text:
What case should letters inside <kbd> tags be?
What case should letters inside <kbd> tags be?
e.g.

⎈ ctrlr
⎈ CtrlR
⎈ CTRLR

Any there any advantages or disadvantages to different styles? Should we try to maintain a consistent style across the site, in keeping with the wiki nature of SE?

I am not sure how important this is in the grand scheme of things (actually I think it really isn't) but I am a detail-oriented freak :).  So I think if everybody read this and followed it would be great!

A trivial problem at most, I don't see many people using all caps and having the first letter capitalized is optional, either way, it's optional at most. I can also say that most of the time, these are in the second form that you showed.

@iKlsR Most of the time.. But more than once I have found myself editing posts with lower case single key shortcuts, and I decided to write a meta to make sure I was doing the right thing by capitalizing them.

I capitalize the one letter keys, and F1 through F12. I specify the NumPad as such:

Press NumPad 1 to switch to front view.

The modifiers, I capitalize just the first letter such as Tab Ctrl Alt Shift. However I find that a lowercase space looks better.

This how I personally do it, and it seems to be consistent with other sources as well.

I vote for ⎈ CtrlR. This is the way it appears on the keyboard (at least on my keyboard), and as the formatting seems to be designed to represent a physical key, it might as well have the same case as a key.
I don't see any reason to use lower case instead of upper case. The only case I can think of is to differentiate between shortcuts using ⇧ Shift and those not using ⇧ Shift. However, I think just using <kbd>⇧ Shift</kbd> is a lot clearer, see the following example:

Using case to indicate the usage of ⇧ Shift:

Press g, then G

Using ⇧ Shift to indicate the usage of ⇧ Shift:

Press G, then ⇧ ShiftG

As far as maintaining this consistently across site, I think it would be nice if posts were styled consistently, but I'm not sure how realistic of a goal that is.

On many windows keyboards it is actually not displayed that way. The windows key defaults to the windows start menu, and the Control key just has Ctrl on it.

@NoviceInDisguiseGraphics I'm not sure what you mean by "windows keyboard", but granted, this probably does vary widely between different keyboards. For instance, my keyboard does have a ⎈ on the Ctrl key. And as the other modifier keys commonly seem to have their own "icon", I figured it would be consistent to include it with Ctrl too. I'm not sure I see the relevance of your second point though. Who said anything about the windows/OS logo key?

Sorry about that, the graphic on the Ctrl key is a simplified windows symbol.

@NoviceInDisguiseGraphics Hm.. Not for me, that might be another problem. It should be this, which is done in the above post with the Unicode character ⎈.

Very interesting! I looked up control key on the web ( https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&authuser=0&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1920&bih=941&q=ctrl+key&oq=Ctrl+&gs_l=img.3.1.0l10.1845.5049.0.6988.5.5.0.0.0.0.122.576.0j5.5.0....0...1ac.1.58.img..0.5.575.fSGWiqLj-TA#imgdii=_ ), I can not find one with the graphic. Is your keyboard moderately new? EDIT: Just found one ( http://xahlee.info/kbd/i2/Microsoft_keyboard_control_windows_alt_keys.jpg ). Since it seems to be so obscure, do you think it is necessary?

I agree 100% with the layout you suggested for the Shift key, BTW.

@NoviceInDisguiseGraphics Huh, that's interesting indeed! It's not really very new, no.  Just your average somewhat-old-but-not-really-ancient microsoft keyboard. Here's a picture of a similar one (doesn't look like mine, but the Ctrl key is the same)

I am having a very hard time finding examples using the graphic. It seems to have been discontinued. Let me do some research . . .

It almost looks like the symbol is a replacement for the plain-text version: "Also, there is a standardized keyboard symbol (to be used when Latin lettering is not preferred) . . ." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_key  Notice that all of their abbreviations are Ctrl + _

To create an appearance of consistency, someone could add a little css rule for <kbd>.
kbd {
    text-transform: capitalize;
}

With text-transform: capitalize, regardless of the actual capitalization, the first letter of each word would always display capitalized. Therefore either ctrlr or CtrlR would always appear as CtrlR. Unfortunately capitalize would not produce complete uniformity since only the first letter of each word is transformed. Completely capitalize words, such as CTRLR would remain entirely capitalize.


text:
Image Description Tooltips
Could the image description text be made into a tooltip?
Currently the description you put before specifying the image url (![description][image_url]) only appears while the image is loading.
It would be nice if that text also appeared as a tooltip when hovering over the image, this would give more incentive to fill in those descriptions too.

This has actually already been asked on math.SE:

Just add hover text in parentheses:
[1]: https://i.sstatic.net/..... (hover text)

or in quotation marks:
[1]: https://i.sstatic.net/..... "hover text"

There's a good reason to have alt-text and hover-text as separate
  attributes: one is intended for users who don't see the image, the
  other for those who do.

So
![][1]

[1]: http://download.blender.org/institute/BlenderSocketLogo.png (That's a nice picture..)

or
![][1]

[1]: http://download.blender.org/institute/BlenderSocketLogo.png "That's a nice picture.."

gives:
http://download.blender.org/institute/BlenderSocketLogo.png

This works nicely, but I'm still wondering if perhaps having the tooltip default to the alternate text (unless of course if the description text is entirely white space, null, or equal to enter image description here) is something worth doing anyway.
Most of the time when you do fill out the image description it's something that would make at least some sense as both a tooltip and alternate text.
If you still want them to be separate, you could specify a separate tooltip with the method mentioned above, which would override the image description tooltip. (yet keep the image description as the alternate text)
If you really don't want the tooltip for some reason you could override it by adding a tooltip consisting of whitespace (these don't get rendered it seems)
It might be nice to have tooltips more accessible, since in most cases (definitely not all) the alternate text only appears for a tiny amount of time then is invisible, replaced by the image. This gives very little incentive to fill out those descriptions because hardly anyone will even read them.
If the descriptions were made into tooltips by default (with the options above, to disable to separate them) then more users would fill it in with a quick description of what the image is which would be displayed as alternate text and a tooltip without any further fuss. (for filling with more detailed information, one should probably limit that to the tooltip only and put a short description of the image as alternate text)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Could hidden text be made to allow code formatting?
Could hidden parts of posts be made to support code highlighting/indentation and quote formatting?
Currently when you hide some text with >! code indents and quotes are not recognized:
E.g.
>! > supposed to be some quote

results in:

 > supposed to be some quote

And
>!    if {2-3} `=` -1:
>!        cd /random/dir

results in:

    if {2-3} = -1:
        cd /random/dir

I can't think of much of a use for quotes, but code formatting could provide an option for users to try and figure out stuff on their own, and only read example code if they get stuck.

Spoiler markup strips out alignment so I doubt this is possible without some hacking.. <br /> and   etc. It works to an extent but the code appears dark. This also seems to be a bit trivial IMO. Isn't the point of asking for code to view it?

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


text:
Which Stack Exchange metrics are relevant to Blender.SE?
I suppose the answer to my question has to be "all of them" since we are a Stack Exchange site.. but I'm still going to ask..
I suspect that not all of the metrics are intuitive. For example, if the "perfect" answer to a question already exists, should people be posting an "almost-perfect" answer simply to boost our answer ratio?
I guess my concern is that how we're assessed doesn't necessarily line up with how we ought to behave. Are there easy things we should be doing which would make the site "healthier?"
Also, I have no sense right now of how healthy is Blender.SE right, from the perspective of the people who decide whether we graduate from Beta, or get shut down. Is there somewhere we can look to get that information?

Also, the answer ratio is not very good, mainly because some questions are virtually unanswerable.

It makes me wonder if we should be tossing up answers, even if they can only 1/2 hit the question, for the sake of Stack Exchange's quality metrics.

I don't know if this is an answer or a continuation of your question..

if the "perfect" answer to a question already exists, should people be posting an "almost-perfect" answer simply to boost our answer ratio?

Not if quality is of prime importance. If the question is well defined then the answer is often self-evident, and may comprise of 1 most applicable solution or several alternatives. When the alternatives are short and trivial, people tend to cluster them in their main answer. If there are other less trivial solutions that are equally valid, can we police one person into not giving all solutions in one answer - probably not.
Looking at the unanswered questions, many of them have answers in the comments and that increases the probability that they'll not take the extra step and give a proper up-votable Answer. Why? I don't know..
The comments are meant to extract information in a vague situation, not give a prelude to the answer or suffice as answer. A solution is to avoid comment-answers entirely and maybe even penalize them (but the idea of policing that seems a bit un-natural).

I do mostly answer in comments but I do follow with a full answer I just try to make sure that I'm really solving the problem , the comment answer will give the asker the idea to solve his problem ( if he is experienced enough ) it also gives me some time to write a good answer that could be useful for others as well

in the exchange of information I think comment-answers are OK, it just doesn't help the stats. We almost have 10k questions and that's the kind of datapool that starts to give insight statistically.

@Chebhou I have done some reading allover SE about answering in the comments. It is not the best way to go about answering a question. It is highly discouraged, and further more there is nothing stopping anybody from posting your "answer" as an actual answer.

@David Exactly, that has happened to me before


text:
Is Blender.SE an appropriate place to ask for code review?
Is is OK to post scripts or snippets on Blender.SE for code review?
I'm trying to get up to speed on writing code (mostly Python, but perhaps also some C) which I could release to the Blender community.
I'd like to find out if I've got any habits that need breaking before I get too used to the whole environment.

