text:
What does the number next to the "review" button signify?
Sometimes there is a number in an orange box to the left of the "review" button at the top of the page.  Clicking on the number brings me to the review queue, just like clicking the review button itself.  But what does this number (or lack thereof) mean?
Intuitively, I would think this would be the number of posts awaiting review.  But this number and the number of posts in the review queue are rarely equal.  Furthermore, sometimes there is no number there and there are posts in the queue or vice-versa.

Not much... It is supposed to tell you how many total reviews are waiting in the queue. However do to caching it sometimes reflects how many reviews are left to do, most of the time it is just an orange number.
What does the number next to the review link in the top bar actually mean?
Also this is the same issue that gandalf was talking about here:
Suggested edit notification wrong

Why on earth do they even have it if it is inaccurate?  You'd think they'd have fixed or removed it by now.

No idea... (and it has been this way for a while)

The official explanation: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/233535/238438


text:
How to link to a specific answer?
How can I link to a specific answer on a question, such that when the link is followed it scrolls down to the answer?  I have seen this done and know how to do it for comments (simply click on the date posted) but have not figured out how for an answer.

Look under the answer and press the Share button, it will give you a link with your unique userid attached at the end (for several reasons such as when you share links, the views can be attributed back to you for badges etc).

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Answering questions and adding screenshots later
I often check the site and see questions that I can answer while I am on the go on my mobile device.  But I (obviously) don't have blender on my tablet, so I can't add any screenshots.  Usually I forgo answering the question and by the time I have access to a computer I have forgotten about it.  Most of the time the question gets answered (which is fine) but sometimes not.
So my question is this, is it acceptable to answer a question without access to blender and post applicable screenshots later?  And if so, should I say something like “I will post a screenshot shortly, when I can” in the answer?

@cegaton so would it be proper to say "I will add a screenshot shortly", or something to that effect?

If you can reasonably answer a question without images, then my all means answer away. Take my answer to this question, I felt it was clear enough with out images. However a user asked for pictures, so 2 days after answering I added them.
I would caution you to not answer a question that really should have a picture, and say "image coming soon". As stated in the comments, incomplete answers can do more harm then good.
If for instance, you explain a modeling process. Giving the keyboard shortcuts and process, images may not be needed to convey a clear meaning of the answer.
Gandalf frequently answers a question, then shortly (after he finishes recording a video of the process) will updates his answer with a gif.

In accordance with David's answer, as long as you provide a decent worded answer, this shouldn't be a problem. What you should avoid however is slapping a few lines together in order to be the first to answer (as I've seen several times). Not only does this deter others from possibly adding other answers but your finished answer later might not even be correct or sufficient. So I say, answer if and only if you can get your point across in words, images can come later.

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


text:
When should we be asking question askers for blend files?
Something I've seen a lot of in response to questions (mostly low-quality posts from new users) which significantly lack enough detail to understand the issue, is some users here immediately jumping in to ask the OP for their blend file so we can take a look.
While sometimes this may be a quick-ish way to sove OP's particular problem, if someone here wants to take the time to open the file and play around, I would argue this method should be avoided where possible as it seems to me as if it doesn't fit the SE philosophy for a couple reasons.

It's cumbersome for future reference.  One of the primary purposes of SE (one may even argue the primary purpose) is not just to answer your particular question, but do it in such a way as to provide a helpful reference for future people with the same issue, to create an encyclopedia of sorts.  An encyclopedia which requires downloading files to even understand what a post is about is not a convenient encyclopedia to use.
It might encourage lazy asking practices.  As Ray Mairlot alluded to here, being told right off the bat that they can just upload their blend file, users may get the idea that "here's my .blend, plz fix" is an acceptable way of asking questions here.  This doesn't seem to fit the SE requirements of minimum acceptable effort and desire for high-quality content.
It puts extra burden on us, the community.  Blend files may be great for troubleshooting an issue, but something they can't do at all is explain what the issue is to us.  This overlaps a bit with the previous point, but we really don't want people getting the idea that they can get out of explaining their problem by posting a blend file.
It makes questions inaccessible for some people to help.  This point may be too specific to me personally, but I suspect I am not the only one in similar circumstances.  Most of my time spent on Blender.SE these days is while I'm at work, either over lunch or just taking a peek now and then to relax my brain while something I'm waiting on runs.  As a consequence, if a question consists of only a blend file with a few sketchy comments about an issue I am unlikely to be able to do anything.  If a post contains enough information to understand the question in text and images however, I may be able to at least offer some helpful comments and at bare minimum be able to handle the post correctly if it shows up in a review queue.

I absolutely don't want to give the impression that I am against posting blend files in questions at all, but I do think we should discuss how quickly we jump to the "can you please upload your blend file?" comments on low-quality posts.
Can we maybe attempt to craft some metric or litmus test by which we determine a post contains enough self-contained information that providing a blend file will only improve its quality?  (Similar to how we judge link-only answers vs. answers which contain helpful links.)

Fully agree. sharing a file should be a last resort, and even then most of the time it is a strong sign that the question is too localized and not a good fit for this site. Similarly, I feel posting files in answers is detrimental to the learning process. By providing a ready made solution one doesn't encourage recreating steps nor learning by taking the time to understand the process.

Another  side effect is the rubbish tip buildup https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2767/15543

Often just describing the problem in detail will help someone to find the problem themselves anyway, as well as allowing someone else to replicate the same situation to be able to offer a solution or even just to learn about that perticular area, even without an answer. To me BSE is a place for learning so just posting a file and expecting someone to fix it is not appropriate. I kind of agree with @Duarte about files in answers, but solutions can sometimes be extremely complicated and a working solution can be useful to allow someone to unpick exactly how it's put together.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I definitely think there are situations where including a file is only beneficial. There are scenarios where OP describes the problem well but the included blend file allows answerers to show the solution directly on OP's file (this not only is nice for OP but also adds clarity for all readers by having direct continuity between question and answer). I've also had some answers where I give a node setup and explanation but include the file so they don't have to copy a 20+ node network from a screenshot. Do you have a suggestion of how we should judge when it is acceptable?

@PGmath Those seem like a fair use cases, there are obviously exceptions where a file is indeed useful. I just think mostly new users in the "novelty phase" trying to help every low quality post jump in too soon asking for a file before even trying to understand the issue. For everything else I suppose using your common sense suffices. Question/answer continuity, and situations where recreating the exact OP setup would just be too time consuming to properly answer, are good candidates for asking for a file.

For answers I have a stricter view, if it does require such a hard to recreate setup then the question was probably too broad to begin with, but it is certainly not something I'd care to start enforcing. If you feel like providing a file for sake of simplicity, then by all means do, I'm sure future users will appreciate the convenience too.

Certainly for answers the answer should be stand-alone without the file - so it’s only an inconvenience if the file wasn’t there. Same goes for questions - the question should stand as it is without needing the file to understand the issue. I agree with @PGmath that it’s definitely helpful to be able to use the OP’s file for continuity with the answer in some cases.

I feel like the most generally applicable answers are composed of primitives, and as such should be easily illustrated with screenshots.  Same could go for questions but the onus is on the asker

In general, I think that while having a file is nice, it's not always necessary. I think it tends be more useful to have images and gifs than files unless the Q happens to be really interesting and just needs a file to completely understand.. But if the question is some variant of "my object doesn't look right" and the answer is "recalculate normals"  then it's a waste of everyone's time, OP included. Regarding answers, there are some around that would benefit greatly from having a file, to make learning simpler to some who would benefit years after, but these are mainly shader related.

@PGmath I understand what you mean, especially points 1., 2. and 4.... there are also sometimes questions where the problem is described well, but (a few) users immediately comment "Please provide your blend file." But in most cases it's not necessary. When suggesting to the commenter no file is needed to find an answer, I'm told that the problem might be identified easy for experienced users like me, but he is still learning and could need a file to understand. That's the moment where I keep calm but think, "well, then let the experienced users find the solution and learn from the answer."

When should we be asking question askers for blend files?
Sparingly, only when necessary.
I very much agree with the question, and have had and stated this position for years.
To quote from this answer:

There should not be such an emphasize on "the blend." Granted, blends are immensely useful, and help get questions answered quickly. Yet there is a balance, not everything needs a blend. Questions should use text as the number one tool through which information is conveyed.

The "fix if for me" type questions have gotten much more numerous in the six years since I wrote that. If we had treated the blend as a "last resort" instead of the first tool we reach for when solving questions I expect the quality of questions would of turned out differently.
I can think of situations where blends really can solve the issue. Cases such as rigging, material settings, or drivers. Its so easy to mess something up, and have no clue where something went wrong. Or even something simple like modeling (I know the bisect setting in the mirror modifier will get many), the OP could make a simple test case, do what they think is the same thing and have it work yet in the original file it does not.
There always will be cases where blends are immensely useful, and so far I have just been talking about the question.
I think answers should always be free to add a blend if the person answering feels it would help.
For example in this answer I laid everything out in text and the pictures, but still felt it would be a benefit to have a premade example to compare the 4 different methods (and apparently it has been a help currently there are 321 downloads on that file).
The trouble comes in defining what is "necessary" to have a blend. I agree we should come up with a standard for measuring and distinguishing LQQWB (low quality questions with blends) vs SQTNB (short questions that need blends).
As an overly broad baseline I'd start by testing to see if the question is still discernible without the blend. (I happen to have an example here) If it is, then it might be a good question simply helped by a blend. On the other hand, if the question loses all meaning without the blend then I'd say that is a low quality question and deal with it accordingly. Likely Closed as "Needs details or clarity" or "Too localized" (doe not really matter which) with a comment somehow or another explaining how blends can not be the biases of a question and questions need details in text.
Here is an exercise for the reader, taken straight out of the current HNQ list: Eevee render output is black
What would you do with that question? Apparently that type of question is well received now (its on the HNQ!?!)
Is the blend supplemental, or would you call that a CDLOQotHNQL (cleverly disguised link only question on the hot network question list)? What action should be taken on it and questions like it?
OK so I have a thing for (dumb) acronyms.

