
In your linked example, and many such examples where the OP has zero knowledge and does not even know how to describe the problem, yet it is easy to spot and correctly depict; then edit it - simple as that.
Be careful of two things though, one that you really do know what the issue is, and second that you do not so radically change the post that the original intent is lost.
Now about "radically changing the post" even to the extent that you kind of answered his question by your edit. Again tread lightly. There is a faint gray line between a good edit and going too far, one which you must use your own discretion when editing. For something to go from, my thoughts go like this: the more unclear the post, the more you can edit and take it away from the original. But keep the original intent, that is key.
I can remember some edit I made where the OP did not know what to call his problem, in my edit I basically answered his question in the alt text for one of his images (I now do not remember what the issue was). Is that odd? maybe. does it fit with SE's Q&A format? I think it still does. There is now a question that is a little bit clearer, and it has at least one answer. At the end of the day isn't that want really matters? Just clear questions and answers to help people.
In the linked example, the question is clearly about the deformations from the sub surface modifier and the N-gon on the bottom. The OP does not know that, his only intent is getting his model to not look like that (even saying that he does not know the terms to use). So by you editing, adding in the proper terminology, changing the question to make it clearer, you are not only staying true to the OP's intent, but helping him in the process. (Good concise, clear questions get more attention and answers than ones which are unclear.)
About point two don't worry, for a post like this example there are most definitely things to make better. It is just a general "rule" of mine, if there is nothing (major) to edit then dont bother. A single misspeelled word, or a misplaced comma is not going to be the end of the world.


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Life On The Surface
TV show
If I ask myself the question, If BSE was a mini series what would it look like?  SE sites are somewhat a pyramid scheme, would we set it ancient Egypt, who would play Duarte?
IMHO one of the best tv series is HBO's Deadwood, initially written to be in ancient Rome, it found its way to the "Wild West" since HBO had recently screened "Rome".  It has marshals and sheriffs, deputies, gunslingers, whores, .. I'm leaning towards some steampunkish western setting.

The Creators
The Gods of our show, who without there would be no BSE.
In no particular order, a little chicken and egg

SE  The site is part of the Stack Exchange Universe, participants often share their time in Stackoverflow,  Seasoned Advice, Are there really Aliens?

The devs Those gods who work tirelessly to create Blender. Like all gods their choices are questioned, why Z up, why isn't cube 1 x 1 x 1, why not use degrees for angle

Gods from both often "walk among us". Keep in mind for any church or religious characters in the show.
Territories
The site is split into a number of territories.  As a noob to our first SE Universe we are given one sheckle and the opportunity to stake our claim with a new question in up to 5 territories or answer any unprotected question.
Sheckles
The monetary system here is very simple. As soon as you have 15 sheckles you can hand out sheckles (upvote) without limit. If a claim (question) is a mine, think of a sheckle like any of the dirt you dig out. The "better" the mine, the more gets thrown in. Even so, high sheckle mines are soon deep below the surface. Many believe the  SE gods have made perhaps one of the worst search engines ever to keep us on the surface.  The HNQ Circus tours the surface, for claims to
rain down sheckles upon.
Pioneers
The first Noobs to set foot on BSE and stake their claims. Like all pioneers most are now long gone.
The Noob Hordes
As the site "matures" the Noob Hordes become larger and larger. This is where a lot of the show plays out.  Due to a number of Noob rights violations the SE Gods drew up some protections [CoC]
Marshals
Voted in, for life, to control in particular the Noob Horde.
Sheriffs and their Deputies
If you have a gold badge in a  territory you can DupeHammer or by other means necessary try and keep the Noobs to the "rules".  For those that don't know me, I have a gold badge in the dual territory of Python-Scripting. Our rules are a bit different from those in Maudlin (aka Modelling) Territory.
Deputies help the Marshals and Sheriffs keep to the SE rules. Deputies often become Sheriffs.
The Good the Bad and the Ugly
Like the Chinese in ancient times, or more recently the US, do we  build a wall at the border of our territory. Can it resist the horde? Remember the Alamo?
Things you see and hear at the border.