Python is still on-topic on [CodeReview.SE], of course. :)

I will leave it to the concensus of the community to decide the final decision, but IMHO code review could end up leading to extensive discussion, which is not a good fit for this site.
However, code related questions (for example, if a particular section of your python code is not working as expected) are within the scope, so long as they are concise and able to generate a single, good answer.
For more extensive code problems, I would suggest IRC or Blenderartists.

I was thinking about posting code that works but which may or may not follow best/good practice.

Expanding on what RolandiXor said — You can also swing by the site chatrooms, some people who dabble hang there.
I agree with his answer as code review is too wide a subject and can often be seen as non-constructive as more than likely your questions will be extremely localized if not completely out of scope and that defeats the purpose of the site as one of our main goals is to create a compilation of reusable and general answers… answers that can benefit others.
All that being said, you can get away with this at times depending on how you phrase your question, optimizing code, best practices and runtime errors etc. are on-topic but general "what do you think of this snippet" or "how can I rewrite this to be more pythonic" are not ideal questions.

I actually find critiques of specific examples useful - programmers are typically pretty good at abstracting away from specifics ;) I understand the SE philosophy though.. thanks.

I doubt you'll want entire scripts scrutinized, people tend to be more vicious on smaller portions of code. What's the saying? :

Ask a programmer to review 10 lines of code, he'll find 10 issues. Ask
  him to do 500 lines and he'll say it looks good.

Why get someone else to profile your code? Find your bottle neck (in itself a learning experience) and then ask people if there are better ways to do it, I think blenderSE would be a fine format / place to approach it that way.

No, code review is off topic. Just as "Does my model look good?" is off topic.
The person asking the question needs to take the code they write and formulate a valid question which is more specific.
This will probably mean they have to break up their script into a smaller example, and identify enough of the problem so they can ask a useful question.
Further, we have the patch tracker where we review code for inclusion in blender, bf-python mailing list - for devs to ask general questions about their scripts.


text:
sometimes I see/comment/answer newest questions which then disappear from the list
I don't know if this really "happens", or there is something I don't know about the questions workflow, but I just answered to a question, and another answer came too (none accepted), but then in the "unanswered => newest" list it disappears...

and it's not "closed" or "deleted": through my profile page I can still visit the question... and I just reloaded both pages... still the same.
is it some form of caching?

This is because the question disappeared from the Unanswered list.
The question is very much still visible. (Right now it is still on the first Newest Questions page.)
Only questions with 0 up voted answers, and do not have an accepted answer appear on the unanswered list.
You answered it, and you answer has one up vote. That alone makes the question answered, but it has two up voted answered.
So the question is  definitely answered, and that is why it no longer shows up on the unanswered list.

oh yes, I thought only about accepted answers counted... thanks, I was puzzled...


text:
Are questions by new users rising, lately?
Is it me, or there are many more "first time user" questions lately?
If yes, would this mean there's a growing Blender interest by "newcomers"? But who they are really? 3D newbies, Blender newbies or BSE newbies?
This made me think: are there public statistics about such (and maybe other) trends/usage here on BSE? I wonder also if during user registration a few questions could be added to know what related tech user already knows about, and how much (maybe how many years), about  Blender or other 2D or 3D packages, just to get an idea but also to know better how to answer, without asking each time...
Also, it could be interesting to know trends/usage related to posting, answering, accepting, and all other BSE workflow actions and states...
Maybe I'm just curious today, but I wonder if knowing better users, could help to answer question better, in the end...

Here's a nice compilation of statistics. If you are proficient with SQL queries, then you might be interested in the stackexchange data explorer


text:
Where to answer specific question about already described problem?
There is quite well-known problem about applying transforms which also has answers about different use cases (rigid bodies, UV unwrapping).
Recently there was added question about unexpected working of symmetry in Sculpt mode which in the end appeared to be yet another consequence of the pretty much the same problem - unapplied transforms.
My question is about how to handle questions like this one. From one side, applying transforms question is canonical and addresses multiple aspects of the problem. From another side, I think that it's too general while unexpected symmetry question is much more localized.
What should be done in these situations?

answering the question?
just flagging as duplicate?
flagging as duplicate and adding another answer to the canonical question?

So generally my question is about handling localized questions regarding more general ones.

I guess this is somewhat related https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/549/duplicate-answer-vs-duplicate-question

I'd say answer it where it is (and link to the more general question).
Two questions can have the same answer but still be different questions. One of these questions is about a sculpting issue, the other is about transforms. Going with the policy of "flag/tag the question, not the answer", I think that these particular two questions are not duplicates.
I'd also say "to keep sculpting transforms straight" is a perfectly good answer to the latter question.

Ok, that makes sense. Looks like I should ask here on meta about each situation like that as they often tend to be unique and I can't decide.


text:
where to put this math repo reference link?
I asked this in chat a few days ago, but had no takers: I came across this amazing math formula repository done by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I think it could be useful for math + blender phreaks ( like me :))

where should I post it - on meta or on main, e.g ask my own question then answer it?

dlmf.nist.gov
I know exterior links are frowned on because the go stale and die, but this one is an entire subdomain that's been around a bit, so it'll like stay good.  (It didn't seem to fit well under the rubric of Python, although, obviously, you'd code the formulas in python.)

There is no reason to ask a new question (I can't think of how you could ask it and keep it on topic). Posting on meta is not the proper place either.
Because it is just a link (unrelated to blender) there is no place where it can stand alone.
The best place on BSE is our Resource for blender list. You may want to add a new answer, because all the existing categories there don't really fit for a math link.

Thx - David ... isn't this resource thing a systemic issue for all SE sites? I mean, it's not easy to find such. Here, for instance, I searched for as many of them as I could find, and added to one, but had no way to know that the page in your answer is blender.se's defacto main resource page.  Does the SE template have a spot for this, e.g. in the bottom menu, or perhaps at the top left corner (like the short links in chat)?


text:
Excerpt of tag `operator` - incorrect definition?
The following definition sounds incorrect to me:

An operator is a processing unit that is invoked/executed on scene
  data by the window manager.

Are operations only run on scene data? All of the 3D View and interface operators  change properties of Screen data, not Scene for instance. Even blend(lib) data wouldn't be quite right, as you can write operators that only report something and not change anything.

A user action starts by device input of the user and the window manager dispatches these and events and starts operations - so by the window manager is correct. However, this is very technical and rather an implementation detail than a useful information for the end-user.

You can always suggest an edit http://blender.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/74.

True, but I'm not sure how to describe it right... Maybe borrow some lines from http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/Architecture/Operators ?

You're an active dev, up to you. ;)


text:
How much code can I post in a question/answer?
I am wondering how much code is appropriate to post into a question/answer. By how much I mean how many lines. Is there a limit? Should I just post what I consider long code in pastebin/co and than just have a link?

Related: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/55986/238438 and http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/25624/238438

related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1008/how-to-ask-scripting-questions-efficiently?rq=1

If an answer comes up with a full module in one file I think up to 200 lines of code should be OK (not as a hard limit).
If the code is distributed to more than two files or exceeds a few hundred lines I would suggest to upload it to a service like:

github gists
pasteall
bpaste

In a question it should be enough to point out the parts that cause trouble or about the correct usage of the API (roughly max 50 LoC), a supplementary .blend file (or addon .zip) could be added.

@iKlsR Thanks for the edit, since we have this expiring problem with .blend files I didn't suggest pasteall and really hoped that code could be placed on a more persistent location. Do you think that the process of registering would be to much an additional obstacle?

Shouldn't be a problem and Pasteall snippets are persistent I think.


text:
Where to upload .blend files - non-expiring links
People can upload their blend files to various site such as pasteall, google drive, and dropbox. The problem with these file hosts is that:

pasteall: links expire after 5 months
dropbox/drive: upload can delete the file

All of these file suffer from the fact that the file could quite easily be gone. This would be bad because some answer include demo scenes that are helpful and add value to the answer/question. Should we use other filehosts such as sendspace which also host illegal content but do not expire and also have to be uploaded by someone with a premium account?

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/297/can-we-have-a-service-for-uploading-blendfiles?rq=1 and http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/166/policy-for-linking-to-blend-files?rq=1

I spoke to members of our community team several times regarding this. Once we are out of beta this will more than likely be added as a normal upload service similar to that for images with permanently available files.

@iKlsR thats great to hear. I hope we can migrate them once we are out of beta.

We now have

an unofficial solution... built to solve exactly this problem!

Built just for this site
Stores files on google drive
Files don't get deleted
Open source

see more

I think the only real solution to this is to have our own hosting service. See this post for more info.


text:
question closed unfairly
The question is this and the reason for closing is

I’m voting to close this question because it is not about Blender

, but it is a question about blender data, blender is explicitly referenced:

The problem with many sites is, that they don't support blender models
directly

So blender data is off-limits? I was looking for a site supporting blender data.

The closing of the question was correct for multiple reasons.

The goal of your original post with its current wording was a bit unclear. Are you trying to find an existing service that provides this functionality, are you asking how to build this yourself or did you want someone else build this for you?
1.1. If you are trying to find an existing service, as your post seems to indicate, then this is not a question about Blender and thus off-topic.
1.2. If you want to build this yourself, the question could be on-topic with several modifications. For instance you could ask how to generate, access and extract thumbnails from .blend files or how to script the automatic rendering of a .blend file to create a final image.
1.3. If you want someone else to build a web-service for you, this would be off-topic. Building web-applications is not the topic of this Stack Exchange website. Additionally, questions on Stack Exchange need to have a limited scope that can be clearly answered and are potentially useful for other people. Stack Exchange is a Q&A website, we do not provide a service to develop complete applications for free.