What (pleasant) a surprise to hear from you!  Your 4th/3rd to last paragraphs are pretty much spot on as far as what I was thinking: blends are fine in some (maybe even many) cases but the question (or answer) must be able to be understood without the file.  It seems to me as if that's a good starting point, I think it fits with an intersection of the commenters' opinions and we can of course in the future refine the criterion or tighten it as necessary.

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


text:
Does drafts' lifespans start from the initial draft or from the last edit?
I am currently writing a relatively big answer, so I am making use of drafts to work on it a bit everyday as I don't have much time.
I understand that drafts will be deleted after 7 days. What I don't understand is, will those 7 days start from the time I initially started to write the answer or will they reset every time I edit the draft?

Related - https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251432/how-can-i-draft-multiple-posts. It could be more efficient to use text editor and save it there to avoid any confusion. In the reference post only week lifespan is mentioned.

^^ I try not to rely too much on the draft system. I typically copy unfinished answers to a text file to save them for later, then paste them back to continue working on them.

Yep, sounds like your are asking for lost work. Relying on a draft system to safegard your work seems feeble at best and is bound to lead to sorrow. Use the editor but save it locally.

I took your advice and wrote everything locally instead. Other wise I would have been taking a risk with a 2000 word answer:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/94991/trace-visualisation-in-3d-how-to-wrap-curves-onto-a-3d-mesh/95577#95577


text:
Is it possible to get notification for new questions through some platform?
Last year, I was active in stackexchange but now I have so much work that I don't have time to look at the new questions or browse the old ones.
Is there is a way to get a notification when ever a question is asked in my favourite tag through facebook or google chrome or other platforms?
So for instance, I have experience in Animation nodes, would it be possible to get a notification when ever a question is asked using the AN tag?
That way I can do my work and head to stackexchange when ever I am needed.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25224/email-notifications-for-new-questions-matching-specific-tags


text:
What means bold in the achievement button?
For the first time, I see this:

For which reason "blender axis to angle" is in bold? What does it mean?

This is a new entry that you have not yet opened and is used to highlight unread messages.
As soon as you click on it, the entry will be displayed again as usual.

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


text:
Revamping tags 2020
Given the recent concerns raised about misuse of tags and incoherent naming of addons this is a tentative proposal to generally improve tag names in Blender Stack Exchange, and bring about some order and categorization.
The underlying idea is to rename existing tags and add either common prefixes or suffixes so related terms are aggregated and grouped together.
These add missing structure by providing semantics, so similar tags look related, they would visually appear more alike, and users will see suggested related terms in the autocomplete popup when typing some tags.
Some concerns have been raised about readability and whether we should use prefixes or suffixes.
Prefixes have the advantage of affecting sorting order, also when listing stuff together having a common first part makes them look visually related, sort together and easier to follow; where suffixes don't.
The tag search engine does supports fuzzy searching and non-contiguous matches however, so it shouldn't have a severe effect. I don't have a strong opinion here both would work fine.
I'd rather have shorter, rather than longer tag names, but I feel the added structure is worth the trade-off.
Pros:

Semantic relationship between tags
Similar tags are grouped together
Hopefully reduces misuse of ambiguous tags like blender-render
Increased chance users find appropriate tags

Cons:

Longer tags names
Potentially worse readability
Some added maintenance work
Dubious real benefit to users

Render Engines
All render engine related tags should receive a render-engine prefix

render-engine-blender-internal synonym  render-engine-blender-render (should reduce misuse of tag)
render-engine-cycles
render-engine-eevee
render-engine-workbench
render-engine-luxrender
render-engine-renderman
...

Addons
Addons would receive similar treatment. Tagging a question add-on would make all specific addons pop up in suggestions, increasing the likelyhood of users finding the correct tags. For brevity I'd stick to "addon" rather than the official "add-on".

addon-animation-nodes
addon-spaling-tree-gen
addon-sverchok
addon-blend4web
addon-node-wrangler
...

We could later expand to more areas like modifiers or nodes if we deem necessary

modifier-data-transfer
modifier-mesh-cache
modifier-mesh-sequence-cache
modifier-normal-edit
modifier-uv-project
modifier-uv-warp
modifier-vertex-weight-edit
modifier-vertex-weight-mix
modifier-vertex-weight-proximity
modifier-weighted-normal
modifier-array
modifier-bevel
modifier-boolean
modifier-build
modifier-decimate
modifier-edge-split
modifier-mask
modifier-mirror
modifier-multiresolution
modifier-remesh
modifier-screw
modifier-skin
modifier-solidify
modifier-subdivision-surface
modifier-triangulate
modifier-weld
modifier-wireframe
modifier-armature
modifier-cast
modifier-corrective-smooth
modifier-curve
modifier-displace
modifier-hook
modifier-laplacian-smooth
modifier-laplacian-deform
modifier-lattice
modifier-mesh-deform
modifier-shrinkwrap
modifier-simple-deform
modifier-smooth
modifier-surface-deform
modifier-warp
modifier-wave
modifier-explode
modifier-ocean
modifier-particle-instance

What do you guys think, is this worth the trouble? Any better naming schemes or different ideas?

Render Engines:
The renaming of the render engine tags is mainly related to reducing the misuse of the rather generically named blender-render tag. Whether all the other render engine tags need renaming because of this, I don't know. I'm certainly not against having all the tags be consistent, but if there's no ambiguity with the other tags, then maybe they don't need renaming and only the blender-render tag needs to be looked at (whether that's adding 'render-engine' to the tag or something else). I think this is my general opinion of the other tag categories as well.
Add-ons:
Again, I am pro-consistency, but at the minute it's only the sapling-addon that is the odd one out of the add-on tags and most of the add-on names are unique enough that they are not being confused with other tags very often. Maybe it will become an issue if there are more generically named add-ons in future.
(If we do go ahead of this I'm still not particularly convinced that it's worth saving a single character by omitting the '-' from 'add-ons', but I don't ultimately mind.)
Modifiers:
There is a lack of consistency here. For example, some tags have modifier in the name (screw-modifier and build-modifier) and some don't. 'build' would certainly be ambiguous without 'modifier' in the name. I actually think this makes the modifier tags the best use case for being consistently renamed.
However, there are some tags which relate to more than just the modifier, e.g. the mirror tag relates to all types of mirroring, not just the modifier. Same with bevel. In these instances will there be a mirror tag in addition to a mirror-modifier tag?
Prefixes vs Suffixes
I still don't understand the advantages you have put forward for prefixes vs the disadvantage of readability. What are the actual usage examples of prefixes helping with sorting order? What example of using the site will lead to it being useful to have tags listed together? I get that prefixes do make tags look visually related and it would make similar tags be sorted together, and it certainly looks neat, but when specifically will this be useful?
TLDR
To sum up, I think:

Modifiers are the best use-case for having a suffix and it is less necessary for other tags. Other categories just need the odd tag fixed.
Tags in a specific category should be consistent. If some tags in a specific category have a suffix, they all should.
We should have suffixes as opposed to prefixes if it is decided tags need them.

"In these instances will there be a mirror tag in addition to a mirror-modifier tag?" Yes in this case I'd say we would have two tags, one specifically for the modifier, one for the Edit Mode operator. One other example would be the Boolean Modifier vs the recently added Edit Mode Boolean Operations

"I get that prefixes do make tags look visually related and it would make similar tags be sorted together, and it certainly looks neat, but when specifically will this be useful?" That it, it is mostly a visual thing, they look better and more consistent. They would also sort together at https://blender.stackexchange.com/tags or when typing in the tag field, rather than be scattered alphabetically. Again it is a minor thing I'm good either way

Well, I disagree that 'looking better' is a good enough reason to go this route. And I also disagree that having tags sort when typing in the tag field is practically useful. If a user types 'render' why is it useful to have the tags grouped together? I mean, again, I get that it does it (although only some of the render tags appear when typing 'render'), but I still don't understand the specific use case? But I guess it doesn't matter as you went ahead with it anyway.

Other than sorting and visual appearance I don't think is a clear winner or advantage of prefixes over suffixes. Either way practically for end users it all ends up seeming ultimately indifferent, since we have synonyms setup. Nothing is written in stone, we can always change them back or rename them again it if we find it somehow harmful anyway

I really don't think that for end users there isn't any difference. Having seen the tags in action it only enforces my thoughts about readability. Personally, I can no longer look at tags at a glance, I have to read past the prefix to get to the actual information in the tag. For me this prioritises appearance over readability.

Switched to suffixes, we loose some visual coherence, but it does gain in readability


text:
Proposal for Rephrasing the Software Bug Close Reason
This has been bothering me for a while, and sitting on the back of my mind for quite some time. I'd like to discuss this with the rest of the community and my fellow moderators.
There are a few things I dislike about our current system messages regarding question closure for being a bug in Blender. I think we could rephrase them slightly to improve clarity and make it a bit more broad to increase scope.
Currently the close reason reads:

This question appears to be about an issue caused by a bug in Blender.
These should be reported to the official bug
tracker.

