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Why use Blender Stack Exchange over Blender Artists Forums?
Why should users be using Blender Stack Exchange instead the support forum on Blender Artists?
P.S (Would a moderator mind adding this to FAQ?)

Because it's STACK EXCHANGE!!

Let's hold off on FAQing stuff until there's a bit more activity (and site-mods to monitor it).

This site is much more useful to me, as a novice who just wants easily searched questions. I'm so glad it was created.

Apart from the higher signal to noise ratio, and the format difference previously mentioned, I find that the Stack Exchange format is a lot more friendly towards people seeking information but not participating in the discussion.
e.g. drawing from my personal experiences with programming, before there was StackOverflow, researching a topic requires one to wade through pages and pages of forum posts to distill out the best ideas. While the same information is often presented on StackOverflow without the user even have to scroll down past the first screen.
The heavy participation of developers in Blender SE is also awesome. And I hope this continues.
BA is like a lounge, a good place for people to communicate.
SE is like a library, you come here to find the best answer to a particular question.

+1 for your analogy.

The support on Blender Artists wasn't the greatest. Questions and answers were bloated and non-informative, and most questions were not answered. Blender Artist is a forum made more for conversation-like interaction(which is fine, it's just not optimal for Question/Answer format). Stack exchange cuts down on the excess and gets to the heart of the problem: Questions and Answers. It's the best way to get quick answers about Blender.

+1 I agree, the forums are more of a place to showcase artwork and a general discussion area. Alot of the questions asked here would have gotten lost in the mass of threads.

The correct name is Blender Artist s.

@RolandiXor yep, fixed it.

@iKlsR ergo, a lot of questions have already been lost in the mass of threads.

StackExchange does a few things that BlenderArtists Forums doesn't.

Edit posts that need a helping hand (formatting, spelling, content, title) if you have enough points.
See a vote tally, which is the closest you'll get to an objectively graded answer.
It has nice enough syntax highlighting for discussing code snippets.
It uses markdown for markup, nice.
Comments on answers appear directly beneath the answers, and therefore are associated directly with them.
Heavier comment exchanges on a question or answer can turn into their own chat if things get lively.
Answers don't get a chance to go stale, if they include inaccurate information someone (sufficiently bothered by it) will pick up on it and edit it for future searchers.

There's plenty more I'm sure, but these are the main reasons for me.

You can sum it up with a section of the FAQ that says:

"Just questions, just answers."

I say so because on forums, you tend to get a lot of unrelated noise, to a level way beyond what you get in the comments (which can be flagged and cleaned up easily, or voted up when they count). Comments have a tendency to devolve quickly into unrelated banter; StackExchange questions tend to stick to the point.
Forums are not often kept up to date, an no one but the OP of a post or the forum mods usually has editing rights; on StackExchange, anyone can edit and anyone can keep things up to date where it matters.

StackExchange is a curated and evolving knowledge base that can be edited and improved by users who strive to fine tune information. I have personally gained quite a lot since the time i joined it.


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New Users and Answers that should be comments
I have seen some answers that really should be comments, but the users who posted them do not have enough reputation (50) to comment on someone else's post.
What should we do with these kind of answers?  It doesn't seam like they should be voted down or deleted, just moved.
Could we add a way for a user with enough reputation to move another users answer to a comment?
Or what about a voting system, like close votes or re-open votes?

Is there anyway to reduce the amount of the amount of required reputation to post a comment? (This 'answer' is actually an example of this problem. I want to ask a followup question, but it really probably should be a comment.) I understand that spam is an issue, but it seems overly cumbersome for the moderators.

Unfortunately not. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment, you just have to wait until you earn the reputation.

This mechanism is already in place. When you see an answer like that, click the "flag" button and select "it needs ♦ moderator attention > not an answer". Optionally, you can leave a comment explaining why the answer should be a comment. This will alert a moderator1. Moderators can convert the answer to a comment if they see fit.
As far as downvoting, it's probably best not to as long as the answer isn't blatant spam or such.
1 In our case, an SE community manager would be alerted because we haven't yet chosen our pro-tem mods.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Images not displaying
Images do not display on Chrome (and Firefox) anymore, the alt-text shows correctly.

Clicking on their source reveals a page not found.