My personal opinion is, that a blender user grows together with his gallery. No gallery, no skill advancement. My goal was 1.1 and highly relevant for a beginner like me. I can't fathom there's no place for a question like this on the blender stackexchange site.

@user1095108 Blender files need to be rendered to create the final high resolution image that can be presented. This means that .blend files are not like your average image format. Most (digital) artists, regardless of the particular medium or software they use for their art, would create a portfolio of their work either on their own website or on an image hosting website targeted at artists. For instance artstation.com is fairly popular. If you want to share your project files with other people there are a large number of data sharing services and you could put a link in the description.

Blender files can store thumbnails, but those would only be suitable as a preview, not as a final presentation of the work. You may also want to create several renders of multiple scenes within the project which a single thumbnail obviously cannot capture. Additionally, the artists may want to take the render and perform color grading or other editing tasks in other application before the final image is done. Thus your proposed approach would not be suitable as a portfolio presentation.

To summarize: You're essentially looking for an image hosting website that has the feature to create private galleries. Since none of this is specific to Blender or uses Blender, it is off-topic.

Rendering .blend files online is easier than you think three.js supports loading blender models. Sure, the quality isn't great, but it works, kind of.

@user1095108 You're heavily moving the goal post now. That would be an interactive visualization of the 3D model in the browser, like Sketchfab does. The reason this would also be off-topic, is that you can export many different formats from Blender for which there may or may not exists such a service. We generally do not provide recommendations for commercial products or services just because Blender happens to support the data format used by that service.

Who says the service needed to be commercial? Anyway, some kind of a gallery is a must for every beginner, I believe. Not to show off, you don't have anything to show off at the start. But to track your progress for yourself and I think this topic is not dealt with sufficiently anywhere or I wouldn't have asked my question.

@user1095108 If you want to discuss how artists can manage a gallery or portfolio for themselves and what kind of software solutions exists for this purpose (pro & cons), you may want to ask about this on https://blenderartists.org/. Stack Exchange is a Q&A website and not well suited for open ended discussions as it is not a forum.

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


text:
question closed unfairly again
After a year off-site, my question promptly got closed again. I assume you have read it. Now to my defense. Blender has an internal mesh representation, my app has an internal mesh representation and they are not the same. Some kind of conversion (import/export) needs to take place. Hence my question is a bona fide, import/export question of which there are a ton on this site. The reason that my question is not about blender use is wrong, I need export blender meshes, not just any meshes.

The problem is that the question you ask, as written is about a comparison between bmesh and a hypothetical "better" mesh representation.  That's not an import/export question as written. It's probably possible to write a question where the answer is about issues that might arise from exporting bmeshes, but this is not that question.

Bubble sort is worse than quick sort. We are talking about algorithms (mesh ops), operating on a mesh representation. Performance of an algorithm can always be quantified, there can be no ambiguity.

It doesn't matter whether your question could be answered factually, and you're talking about suitability of data structures, not algorithm metrics, which isn't so easy to quantify.  The point here is that your question as written isn't about Blender.  It's about comparing two data structures, one of which isn't from Blender.

I don't think your question can be answer here for a variety of reasons.

So, my question is: is there a "better" mesh representation than the one blender is using

I'm sure there are hundreds, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. This is neither an objective question nor a question about using Blender itself, which is what this site tends to focus on.

The problem I am having is as follows: I would not like to mimic what blender is doing in their code in my own program

Virtually everything you do differently from Blender is by technically "not copying" it, or at the very least improving over it. This sounds like a very broad and open ended discussion, more suited for some coding or programming oriented site.
Even there "How can I do things differently" doesn't seem like a valid question that can be answered with facts.
Now source code questions have been considered on topic here, if it was focusing on some technical aspects or specific details of the implementation, but your post doesn't seem to be focusing on any data structures or how to convert them to some undisclosed format you intend to use.
A potentially acceptable question would say something along the lines of

Bmesh uses data structure X that I need to convert to import into my app that uses Y. How can I do this?

And proceed to show some code examples. This might have a chance at some coding site, again not something we would generally deal with here.

Magnificient hand waving here, where are these hundreds of mesh representations documented? I'd like to see. Can't anyone disprove my claim that there are just a hanful of mesh representatons.

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


text:
Question still didn't receive a good answer after bounty?
This is pretty simple to understand: it is when someone would have a question, place a bounty, and not receive a working/good answer. This has happened to me a couple of times, and I want to get an answer. I can't create a duplicate, I can't place a second bounty, what would I do? Would I delete it and duplicate it? I am confused. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

that is a sure sign that your question is: 1 not clear, 2 a hard or unusual problem, or 3 very localized

You can't assume that just because you put a bounty on something, that you'll get a good answer. When I look through the bounty section, I never see something that I could answer. Like @David if your answer isn't easy to understand, or is something that not many users know about, putting a bounty on something won't help. Everyone here is happy to help, but we need something to work with.

A bounty isn't a good answer generator.
All a bounty does, is bring more attention to the question, and give a bit of incentive for it to be answered.
For a question to be answered, it needs to be easy to understand, and it needs to have enough people who understand that part of Blender.
A bounty will do absolutely nothing if the question it's self isn't good.

Well I got comments of people saying they see the issue but dont know how to solve it.

@blackhole That suggests that it's a part of Blender that people don't know very well.

Unfortunately merely placing a bounty on questions doesn't guarantee or entitle us to get an answer. It's there to entice people to spend a little time figuring out if they can solve it for you, or make it worth their time. You might imagine that some questions are not necessarily easy to answer, even if the question is clear.
Anyone who knows how to answer, and has read your questions, will have tried to answer, most of us probably read the question and know that we can not answer due to lack of expertise in the Game Engine.
Simply deleting your Question and adding the question back as a new question won't be any better. Sometimes very short questions require literally paragraphs of text to put across a meaningful solution. Conversely, very long questions are a pain to read and a sign the question hasn't gone through a lot of self-editing. If that's the case we've asked you to re-word your question or clarify things, or break the question into smaller separate issues because stack-exchange isn't about answering 5 questions at a time.
If the question is clear, remember that we all volunteer our time, someone might eventually stumble into the question and be able to give a satisfying answer. Or up your bounty, 50 is very little.

I was planning to use more bounty points, but I recently opened 3 bounties and only got 1 solved (no rep left).


text:
Add prompt to mark as answer
I was just on movies.stackexchange.com and I discovered they have an automated prompt that comes up if you, as the person who wrote the question, upvote an answer:

I think this is a must-have for Blender's site, because when someone comes to the site, questions with clearly identified answers are more valuable to answer-seekers.

I'm not certain, but I think this is on every SE site, however only shown to low-rep users.

This feature reminder is already active across the network. It is a bit of just-in-time learning geared towards newer users. Once you have (I believe) 1000 rep, the prompt is no longer displayed.


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Perhaps using 'code' format for displaying UpperCase I as a keyboard key should be standard protocol?
I recently noticed that when showing the uppercase 'I' in keyboard format, unless the letter is enclosed in `` to display it in 'code' format, the result may be easily confused with the lowercase L or a vertical line:
I vs I
Just in case anyone, like me, is new to this, the ` key is not the apostrophe, but the "Grave Accent" found here:

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/250/599


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any way to view a deleted answer?
I made a question yesterday, and someone did answer something,
I remember i asked for more information in the comments, but today I checked again and the user deleted the answer.
Wich makes me feel like i'm crazy or something, but no, i'm sure he (or she) actually did answer my question.
There should be something like a record for the questions you ask. Something like a history, or a log where you can check if this kind of things actually happened.
of course, it should be visible only for the author of the question, not for everyone.
I think in most of cases it would turn out to be useful
I don't know if this feature already exists, but i couldn't find it.
Thanks for your help, despite this may be more of a suggestion for the site

I think only mods with a link can see deleted things

Users with over 2000 rep can also see deleted answers (here is a screenshot of the answer in question, I hope the OP doesn't mind..) Note that there is a history of both the question and answer(s), however deleting is not included in this (unless the post is later undeleted).

I didn't know about that, thank you!. AND thank you for the screenshot, it was actually a very useful answer and it is the approach i'm using right now!

Users with over 2000 rep can also see deleted posts.
Here is a screenshot of the answer in question, I hope the OP who deleted it doesn't mind..

Note that there is a history of both the question and answer(s), however deleting is not included in this (unless the post is later undeleted).
To view the history of a post, click the date/time below it.


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Why do you need less rep to review an edit then to bypass the review for your edit?
Here is an example: Why do you need 4000 rep to bypass the review for a tag wiki edit, but only 1500 rep to review other edits?


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Winter Bash 2016!
Its official, the winter bash starts on December 19, 2016 and runs up till January 8, 2017.
I for one am super excited (again).
However my question to all of you is, do you want BSE to not have hats?
To quote the email from SE:

If you want in, you don't need to do anything; that's the default this year, due to overwhelming positive response in previous years. If you want to opt out, have someone on your team reply to this e-mail to say so by Tuesday, 13 December 2016.