What I dislike about it:

Sweeps all bugs under the "Official Blender" umbrella
Seems to just push the unwary user directly towards the official bugtracker (despite not doing so)
Leaves little margin for doubt
Makes no attempt to diagnose it is actually a bug
Doesn't account well bugs in addons, or other parts of the environment

I'd like to propose retiring the current one and replacing it with a better one. I'll post a proposal below.

I'd like to rephrase it to something along the lines of

This question appears to be about issues caused by a software bug or
error. If you confirm this to be the case, consider reporting it to
the corresponding
author in the
appropriate bug tracker.

I think it transmits a bit better the concept that:

There are other places to report bugs other than the official bug tracker
It may or may not actually be a bug in Blender itself
If that is the case, then it should be reported to the corresponding author

let me know if you agree with the rephrasing, or post your own answer if you have better wording for this.

In short, I agree! (even if it technically means that the question is then closed, isn't it?)

Yes, still closed, from the user point of view, but hopefully with a bit clearer directions. I'd really like to also rephrase the post this links to, but I lack the time and energy at the moment.

Sounds like a good proposal to me.

I think it is important to keep some assertiveness and certainty in the message. Otherwise, you leave a lot of decision-making to users that don't necessarily have the confidence or knowledge to know whether they are indeed concerned by the closing message and what to do about it.

@RobertGützkow Could you look at my comments in the other answer?

@quellenform Should we link directly to the official tracker, or our own guide first?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos To have better control over the content, I would say to refer to our own guide first. ...Who knows what awaits us in the future.

Agree, I was veering more towards that option as well. That makes sense to me.

@RobertGützkow I've submitted a draft for your review at https://blender.stackexchange.com/admin/flags/site-specific-close-reasons

@quellenform Could you guys take a look when you get a chance? Feel free to edit whatever you feel needs improvements

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Thank you for editing this item! It looks good to me. Do I need to set any action or can you put this online?

Thanks Quellenform. I think you have to approve the revision at the link above. There should be an Approve  button to the right on he Actions column. Mine is greyed out because I'm the author, but yours should be clickable

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos The approve button is also greyed out for me.

Strange. @RobertGützkow Could you check now?

@quellenform It may have been cause by having reached the site limit for custom close messages

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Yes, I think you're right, and that's how I understood it: first one of the existing options must be deactivated, and then another can be activated. Could a CM possibly increase the limit?

No, I don't think they can, its a site wide imposed one if I'm not mistaken. If it is possible at all might need escalation to site admins, not sure. I removed the old one now, so I think you can vote now.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos It works now. I've approved the new one.

After these two topics, I also thought there is something wrong. Addons are mixed in, there isn't much help being done, ... Posters are kinda left alone with a door slammed at their nose.
I was thinking perhaps we should have two different messages for whether it's a Blender bug or a third party addon / software bug?
That being said, I think Blender's bug message is actually fine ; it's when we use it too broadly that it becomes clunky. Namely, when we use it for a non-blender bug or when we are not even sure it's a bug. I think that's when there is an issue.
Hence, a new message that is formulated for both Blender and non-Blender bugs, and links to the official bug report documentation instead of our current BSE link. As that official documentation really does a great job of explaining everything, what is actually a bug, how to report bugs for Blender or addons, which data to include and how, ...

This question appears to be about an issue caused by Blender, or a third-party software or addon. These should be reported to their respective bug tracker. Please look at the following page to learn how to do so:
Process/Bug Reports - Blender Developer Wiki

And ideally, we as good Blender citizens could take the time to comment the link to the actual bug reporting place if it's a third party.

While I agree with most of what you said, unfortunately Stack Exchange imposes only three custom close reasons for sites, beyond the network wide ones. We already have "Too Localized", About Hardware" and "Bug Report", so sadly we've have to do away with one of those to introduce a new one which doesn't seem reasonable. I do like the idea of linking to the official bug report guidelines, but given the broader scope of the close for both official and third party bugs, we'd have to do so carefully. Could you suggest a proposal with this in mind?

Just updated, let me know how it goes.

Structure wise seems mostly fine, I'd do some minor adjustments but that's it. I'm unsure about linking directly to the wiki, it may unintentionally encourage third party bugs to be incorrectly reported to the official bug tracker. I'd like to hear what the other mods have to say.

The documentation specifically mentions that addons bugs must be reported using the addon's own Report A Bug button, so unless a specific addon is made without it, there shouldn't be any issue here. If we think things needs to be made clearer, we can always propose a change ;)

I asked the other mods about this. So far Quellenform commented on my answer below, and also prefers linking to our guide first, which gives us more control. From there we can link to the official guide. Maybe Robert has a different say.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Either approach is fine by me. The benefit of linking our own page is that we can provide additional information not included in Blender's wiki. The benefit of Blender's wiki is that it is the official source on how to report bugs.

I've submitted an initial draft for review. Feel free to improve in any way you can


text:
What's the tag [project] for?
I was reading a question and noticed it was tagged with project. Looking further I see 65 questions tagged with it, 28 unanswered. There's no description for this tag, but it seems to be used mainly for asking about blender Projects and projecting stuff onto models (texture, geometry, etc).
Shall we split this tag into 2, perhaps blender-project and projection or projecting to avoid confusion? (or retag it to other existing, more popular tags I might not be aware of)

I'd encourage you to post your proposed solution for the tags as an answer so other people can vote what to do with them.

there seem to be some developements in the area of ]project management](https://developer.blender.org/D16288) underway, answer updated.

It seems like one of those tags that "crept in" and discretely stayed around despite being unwanted.
As it stands I agree with your assessment, its meaning is unclear as you stated.
Both of your proposed uses seem unwanted to me as well, those sound like "meta-tags" they don't really tell you anything about the question and aren't very useful for categorization either.
Technically speaking, virtually all questions here are in some form about "Blender-Projects", and the tag isn't really elucidative about the question content.
I'd reserve this tag for some later time when Blender actually has some form of "Project Management" and a concrete concept of what an actual "Project" really is. In the stricter sense of a collection of related files, folders or content all pertaining to some common final finished product.
The use of "Project" as verb "to project" something over a surface seems too specific and abstract to warrant a dedicated tag. It really doesn't help categorize a question in any meaningful way and should not exist. Mentioning the word in the body of the question should suffice for searching purposes.
I'd vote for removing the tag entirely, it doesn't seem helpful in any way.
Once again this seems like a community decision, so I'd encourage anyone else to post their suggestions as questions and let the voting decide the outcome.
As of 10 October 2022 there seems to be the first steps towards project management in Blender with the introduction of the concept of a "Blender Project" in the task Basic Blender Project Support (experimental feature), for which this tag would seem most adequate, maybe in the form of project-management or project-manager depending on how the feature ends up implemented.

I agree with your answer, so I won't post mine with tag suggestions as you asked - perhaps someone more knowledgeable can come up with more relevant tags if they think there would be any.

@Luciano If you still want to be involved later on, and we do decide eliminating the tag is the way to go, then you can help remove the tag entirely by retagging existing questions with something else more fitting, or just deleting the tag all together.

sure, let me know whenever that happens


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Flag declined on "not an answer"
I flagged an answer as "not an answer"
Why isn't the animated object moving in the final video?
That answer is OP trying to add an edit to the question, why was the flag denied?

thanks, converted to edit

I’m voting to close this question because it no longer up to date.


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How to access starred questions
When I find helpful question that I might need to read the answer to it later, I check the star, I tried to find a way to access the questions that I starred but couldn't find the link.
Is there a link to questions starred by user?

This is in the favorites tab on your profile under Activity.

Thanks for your answer! couldn't find it among all the other links, must be age.


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How can reputation points be used?
Except for Bounties, is there any other "functional" use of reputation points? I'm not asking about privilege, my question is about the direct benefit that a user can get by having more reputation points, that allows him/her to get better answers to his/her own or other users questions (as in bounties) or helps her/him directly achieve a better educational level of Blender.

Does rep "directly achieve a better educational level of Blender," nope.
It is possible that when you have more rep your questions will be looked at more, but still unlikely and about the most benefit you could get.
So no rep has, and isn't meant to have any bearing on the educational value of the site.
Reputation is a measure of trust (as one way to put it) or knowledge, not only in blender, but also the SE system; and nothing more. It was never built to help or hinder, you or anyone else from learning from the site.
So if you don't care about the higher privileges, and are happily learning and using BSE now, then there is no reason for you to try to get more rep.
(An interesting side note though, SE has become so big and influential that having an account with useful activity and high rep actually is a bonus when looking for a programing job. Who knows, maybe BSE will play a role like that for blender in the future.)
< joke> In the mean time, you could always go to the prize page and spend some of your rep. < /joke>

"then there is no reason for you to try to get more rep." Generally most helpful actions on this site reward you with rep, technically, saying that means don't do anything helpful. :P

@Lukaash That certainly isn't the way it was meant to be taken! :) More for the people that actively try to get rep (because they need a bigger number).

@Lukaash "Don't try to get more rep" != "Don't get more rep". Just because you aren't using the site for the rep doesn't mean you won't end up with some :)

@David Don't worry, I know, was more just saying for sarcastic purposes. :)


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Suggesting adding a button/link for uploading .blend file above the text box
How/where do I upload my .blend file comes up all the time. I suggest adding a button/link to http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ for uploading a .blend file above the text box with the other options like B, Italic, Hyperlink, etc...