I'm using Chrome 73 on Windows 8.1 from Berlin, Germany.

Update: The images have been restored, it seems to be a problem somewhere between my router and the internet provider.

The images are hosted on i.stack.imgur.com, and I can see them alright. Is your ISP/firewall/office/whatever blocking imgur.com?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this question is too localized in its current form and is unlikely to be applicable outside of a very narrow context.

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


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What can we do to reduce the misuse of the 'blender-render' tag?
In my opinion the blender-render tag has become problematic.
This tag has become (or always has been) one of the most misused tags we have. People are adding this tag to new questions simply because it mentions rendering and not because it relates to the actual render engine. I have this as one of my watched tags so I edit the tag out as the questions come in or leave a comment when it is unclear, but it is being misused nearly every day and sometimes more:
(Note: These are just my edits of the tag, I don't know if there are more by other users.)
Feb 2nd:

Is it possible to convert any mp4 file to hdri format to use in blender background
problem with insetting faces

Feb 3rd:

Grease Pencil Crash when Draw
Transparent background not working with smoke domain

Feb 4th:

Rendering from command line script that allows specifying which camera to use / render with
Nodes, undesired pixel/glitch effect

Feb 5th:

Why does my render layer node not have the expected number of outputs?
Missing elements while rendering an image in Blender

Feb 7th:

Strange lightning - what is wrong with my model?

Feb 9th:

Rendering Black Screen

Feb 10th:

Blacklight CFL Bulb Effect?

Feb 11th:

Blender 2.81a cannot render anything
Blender crashing [Update on my old post] (came in as I was writing this)

The tag was actually renamed from blender-internal to blender-render because originally it was being misused. You can see the discussion here. I don't know how badly it was being misused at the time, but it's pretty bad at the minute. It was brought up at the time (in the comments, by David) that this could turn out to be a problem, and I think I can safely say that it has.
I don't entirely know what the solution is - whether changing it back to 'blender-internal' would at least reduce incorrect tagging, I don't know. I don't entirely like this option as the official name is 'Blender-Render', but I don't know what it could be renamed to. Even if we decided that this is a special case where it should have 'engine' in the tag (blender-render-engine), new users would probably still misuse it, thinking it refers to all render engines in Blender.
Regardless, I think we need to discuss what could be done to reduce its misuse.

The problem seems to stem from the fact that the name uses very generic and common terms, like "Blender" and "Render". Bewildered new users often resort that tag when they know no better. Sacrificing accuracy and naming it something like [internal-render] or [internal-render-engine] would probably help reduce false positives by making the tag suggestion pop up less often.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I have a slight preference for 'blender-internal' because that is at least it's unofficial name (again, I don't know quite how badly it was being misused originally, but it's hard to imagine it was worse than this).

I wonder if you should somehow enforce some form of categorization into our tag names. Something like [render-engine-internal], [render-engine-cycles] [render-engine-EEVEE], [render-engine-luxender] and expando to other areas like [addon-sapling-tree], [addon-animation-nodes], [addon-tissue]. It'd probably help this issue considerably

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I definitely agree that we should have a standard format (in the form of an answer on the relevant meta questions, which can serve as a reference for new tags). I would probably suggest having either render-engine and add-on as a suffix though, simply because it's slightly more readable. Or is there some use to having it as a prefix?

I suggested a prefix for sorting purposes, when browsing or listing related tags would be bundled together. Downside is of course readability. In terms of search suggestion it seems to make no difference, the engine seems to support fuzzy search and non contiguous matches

Do you think that will be something that will need to be done though? Trying to think of times when that will be of benefit and whether that number is great enough to sacrifice readability.

"Addon" seems to be a recognized word, I'd ditch the hyphen. Could we somehow shorten also "render-engine"?

My main concern was search suggestion, but given how the engine is relatively intelligent suffixes should be fine

'addon' was renamed to 'add-on' (at my suggestion) because that is the term officially used in Blender. This was unfortunately done through chat a few years ago, so no reference to it on meta.

For readability sake I'd go with just "addon" at least for these just to avoid overly long tags.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

As part of the 'Revamping tags 2020' process (partially motivated by this question) the blender-render tag has been renamed to blender-internal-render-engine.
This has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the misuse of the tag. While it hasn't completely eradicated it, there have only been 5 misuses of the tag* in the week since it has been renamed vs 11 misuses (listed in the question) over the same amount of time prior to renaming.