What is winter bash?

What is winter bash, you ask? Well you are in for some fun times. SE does this thing (winter bash) every year, where you get "hats' for doing normal actions across the site. (example: edit your profile, or UV a old question)

All right, cool. Thnx!

YEPPPPPEEEEEYYYYY!!!!

David "Super" excited really??? best to join in I suppose or Gen. Prescott might shoot me.

@batFINGER sure. Last year I created a chat room just for the winter bash. I was tied for first place in the great race to collect the most hats. I got 2 Archimedes hats. I had 39 of the 41 hats. I have been looking forward to this years since last years ended, so yes I think it is safe to say that I am super excited. (Is it possible to be too excited for the winter bash?)

@David and here I thought I was special for getting just one Archimedes hat..... :(

I thought I was specially for having a life

@DuaneDibbley Here you go. :)

Dear santa StackExchange, please add a Mario hat this year. PLEEEEEASE!

wtf  VLC player has joined the bash and is wearing a santa hat???

Why on earth would anyone not want hats?
Everyone loves hats - they promote lots more activity on the site during a time when there would usually be less.
There is no need to ruin the fun for everyone just because of a few weird outliers - that is what the "I hate hats" button is for. This button is put in place for these poor, misguided souls to click on to ruin the fun only for themselves, instead of for everyone.
Did I mention I like hats?

I, have no hats, but, upon hearing about this wonderfull "winter bash," I decided that I too would like to be an esteemed hat collector.
The only real question: Are helmets hats? Or are they not hats?

Throughout history, men have worn hats as a way of showing how much better they are than other men. “I buy hats,” a behatted man seems to say. “I am better than you.”
  In wartime, hats were a useful way of conferring rank, and ensuring that casualties were confined to the lower classes (hence the famous command of “Don't fire till you see the tops of their heads” at the Battle of Bunker Hill by William Prescott, a general renowned for only shooting enemy combatants who were poor). During peacetime, hats have been instrumental for men to let the non-hatted know just who is wearing the hat around here.


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Any way to see all moderator nominations?
The current 2015 Moderator Election page just shows 4 candidates ran for moderator; however, I know there were seven nominations. Is there any way to see withdrawn nominations?

Although this does not seem to be available on the election site, it can be found with the Data Explorer. Since a PostTypeId of 6 means ModeratorNomination, the users that entered nominations for moderator election can be found with this query.
SELECT OwnerUserId AS [User Link],
       CONCAT('https://blender.stackexchange.com/posts/', Id, '/revisions') AS 'Post Link'
FROM Posts
WHERE PostTypeId=6 --PostTypeId of 6 is ModeratorNomination
  AND YEAR(CreationDate) = 2015

Thus, the following users made nominations:

X-27
zeffii
David
iKlsR
gandalf3
VRM
ideasman42

(The links for X-27, zeffii, and ideasman42 are to post revisions because there does not appear to be a way to link directly to withdrawn nominations. There were also Comments on 2015 Moderator Election Nominations.)

Awwww, that was a fun nomination XD


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What is our standard for spelling?
I have edited many questions and answers to change spelling. Do we have a standard about how words are to be spelled, that are differently in different parts of the world?
Example: Color and Colour (and many more I can't think of now.)
I ask because if we allow multiple spellings of a word, then there will be some answers lost in a search.

This is completely optional, even for tags, whichever comes first, we usually just go with that. However, I find that more people opt for the American spelling, color over the British colour and modeling over modelling etc. If we were to try and uphold a standard, I'd say the former (which is what I see around here anyway based on our demographic).
Also, see Micro Editing, does everything need to be perfect?, these are rather trivial and you shouldn't edit a post just for the difference in spelling.

I would not edit a post just to change colour, but when already editing a post I should change colour to be color. Is that right?

@David Rather trivial IMO but should be fine. Again, see the post I linked to, everything doesn't need to be perfect, just understandable.

the blender code standard is to use American spelling.


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placing .gifs in text
I have read how to post gifs on this site, but I can't get that to work for me. I tried using Gfycat and everytime I try and upload the images I get an error saying This isn't an animated gif, so I am wondering. How do you all out there record and save them? As I recorded it, used Premiere Pro to convert to Gif and tried that.

I use licecap running in wine.

@gandalf3 what is wine?

It's an environment for running windows programs on linux.

On gfycat, click the paperclip icon and you should see 4 textareas, the second one has the actual .gif and not the special webm or mp4 format they display by default.

@gandalf3 worked great! Mind putting that as an answer?

I assume the error was coming from gfycat, but I'm not sure, as they do allow non-gif uploads (they will convert to a gif automatically).
That said, I normally use peek to capture gifs. I've also used LICEcap and gifcam running under wine (wine is not needed if you are on windows).
If the file is < 2MB, uploading directly via the image button or ⎈ CtrlG should work fine. If not, try gfycat :)

perfect! Thanks again

about licecap on linux (with wine), I have to add that I can't record mouse pointer, though (works on windows), and others too, apparently (http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?s=c55575985c70a79e987a0a5fd0ed8bb6&t=181959). Recently I just found key-mon (https://github.com/critiqjo/key-mon), it seems quite useful for tutorial-like screen recording, although that means adding another separate tool...

@m.ardito Indeed. I've recently discovered peek, a licecap-like gif recorder with native linux support (and mouse-capturing abilities).

@gandalf3 yes, I've already seen that, I'll try that on linux, but it seems that it doesn't support it natively...  <<How can I capture mouse clicks and/or key strokes? Peek does not support this natively. But you could install an external tool like key-mon >> that is where I found about key-mon, in fact... :)

@m.ardito Ah, it doesn't capture clicks, but it does capture the cursor. There's an X utility someone on unix.se made which can be made to do mouse click highlighting, and screenkey can show keystrokes. My experience with key-mon was rather buggy, but I've yet to find a really satisfying alternative.


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BSE has a external image problem
We all will agree that there should not be images hosted externally.
However in the past it has been accepted to host gifs larger than the 2mb size limit of i.stack.imgur on external sites, I even said to do so in my gif post.
This needs to end.
Well a few years have gone by and technologies have changed, those gif hosting sites we used have stopped serving the gifs as gifs.
I came across yet another post today with a dead gif and was greeted with this at the top of the answer:

Under no circumstance should we have "no image available" animated images on BSE.
I made a quick data explorer query, and it appears there are 167 externally hosted gifs on the main and two more on meta. Thankfully not all of them are dead - yet.
A preliminarily investigation reveals that at least some of the gifs on these main hosts are gone:

gfycat.com
giphy.com
i.imgur.com

Mind you that these were hosts that were never going to remove the images...
This is a big problem. Gandalf's legendary quest in Stackexchangia is just not right without the gifs.
Cleanup
What to do about all the now dead links? I would use the methods in the last part of this answer. Try leaving a comment for OP below the post with the dead link, maybe the OP can reupload the gif, to i.stack.imgur this time.
At least for images on gfycat a smaller version (tiny in some cases) of the gif is still available. To find the new url for the gif you will have to follow the link (https://gfycat.com/loathsomecostlybufflehead) click on the paper airplane to "Share." Next on the bottom click "GIFS" then copy the url of the larger one.
Hopefully there will be no cases where the post was so dependent on the gif that outright deletion is the only option, but don't count that out.
The cleanup so far is relatively minor (painful, and with lost data no doubt) but the bigger issue is stopping the usage of externally hosted images altogether now.
Next steps
I propose BSE creates a unilateral ban on external images. I do not remember which pages in the help docs are editable (mod only feature). If a suitable page is found, then add something about external images. Edit, or add a post notice to historical posts (like this one). After there is no conflicting information lurking in the depth of the meta, then ruthlessly edit any new images that are not hosted on i.stack.imgur.
Unrelated, but in investigating this I was reminded of Glorfindel's bot. A huge shout out and thank you to user Glorfindel who has had a bot running for years fixing dead images.
I'll spare you of my rant about images hosted externally.

Made a few adjustments to https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/404/how-to-post-gifs-on-this-site/405#405 and https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/963/what-is-the-process-for-creating-gifs-for-questions-and-answers/964#964

I agree. If the gif or image isn't available anymore and the user doesn't reply, it might also be worth checking the internet archive / wayback machine

In the end, the entropy always wins.


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Asking redundant questions
When a user asks a question that could easily be googled, or for that matter, a question they already know the answer to, is it acceptable?
I ask because i believe that whether or not the information is readily available should be irrelevant. Stack exchange websites provide an active 2nd opinion on a subject and encourage elaboration on specific issues where confusion might arise. So is it acceptable to ask questions that are more or less obvious?

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/121/599

Here are two discussions about this topic from mso: How should we deal with Google questions? and Should I ask a question that is easily Google-able?
IMHO: As long as the question is no duplicate you should answer it. Easily earned reputation ;)

I believe all kinds of questions should be covered, because that lets visitors from different levels of expertise to dive into the site and engage with it.
If novice visitors come for the first time and they are unable to find relevant content, they won't come back later...

The number one goal of an unsuccessful sale is to secure one for the future. I know that with StackOverflow, for instance, some of the first results in Google for basic questions is still StackOverflow. There shouldn't be any reason that isn't the case for Blender.SE.