There are probably technical limitations at play here, not sure the editor toolbar is modifiable on a per-site basis, but I 'd vote for this yes. Along with a button to insert the <kbd> formatting tags

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos We have a user script for a <kbd> button, in case you weren't already aware of it.

There's also a user script which adds a blend-exchange button.

I use Vivaldi Browser which has a nice Insert Note feature, one of which is this keyboard markup, which I use to insert that snippet, but a userscripts sound pretty neat too. Definitely gonna check those out.

I think this is a great idea, but we'll need to get SE to add this. We don't have control over much of the help center content.
I propose adding something like this at the end of the "how to ask" page:

Help us help you
  If your question involves troubleshooting strange behavior,
  the fastest and simplest way of finding the answer is often by providing a blendfile and/or screenshots for others to examine.

And something like this to the ask question page (à la codegolf):

How to Ask
Is your question about blender behaving differently than expected?
Chances are, the fastest way to find an answer is by providing a blendfile for others to examine. If your file is especially large or you don't wish to share its contents, try to pare it down by deleting extraneous objects and/or replacing the actual meshes with placeholders.

Please feel free to edit these and improve wording etc, or propose your own in another answer.

Hm, I just noticed the question was mainly about the buttons directly above the textbox, not the help on the side.. I don't think there's much chance of getting anything official in the textbox buttons (we've tried before, but we haven't even got an official <kbd> button). However we might be able to get text added to the help/ask question sidebar, which IMO would be the next best thing.

That would be the next best thing. A lot of new users simply arn't aware of http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ and that sharing their .blend is helpful in a lot of ways.

Doesn't the wording of that first (and possibly the second) help message go against the general idea that not all questions need a blend and that ideally we would rather answer a well-worded, illustrated question without downloading a file, save for the cases where they really are required? I feel the question was more about letting the user know where the best place to upload a file was, not indicating that uploading is always the best option.

e.g. "If you need to add a blend file to your question use blend-exchange...etc."

@RayMairlot Edited to add emphasis to the "if your question involves troubleshooting"

So now we will don't need to remind users to: "Please upload file to blend-exchange..." but "Please read How To Ask page to see how to upload file to blend-exchange". It's better then nothing but I can't see this as a solution. Too often users whom upload file to random hostings also show in different ways that they didn't see any help page before asking question. Or Search box. Or Google. Maybe just something short and clear in sidebar on ask question page as "If you need to upload blend file use blend-exchange..." and there give instructions how to prepare file.

I simply cannot understand how adding for example a simple link with text could be such problem :/


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Non-mod Steward Badge: Keep Reviewing or Don't
For those of you who don't know, I have been very active on the Review Queues lately, achieving Top Reveiwer of the Day almost every day by a wide margin. This means that I am currently 80 First Posts away from a Steward badge.
It occurs to me that I will likely be the first non-moderator to achieve this badge, and this sparked a question in my mind. It makes sense for someone like David to continue reviewing long past his Steward badges because he is a moderator. However, as a non-mod, perhaps I should step aside at 1000 and let other users reach 1000 themselves.
Should I continue reviewing past 1000 reviews or should I step aside to let other users achieve what I might soon?

Granted getting a gold badge was a good incentive there's no reason to stop. Tho not in the diamond sense you are a moderator as you have certain privileges the average user doesn't and as such should exercise them as such. This site is curated and run by us the community, not everyone will set such a goal and as long as you're helping to clear the queues and guide new users, that is always welcome and appreciated. Perhaps set a new steward goal in another queue, some users stick to specific tags or queues. I personally focus on flags (lots), troublesome users, low quality content and spam.

Note that badges are mainly there to encourage good community service.  IMO nothing should be done just to get a badge, doing something for the sole purpose of getting a badge is called farming and is forbidden.  Badges are there to show off devotion to the site and community, they're not "objectives".  The purpose of reviewing is to enrich the site, not to get a badge, so by all means, go on reviewing!

step aside to let other users achieve

@DuaneDibbley I have, but I would encourage you to continue. As long as your taking your time, go review everything, if you want ;-) p.s. Get better!

First off congratulations on doing so many reviews and so quickly! Steward badge in 7 months is quite something!
So long as you are doing good reviews, and not just hammering on the buttons to get the badge, then there is no reason at all that you should stop*.
If you want to keep reviewing, then keep reviewing!
(Top reviewers on SO have over 45K reviews in one queue!)
SE actually does has review limits (20 per queue per day), that is all SE does to rate limit users; there is not max cap.
There is no reason why you should sop at 1000 reviews. I do not think SE ever designed it so that users feel that they should stop. (That would be quite counter intuitive) this is a community run site, if the most active users stop running the site what will happen?
Fun fact, moderators as part of the job description are not required to do reviews.
That by design, as part of the reputation system, is left to the general users so the mods only have to deal with the emergency situation stuff AKA "flags."

* Only reason to stop is so David ♦ could remain in first :)

Just wanted to say thanks for this great answer and letting you know that I will continue reviewing past 1,000 (just earned my Steward Badge; Yay!). I'm not sure I'll ever pass 45k, as that would be nuts, especially considering the size of our site. Once again, thanks!


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Additional Reputation for Upvoted Questions
It just occurred to me that questions that are upvoted more than others are often harder to answer. Therefore, perhaps, a user who provides an accepted answer should get +1, +2, or some other small amount of reputation as bonus per upvote on the question for answering a more "difficult/liked" (upvoted) question.
Anybody agree?

It is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure of your premise that questions with more UVs are harder to answer.
The odd tide of votes come and goes, I sure don't know why some things get UVed so much and not others.
I can for sure say that UVs on a question have no correlation to the difficulty of the question.
Also UVs on questions should not indicate the popularity of a question; views do that. Now it is true that when a question is popular, it gets a lot of views and thus more UVs. But UVs are a measure of how many people found that post useful, not "liked" as in facebook popular.
Take this question as an example; it is about a little known feature, and has only gotten 650 views in 2 years (not a lot). Surely you can't say that it accumulated many UVs because of its popularity, and it sure is not a difficult thing to fix.
In fact some of my most UVed answers are answering simple questions.
How to convert a single vertex into a plane within a mesh?
How to Model a Keyboard key?
Is there a way to make comments in the node editor?
See Why is voting important? and What is voting up?; they make it clear that when you vote it represents much more then just, for example "you liked the picture," but rather you are playing a part in the whole site wide sorting of content best to worst.

However, after saying all that, if you could find a metric to find the truly difficult questions and award good answers a bonus I would be for that.
It might be something like unanswered for more then 3 weeks with more then 4 UVs on the question and less then 100 views, then the bonus kicks in.

I do have quite a bit to say, so bear with me if it takes a while to type (using the mobile app). The first several things all blend into one: What you suggest in your last paragraph is not at all what I meant, but also, in my opinion, a much better idea (sorry for being unclear). What I was suggesting was a normal accepted answer grants the answerer +15 rep. What I was suggesting was a 0 or <0 upvote question would give an accepted answer +15 rep. A 1 upvote question would give an accepted answer +17 rep. 2 upvotes --> +19 and so on, and so forth.

Second, you are very correct in saying that upvotes are not a particularly accurate way of measuring a question's difficulty; it was simply what came to mind first. A better metric might be something like what you suggested or something like the following. A DP (Difficulty Point [theoretical]) would add +1 rep to the usual +15 for each of the following. 1.) Asker's rep / 1,000 rounded to nearest 1 (roughly +1 for each 1,000 rep that the asker possesses [makes sense because people w/ more rep/more experience often ask better questions]).

2.) +1 for each 5 comments (more comments probably means more difficult things that need to be explained). 3.) +2 for every other answer (if there is only one answer, it's the best, the worst, and everything else. If there are five answers and it's accepted, it's probably the best for that particular case). I'm done now (yay).

@ShadyPuck you have an interesting and intriguing idea, yet I kinda doubt that we will ever see this on an SE site.Just because I dont know if there is a good way to create the definition for what a difficult question is. Propose it on the main meta, but just a warning you probably will be met with DVs.

I think I will. I'm not sure I should care about DVs, though, because I don't have an account on it yet. Why should people DV it, out of curiosity?

@ShadyPuck That is just the norm on other large SE sites, SE and the main meta definitely have a tenancy to down vote posts a lot.

Ah, okay. Noted.


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Making Mouse Icons
How do you make the icons like in David's bio?

Like this:
 RMB
 <kbd>![RMB][RMB] RMB</kbd>

  [RMB]: https://i.sstatic.net/LPwD4.png (Right Mouse Button)

The mouse icon is simply an image, embedded via markdown syntax just like any other image.
I and some other users have written a userscript which allows these and other <kbd> buttons to be inserted with a single keyboard shortcut.

The links for each icon are as follows:
 RMB https://i.sstatic.net/LPwD4.png
 LMB https://i.sstatic.net/FwrAW.png
 MMB https://i.sstatic.net/OASpJ.png
 MW https://i.sstatic.net/v1vyT.png
The icons originate from the wiki, but it was decided during the development of the userscript to host them on imgur in case the wiki versions changed.

Perfect. Thanks!