*I'm only aware of the questions that I retagged - other users might have also retagged questions.

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


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Was the 'blender-2.8' tag created intentionally or should we remove it?
A blender-2.8 tag seems to have cropped up recently on the main site. As it seems to have been somewhat discussed that we won't have tags for different versions (or at least, there's no real consensus of what they should be), should this tag be removed from any questions it's on or did I miss the discussion where it was decided it should be created?
(If so, do we edit the questions manually to remove the tag or do the mods have some ability to batch remove?)

Consider these removed and the tag blacklisted, not sure how this slipped by for so long. Let this be the real consensus. It has been discussed time and time again, time to cement it.

The iKlsR has spoken. Version tags are a #sadmess

Without a complete API and implementation I'm surprised anyone is asking any assistance for it since a lot will ultimately change. A lot of the questions will have to specify Alpha/ Beta. But, as a side note Eevee is really really awesome.


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Is it appropriate to promote your question by repeatedly posting links to it in comments of other answers?
I have recently noticed that a specific user has been trying to promote their unanswered question by finding similar questions to theirs and posting a link to their question in the comments on one of the answers, asking the user that answered to have a look at their question, i.e.:
"I see you have answered a question on this topic, can you look at my own question on a similar topic and also answer it?"
Is this appropriate?
This is not the first time I have seen this user use this tactic. They have 6 near identical comments on specific answers asking the user who answered to look at their question. I was alerted to this as I was one of the people contacted. As I said, I have noticed this user employ a similar method when they had previous questions, though I am unsure if they then went back and deleted their comments if and when they got an answer.
It is my understanding that comments should be about whatever question or answer the comment box is under. To me this type of tactic almost comes across as spam and a misuse of what I thought comments were for.
I did suggest to the user that they should not use comments for this purpose and they were happy to remove their comment, but I then noticed all their other comments. I thought it best to clarify what the policy is on this and if necessary, what action I should take.

This does merit some discussion I agree, non-officially atm I can say it would be annoying and a tad bit abusive at most but not up front wrong per se but we should definitely cement a rule on this. I can understand a plea comment for help but several seems excessive so we enter the gray area.

@MrZak They are not posting a link to a related answer, they are posting a link to their own, unanswered question on an answer in the hope that the user may also be able to answer their question. E.g. "I see you have answered a question on this topic, can you look at my own question on a similar topic and also answer it?"

Ah I see. I think this case is easier to judge then - it's not appropriate, editing and clarifying question should be done instead.

This as happened to me on a couple of occasions before, possibly by the same user, and I did find it inappropriate.
Not only were the comments unrelated to the answer at hand, it could be considered kind of "spamming" to unsolicitedly ping a specific user to look at another random question.
Looking at the help center it specifically mentions:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment
When should I comment?
You should submit a comment if you want to:

Request clarification from the author;
Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the
  question has been updated).

When shouldn't I comment?
Comments are not recommended for any of the following:

Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;
Answering a question or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer; instead, post an actual answer (or edit to expand an
  existing one);
Compliments which do not add new information ("+1, great answer!"); instead, up-vote it and pay it forward;
Criticisms which do not add anything constructive ("-1, see previous comments you scallywag!"); instead, down-vote (and provide or
  up-vote a better answer if appropriate);
Secondary discussion or debating a controversial point; please use chat instead;
Discussion of community behavior or site policies; please use meta instead.

It doesn't seem to fit into any of the appropriate categories, and I suppose they could classify as "secondary discussion", which as per the rules is discouraged.
As for the course of action, I'd suggest perhaps flagging it as "no longer needed" if it is not too harsh.

no longer needed
  This comment is obsolete, chatty, or otherwise unnecessary.