When I see this happen I try to educate the person on how to use a search engine properly.  Searching may seem like an obvious thing but for someone who has not yet learned how to formulate keywords properly it can be a complete mystery.  When doing this I prefer to focus on the keywords that I would use to find the relevant information instead of focusing entirely on the task at hand.  It's sort of like that old adage, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime".
Now for people who are just being lazy and expect others to do their work for them; I think this is a non-issue.  They won't be around for long because they will quit this like they quit everything.  You'd get really stressed trying to deal with this on a daily basis.  Maybe it's best to just deal with this like it's noise and ignore it.  A system that can deal with this 'noise' will bury the page quickly so it disappears silently into the background based on some usefullness rating.
In any case it's best to be as helpful and courteous as possible since many of the people which this topic deals with are very young and have had no proper guidance in these matters.
Also, when it comes to redundant questions it helps to realize that most websites have very poor internal search engines, it can take a while for people to realize that StackExchange actually does work well in this area.
Perhaps the redundant question notices could have a short tutorial on how to use this feature.  The way it's formatted now seems more like a "Go away, you did something wrong" notice.  Because it's not instructive it does little to prevent this from happening again.
Maybe some programmer can find a way to easily merge the pages which are redundant.


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Reputation per Day one day off
Why is my Reputation per Day Graph always displaying results a day off?

When I click the day after the one I want I will get the correct results below. But this means, I cannot watch the reputation changes of today as there is no "tomorrow" clickable in the graph yet. And it's very fiddly to press on this very tiny space just above the horizontal axis on a day after the one I want my results to be shown when there was no reputation change on that day. It works with one or two pixels high to click on this. But this seems to be a Bug on SE?

what os, browser and version are you using? None of that works for me, (I don't even get the box with the daily stats.)

This seems to of been addressed on the main meta: Reputation for graph is off by a day

Yeah, that's the thing. It's already listed as a bug there and even for quite some time. I'm on the latest Chrome, Windows 7.


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How do I know if a new tag is warranted?
Today I made a post involving the mist pass and typed in a tag for "mist" but then the confirmation dialog popped up and I had second thoughts because maybe "mist" can be categorized under "render-passes". How specific is too specific? How general is too general?

Brilliant question! It would be good to revisit this I think (in the past we've often discussed how specific tags should be). To get a rough upper bound for the number of questions which would likely use such a tag, a search like this can be helpful.


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Always mention that something is an add-on when referencing add-on features
I recently had an experience trying to answer a user's question that was very confusing because that user neglected to mention that the feature he was referring to is only available after enabling a certain add-on.
Maybe this isn't such a big deal that it deserves a post, but then again I think it's common sense and we should somehow get the message out to users that just because they may think everyone knows about their add-ons doesn't necessarily mean it is so.
Having the courtesy to type "add-on" somewhere in the question isn't an unreasonable request.
Thoughts and ideas, anyone?

We have an [tag:add-on] tag, IMO any question using an addon should use this tag.  But AFAIK there really isn't any way to force people to use it.

@PGmath I would not encourage tag usage like that. The tags should be describing what the question is about. You should defanitly put in your question that such and such is done by addon X, but to tag every question that has a problem where the user has used an addon is too broad.

@David What I mean is that, iff the addon is a necessary element of the problem (which I think is what mentalist means) it should be tagged addon.

Yes, and yes. If knowledge of the add-on is required to answer the question, users should use the add-on tag. However, tagging all questions that mention add-ons would be overkill and not helpful. As for a place where such community guidelines can be posted, I don't know that SE currently offers such an area(?) I'm imagining something like reddit's sidebar and I can't think of an equivalent on Stack Exchange.


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Should we have a "Best Practice" tag?
Today I found that Graphic Design Stack Exchange has a best-practice tag. And while not so large in number, tagged with it are some pretty helpful and interesting questions. I immediately thought "why don't we have that over at BSE?" and I recalled that there was some rule that was basically agreed upon by the community that we shouldn't allow "best practice" questions because they would be too broad, or would generate answers that are opinion-based. Ah yes, here is the post I was thinking of: Best Practices for Learning Blender [Closed]
Now, in that particular example I think the question fails because it's essentially asking how to use all of Blender. But is it inherently wrong to ask a question about the best practices with regard to accomplishing a certain task within Blender? And could such a tag, if given a clear definition including clear usage guidelines, help to serve the community?
A keyword search of questions within Blender Stack Exchange containing "best practice" reveals that they are not so uncommon.
But isn't it then perhaps sufficient that people trying to learn Blender with less trial-and-error and more attention to theory and workflow can simply use the search field to find these questions? Is there any real benefit to having a tag?
Here is a Meta question proposing a best practices page. I can see why it was not a popular idea. We don't want to write entire tutorials, and we want to keep our content here concise.
I can't help but wonder, is the nature of the questions at BSE different enough from GDSE that this sort of question should be handled differently? Would adding such a tag open Pandora's Box and lead to a flood of vague and rambling questions that pave a wandering trail off into Opinion Forest? Or could some good come of it if we instruct users to keep it to a specific topic or tool?
What do you all think?

In regards to your thought as to why Best Practices for Learning Blender was closed:

Now, in that particular example I think the question fails because it's essentially asking how to use all of Blender.

No, the question was closed because 'best' inherently refers to someone's opinion and therefore cannot have a 'correct' answer, which is why it was closed as Primarily opinion-based.
And if we look at the close reason description:

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

I can't really see any way that a best-practices tag wouldn't be entirely comprised of opinion-based questions, which would then be closed.
I can't really speak as to why the Graphic Design StackExchange might be better suited to have a best-practices tag, but as you point out, they have very few questions tagged with this. Out of their 22,000 questions only 57 have warranted the use of this tag (47 when you exlude duplicates and closures). This doesn't say to me that this tag is entirely valuable.
There are of course best practices that blender users use, but how would we work out which questions deserve to be immune to the Primarily opinion-based closure reason? Would it be helpful to the user to potentially get conflicting answers because people disagree on what the best is?
Personally, I think this tag would only introduce ambiguity into what questions are on or off-topic. We already have a way of finding out the best way of doing something. It's asking a question. The best way of doing something (is that really any different to best practices?) is the answer that gets the most votes from the community.


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Should questions on the reopen review queue show why they were closed?
When reviewing the Reopen review queue, I find my self having to open the question it self on another tab, in order to check why the question was close in the first place, so I can know if the edit fixes that. I think this is just extra effort (not much, but still) and should be fixed.

This would probably have to be a network wide change, probably better put on http://meta.stackexchange.com

@GiantCowFilms Well, yeah, but they're mean :( sometimes; I'll migrate it later...

For questions that were edited after the question was closed (thus the automatic reopen review), it will say at the top of the review: "This question was edited after it was closed."
For all other questions in the review queue you can simply click on the Question (revised) button. Then look at the close reason listed below the question.

I just did a reopen for "edited after it was closed." As you can see in the screen shot after clicking on the Question (revised) button the close reason is listed below the question.

And that's why I didn't post it to meta.stackexchange.com - it was a derp on my part...

Well at least anyone on this site with the same problem should be able to find an answer now.

@David Wait.. Yeah, that was the problem - it doesn't show the close reason if it was edited after being closed, so I can't know if the edited fixes the question.

@someonewithpc see my edited answer.


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Assumed off or on topic until proven otherwise?
Blender stack exchange receives allot of "import export problems" questions. Sometimes it is nearly impossible to figure out which software package is responsible. If blender is causing the issue, then it naturally follows that the question is topical, but if that is not the case then it isn't. If no one knows whether it is blender, then know one knows whether it is topical. Should it be closed...?

On a sidenote, we are discussing changes to our close reasons and our scope. Watch meta in the coming week.

@iKlsR Good to know

In either of your cases it should be closed.
If it is too unclear to figure out where the problem lays, close it as unclear.
If the problem is clearly out side of blender, close it as off topic.
Case one:

The obj exported from blender does not display right in my custom built game engine.

Closed as off topic because it is not a problem with blender.
Case two:

Import export trouble between three.js and blender.

Most likely closed as unclear what you are trying to ask.

The question can always be reopened if necessary, so closing "prematurely" is not a problem.

@someonewithpc very good point.

I don't really agree with this. For example, I once had it rendered it wrong in my custom engine because I had forgotten to triangulate faces.


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Proposed Community WIKI suggestions
I was reviewing questions seeking help in resolving issues the various posters of the respective questions had with different aspects of Blender. Now, while the particular questions I was paying most attention to dealt with modeling issues, I noticed questions about other areas of Blender, too: animation, texturing, rendering, &c., and it occurred to me that what many of the questioners needed more than they needed an answer, was a guide to how to find the answers to their questions themselves. Of the books I have read, the tutorials I have reviewed, and discussions I have followed, not once have I found a resource which, given a particular type of problem, say some tool not working as expected, presents a list of suggested steps in how to help a user find the answer.
What do you think about the idea of a series of pages, titled, "When you have a problem with >    <, here are some things to look for to solve the problem."? As a concrete example, a recent question asked about an interrupted loop cut, but I suspect that the person who asked the question didn't think (or didn't know) to switch to vertex select mode, in which the problem would have been quickly identified. I remember another question about textures not appearing which the answer was simply that the one asking the question had the display mode set to solid. I expect that a current question about why a render is all gray will turn out to be similarly trivial to solve.
I think a good format is to write a "question" introducing the check lists, and have a series of answers, one for each area of blender, where things to look for are posted, somewhat on the format of the "Resources for Blender" question.