Hey! wouldn't I of been better to answer this one... :)

@David heh.. :P


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Blend-exchange not working(Please accept the terms and conditions)
Blend-exchange won't let me upload my file despite me accepting the terms of service

Please add the OS and browser version that the error is occurring in.

google chrome Version 67.0.3396.99 (Official Build) (64-bit) I am doing this on a windows laptop

Try removing the # sign and everything after it from question url.

That worked thank you


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Can you add files to comments?
Is it possible to add .blend files or images to comments? I'm having a bit of difficulty with somebody's answer to my question, and I'd like to give them my .blend file or a screenshot to help them help me out.

If the screenshot is related more to the question than to the answers or if the screenshot will help other users answer your question, then I think editing the question and adding the image is the best thing to do. Same goes for blend files. Otherwise, use any of the available markdown editors to upload the image to imgur, get the link and add it to the comment using [Text](Image Link).

Related: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/985/599


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Is there a feature that could be developed that would allow for a question to be marked as answered, without an actual posted answer?
There are Questions that at times get answered by the original individual who had asked the question. However, they did not actually provide an Answer entry to their Question. The context that indicates that this question has been answered/solved is in the comment thread of the question.
Such as this question.
Is there a way to vote that this has been answered?
I keep running by it on the "unanswered" filter when I look at questions to see if I can offer help, and items like these will keep popping up (even though they have an answer).

Short answer, no. SE will not have another system to mark "answered" questions that do not have an answer.
Now what to do in case like this one?

If a long time has passed since the "answer" comment, then just write an answer yourself. Give credit to the user that posted the comment, but feel free to actually answer the question, and make it better.
If it is one of these where the OP comes by at some point and says "never mind I did so and so, and it works now," then Vote to close it as "Too Localized" (close > off-topic because > Too Localized).

For this specific question, I closed it as a dup.
Lets say that it was not a duplicate, there is really only one thing left to do - answer it. There is no good comment to use as a source for an answer, so this answer would be new and totaly mine.
Now if you don't feel like writing an answer for the question, then there is nothing to be done to take it out of the unanswered list (because it is unanswered.)
Think of someone coming from google, they are not expected to dig through the comments to see what the OP did.

Answers should be in the answer section.


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An argument for allowing the 2.8 tag
I've been using SE for years now. As a long-term user, I always try to search for existing questions instead of immediately asking a new one, as is expected.
Now that I'm learning Blender 2.8, I find it very difficult to find questions that are relevant because the majority of relevant answers are for 2.7 and before. As a simple example, when searching vertex weights, the first 5 answers are for the older version before I get a relevant answer for 2.8. However, if I were allowed to specify with a tag: [2.8] vertex weights, I would only get answers for the version I'm looking for. That's the point of having tags, correct? After all, tags are defined as:

"Tags are used to categorize questions so that it's easier to search or browse through all the questions on the website"

I'm not advocating for small incremental tags for every minor release. I'm not asking for tags for 2.8.1, 2.8.2, 2.8.3... that would be cumbersome and inefficient, as mentioned before. However, the difference in the software between pre- and post-2.8 is extensive. The new version is an entire new monster, and the answers that applied to one version no longer apply to the other.
StackExchange allows a distinction between windows-7 and windows-10. Why can't we? I hope the phrase "version tag" doesn't automatically get shut down without consideration. I know this has been discussed before, but these discussions took place before the program experienced such a radical update. As you can see here, the accepted answer of not allowing 2.8 tag has been gradually losing traction now that 2.8 is in its stable release.

https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=2.8+tags

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Not sure what the link to those search results is supposed to mean. Out of those 9 results, only 3 are relevant questions on the matter (the rest are answers), and I purposely discussed and linked to each one of those 3 in my question above. To reiterate my concern: "I hope the phrase 'version tag' doesn't automatically get shut down without consideration."

Just pointing out that it has been discussed several times already with no conclusive decision so far, veering towards not having that tag

Correction: "the answers that applied to one version sometimes no longer apply to the other".

I agree with you, lets do it.
The main arguments I'm aware of against having a version tags are:

It's messy. Almost every question on the site is eligible for one of these tags.

Yes, perhaps having the same tag on nearly every question from now until 2.9 releases sometime in 2 or 4 years seems silly, but I think the improved search-ability is worth it. Tags are used for SEO, so there's a good chance it'd benefit outside searchers as well as power users searching on SE.

It invites "tagging the answer"; answers should be updated to be version agnostic anyway.

It may be unrealistic to expect to re-tag all our existing questions overnight, but as we've definitely learned by now, updating every 2.7 specific answer to have a 2.8 section also isn't happening any time soon. Version tagging definitely sounds like more realistic way to handle this kind of transition.

Before we eagerly start creating tags and editing, we should discuss convention once again.
Some ideas:

2.8 Very short and clean, but leaves room for users to assume there are/should be 2.81 2.82 tags as well. Also not necessarily obvious it is referring to blender's version number.
2.7x Unambiguously about all versions from 2.70 to 2.79. Fairly clearly a version tag given the context (the description can help) but not totally unambiguous in that respect.
v2.4x Messy and unsightly, but most definitely a version tag.
blender-2.3x Clearly a blender version tag, but long (considering this tag will likely be added to so many questions and will be sorted first a lot of the time, shortness is probably a virtue worth prioritizing).

Personally I'm inclined to go with 2.2x but I'd like to have some consensus before charging ahead.

Here I would like to say that 2.8 would be the best as now most questions are being asked with this version,  the largest changes were made with 2.8 and 2.79 is vastly different from 2.8.

I wonder if using something like 2.8* or 2.8# would help search engines understand the version semantics would cover all 2.81 , 2.82 etc.

Is it really helpful to differentiate between 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7? See my answer for further explanation.

As @RayMairlot said, I don't think we should go back and start categorizing previous versions with 2.7, 2.6, 2.5, ... that sounds like a burdensome task that nobody would want to take on, and it might change expected search results. I was suggesting a simple 2.8 from now onward to filter out "old" answers. This would give us just two easy categories: [2.8] and [everything else as it always was].

@Marquizzo I could get behind only having a 2.8 tag (though I still think that will encourage users to create their own tags if they're using other versions of blender) but I would still like to emphasise that there are plenty of pre 2.8 answers that it would be disadvantageous to filter out because they would answer the question.

Something like 2.8x or 1.x or 2.82x (for a, b, c) is common parlance for version releases. I would be more comfortable with that, since it follows the standards that everyone else does.

The purpose of a version tag may be to help with searching, but I think one of the downsides is that this will filter out perfectly good answers. If someone is using 2.6, but doesn't see any results for a specific query with that tag, they may presume their question hasn't been asked and either ask their question or leave the site, but the question may have been asked and answered, but tagged 2.7.
Will this help new users or limit them? Will they know that questions tagged 2.5 and 2.7 will be just as suitable to them or presume that because there are version tags that there are major differences between those versions? Will we get a mass of duplicate questions because people presume that other questions aren't applicable to them even though they are?
So, ok, we limit the tags to:

2.4 era
2.5 - 2.7 era
2.8+ era

But how do we do that? We either have tags that are unnecessary (2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 will all refer to the same 'era') or... what? A convoluted 2.5-2.7 tag? And as gandalf3 pointed out, how do we make tags unambiguous enough that users aren't constantly making new version tags?
While there are plenty plenty of 2.8 specific questions, there are also plenty that refer to more general topics that have been already answered or answers that contain instructions for 2.79 and 2.8.
I'm not completely against this, but I'm also not entirely convinced that this will be as useful as people think.

Maybe tag synonyms could be used to enforce only 2.4 , 2.5 and 2.8 tags, though it will still certainly confuse users trying to tag questions

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Synonyms could be the answer, but seeing '2.5' when looking for '2.7' would definitely confuse people.

It probably would. We´d have to resort to those "ugly" 2.5-2.61 (I think its when Cycles was introduced) style tags. May be your three categories are enough pre 2.4 era, 2.5 to 2.79 and 2.8*

My original thought was to simply allow the 2.8 tag, not to introduce a comprehensive tagging system for previous versions. That way if you search with no version tags as usual, you'll get all results as usual (so as to not change behavior or expectations), but if you specify [2.8], then you'll get more tailored results. Nobody is going to go back and organize thousands of pre-2.8 questions.

Let's just add 2.8, please.


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Why edit that make easier to understand for new version of blender get rejected?
i would like to understand what make this edit not accepted by community ? https://blender.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/109170
In my opinion it help make thing more understandable as i personally copy the wrong version of the code before realise my mistake was just syntax of blender that changed over time.

Hi thanks for the edit. The answer already covered both versions, you just shuffled things around and switched the order. It doesn't seem to improve the answer content itself on any meaningful way or make it easier to read. Was there any particular reason or concrete goal for that edit?

See When should I edit a question?

I suppose the point here was "To correct minor mistakes or add updates as the post ages" - in that the text of the answer was assuming '2.79' was the "current" version. Swapping it around makes the 'current' (2.8+) method the default with additional info for what it used to be. I suppose it's just a matter of opinion but if the majority of users need the 2.8 syntax then it's arguably better for the version from the edit. That said it would be a massive undertaking to go back and edit all posts to be more 2.8-centric. A compromise would be to add 'In blender 2.79 and below:' instead of edit.

Sometimes If I update a question with a longish script to 2.8, I use the revision link to point back to prior eg for this particular answer  For 2,4 < version < 2.8


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How can I properly invite people to a chat room so I can ask for resources?
I created this chat room since it's not clear to me what's on topic or not in this SE site, and in most sites asking for resources, books, recommendations, ... is not on-topic.
Should I use meta for this? How can I invite people to join? (In both senses: is there an efficient way? what's SE-legal to do in this cases?)