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Editing - what's the purpose, where is the limit?
Yesterday I posted an answer to some topic, and someone edited it. Usually, I'm okay with that, sometimes it happens that I write things wrong or destroyed some markdown tags. And as for myself, I did some edits too, in order to correct similar issues in other people's posts, as well as clarifying some newcomers' posts, etc.
But here the edit goes far more away than just correcting issues and giving more precision:

Maybe I'm the only one to see it that way. But to me, this goes too far for an edit.
First, it almost doubles my answer (from 401 characters to 702). If the edit is that massive, either my answer is wrong in the first place, or the editor really has other things in mind. In both cases, maybe the editor should post his own answer with his thoughts.
Second, it doesn't respect my author's intentions: my phrase was "The important hardwares in render times are the CPU and the GPU.". I MEANT to remain concise and clear. The new informations given by the edit are not needed in the first place: the question is only about the effect of RAM on render time. I'm already giving additional stuff which let the OP go further by its own without drowning him into loads of informations. That was my intention.
And now I get back to my title :

What is the purpose of edits?
Where is the limit of what an edit could/should do?

I've found this help page about edits and it says:

Some common reasons to edit are:

to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes
to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it
to correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages
to add related resources or hyperlinks

It partially helps me to answer my questions, but the issue is that it's a community here, everyone should be on the same level.

According to the "rules" on Blender.SEs help, that edit should have been another answer or possibly a comment on your answer. The author of the edit must have misinterpreted the intention/content of your answer. If he disagrees with the answer, he/she should downvote it instead. A simple fix you could do right now, would be to roll back the answer before the revision.

Yup I might just to that. Thanks.

From Help > Editing:

Editing is important for keeping questions and answers clear, relevant, and up-to-date. If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.

and

Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it. Common reasons for edits include:

To fix grammar and spelling mistakes
To clarify the meaning of the post (without changing that meaning)
To include additional information only found in comments, so all of the information relevant to the post is contained in one place
To correct minor mistakes or add updates as the post ages
To add related resources or hyperlinks

Generally when edits stray near "changing meaning" territory and/or are compelled to make leaps in an effort to clarify, it's good etiquette to leave a comment (or utilize the edit message) with some explanation of the reasoning behind the edit. That said, it looks to me like this edit falls more within the "additional information" category, albeit skipping the comment step.
If you feel that this (or any) edit degrades your post, you may either roll it back, or submit additional edits. For example you might wish to incorporate the additional information, but in a manner you see fit.
Note the complete revision history is saved (even rollbacks), so there's no need to worry about irrevocably trampling others' work.
Also note that users who have edited a post will be notified by comments containing @<username>, so if you wish you can ask the edit's author for clarification directly.


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Questions overlapping the Blender manual
Since this is a Q&A site on Blender, we should accept questions regarding the functions of Blender (other than too broad/tutorial requests).
However, does the community here accept questions which ask about things that are already covered in the Blender manual?
For example:

What does the "Mix" node in compositing do?

This example question seems totally on-topic here, but the answer to this example can totally be found on Blender Manual > Composite Nodes > Types > Color. In this case shall we accept the question?
There may also be some cases where the question may be answerable by the manual, but the documentation is shown to be incomplete, misleading, unclear or outdated. In this case shall we accept the question, or simply edit the manual (since it's a wiki) and then direct the question poster to the manual?
How about questions regarding things which should be in the manual but missing? (Now this part may become a little bit too broad since almost everything can be in the manual...)
For accepting a question I mean the question will be answered and not be downvoted, closed or even deleted.

I'll have to give this some thought.

…does the community here accept questions which ask about things that are already covered in the Blender manual?

Yes, we accept everything
This is a bit tricky as it also depends based on the simplicity of the question.. so instead of making exceptions, we just accept everything. The reasoning behind this is that:

Often times people ask these questions, they have an idea of what it does and are not entirely sure or they have read the manual but don't quite understand it (which is one of the reasons why simply linking to something is frowned upon.) Link to the manual where you can in these cases but add any explanations or any experiences you have had etc.
We have to cater to beginners who for all we know aren't aware of the manual. Simply pointing people to the manual detracts from what this site should be about as we are trying to make a useful compilation of self-contained answers, not pointers to other sources.
The manual tends to be short of usage examples and also often has vague descriptions of the tools and what they should be used for, (some entries are just plain useless in my experience).

There may also be some cases where the question may be answerable by the manual, but the documentation is shown to be incomplete, misleading, unclear or outdated. In this case shall we accept the question, or simply edit the manual (since it's a wiki) and then direct the question poster to the manual?