I think you're right. There are a lot of questions that get answers that are extremely quick, and I have to wonder if they're duplicates. I think we do need some sort of resource that we can at least point to for those types of cases, but I'm not sure if the format you're suggesting is the way to go. I feel like you're more just throwing ideas around that things that are written in stone anyway.

@TARDISMaker On occasion, I've done some keyword searches on some of these questions, and have found that some of them are duplicates. Of course, they're not seen as duplicates by those who are new to Blender and new to Blender SE, and are asking the questions.


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Can we make a change to improve the tour?
I just reviewed the "Tour", and I'd like to suggest that the tour be modified by adding a section that strongly suggests to users seeking help solving issues related to a particular blender file, that they include with their questions relevant information, including version of Blender, screenshots, showing the problem, and ~.blend files, and more importantly providing new users with instructions detailing how to post the screenshot and the blend file.

Yes, as a matter of fact we (David, iKlsR, and I) were just planning to start on things like this (also the FAQ, custom close reasons, etc.) with a big meta post for people to suggest ideas and help write sections :)


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A Question about the "Blender resources" question
Should there be in that list of resources a heading for forums and similar groups? I don't want to add one without some discussion about it first.

Sounds good to me

It is a community wiki, as such please add any info and resources you find that fit in to the categories that are already there (and there is no need to ask first to do so).
However if you want to add a new category (such as reference images), or restructure the answers that are there (say merge blogs and community sites which I think would be a good idea), please ask on the meta first.
To answer you question.
Yes a general blender sites answer is a good idea.
It could contain blogs, tutorial sites, forum(s), etc.
Thank you for making the Resources for Blender list better.

Well, after gandalf3's comment, I kind of jumped right in, after which Gandalf3 did a masterful job of organizing the original question, at least in my view..

@brasshat I saw, and you did a good job.

I'm not so sure about good; I was aiming for "reasonably tolerable".

@brasshat lol, it was much better then that.


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Is there a bot for that?
I haven't yet run across a question or answer which includes a link to a now unavailable ~.blend file, but I assume that there are some questions or answers with just such a broken link. In some cases, the now missing ~.blend file is an essential part of the question or answer. Is there a bot that checks blend file links to make sure they are still valid, and flags them for attention if the linked file is missing? And whether there is such a bot or not, what is the best way to handle such a situation when one encounters it? I imagine that in some cases flagging the question (or answer) for deletion might be a desirable course of action; in other cases, I imagine it might be of benefit to the community to construct a replacement blend file.

Please leave a comment first, asking the author to re upload, or edit. Then I would encourage you to not flag for deletion, but flag with a custom message such as (what I use to use) "Link only answer." it will give us mods a bit more info as to what should happen.

There is not a bot, but there isn't a need for one.
David has kindly written a query which finds all posts of yours containing links to pasteall or blendexchange via the SE data explorer. Here's a fork which lists all .blend links to pasteall or blendexchange found in all the posts on the site.
When you find dead .blend links in other users' answers, leave a comment if you want the .blend (I personally am re-uploading files on a per-request basis for the time being, given the sheer number of now dead .blend links on my answers..).
If the answer relies heavily on the .blend and there doesn't seem to be much chance that the OP can/will re-upload it to a more permanent host, then flag it for deletion.
This goes for pretty much any dead link too, not just .blends.

None of the links in my own files are dead, because files I've linked to are in my personal dropbox account. When (If) an official hosting location for blend files is established, I'll be moving my own files to that site, and changing the links.


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Where does one draw the line?
When a user posts a question about performing some certain tasks, one of the reasons that the question can be closed states, in part:

This question appears to be off-topic because it requires step-by-step instructions for a process that is specific to a particular project,...

But how does one determine where the line is between giving enough information to answer the question, on the one hand, and giving "step-by-step instructions" on the other? Should the reputation of the questioner be a factor, that is to say that a question where the answer needs to be more detailed might be more acceptable from a user with low reputation, than from a user with a higher reputation? I recognize that the magnitude of the reputation a user has on the Blender SE site is not always a reliable indicator of the experience of the user,  but I find that this is often a useful indicator.

Note that this close reason will likely be removed in favor  the the built in "too broad" close reason. See http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/584/599

Related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/62/599


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Is there a way to tag an _answer_?
I've seen a number of answers which provide novel means of using Blender tools to achieve results I didn't think were possible. Sometimes I'm inclined to tag the answer with a tag like "tip", to make the answer more easily found. Is there a way to do that?

Nope, I don't believe this is possible atm.

Well how about implementing the idea by editing a "header line" into selected answers, something like " Tag: a helpful technique"? Then doing a search for "helpful technique" would bring up all these helpful techniques in a single page that people could browse, say while on an extended layover at their least favorite airport?

These sorts of SE feature requests will likely get more attention from people who can answer (SE devs etc.) on the network-wide meta.

OK.  But why do I care about all those other SE sites? </Tongue in cheek mode>. More seriously, this is partly a way to make sure that I don't make more of a fool of myself than I already seem by asking a question (or making a suggestion) whose answer starts out, "It's trivial to do that, just..."


text:
Are too many questions being tagged "duplicate"?
Friends, consider the following two questions:

In the US, what traffic control sign has eight sides?

and

In the US, what traffic control sign is red?

In both cases, the answer to the question is "a stop sign", but the fact that the two questions have the same answer does not make them duplicate questions.
I am of the opinion that recently there has been to many questions closed as "duplicate questions" because they had the same answer as an earlier question, when a close examination of the question shows that they were not duplicates, but two different questions which happened to have the same answer.
This can be a particular issue when one is dealing with novices who may not know the terminology to use in their question so that a search brings up the earlier question with the answer to their problem, or in cases where the problem might not seem to be the same because of the diverse nature of the meshes referenced in the two questions.
Particularly with new users, I think questions which have answers in another question should not just have the "This question already has an answer here", but rather that they should have an answer to their question that not only points to the question, but shows how the answer pointed to applies to their question.
As I demonstrated at the beginning of this proposal, identical answers do not automatically mean that the questions to which they are made are duplicate.

Do you have some examples of questions on the site which you feel were closed incorrectly? (related: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/549/599)

brasshat .... you wrote ,,,  [novices who may not know the terminology to use in their question]. I totally agree. I might even like a check box on the question ..[We changed your question to standard Blender terminology, to get you quicker and better answers]. I find it a bit chilling to read [marked as duplicate by X1, X2, X3, X4]. I would like an extra step to see the names.  I feel a bit chilled even when I did not pose the question.  Some more friendly verbiage such as [Congratulations! Luckily we have found a good answer to your question in our archive. No waiting ... its ready now ...]

maybe there should be a new category beside duplicate.. like 'exhibits strong similarity with another question' , because I think I agree with the term duplicate loosing meaning otherwise.  But I also can't stand seeing people answering with the same content just because the question comes from a different perspective, that's silly.

@gandalf3 maybe you know what percentage of total questions get flagged as duplicate and what percentage stay that way ?

@zeffii Regarding your first comment, I usually link "exhibits strong similarity" questions to each other with "related" links in the comments, which IMO is a good-enough solution. Regarding your second comment, unfortunately I can't share details of mod-only analytics..

@brasshat .  As new blender versions arrive, new answers may be possible to incorrectly marked duplicate questions, and thus I further agree with your statements above.

@gandalf3 the percentage closed as exact duplicate is just above 9% of all questions.

Interesting read about duplicates.. : dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication
I also think we need to improve this area, it can be friendlier.
The label 'duplicate' could be reserved for questions which are obviously covered by the suggested duplicate question (in letter and spirit). We can't expect everyone to know if questions already exist somewhere. This goes for both those who ask and those who answer.
We should also make it clearer that the 'duplicate' or 'similar question exists' label is not bad but helps the search feature by adding new terms to the query-matching algorithms.

"a close examination of the question shows that they were not duplicates, but two different questions which happened to have the same
  answer."

We already have language in place which asks if the answers to the suggested 'duplicate' addressed their question adequately, and if it doesn't then the OP is asked to elaborate. When the OP takes time to come back and clarify why it doesn't address the question, we listen and often agree. Sometimes the original state of a question lacks enough detail to consider it anything other than a duplicate.
But what I, and perhaps others, don't want to see are Questions being treated as unique just because they happen to be a bit more specific in some arbitrary way. There are times when the specifics justify a unique answer, but other times the existing answered duplicate will have enough information to be helpful - that's a perfect opportunity to educate people and show them that we think the question already has an answer.
it's not uncommon for people to comment that ' yes that other question solves my problem, thank you '.

Important to note that when we flag something as duplicate it's a notification to others to check the suggested duplicate before answering. They don't have to agree, and can always say that in the comment and still  submit their own answer,.. but then popular vote takes over.

Some snooping around led me to return to the Database schema for General stack exchange
Query: http://data.stackexchange.com/blender/revision/368037/474449/percentage-closed-as-exact-duplicates-of-total
result:

This is publicly available data (As far as i'm aware... i didn't need to be logged in to do the query) . This percentage doesn't include all the questions that get unclosed.

Indeed it is open data. Anyone can see and use the data explorer.

Experienced Stack Exchange users will spot many questions from newbies (me) that are close duplicates for existing, well-answered questions. The question was probably re-asked because:

the new user is either inexperienced/lazy with searching;
searched, but wasn't using a key term;
Wants a case-specific answer... Because an existing answer is overwhelmingly complex for their level of comprehension.