Bleary eyed sleep deprived gunslingers
Addicts
Calls of "So, I wanna", "Show us your blend!" echoing
The same Shot down low quality Noob claim reincarnate
Sheckles flying every where when the HNQ Circus is in town.
An unwanted intruder, selling spam, de-sheckled faster than a rocket full of monkeys

The question.
Your take on what role you would play, the other  characters (by type please not by name) , possible scenarios... or maybe you would set the show completely differently.

This is possibly one of the most fun uses of our meta I have ever seen. Not really within the rules but I suppose there's no real harm. This actually made me laugh, this community can surprise me some times. I'll answer it later :D

Hopefully it is taken in the spirit intended. My dry/dark SOH was looking for a "fun" way to cool down some of the friction on the surface. Funny how all communities mimic RL to some extent. My speyes tell me @voter fraud has reared its ugly head again.

Not long ago the Monica wars took a heavy toll across all Stack Exchangia, affecting most areas of the universe. Many marshals died, some resigned due to post traumatic stress, others went into hyper-sleep for prolonged periods, awakening occasionally when the need is most dire.
This left us with the current generation of marshals, rookies in the eyes of the old veterans, inexperienced in many ways. They weren't here in the old days when the land of Blender Stack Exchange was created, they didn't help create the world or shape it into what it is today.
They try their best to keep the planet running and the rules respected non the less, with what little knowledge was passed down from the old ones, to shape the future into something better.
Many impending dangers loom in the distance threatening the land.
The threat of the donut wielders
Donut wielders pop up everywhere these days, threatening local wild life and way of life with their intrusive high calorie, high sugar, low value, diabetes inducing samey junk food.
Their numbers increase daily making them a foe to be reckoned with.
Help Vampires
They come at night and strike silently in the dark, stealing precious energy from our users with incessant questioning at the minor of inconveniences. They don't care for the common well being, and bring no value to the game, relying on others for answers giving little sheckles back. They get most of their nourishment from stray whores and sheckle-farmers trying to make a living from whatever they can scrap.
Allies
We do have some strong allies that defend the land at all costs.
BatFinger is the master of the old order of mages wielding the ancient power of coding. They are skilled in the art of scripting with the old language of the Serpent.
This not only grants them the prime access to contact the dev Gods by speaking the language of the divinity, it allows them to make quick work of hordes of noobs and even uber-noobs with bare coding skills.
With two fortresses in the lands of both Python and Scripting they control the borders and tirelessly defend the land using the power of Python scripting.
There are many other allies and vigilantes who on a daily basis tirelessly help manage the growing backlog of flag reports that reach the marshal stations.
We have gained and lost many other friends along the way, like Ray Mairlot the Gate Keeper. He was adamant in keeping the territory borders clear and well defined, tirelessly tagging questions, and keeping tabs on a highly organized and coherent system of tags for keeping noob trespassers in check.
Some marshals and users like to cross universes from time to time to Seasoned Advice realm, a land of vices, gluttony, excess, for an occasional respite from the demanding work of keeping the land of Susane the monkey safe.

Fortunately none of those dang varmint donutters come into python-scripting territory.  Have  been mostly safe from the anvil plague too.

I even forgot about the anvil haha, good one

I'm going to ask how to script a donut + icing using python just for @batFINGER

Clint Eastwood playing ‘Blondie’ in‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’
ot exactly radiating with warmth, sometimes rough to interact with, this epic character has a heart of gold, helping those in need even at the worst odds and the highest of stakes. Twelve shooters and a sniper on the roof? You say ‘impossible’, yet he single–handedly disposes of all of them, and when you think it couldn’t get any better, turns out he managed with just two six–shooters without the need to reload even once! Considering usually few (alive) men witness those great deeds and the hero gets rewarded with merely a sheckle or two, it makes his accumulated wealth even more impressive…

Sharon Stone playing ‘Ellen’ in‘The Quick and the Dead’
on’t make the mistake of underestimating her. Just because she has no reputation, doesn’t mean she has no experience. You might be surprised if you investigate the archives for her accounts outside ʙꜱᴇ; even if you find nothing there, she still might have extraordinary deeds outside of Stack Exchangia…