If it was not in the manual when OP searched, updating it and pointing back to it might be a bit confusing even if you explained that it was updated etc. Also, how would you know your edit is accurate, useful and or the correct way to do it etc. It's best to answer on this site, have your answer reviewed by the community and possibly accepted and then edit the manual later.

How about questions regarding things which should be in the manual but missing?

Answer here. Edit the manual later. — That is the purpose of this site. The manual and Blender itself are constantly changing, wiki pages and the information there gets updated, removed, revised, moved etc.

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


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Gooseberry banner
Could we not have a banner (on the right side) which promote the support for Gooseberry project, as there are 4000 visitors/day here on Blender.SE? It could be a good lever for the project, or at least a nice visibility. No?
http://gooseberry.blender.org/press-banners-promotion/

Good idea. I would like to see this as well.

Unfortunately not, beta sites don't get community ads.

It would be great!! But who can do it? How to do it?

@Polosson I believe the SE employees have to set it up (I don't remember all of the details off hand; been a while).

Owkay, so... How to contact them? We should hurry...

I will contact them either tonight or tomorrow. If I don't reply by tomorrow night ping me (by commenting) to remind me.

These community-chosen ads only appear when a site graduates from beta. @Polosson

My understanding is that beta sites don't have Community Ads. That is a graduated site only thing. Dunno what would happen if you brought that up with SE.

@RolandiXor Ping, hurry up the campaign will be over soon ;-)

Unfortunately, I have bad news :(
Beta sites don't get community ads :(

That's unfortunate. Any other way we could try to advertize it on here?

@Keavon The chat rooms.


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Why did Community ♦ review my suggested edit?
I suggested an edit to the cycles tag on the main site. It was approved by two human reviewers, but also by the Community ♦ bot:

Why is it that Community accepted the edit?
I also see that it has rejected 4 and approved 38 – how does it decide how and when to judge edits?

See this post on meta stackoverflow - http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/127375/why-does-the-community-user-reject-approve-edits

When an edit is suggested, a reviewer can choose to improve the edit. If the reviewer checks the box "the suggested edit was helpful", Community approves the suggested edit and the reviewer's edit is also made. If the "the suggested edit was helpful" box is is unchecked, the edit is rejected by Community and the reviewer's edit is made.


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GPU post maintenance
It's been a while since we made Enabling GPU rendering for Cycles?, and a few things have changed since then (opencl support has come a long way, but also has more than a few issues worth documenting). As the main answer is already quite lengthy, I propose splitting it into separate answers by operating system and GPU manufacturer. That way we can link to the instructions more precisely and supply an index like this.
Since it would be a little weird to make the current highly-upvoted answer specific to a particular operating system + manufacturer, I suggest putting the index there. Hopefully it remains on top, or if not, we can link to it instead of the question.
Unfortunately, this does mean breaking the edit history up. Spelling out credits for everyone who contributed in each new answer would probably generate excessive noise, so, perhaps people who contributed a section before might like to author the answer for that section?
Otherwise, if there are no objections, I can start splitting things up tomorrow.

(Coming from me, an infrequent user of this site) Thank you for taking the time to keep questions and answers up to date and keeping some indispensable information organized.

I have not contributed to the answer in question, but I will say that I see three possibilities for this.
First off that CW answer should not be the index. The index belongs in the question. There are three sorting methods for answers, we have no way of knowing if the "index answer" will be on top. Any index for a post like this needs to be in the question.
Having established that we are left with three options.

Delete it. I know sounds crazy, but hear me out. Any information in it (that's not outdated) will be in its corresponding new answer. The most recant comment was from 19 months ago, and there is nothing really needed there. Gandalf you are the original author you would be the one starting the new answers, so no problem with authorship.
Convert it to one of the new sections (say the windows answer). But how do we choose which platform gets a 100 vote bonus offer the others, the new answers?
Lock this post and start a new one. Like you said some things have changed. We could lock this as historical, and link people to the new clean post. (Seams better then deleting an answer, and solves the lost revision history issue.)