You might try asking around in our main chatroom


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Unable to locate specific question posted by another user
In the last few days, I came across, in my RSS feed for Blender a question that I want to revisit. I did not follow it nor post a comment, but I'd like to return to the post.
The terminology in the question is not what I expected for the objective, and I've forgotten the terms used, which resulted in my scan through the last week of posts returning null.
The images provided by the OP resembled the letter P with fat strokes (1st image) with a second image presenting the letter P with single line strokes. In the vector editing world, it's often called centerline trace, but those terms were not in the original post and may not be applicable.
Scanning the questions posted does not present thumbnails and my RSS feed, which does, will not retrieve older posts without throwing the entire feed off-kilter.
How does one find such a previous post? Do any viewers of this post recall the one in question?

What was the question about? How old is it? Last few days, weeks, a year old, or more?

The question was within the last week, more likely the last three days. The OP started with the "fat P" and ended with the skinny one, but wanted a different result.

Try a google image search?


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Is it possible to post .webm videos on the Blender Stack exchange?
I know how to make .gifs but they have no sounds.
I also know how to make .webs which do have sound.
Is it possible to attach a .webm on a post?

It's not possible network-wide. Only images and .gif animations can be uploaded in Stack Exchange Q&A posts.
Speaking of externally hosted multimedia content, included via embed, this is only possible for YouTube videos on four specific stack exchange sites. Blender.StackExchange seems not to be interested in that feature anyway: see this post.

As I said it somewhere before on meta I will say it again now.
We need .webm support! Without sound.
For the sake of:

quality,
bandwidth (!),
comfort - creation and watching (controls),
smooth playback,
lack of glitches,
editing,
and again bandwidth and quality.

This example has around: .gif ~835kB, .apng ~740kB and .webm ~185kB

.webm is around 80% smaller than .gif in this example.

It's something. Right? Considering over bloated internet this is a big thing.
As much as I personally prefer fully written answer, it is undeniable that there are things that you cannot describe, there are ones that are just clearer with animated proof. We have them, we need them, we will still use them. So why not use  nicer, smoother and considerably smaller way?

I am very much in favour of this. Imgur already convert all uploaded gifs to h264 videos, it also support native video uploads. So even if they don't want to support webm, they can easily support mp4s. Why isn't this being considered?

@OmarAhmad I've no idea. It's 2019 and we are still using ~30 years old technology - just because. I cannot find a single positive why gif's are better than short videos.

I am guessing it is to avoid "video only answers" with "lengthy tutorials", or worse questions that are just a dreadfully long video instead explaining an issue succinctly . But I do agree, some times it is very hard to explain something withing the confines of a 2Mb GIF

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos as I said in my post and proved in my answers, I prefer written ones, but. If we have 2Mb .gif, lets switch to 2Mb .webm. There are only pros to this decision and you cannot fit full tutorial in 2Mb, or can you? :D

Probably not, but I can see many newbies posting videos of "look at my issue", how do I solve this? Like I said, I would holehartedly welcome the change, just pointing out the probable reasons why it hasn't been implemented.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos They can do this now by posting numerous .gifs or just pasting links (like they sometimes do). This we cannot avoid. But we can ease life for ourselves.

Nope. We have no video support.
Further I would caution you on how you use a video. Sure you can make a video put it on youtube and link to it. But that whole video should be supplemental to the written answer. If a video helps explain things (and sometimes it does) then in no way am I saying that you should not have a video, just that the video should not be your answer.
And that is why we do not have any kind of video embed support.

Note that this site also supports animated png files:

However, I might be wrong but the support of apng also depends on the browser.

If you ever want to upload videos, but they are in different formats beside gif, you can go to site Ezgif and convert your mp4 videos to gif.
https://ezgif.com
If you have ffmpeg videos, go to this site below.
https://www.online-convert.com
Choose "Video convertor" and select "Convert to MP4." Upload video and hit "Start converson" button. Don't bother with settings below that.
Once you have created MP4 copy, go to Ezgif and convert it to gif.
At Ezgif, you can crop videos, optionally.


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Where to ask questions about animations created with OpenToonz?
Recently a new open source project was created called OpenToonz. OpenToonz is software for creating 2D animations (whether small and low res or full length feature films with high res 8k frames (See "Studio Ghibli". One of the main users of OpenToonz.)
Where on stackexchange could I ask questions about 2D animation and OpenToonz? Would this stackexchange be a place to ask (I'm pretty sure the answer is no. given the FAQ/about/name-of-the-url)?
I tried superuser.com but didn't get any response. I saw graphicdesign.stackexchange has an animation tag but the description of the tag IMO sounds like small animations or single frame type questions.
Maybe a new animation stackexchange needs to be created?
(For general animation questions whether by hand or by OpenToonz. Or maybe limit it to only 2D animation.)

This is not the place, but the project sounds interesting. I'm not sure a suitable SE site exists yet, so you might consider proposing a new one

@gandalf3 hey for the Blender Area51 proposal what section did you put it under: arts, recreation, technology, professional, etc?

It's up to you, what category do you think your idea of the site fits under most? (perhaps have a look at the faq if you haven't already)

Yes it would definatly be off topic here on this site. We are for everything blender.
As you correctly discovered there is no good SE site now.
I would say try on Graphic Design they do have some animation questions using after effects and adobe animate, which are similarish.

Thanks for the help. I will accept but I also agree with @gandalf3 comments, in addition to your answer, that creating a new SE is also a possible way forward.


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Why are bots surfacing lots of old questions so that they show up in Active? Should they?
In the Active questions list (which is the default view when going to the top level blender.stackexchange.com site) there appear to have been recently a lot of old questions, by which I mean they were asked from 1 to 5 years ago, sometimes answered, rarely even with an accepted answer (though I can't find one of those right now).
From what I can tell from the information I have available, a bot has edited something about the question and that's why it's in the active list again.  I cannot as far as I know see what's changed.
Here is an example: one example of this
and here is another: another question link
Why is this happening, and is it the intended behaviour?  If it's just bots improving old questions in some automatic and hard to tell way, should they even be put in Active?  There's a case that they're not actually active after all.

Yes, this is intended. See e.g.:
https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4674/why-does-community-make-old-questions-active-again
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/412115/should-the-community-bot-stop-bumping-dead-questions

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99672/community-should-discriminate-more-when-bumping-unanswered-questions might be helpful as well to explain what Community ♦ is doing, and why.

I searched for this!  I used old and bot and various other search terms and I did not find it.  Sorry!


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What is wrong about answering with a link?
In this question: Will increasing samples reduce fireflies?
Someone answers with a link to an article, and even tough the answer is helpful, some are saying that is not ok to answer with a link, what's the reason behind this?

If the link goes down, the answer does too. Answers should contain enough information to stand on their own without links, but also having supporting links is good.

Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?
Are answers that just contain links elsewhere really "good answers"?
Why is linking bad?
Should there be a policy about 'One-Link-Only-Answers'?
Please define “link only answer”
end of example answer

OK so even though all those links may very well answer your question. I did not answer your question. You had to go somewhere else to get the information. Thus it is a link only answer.
Why are LOAs (Link Only Answers) bad?

Links break, period. then you are left with nothing.
It is not an answer, it only points to the answer (or where you might find the answer)
It is super lazy.

Nothing you can do to prevent problem one. On BSE we have had wide spread link rot. cgcookie changed all their links which broke them all; and blender changed the manual (twice) which broke all the links. The internet is not forever. So don't post just a link.
If I was at Disneyland and asked you "How do I get to Cars land?" I would much rather you say "Go down that path it will be on your right", then "Go back to visitor services then can tell you." Sure I can get my answer from your link but there is an extra step that should not be there.
Now yes being lazy is kind of a problem. Sure if you are about to leave to get on a plane for siggraph and you only have time to post a link, then yes that comment is better then nothing.
But think of the OP, and then all the others that will come after the OP looking for the same answer. If you just took the time to write a bit in your answer, so that the link is now supplemental, it would save so much time for all those that follow. Also it would not pollute the internet with yet another useless post that will be deleted when the link goes dead.

Lets pretend the little blue text was not at the end of that line in the "answer" above - the link was dead.

BlenderGuru has a nice article about how to get rid of fireflies here

I now know nothing more about whether or not increasing the samples will eliminate fireflies then I did before I asked the question. Essentially it is not an answer.
Us mods are instructed to delete (or what I do, convert to comment) any link only answer - even if it is UVed and accepted. They are just not answers.
Now don't get me wrong I have no problem with links. Links should be used in answers to provide further information. But if all you are going to do is post a link, then do it in the comments. (Like I did here)

Quote relevant material to keep the user from having to click on every link given to get basic information.

Copied from How do I write a good answer to a question?


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kbd shortcuts and unwillingness to comply
Related to comments on How to move points proportionally to keep edge flow good? , which are getting out of hand and inappropriate to where they're occurring.
I like helping people.  However, I am only willing to go to so much effort to help people.  I don't go to effort to do things that I think are a waste of time unless I'm getting paid, right?
I like to provide information that people would find useful, including keyboard shortcuts for Blender operations I reference.  I am not going to use  tags because it's tedious and I don't see any point to it.  So my question is, what would the BSE community prefer?
1) I walk away and stop answering questions.
2) I continue to answer questions but provide no keyboard shortcuts.
3) I provide whatever keyboard shortcuts are convenient for me and people that care about keyboard shortcuts can edit my posts as they wish.
To me, 3) seems like the best option for people using BSE.
Obviously there are going to be differences of opinion on this, I'm looking for something approaching community consensus, which I'll respect.