Sean Connery playing ‘Allan Quatermain’ in ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’
e achieved everything he could in the land of ʙꜱᴇ. Perhaps one day he will return, when the Exchangians need him the most. For now, we can enjoy his legacy, both what we see: great answers, policies and inspired community, as well as what cannot be seen: conflicts averted, villains banished, damage avoided…

Charlie Cox playing ‘Tristan Thorn’ in ‘Stardust’ (2007)
nlike the outsider, he indeed is a noob. But this one learns really fast. He came to ʙꜱᴇ to get help, but stayed to help others. It seems like yesterday, that he didn’t know a thing, and now he’s finding himself correcting the veterans. If his luck won’t fail him, he may age to become one of the above archetypes…

 …

Jamie Foxx playing the title character in ‘Django Unchained’
ot much can be said in general about such people. Everyone is different, and so that's what they share — they are different than everyone else. And yes, every human being is different, but not all so flamboyantly! People say there are no wrong questions, but if there is one, someone extravagant is asking it; you may discover that “there’s a method to his madness”, and if not, maybe at least get provoked to think outside the box…

‘Droid IG-11’ dubbed by Taika Waititi in ‘Mandalorian’
ireless, but not mindless; turns out with enough gears the mechanism becomes complex enough to develop consciousness. Unlike what you expect from a robot, it doesn’t blindly follow the rules: be it off–topic, two questions in one, a duplicate or poor research, it responds to the call for rescue. It doesn’t know arrogance and will not look down on simple problems as unworthy of its time. Its systematicity is a crucial foundation of the ʙꜱᴇ society…

Mel Brooks playing ‘Governor Le Petomane’ in ‘Blazing Saddles’
ow is it possible this incompetent idiot amassed so much wealth‽ Looking into the archives, you can count on fingers of one hand when he tried to help someone, always with embarrassing results. It looks like the secret of his success is he was never afraid to ask for help and was helped over and over again. Perhaps by asking his stupid questions he provoked so many great answers, that some credit was due…

John Wayne playing ‘Sheriff John T. Chance’ in ‘Rio Bravo’ (1959)
heriff’s badge is not just an insignia of power. It’s a symbol of respect of ʙꜱᴇ citizens. Despite what media might make you believe, sheriffs spend little time fighting villains, and a lot on rigorous task of keeping the society functional. Someone new in the community might even think his sheriff is able to do only that, but every now and then the guardian of law steps in to answer a distress and shows his true power…

Kenneth Branagh playing ‘Dr. Arliss Loveless’ in ‘The Wild Wild West’
ortunately, there aren’t really any villains in the ʙꜱᴇ. Yes, sometimes someone will have a bad day and act in a bad faith, however, people in conflict eventually cool down. Still, we all meet this character in our worst nightmares, the embodiment of human viciousness, Frankenstein’s monster of all possible malice: he downvotes good work because he hates the person behind it; tries to insult others, driven by arrogance; breaks the rules and peskilly keeps reverting the fix by a sheriff; blows off steam on poor newcomers, who come in his way. Who knows, maybe such people would be swarming the ʙꜱᴇ land if not for the hard work of sheriffs who usually nip the fire in the bud…

This has to be the most beautifully composed post of the whole Stack Exchangia, complete with drop caps and gothic fonts. Kudos for that! We could make an RPG out of this, I can almost pinpoint specific users behind every archetype.