How many answers are we talking here? Will it be just Win, Linux, and OSX, 3 answers. Or will it be Win cuda, Win opencl, Win intel; Linux cuda, Linux opencl, Linux intel; and OSX cuda, OSX opencl, OSX intel, 9 answers?
I'm not sure which is better. I think if we go with the new post then just split it all up.
If we do decide that all nine answer is better and we keep using this post, then I think the standing answer should get retired (deleted).

The index answer would be the best, because it would have all the information inside it. So it should be voted up as the most helpful. And if this is not the case and there is answer more helpful, be it. That would only show the proposed structure of indexing is not working and people want something else.

@JaroslavJerrynoNovotny SE's format is not great for this type of info post. If there is any point to have an index, it needs to be first. (If you are using a Mac, then you will not care at all about the Linux or Win answers, even if they are voted higher.) As I said in my answer,
there are three different ways to sort answers: active, oldest, and votes. We have no way of keeping any set order to the answers. I think an index is a good idea. People coming from google can find the section they need. However for that index to be any good it needs to be in the question.

So don't try to make info post that does not work in SE's format, tailor it so it works with the system and not against it - the logic needs to work like this: a general question and an answer for it that covers all the cases inside it (not multiple answers for each case). Because such answer would be too long, it will be just bunch of links to other specific questions with each having answers. Like Enabling GPU rendering on Mac, Enabling GPU rendering on Linux, etc. Also for each such specific question, there might be multiple ways how to get it working.

See this as an example - I linked another question in the answer, because it was already covered there. What if all the cases of GPU enabling were covered on SE already and someone asked a general question? You would just post an answer full of links to those and the answer itself would not have much more content than that. Pls do not try to bend the site into being a wiki site, it is not, the result would be ugly.

As long as the score doesn't go too low (!) the accepted answer should stay on top. I don't like the idea of deleting the main answer as that would erase pretty much all traces of who contributed what..

To clarify, I am thinking more along the lines of your 9 answer example. I chose GPU manufacturer instead of CUDA/OpenCL though, as, say, someone on Linux with an Nvidia GPU may very well be interested in setting up both CUDA and OpenCL. Also, as the instructions for linux differ a bit between flavors, there will likely be more than 9 answers (e.g. separate debian and arch answers).

Regarding starting a new post, that will break all existing links to the current post. Sure, we could link to the new post from the existing one (or close as duplicate), but I'm not sure it's worth putting an extra "manual redirect" in the chain.

@gandalf3 I think it's important to preserve the original. There may be information that is still relevant to some people. I would either keep the anwswer and edit it to make it clear this is 'legacy' information or make a new question and close the old as a duplicate.

@RayMairlot The content won't change, it'll just be split into separate answers. When the answers are edited/updated, sure, old information will be hidden in the edit history, but it's still there (and no different from how the current single answer works). If the current answer were mostly obsolete I'd agree with archiving and moving on, but for the most part I don't think that's the case. If we were to completely rewrite all of it the end result would probably look pretty similar.


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Do we need the "directories" tag?
Do we need the directories tag?
It seems very general and not all that applicable to the majority of 3D workflow questions.
Are there any pros to keeping this tag?
Should we wait for a while and see if it gets used in a useful way?

I agree it is rather vague and currently only has 2 borderline questions.

I was going to remove it, but iklsr has told me to talk about any tag changes before I do anything. So I have not removed it yet. If you are in support of removing it also, then I will delete it.

Takes two to tango. As long as no one person is making any changes and the change is made public it's fine. I think it can be removed.

I've left a comment on the post where the tag was created, just in case the creator wants to put in a word or two.

I was inclined to remove them, but hesitated because of administration and discussion and so on. IMHO the tag should be removed.

I think it is useful, if people ask question about linking, saving, importing, exporting etc. Sometimes people doesn't know right syntax for directories in Python etc.

Maybe it should be just renamed...

@AdriansNetlis there are already tags for: linked-data, import, export, and file-format, so I do not see a need to rename it.

I think it may eventualy be useful.  Although most people use the default install location of blender, that has no white spaces, someone will eventualy come along that will install to "Program Files", which has a white space and run into problems with a python script.
I've already seen a post where the person who gave a good answer with some code had no need for enclosing a piece of python code that accessed a file because his file path had no whitespace, the person using his code ended up stating that it didn't work.  He had blender in "Program Files" and that was why.  It may have been just yesterday that I saw it.
This directory tag would fit well in a situation like that and alow anyone else with the same issue the ability to find it quickly in a search as long as a moderator/editor ensures it is tagged.