I suggest that the ANSWERS aren't as important as the process of CONVERSATION, or a current, live dialogue between parties.
@zeffii comes close to identifying a modified feature: a search that comes up with 'Related Topics' to the question (which are basically the duplicate questions). S.E. already comes up with potential searches based on what the questioner is typing in, to 'head off the question at the pass'.
But is this the point? Are we trying to foster the growth of a reference manual, or 'exchange' ideas as we need them?
There will be regularly asked questions from very new people. I think they should be allowed the chance to be answered by new people, so they can improve their own reputation. And when new people ask questions, they will find an audience with intermediate users. And intermediate level questions will find help with experienced users, and so on. I suspect this process will help develop community. This doesn't stop experienced people answering newbie questions, but often, experienced people won't answer simple questions because... well, it's been done. Leave it for someone else.
Pointing out that users have asked duplicates might not be a positive move. It can imply the questioner didn't have the courtesy to do a search first before 'bothering' the S.E. hive mind. This puts the new user on guard, and could put pressure on them to research a question far in excess of the kind of answer they're after. "Good", I imagine some might cry, "that's exactly what they SHOULD be doing!"
Nope - That's people projecting their own superiority of knowledge over others, conveniently forgetting that a large portion of their own knowledge came from the generosity of others when they hit an inevitable block.
Rather than bill them as 'duplicates', I think answering the question and adding a link to 'related questions' or 'simil-asks' ( (cc) 2015, Oro), might be a more courteous way forward. Stack Exchange's biggest power is its immediacy and specificity of rewarding people in a constructive, specific, personal conversation, and embracing this POV reduces a need to be pedantic over the vast library of knowledge accumulated over the years.
My 5 cents.

Dupes can be classed in two ways. 1) obvious duplicates 2 ) non-obvious duplicates. Non obvious dupes exist on a gradient, some require more blender / python knowledge to make the link than the questioner exhibits. I have definitely mellowed on this latter class.


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How about a "BSE-OOS" site?
First: "BSE-OOS" is an acronym for "Blender Stack Exchange -  Out of Scope".
I have found a number of situations where a question has been asked that is obviously out of scope of the site as defined in the help page, and yet, for one reason or another, I'd like to provide an answer to the question. One example of this would be a case where an inexperienced user has a problem where the solution amounts to a tutorial, and there I can't find an existing one that would be useful, but I could provide it for the user. A private message facility, like in the forums at Blender-Artists would be one way to do this, but if the Stack-exchange site has a direct contact facility, where I can communicate such a private message to a particular individual, I have yet to discover it. I suppose that one could move a discussion over a particular question to a site like Blender Artists, or one of a host of other forum sites, so these would work, too. Is there some site which would be better for this purpose than others, or would it be worth considering a new site, like "BSE-OOS"?

One thing you can do in a situation like the one you describe, is create a chat room. This allows discussion to continue between specific users without affecting the rest of the site. If you're so inclined, you can always go as far as to make a complete tutorial and post it on youtube/similar, then link the OP to it (in comments or chat)


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How do we get more options when flagging a question as belonging on another SE site?
At the moment, at least for me, the only option I see for recommending migration of a question is to BSE meta. In my opinion, there needs to be either a wider set of choices available to which to recommend migration, or a "fill in the blank" option where the flagger can make a specific recommendation, or some combination of the two.

See http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/261196/238438. So far I haven't really noticed a lot of content consistently showing up which definitely belongs on another site, so I'm not sure we need any default paths (yet). For now, if you see something, flag it as "other" and one of the mods can migrate it.

related, essentially same question: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/824/off-topic-other-stack-exchange-network-limited-options-why


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Blender Stack Exchange in languages other than English?
Are there versions of Stack Exchange generally, or Blender Stack Exchange in particular, in languages other than English? If not, where can one direct a user who is hampered by trying to ask a question in English, when English is not a language in which they are particularly facile? Should there be an entry on the resources question that points to help resources in other languages.

I think there isn't; if taking into account StackExchange format then this could be made the same as with StackOverflow which now is in Portuguese, Spanish, Russian except for the main one. As such a proper proposal should be made for that.


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Should I delete my question?
I posted this question:
Automatic Weights not recalculating after moving Bone
While I think it's a valid question, it is kind of a duplicate. I just realized that this behavior is happening because my vertex groups were locked on my mesh, which kept them from being updated.
As such, the question I link to in the post solves my problem. However, I still think it might be valuable knowledge to provide this information regarding unlocked vertex groups, especially since I think that the nature/function of Blender may draw its fair share of newbies like myself.

However, I still think it might be valuable knowledge to provide this information regarding unlocked vertex groups

That's merit enough to keep it. I'd also suggest linking to any similar posts you chanced across since you feel it's a dupe of sorts. If it is an exact duplicate of an existing post it can be marked as such.


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Should we have tags for Pie-Menus?
Pie-Menus are well implemented now and finding their way into daily workflows with Blender. Should we create a pie-menus tag or a pie-menu tag at least, even if they are rather specific?
From the Wiki:

A pie menu is a menu whose items are spread radially around the mouse.

+1 from me. From a quick estimate we have maybe ~20-30 questions which could use this tag.

Just FYI, I'm working on a big retag (will be on meta) and had already included this in it. (so yes I support it.)

@David Thanks for your opinion. You are the tag guru, then we should wait for your proposal :) I assume it's hard work to re-tag the questions, so let me know if I can help to edit the posts.

I think so. I don't know how many questions we've got for them so far, but they do have special code api's and stuff, so there's definitely room for coding questions.


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What exactly is a bug report?
I have noticed a lot of questions on this site getting closed as a bug report when I do not think they should be getting closed. With our current system, a question could legitimately  be considered a bug report if the question is something like "Blender crashes when I do this"
That is merely a user stating that blender crashes when something is done. And in that case all the question is is a report of the bug and should be closed. However, If the question is something like "Why does blender crash when I do this?" It is a question asking Why it happens. In this case It would be appropriate to answer the question saying something such as,
"This is a known bug. Possible workarounds include __________ Or you could try this _________ instead. the developers might be fixing this in the near future"
In this case it is Not a bug report. It is a legitimate question of a user wanting to know Why something is happening. and Not a direct bug report. and should Not be closed.
So my question is this- Is the bug report close reason overused on this site, and what should be done to fix this problem if it is?

I feel that most closed questions are closed to quickly.   For the case where someone shows up and asks how to find Maya's 'Make Dinosaur' button, obviously that should be closed.  However, if someone asks about a work-flow that involves 3rd party software, nobody should even be voting to close that until a week has passed and the issue has been thoroughly discussed.  It should be absolutely clear that the person's problem is only solvable on the other end of things before deciding that it's not a Blender problem.

Also see When should a question be close as a bug report?

There are some situations where it could be more constructive to leave the question open so it can be discussed even if it is bug related.
Several areas of Blender have multiple pathways and if one tool fails because of a bug, it is not necessarily the case that all available work-flow options will fail.
If a question like this is closed for being a report, alternate methods do not have a chance to be brought up by other people who have found a work-around that can accomplish the same task but in a different way.
Automatically sending people to the tracker without discussion can also lead to the tracker becoming filled with nuisance reports and this can lead to issues for developers who have enough work to do already without having to sort through issues that could have easily been dealt with here.
If a question is closed for this reason and there is no discussion on the topic; every time someone comes here with a similar issue, they will think that it has not already been discussed because the other similar questions are not available.  Now the nuisance question is right back again and now it has to be closed.
Leaving them open or directing the user to a page where the problems have been linked together can help to prevent these types of questions from repeatedly being asked.
Enough bug reports have been moved onto a to-do list instead of being fixed right away and when this happens, alternative solutions have to be used.
Not every code problem is going to have an immediate solution, some may never have one.
In cases like this, artists discussing work-flow alternatives needed to work around these bugs is really the only available option.
The following example shows a bug report that is valid;   However, if it had been brought up here(and left open), then it could have been a discussion on how to avoid the bug in the first place.
https://developer.blender.org/T42056
Coders and algorithm designers cannot bear the full weight for everything that can go wrong with a complex system of tools.
Artists should have multiple ways around software weaknesses so they are not tripped up when bugs are encountered.
It helps to know how to avoid encountering those situations to begin.
One way to learn these things can be to make bug-report related questions into discussions instead of closing them.
Now bug-reports can be focused on problems which cannot be solved by work-flow solutions.
There should be no hurry to shut them down and move on as quickly as possible.  That goes for many of the other 'close' reasons unless they are spam or abusive.
A particular bug report discussion here can be good cross-reference for the actual bug report since artists showing up here may have something to contribute.
If an artist shows up here a few months after the question is posted and recognizes a pattern to the bug based on similar issues they've been having, it may now become solvable instead of sitting idle in the Tracker for several more months(or years).
If it's been discussed and decided upon that a serious bug is present, the person can be referred to the tracker and asked to post the tracker URL on the related page here on this site.
Now anyone who finds the page will also know where to find the bug report, but only if the page here is still open.
This brings more opportunity for the problem to be solved because there will be more people involved.
If a developer reports, on bug tracker, that the issue has been solved, the page here can then be reported as being no longer valid. Now it can be removed.

I totally agree.

I would guess most of the questions closed as bug reports are correctly being closed.
Some rules of thumb which give a good hint that the question is in fact a bug report.