Bravo. You truly have a way with words, sir, just as with noodles :))

Thanks for this. Totally OTT, love it. Apologies for not commenting earlier. IMO would have made the gunslinger droid a permanent fixture (side-kick) best actor in it.. except for maybe Olyphant. @DuarteFarrajotaRamos funny you mention that, it was a toss up between TV show and MMORPG  in some ways the latter fits better, same end game. .. ie keep going or quit.  That post I flagged as VLQ -> Marshal badge. Was surprised to see I'm only number 8.  Think the other 499 were not an answer.


text:
Comment on a suggested edit?
I had to reject an edit for an answer today, since it was erroneous. However I wanted to comment on the edit and explain why I rejected it, and found no designated place to do that.
The reason I chose from the existing options is that the edit does not improve the answer (which is the closest thing), but there was no place to add a free-text explanation, nor anywhere to add a comment.
Am I missing something?
I ended up commenting on my original answer in hope that the person who suggested the edit will see my explanation.
Is there a better way to do this?


text:
How can I upload any other file types like .py , .obj,
Importing Another file formats not .blend or img only
I know that I can import a .blend or an image file but,how can I
Import other formats like .py , .obj , .dae .....
How can i make it in blender stack exchange ?

As far as .py goes, that can just be copy-pasted as a code block. .obj and .dae can be imported in to a .blend and uploaded, but that won't always work for every question.

If you're thinking to upload another file format by itself, chances are your question probably isn't Blender exclusive, if not, it should be fine to embed it into one and outline the problem you're having with said file in Blender in a project context.


text:
Proposing the numpy tag
Have proposed the numpy tag.
Currently searching on numpy yields 423 results and numpy [python] 322 so there is some interest.  Not that all of these would be tagged, some IMO would benefit
Replace matrix @ vector list comprehensions with something more efficient
Has been my experience asking Blender related numpy  questions on  SO SO often generate little or no interest.
Asked this one
Indexing back to the one from the many
in relation to selecting verts using UVs selected
I knew what I wanted to achieve Blender wise,  coming up with the numpy jargon to ask a good question on SO not so much.  IMO Blender related numpy questions will help bridge that divide for all, and in the end help us produce faster code when dealing with large arrays (like a mesh)
To reiterate: Tagged questions would be about solving a blender specific question using numpy. The python bundled with Blender includes numpy. (It hasn't always)  On the con side I understand there are many other python modules shipped with Blender & why add just one as a tag.
Anyway will leave it at this. Interested to hear your thoughts.

Well I'm not a coder, I can't judge how useful it would be by myself, but I trust your judgement. There does seem to be a demand, and if it helps find those questions more easily, then I'm up for it.

I'm for it just because seeing the word numpy makes me laugh.

Does the [tag:mathematics] tag not already serve this purpose?  It seems to me the SE philosophy is that if the question is about numpy then it should belong on SO, if it is simply about something that may use numpy in Blender, the existing [tag:mathematics] tag should cover it, right?

Does   python + mathematics imply numpy ?   ( leaving out the  moot point re what maths questions -->  Maths SE :-/)   TBH I'm not 100% sold on the idea of the tag, was talking myself out of it while writing the question.   Arrived  here after writing a question pertaining to blender,  requiring  a numpy  solution.  Followed SE philosophy and asked on SO. My conclusion from that adventure:  it is better asked & more helpful here.ie , when I find myself, or see others  asking "How to do Bar in Blender using  Foo" often enough, perhaps a Foo tag is worth considering .

@batFINGER to your first question: no, not necessarily.  But I guess I am struggling to see a scenario where numpy specifically is necessary to be tagged and not mathematics in general.

I don't think, for the tag, the distinction would lie so much in the maths that numpy does, as in the idiom it uses to do it. Is it tricky to find the line between BSE 'Blender Numpy', and SO 'Numpy Numpy?'  BTW, my introduction for beginners has been through Rich Colburn's generous Numpy for Blender series of videos.. covers some of that idiom, but doesn't dig into the kind of optimisation question that you've been posing recently.

Thankyou & agree it's tricky (and sticky) attempting  to find the demarcation.  Will check them out.   Recall the name from my BA days.

@batFINGER I think you're probably ahead of them.. but a really nice intro for folks like me.

FWIW I'm in favor. Dealing with Python (notably slow but accessible language) and a software with many lists that can contain many vectorized elements, having easier access to questions / answers about a well maintained and optimized library will definitely help aspiring coders in the long run.

I'm not a coder, and can't too well judge the usefulness but I don't really see a reason not to have it. The SE description of a tag is... A tag is a keyword or label that categorizes your question with other, similar questions. Using the right tags makes it easier for others to find and answer your question. anyway.. So it would make sense to have the tag if it is going to help other users find the right questions and answers.