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Review notification appears after suggesting an edit to a tag wiki
After editing a tag wiki, the notification that indicates there is an un-reviewed item is visible:

But you cannot review it, as you suggested the edit.
It will stay there until the item is reviewed by someone else.
This is different than what happens with normal edits, where you do not seem to be notified of a review when you edit an answer or question. (as it should be)

After editing a tag wiki, the notification that indicates there is an un-reviewed item is visible… but you cannot review it, as you suggested the edit.

This is normal. You have the access to moderator tools privilege (unlocked at 2k rep on beta sites and at 10k on graduated sites) so you will get notifications for normal suggested edits excluding yours and you should also get notifications for suggested tag wiki edits that are yours. There are no exceptions as these are shown to everyone with the privilege.
You can also get this notification in the edge case where you gain the edit privilege while one of your suggested edits is still pending.
When you suggest a tag wiki edit, you won't be able to review it, that wouldn't make any sense.

This is different than what happens with normal edits, where you do not seem to be notified of a review when you edit an answer or question. (as it should be)

You also have the privilege to edit questions and answers without needing approval so neither you nor anyone else will get notifications for these edits since they are applied at once.

Just to make sure, I assume by "you will get notifications for normal suggested edits excluding yours and you should also get notifications for suggested tag wiki edits that are yours." you mean "you will get notifications for normal suggested edits including yours and you should also get notifications for suggested tag wiki edits that are yours.", the only reason you don't, is that in order to get the moderator tools privilege, you will also have the edit without review privilege

@gandalf3 the only time you get notifications for your edits is when it is a tag wiki as these are shown to everyone with the privilege.

Right, I think I understand now. I would get notified for my other normal edits, except no one gets notified, because I have the edit questions and answers without review privilege. So if I had the edit tag wiki without review privilege, I would not get notifications for my own tag wiki edits.

@gandalf3 you don't get notifications for your normal edits ever. The only time you get notifications is for other people's normal edits and tag wiki edits including your own.

I think were saying the same thing different ways..?


text:
Bringing back scheduled chat - Meet the Pros
A little over 2 years ago when we entered public beta, to drive traffic to the site and engage our then avid users we came up with the idea of scheduled chats where we picked an active "celebrity" in the Blender community, invited them to a chatroom and bombarded them with fun and interesting questions for an hour or so.
Granted this quickly failed for several reasons.

the site didn't have active moderators back then so we had to have a super mod sit in the room
we didn't have enough people participating (had to beg people from other rooms to join :)
timezones

With us becoming a permanent member of StackExchange and having a very active community and many chat regulars it's a good time for this to resurface. The two events we had were very successful and informative, we had Jonathan Williamson (author at CGCookie) and Campbell Barton (main Blender developer) lend us their time. Find the transcripts here scheduled-chat.
To bring this back better than before, here's what we want to know

who should we interview next?
thoughts as to how to make this a regular thing, weekly every last friday interviews anyone?
what we can do to ensure this becomes a thing and encourage our community to participate.
should we center these around a theme, have different segments or just pop questions on the fly etc?

Interview next (for starters): Andrew Price, Gleb Alexandrov, Ton Rosendaal

making it weekly event will most likely kill it , you will run out of "Celebrities" and regular audience and interest

Great point, evey last friday could work. Mike Pan is my nominee for now.

Greg Zaal, Reynante Martinez maybe? Every last friday would be good.

@Chebhou I wonder if we could have different off-week programming, to keep up interest . . .

@TARDISMaker Good one with Greg. I thought about Reynante but couldn't be bothered to look up his name since I was in a hurry

Ton would be cool.  @Chebhou is right too, we definitely should do it monthly, not weekly.

I'd say that if we do a theme for the interviews, it should be rather loose. Also, a few more suggestions, Andy Goralczic, Sebastian Konig. I'm trying to think of people who would give a bit more variety. Also, Kent Trammel?