In my opinion you're approaching this too pedantically. Markup is for visual convinience to read and understand what's written. For example in original text of your linked answer shortcuts can be misinterpreted as description for that question (A, B, C as designating triangle and A as shortcut etc). If you are really bad with putting those markups inline then e.g. write them all caps with pluses in between, like SHIFT+C.

Thanks @MrZak , that is acceptable to me, and I'll do that in the future.

Also look here: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250/guidelines-on-the-usage-of-stackexchange-markup-and-style and here: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/388/button-to-insert-kbd-kbd-for-users maybe this could be less tedious for you.

As someone who absolutely overuses <kbd> tags wherever possible, I would hate to type them manually. cgslav already linked it, but I can't emphasize enough how useful I find the kbd insertion userscript.  (disclaimer: I helped write it, so I may be biased)

First off the comments you linked to are not inappropriate or out of hand. A user asked you to make your answer better by adding <kbd>. Suggesting improvements is one of the designed uses of comments.
Now on to your problem.
Unless you are planing on writing answers that just names the tool and not how to get to it; then I think you will find the <kbd> is much quicker.
Lets take the "Show Hidden" tool as an example. (I'm sure you know this tool, and use it all the time. However if you do not know how to get to it (and I always assume someone reading my answers will not) then you will have to show them:

AltH

Or

From the 3D view header Mesh > Show/Hide > Show Hidden

Which would you prefer? (I do both)

To get the best benefit out of your answers you should have the shortcuts wrapped in <kbd> tags. We even have something of a style guide for them.
It really is not that much work. I have typed <kbd> 1,830 times in my posts (and that is just on BSE).  It's something that takes very little extra effort and almost no extra time, yet makes the post much better.
Just do it.

If all that did not convince you, then yes your option three is the least bad.

You don't use the userscript? :(

I walk away and stop answering questions.

That would be an act of a little kid. Looking at the comment thread you were far from harassed, people just gave you feedback that kbd shortcuts are better readable and would appreciate you for formatting them.
No one forces you to do anything, format your answers however you like. The best answer gets the upvotes and I think you now know what such answer looks like. It has pictures, gifs, is well worded, structured into paragraphs and among other things has formatted shortcuts.
Putting time into this is not a waste

you save a fellow user's time if your answer doesn't require formatting.
you make better answers that gets you more points and you can brag about them when getting work from clients or when job hunting.

Basically the more effort you put into building this site the more it's users will like you and the better public image you will get. You can even get one level fancier with shortcuts to reach god tier:
⇧ Shift
If you don't care about any of this, that's fine, but I wouldn't count on other people editing your answers to look better when they know you are purposely making them that way.

That said formatting them could be easier, true. Could require less key strokes like > quote, **bold**, *italic*, [link](http://), etc. Something similar like this {Ctrl}+{C} or this <Ctrl>+<V>..
There is this: Button to insert <kbd></kbd> for users, requires browser extension.

My walking away would solve people's frustration when keyboard tags are not used (...) It's not a threat, it's an offer. And you don't speak for everyone on the site.(...) It is clearly something that matters to some people.

You are right that I can only speak for myself. But consider this:
This site is a competition. It's a hunt for points. Regular users on this site want those points - they give benefits (more rights on this site and the bragging I mentioned when looking for work or job). It's the currency here, people give bounties in them.
Something that can be improved is an opportunity to post a competing content. Anyone being frustrated by your answers would be stupid, trust me. If there is someone like that, do not pay attention to them, ignore them, their frustration is their problem and you don't have to solve it by walking away or providing no shortcuts, you don't owe them that.
People commenting (to increase readability of posts) are like people suggesting improvements to a competitor. If you reject those suggestions, it's tedious and not an option for you and the suggested benefits are not worth the effort - they can:

post competing answer (opportunity to get points)
edit yours

If there wasn't the 1st option and voting on answers, I would understand why someone might get frustrated - it would be like someone not conforming to standards of wiki editing for example. But this site is different. There is reward and there is opportunity to compete. Would you be frustrated if your competition did something you think can be done better?
Because of this, it's not your fault if there is someone frustrated with your answer. Some answer is always better than no answer and they can post theirs anytime if they think yours is low quality.
You might even find some benefactor altruistic people here that will edit the shortcuts for you without any frustration of doing work for you to help your answers be more readable and probably get more points. Anyone else can post competing answer.

"That would be an act of a little kid."  Nobody has a responsibility to participate in Stack Exchange.  Don't escalate.  I'm offering people options.

@Nathan The option of you walking away does solve what exactly? Nobody forces you to do anything as far as I am aware.

My walking away would solve people's frustration when keyboard tags are not used, because there would be fewer messages without appropriate tags.  I mean, "solve" is kind of saying it too strongly.  I don't get it, was that not clear?

@Nathan I think you miss-interpret this - no one is frustrated with you, I am not and it would be so sad if anyone else was. There is no reason for it, you did nothing wrong. Walking away would only hurt this site, not help anyone, that's why I called it act of a little kid - solves nothing and it's a threat. Sure you do get constructive feedback in this community, people suggest what you could improve - it's all in a friendly manner and intend, supported by arguments. This is healthy, helps you grow, it helps me grow, I learned so much from others and their suggestions.

No, you misunderstand.  It's not a threat, it's an offer.  And you don't speak for everyone on the site.  I'm glad you're not frustrated.  Don't think that because you aren't, no one else is.  It is clearly something that matters to some people.  It is not something I intend on doing.  When you're in a situation like that, offering to walk away is the adult thing to do, not the childish thing.

@Nathan I too care about how this site looks, true, it matters to me. But if you decide to not listen to the suggestion, that is fine, then people should respect your decision. I would not be mad or frustrated with you, why would I, you don't work for me or anyone else here. I would respect your decision to neglect formatting shortcuts and would leave your answer as is. I would give my upvote to the better answer or submit a competing answer that is better formatted. No one would like to become your personal assistant to improve your posts, I hope you can see that.

Thank you, I'm glad that you respect that.  It's important to me and I appreciate it.  I don't expect anyone to become my personal assistant to improve my posts, but they can feel free to do so if that's something important to them.  Why would I want them to?  I would have to think that keyboard formatting was important to want people to do that for me.


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Community bot closes for the wrong reasons
This is in regards to https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/292724 , which is already closed, so maybe some folks can't see it.
This question quickly gathered a lot of downvotes.  Community bot closed, giving a reason of "abusive or spam."  However, this question is neither.  It's not a good question, but the reasons it's not a good question have nothing to do with either of the reasons offered by Community Bot.
The user is probably being told their question was closed for being abusive or spam, and scratching their head-- or, perhaps, just writing off Blender SE as full of it.  They may not realize that it was a bot that closed the question.  Apparently, there were no comments from any users offering suggestions to the questioner as to how to find out what they wanted to know, just downvotes.  No comments can be left on this question currently (I don't think there are any privileges left for me to earn related to this....)  I suspect that if this post were closed for other reasons, I could comment to offer advice to the questioner-- IIRC, I've done so in the past.
Is it possible to get community bot to be a little less certain about the reasons that a particular post garnered so many downvotes in such a short period of time?  It is not necessarily because a post is abusive or spam.
Note that there is an additional weirdness here-- atm, the post is marked as viewed 4 times, with a score of -6, implying that some downvotes were cast by users who never viewed the question.  I'm not sure exactly where that comes from, maybe the view count resets when the question is closed, but it's definitely weird.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
It all happened while I was absent, I'm only aware of the events because of this post.
As far as I know community bot doesn't erase posts of its own accord, it generally acts on flagged post by other users only.
Looking at the question flag history it was first flagged by Smoke Detector bot as possible spam, then put up for review and confirmed as spam by four other users doing reviews. This is what prompted community bot to erase it.
The fault here (if any) would be from those users who confirmed the post as spam despite not looking like it at first sight. The post however originated from a new account which matched previously known spammer names and also matched some of the same keywords keywords and patterns of previously confirmed unwanted posts.
As for the six negative votes, when a post is flagged as spam the community bot user downvotes the question on the user's behalf (to spare the user the associated reputation penalty for downvoting answers), this is in addition to any optional user cast downvotes, hence why the post appears to have more downvotes than views.

Are users actually capable of confirming SD's suspicions?  It sounds like this is on the basis (primarily) of IP address; are users offered the similar posts to judge and say, "This is the same user"?  Maybe in some cases, we could say, "Yeah, this is just guerilla marketing," but that doesn't seem to be what's happening.  I think that we should expect that when a user has a question deleted, that they try to improve and repost the question, and that such shouldn't be considered as spam, but as how things should be, even though some tries won't reach the target.  Spam is 2+ open questions.

For most spam posts the offense is quite obvious, users can easily identify by simple visual inspection, regular users obviously don't have access to advanced info about the account like IPs or nothing of the sort. The users in question are all low or no rep, "trusted in other communities",  with little involvement in this community. Not sure why they confirmed the flags, either they are benign bot accounts themselves, they are aware of smoke detector insight, or they just arbitrarily confirmed spam flags by "me too" blind flock behavior.