I think this is a great idea, and don't see any downsides.
To I could really use MathJax for a series of qestions - how to build support for it? the only down side was load time for posts, but this is just a tag.
Numpy is incredibly powerful and can solve a lot of calculation conundrums and provide capabilities that may be useful in surprising ways, but it takes getting used to. Having a numpy tag allows readers to quickly find many examples of numpy-based solutions and read through them, and this makes it a lot easer to modify them and explore new uses.
Yes please!


text:
What is the best practice for allowing someone time to give an answer?
I suppose this is a straight forward enough question, but I see this happen from time to time. Someone will ask a question, and then in the comments, a user will give a suggestion, or ask "have you tried 'XYZ?". Then not much longer after, an answer is posted and voted up and accepted with this suggestion or query for information starting with something like "as mentioned by..." or something similar by yet another user.
So my question is, do we have a generally accepted best practice for giving someone time to give a good answer if they have posted a viable solution in the comments to a problem, or do we not? I would expect that most people with the intent of answering questions have  read the comments as well as the question in detail, so would likely have seen if someone had just given the same idea, and in my mind should be given a chance to answer and earn the reputation deserved for a good answer.

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/436/599.

The person chooses an comment submission or answer submission. You stated [should be given a chance to answer].  What do you meant by that?  Is that an amount of time?

Once or twice I have mentioned the comment author by name who may have enhanced or inspired an answer in any temporal order.  A useful comment may come after an initial answer is submitted.   The comment does not always come before.  On one hand many comments are useful.  On the other hand comments may not be a direct answer to the question. If someone takes time and energy and 5 comments and creates a better summation as an [answer] than the comments then I say [Bravo].  Having excessively clear questions or answers is not a problem at BSE.  Attribution is easy to achieve if necessary.

Remember that answers can be downvoted, while comments cannot. This makes answers a riskier type of post if you don't have time to explain the answer well. I have encountered many questions that I wanted to answer in detail but due to time constraints I left a comment instead. If another user uses the info from the comment to post an answer that's perfectly fine. But if we post a comment with the intention of answering later, we should state that intention, like "I'll post an answer soon, but for now..." and in that case I think others should give the commenter time to answer.

I think it's important that all users at stackexchange have the mentally that it's not all about earning points. It's all about helping your fellow human beings on the topic. So usually I have no problem with people using my comment as answers ... as long as it's a clear answer to the initial question. I hope we can all have that mentally so that we are all focus on the questions and not all about points.

I asked a similar question a long time ago: What to do with questions which have been answered in comments?.
From the accepted answer:

I would try to notify the user first to give them the opportunity to answer the post and get the reputation. If they don't respond in a few days then answer it.

Note that this was written way back while we were in beta and only got a few questions a day. Since then the site has picked up a lot more traffic and generally runs at a faster pace. So maybe instead of waiting a few days, it's fair to wait a few hours instead.
That said, I wouldn't expect other users to always follow this sort of etiquette. It's a nice gesture (I always try to do this), but be prepared to graciously forgive others for "stealing" your comment answers.
If that happens, consider writing up an answer anyway, even if their answer uses all the same techniques which you planned to answer with. A new explanation of the same thing can sometimes make all the difference. In other words, the more answers the merrier.

I totally agree. It's a bit frustrating as an asker to see someone make a comment that COULD be a really great answer if they'd take the time to write it up and add the detail I need to fully understand their answer. As an asker and and answerer I'll often say something like "That'd make a great answer! Write that up!" Other times, if it's clear that they've had a chance to make an answer my thinking is "getting your answer stolen is the cost of not using the site properly."

When someone posts an answer saying the same thing as someone else's comment I usually like to leave a comment referring them to that meta post.

I think this makes perfect sense, I had missed the post linked despite searching for something to clarify. Nonetheless, it is understandable that not everyone will follow the same etiquette across the site.

I personally feel as if someone does post someones comment as an answer, they should not get angry or upset, as it's not a game, it's a Q&A site.