You have to look at the source code to answer it. (example, you must be a developer).
The software is not working as it should and this would be better brought to developers attention.
If the error is something which used to work in older releases.
If the error is hardware related (graphics issues, OpenGL).

There are valid questions...

General questions such as why Blender fails on some hardware (graphics-cards, touchpads... but not specific models)
General Questions relating to a class of errors (out of memory, invalid files, unsupported OpenGL versions... for eg.)
Questions about known limitations *

* What is/isn't a known limitation isn't clear, for users, we do document these, however sometimes  we could do better too.


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Will I loose my privileges when the site graduates?
I have noticed that graduated sites have much higher reputation thresholds  for privileges, for instance the "trusted user" privilege goes from 4k on a beta site to 20k rep on a full site.  I currently have 4k rep, am I correct in presuming that I will no longer have this privilege (along with quite a few others) when the site graduates?

Short answer: yes. Unless you get 20k before the site graduates ;)


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Images in comments?
I have seen people post comments with links to images on Stack Exchange's very own Imgur installation.  How can you upload an image for a comment like this?

I just upload it in an answer section then copy the URL into the comment :P

@gandalf3  I thought about doing that, but I was wondering if you had a less Mickey-Mousey way.  I guess not :)

You can also upload the image to the chatroom and copy that link.

Quote from GiantCowFilms : Using external sites can cause a lot of broken images, which is really really bad. The default imgur installation should always be used unless there is a VERY good reason not to.
Steps you can follow...

Prepare your images
Safe them on your desktop ...
Click the icon that has a mountain and a sun on the text input tool bar
Click on the big blue box that says "Drag and drop or Click here".
Navigate to the image on the desktop and click "Open"
Click on the "Add Picture" button.

You can also use http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ to share your .blend files in questions.

DO NOT DO THIS
Use photobucket.com personally. Just copy the uploaded file URL using
the easy copy URL button on photobucket site and just paste it here,
using  the little mountain icon that says "image" when your mouse
hover over  it. I also use mega.co.nz for uploading blend files, mega
provide a very  clean and easy to operate interface, it's pretty much
free for the average  user 50GB of space for free.
It's pretty easy to do. Image is a great way to show others what you
are talking about!

Using external sites can cause a lot of broken images, which is really really bad. The default imgur installation should always be used unless there is a VERY good reason not to.

Ok I will give that a try. I have always the impression that forums don't want to manage user's images and would rather have a external site handle the load.

@hawkenfox, what you wrote is true on forums, but stack exchange is not a forum  and has different considerations.

I would often comeback later to delete unecessary comments. I use it as friendly way to say "I have got the message and I am willing to comply".


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Custom error/404 page status?
It was almost two years ago that the creation custom 404 and other error pages was offered.  Several good ideas were presented and voted on, but there was no final official decision and we still have the generic error and 404 pages.
Is there any way this effort can be resurrected?  I think it would be cool to have our own, and I really like some of the ideas presented (not just my own :P ).

We could also do something like the Blender Manual 404 page: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/404

I think more suggestions for page ideas should probably go on the original post (linked above).  Here I am inquiring as to the status of this project as it seems to have been somewhat forgotten.


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What does a "Leave Open" vote do?
When I vote on a question to "leave open", how does that affect the closure of the question?  Does a "leave open" vote negate a "close" vote, or does it simply do nothing, or does it do something else?

Casting a "Leave Open" vote in the close review queue, counts towards getting the question out of the queue and kept open.
If any question in the close review queue (CRQ) gets three "leave open" votes it gets removed from the queue (thus greatly reducing the chance that it will be closed).
It does not negate the close votes, but if the review item is completed with a Leave Open result, the close votes will begin aging away immediately.
What exactly happens with the button "Leave Open" (previously "Do Not Close")?


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Site index proposal for useful reference questions/answers
Often when answering a question it is useful to point the OP towards another question or answer for more information on a particular topic.
I often see such questions and/or answers come up that I think would be useful to reference in the future.  However when the time comes to reference a particular post I often can't find it due to the quite miserably pathetic search capabilities of SE.  Currently I try to solve this problem by favoriting the questions when they come up.  But that doesn't really work well as now my favorites are getting rather large.
So to solve this problem I propose that we start a community wiki post on meta where we list and categorize useful questions/answers that could be used as reference.  What are your thoughts?

An excellent idea! (even an exclamation mark.)
I would suggest an  one answer for each subject Example: "Modeling tips", "Cycles Materials", "Python reference" "Awesome answers", etc.
The "Awesome answers" section would be kind of a best of BSE list. Where we not only put, gandalf's answers :) but any answer that has been very well received by the community, and seems that everybody should read it at some point.

Exactly what I was thinking, I like the "awesome answers" idea too.  I'll wait a little bit to get a little more input then I'll create it.

What would be the difference between an "awesome answers" section and this search sorted by "votes"? That said, it would be nice to have fleshed out references for common questions (e.g. flipped normals)

@gandalf3 some of the highest voted answers would not make that list. Example, this is more of a hidden gem list then highest voted.

I thought adding some type of categories would work, which everyone can create for themselves. It could work exactly as favourites: one clicks star, and dropdown menu pops up with previously created categories by the user (rss-reader feedly works in similar way). But it seemed to me it could be  harder to achieve

Well it seems this is an acceptable idea.  I'll try to get around to posting it today.

@gandalf3 and David I've started it up here, please feel free to edit the question if you think it needs improvement, and start adding links!


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How to keep SE from scaling my images?
When I upload an image for a question/answer on SE, the site seems to scale it to fit the standard post width.
Often this is useful since it gives a nice uniform clean look to the post.  But sometimes it's annoying, such as when I want to put a small image inline with the text, or if I am trying to put multiple images side by side, or just if my image is too small to be scaled up that much.
Can I keep SE from scaling the images I upload?  Or (even better) control the scaling manually?

Images are never upsampled AFAIK. If your image is smaller than the width of the post, it should work as expected

@gandalf3  This image is definitely scaled up.

It looks like the file itself has been upsampled. Right click > view image shows it just as it appears in the post for me.

@gandalf3  So you think imgur is scaling the images?

idk, that's really odd. I've never seen it do that for me..

@gandalf3 It does that to me all the time.  I often turn my DPI scaling way up to take screenshots so I can get them higher res to minimize this effect.

I don't suppose it's possible your screenshot taking software might be doing this? Can you check if images look upscaled prior to uploading?

@gandalf3  That's definitely not it I just use good old fashioned print screen and MS paint.  And they don't look upsampled before uploading.

You can specify a height and width by inserting the image via a HTML tag.

Upload your image via the standard image uploader, copy the image address and delete it.
Copy this line of HTML into the editor and insert the values:

Notes:

The attributes MUST be listed in this order
There is no need to specify a height attribute, it should keep the aspect ratio
DO NOT include the px extension for the width attribute

Example:
Standard Markdown

HTML tag:

(not anymore!!)

What's the alt attribute do?

@PGmath you know how in markdown it asks you to insert an image description? Same thing here. The Alt (alternate) text is displayed if the image is not available or if a screen reader is used.


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What should I flag link-only answers as?
When voting to delete an answer in the review queue there is an option

link only (and not spam)

However, there is no such option when actually flagging answers.  When flagging link-only answers I usually use either

not an answer
  This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.

or

in need of moderator intervention

so I can add an explanation.  I usually just put something like "Link only."  Both of these have been picked up and resulted in the answer being deleted.  But for the sake of consistency, what should I really tag such answers?

Relevant MSE Discussion - Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

I use to flag using the custom reason with something as simple as "Link only answer."
As a mod now, that would be great.
Just so you know among the three general flag types:

not an answer

very low quality

in need of moderator intervention

which of those you use does not make much of a difference. Those three are all handled the same way by us mods.
However, spam and rude or abusive have special meaning. These two should only be used when something is spam or offensive. These have more "power" than a normal flag. For example after 6 spam or offensive flags not only is the post deleted and locked, but the author will loose 100 rep.

I've noticed the community bot doing things (such as downvoting) when flags are marked as helpful. Not sure if it does different things with different initial flag types, but it might?

@gandalf3 The DV comes when a VLQ flag is marked helpful.


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What does it mean to review a declined flag?
Recently one my flags was declined (OP revised the flagged post after I flagged it).  However now when I go to flag a post the flag window says

Your last flag was declined - please review it before flagging this post!

and the flag button is grayed out.  "Review it" links to my page of past flags.  But I see now option to review or do anything with any of the flags.  What does it mean to review a declined flag?

Go to the page linked in the message: Your flags (only viewable to you and mods). This is the same page that the "Helpful Flags" link on the "Activity" tab of your profile page goes to.
There is no button, or anything like in the review queue. All SE wants you to do is read the message under the flag(s) in question, and make sure you understand why your flag was declined.

You still can flag posts (it says so on your flags page).

Flagging status

Not banned from flagging
Warned when flagging

You can read the details about how the flag warning and banning system works here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/175405/278094.
In short:
If you flag more then 10 flags per week you will get warned when more then 10% are declined, and temporarily banned if more then 25% are declined.
If you have less then 10 per week (this is your case at the moment) you will get warned if your last flag was declined.

Hmmm... I did go there, both before I tried to flag another one and several times by clicking the given link, and it still won't let me do any more flagging.

@PGmath see updated answer (from what I've read I think the grayed out button will still work)