"the community bot user downvotes the question on the user's behalf (to spare the user the associated reputation penalty)" - only downvoting answers cost rep, as far as I know. Will downvoting a question cost reputation?, Why does downvoting an answer cost reputation while questions not?

@MarkusvonBroady True, updated for clarity

The question itself may seem legitimate here (even if its content is questionable).
The reason why the bot deleted the question is because the user behind it had created some accounts with obviously dishonest intentions (some of them have been deleted already) and some (or all) of his posts were actually spam.
So the bot worked splendidly and showed in a very precise way that there has been abuse here before, and in this case that there will be abuse here with the highest possible probability.

To describe the situation a little more precisely:
There are some mechanisms running in the background here, which check the processes according to certain patterns for every (!) action on SE page, in order to be able to detect any misuse at an early stage.
The automated processes remain hidden from the user for the most part, but the information is basically publicly available.
One of these mechanisms is metasmoke.
"metasmoke" is a SmokeDetector, which is run by Charcoal, a group of wonderful and hardworking people whose effort is to keep spam away from SE-networks.
This mechanism operates on SO/SE with two accounts:

metasmoke
SmokeDetector

These two bots converse on Charcoal HQ. SmokeDetector detect and verify posts there and rate them.
In the specific case you mentioned, here's what happened:

Due to the fact that it is currently (still) was possible to post questions/answers here on BSE without having to provide a valid email address and register an account, this site once again fell victim to a certain spam wave. So it was a certain user who continuously created unregistered accounts and thus created a lot of unpleasant content on several SE-networks.
This "user" was recognized by metasmoke due to a certain string in the username, which was meanwhile considered so critical that it was even a blocklisted username.
In addition, this user used certain keywords in several posts previously recognized as spam, which also appeared in the title of this post you mentioned.
Based on this precise (and reliable) assessment, the post was further processed as spam by metasmoke.
Since Charcoal was authorized by the CMs to remove posts in case of spam detection, this bot then acts on its own and removed the post. However, since non-moderators do not have the rights to directly delete a post on SE platforms, the bot acted on behalf of several Charcoal users by assigning a total of six downvotes, which caused this post to be automatically deleted by the BSE community bot.
However, since there are no real page views, the post on BSE did not receive any further views, because the processing (and also a possible manual review) was done fully automatically on a copy of the post in metasmoke's network.
The detection and processing subsequently deleted the post, but not the user. This had to be processed manually by the moderators.

So it may not always seem very clear why a post was deleted, but in almost all cases, metasmoke's assessment is very reliable and helps us keep the site spam-free.
BTW: In the last three days, due to this spam wave, more than 50 posts and users were reliably deleted, which would have otherwise quite harassed this wonderful platform. I therefore stand by the conclusion: The mechanism works very well!


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Is this an acceptable place to ask for feedback on a sculpt? If not what would be a better place?
Feedback from people who know what they are doing would be helpful in getting better, but I do not know a great place to ask for that feedback.

Generally the point of meta is for discussing the site, if that's what your question is.

No BSE is not for Critiques. (See point six What questions should be definitely off-topic?) Any question like you described would get closed as off topic.
You could try in our chat room there is almost always somebody there, but I dont know how much help you will get.
A much better place for feedback is on blender artists. There is a entire thread for Focused Critiques.

Try CG Stack Extchange, I guess that would be the right place to do so, since I've seen a post there requesting feedback, and nobody seems to object: https://computergraphics.stackexchange.com/
Still make sure to ask the right question, as in asking, what do you think is missing? Or should I do it this way? Rather than How do you like it?

On Computer Graphics Stack Exchange a request for an artistic review would be off topic, but a review of code that produces or works with models could be on topic depending on the context. A review of a hand sculpted model would be off topic. As a rough guide, if you're writing software your question is likely to be on topic, while if you're using software it is likely off topic. Research and algorithm questions are also on topic though, so for specific details see the Computer Graphics on topic page.

@trichoplax http://computergraphics.stackexchange.com/questions/2556/what-physical-properties-are-lacking-to-keep-this-3d-scene-from-looking-like-a

I thought that might be the example you were thinking of - it's a good way of seeing that the scope isn't obvious. In that case it's asking about which physical effects need to be included, rather than asking for a review of just the model. Some answers do include criticism of the model though, since that's part of what breaks the realism.

I think that the type of review question that the author of this meta question has in mind would be off topic, but Computer Graphics may well be an appropriate site for some of the people who find this meta question in future. Exactly what is on topic can't be easily summed up in comments, but there's the on topic page and also Computer Graphics chat for anyone with further queries.

Exactly it's a feedback request of a specific aspect concerning an artistic opinion based matter


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Add feature for high reputation users to manually mark as answer?
I've noticed for a while that sometimes someone will answer a new person's question, but that person will forget to mark it as answered, even if they are reminded to. I have a feeling this happens because people just use the site once and once they get the answer they want they never come back. There should be an option for people with high reputation (I.e 3000+) to mark the answer on a question that has been abandoned for ~7 days. Perhaps maybe if someone who posts the answer could request it to be looked at, and see if it was just a neglected answer or not.


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Deleted Account takes my rep?
I saw that someone recently deleted there account and I didn't think much of it, until the next day when I noticed I was missing some rep. It wasn't a lot, only 15, but as just a beginner here at B.S.E. every point counts. So I read into it a little more and came across this:

This removal occurs whenever a user is deleted, unless that user had a very high reputation score.

If I remember correctly the person who there account removed HAD a very high rep, so I'm sure other people were affected or am I just crazy?

the staff use a special deletion that preserves the votes, resulting in no reputation change for those who had been voted on by that user.

Ok I'm not trying to blame "the staff" here but I'm just curious is there ever a reason to not preserve the votes? It seems a little unfair to me.
But like some dead guy said

Life isn't fair

The "dead guy" got me for 15 too.  If only he was a downvoter.

I don't think the dead guy uses blender stack exchange... or does he?

PS just checked and I lost 20.

I have lost 30... but points are not the point !... just curiosity for me... how to know on which questions or answers ?

ok... I have read that now http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1139/how-can-i-delete-my-account

@lemon you can't. All up and down votes are completely private. Only the guys who play around in SE's database could find that.

I also lost about 60 points or so, but not really very concerned about it, just sad to see a good user go.

(First off, I really like it when users research their own questions first. Nice going.)
This "unvoting" may seam unfair but when an account gets removed all votes cast (except in special cases) get removed too, both up and down.
So there actually are cases where you gain rep when a user gets removed.
Believe it or not, I'm actually not part of "the staff" and I don't have access to that special way of deleting a user and keeping the votes. It really is reversed for special cases. (Think something like gandalf3 permanently lost internet in Mordor and wanted his account gone, then the CMs would keep his votes.)
Removing votes cast, is just part of the normal part of when a user gets removed.
Thankfully it does not happen often.
PS if you are curious the user was root see How can I delete my account? for more info.

One more thing, root had very high rep, right? What is considered a "very high reputation" Or am I just remembering wrong?

very high reputation is relative to each site, and I don't even think there is a fixed about that the CMs will say "ok you have 10,001" rep we keep your votes." No, root did not have high rep, more then you but still not high.

I'll remember to bring Galadriel's phial of wifi next time I head that way.. thanks ;)


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Adding Tags Related to Answer
Is it appropriate to edit in tags to a question that relate exculsively to an answer (or the answer of the question?
For example, I answered this question. It is properly tagged with cycles, volumetrics, and texture-coordinates. My answer utilized Animation Nodes, which also has its own tag.
Since the answer (and thus the page) now contain information about Animation Nodes, would it be appropriate to edit in the animation-nodes tag?
I have seen this type of answer occur more often recently, where the solution uses a totally different method than the question was tagged, specifically with animation-nodes, though I'm sure it also applies elsewhere.

No. Tags describe the question. Just because you use X in your answer does not mean the question is about X, nor should it be tagged X.
Should we retag questions with topics proposed in the answers?
Take your example question for instance. Say you added the animation-nodes tag, now I come along (knowing almost nothing about AN) thus I skip over that question entirely.
Or another instance, Its a modeling question. You write an answer using the knife tool, so you add the knife-tool tag. I find it, and now I'm not sure if the OP really wanted to use the knife tool, maybe my boolean answer is not what he is looking for.
We all know there are lots of ways to do things. We should not be retagging questions, essentially limiting the scope of the answers, just because you used tool X.

Thanks for the response! The main Meta link is very helpful.

While I agree with this answer. I still think there is some wiggle room available tho I'm not sure how to best express it or even do this with existing functionality. See my post here some 5 years ago. Hmm. Maybe it's best to just be explicit and say no after all...


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Can I block users from my chat room?
I currently do not have a chat room, but I was wondering, could I block annoying users from my chat room?

To elaborate on what gandalf3 said, no you can not just block a user from your chat room.
Chat room are set up to be public, and in normal rooms there is no mechanism to banish a user from just that room.
The "kick-mute" feature will last (depending on how frequently the user has been kicked) 1, 5, or 30 minutes. So it is not permanent.

Now you can create a restricted room where only people that you let in can talk. That type of room is called a "gallery," only the people you have on the room's access list (and mods) will be able to talk; however anyone can view it.
Those are the only two ways a room owner can control who talks in their room. But there is no way to just block a user from talking.

Yes, as a room owner you'll have the ability to kick/mute users from your room.
For a full list of chat-related abilities and privileges, refer to this answer on meta.