In addition to those mentioned... Brian Savery of Pixar who is heading the development of Renderman for Blender, Brecht Van Lommel or any of the present Cycles devs (or just any Blender devs really), Blender open project artists (support Gooseberry!), Enrico Cerica who is well known for his work with Blender+Octane, CynicatPro who has been bringing a lot of PBR knowledge to the Blender community, or developers of major add-ons such as Blend4Web or Sverchok.

Pierrick Picaut anyone?

We could raise participation by asking the interviewee (out of the kindness of their hearts) to post/tweet/announce the interview so their fans come and visit us. Some members of our site might actually find out about it that way, since not everyone know/reads about chat & meta.

exactly the chat and the meta posts don't have that popularity

~10 people is more than enough for one of these sessions (usual amount in chat every other day) and meta posts can be featured on the main sidebar for those extra few views. Also a good time to see if we could possibly launch our own site blog.

We may even get some new users this way too.  People who join to talk with so-and-so but stick around to participate on the site.


text:
How should be the version tags?
Make it sense to create tags there also include blender as a part of the tag e.g

blender-2.67

Is not be easier/more DRY to create only tags for the version number like 2. 67 because we are here in the blender stack exchange.
What you think?

Hey! You guys are talking about me! I did that!

We're don't talk about you but about the future of the version tags. You were only the initiator of the question. :D

I propose that there be two (maybe three) levels of specificity. For instance:

blender-1 vs blender-2 (likely will rarely be used, if at all)
blender-2.4 vs blender-2.6 (huge changes in interface, inner structure, etc)
blender-2.66 vs blender-2.67 (new features present in one version and not earlier versions)

I would say that when tagging a question, the more general, the better. For example, if you can do the same thing in 2.4 as in 2.6, then it makes little sense to tag as 2.67. Perhaps we could also use tags such as blender-2.4+ for questions where an answer exists in 2.4 and up as a way of clarifying that the question isn't about 2.4 only, so answers in 2.6 would be fine as well.
One thing's for certain though: there is no use in having a blender tag. It adds no value to any question. I'm currently a mod on Christianity.SE and the tag "christianity" doesn't exist because there's no point in having it.

The problem with this is that you will have many many tags.

@PhoneixS: It's better to have many specific tags than a few too-broad tags.

Yes, if we will have version tags, they must be for specific version (2.66). And thinking again about it, well, there isn't so many new releases.

The site is about Blender, let the questions specify the version.

I agree. Must be specific version tags. This matters a lot when talking about bugs.

I agree that blender should not be a valid tag within the scope of this forum.

Should we just shorten it to 2.67 instead of blender-2.67 ?

@DantheMan: There is potential for confusion that way. After all, Cycles, Yafaray, and other programs also have their own version numbers.

@El'endiaStarman Ok. Good point.

Having version tags has worked well for us on Ask Ubuntu. Sometimes there are issues and questions specific to a single version, and it is useful to separate these out with a tag.

I think we should only have one tag, something like versions or builds, which would be used for questions relating to different versions of blender.
Some examples of existing questions which could use this tag:
Mesh appears normal in solid mode but looks weird in textured mode
Blender release life cycle and versioning
Such a tag could also be used for upgrade questions such as this one:
Is there a way to update Blender without deleting it and downloading the new version?
This might be a stretch, but this question might also be eligible for such a tag:
Working with VRML 1.0 files in the current version of Blender
I feel that having many tags for specific releases of blender is overkill when most questions are only related to the current version, but there are enough questions that are related to versions of blender that such a tag could make sense.

Blender versions are actually stable builds for the most part. I say one tag is enough, the builds tag should cover any of these questions. versions is a very vague version of what OP and El'endia Starman suggested.

@iKlsR They could be synonimized, but I think it would be good to at least have a prompt for whatever tag we use if a user starts typing versions or releases

Good note, I will make this so.

The problem with doing this for questions about different versions is that, as time goes on, a build that was up-to-date will become out-of-date, and a build that was beta will become the release-- but nobody will constantly update tags of all questions.

This would be extremely messy, if such a tag were to exist, it would be one set tag such as blender and that alone. If a question is tied to a specific version it can be specified in the question and or answer.
That being said, I am against such a tag as it would make little if any sense or even be of any use as the site is about Blender and presumably and preferably, the questions will be too.

I agree, keep it simple and tag with only [tag:blender]

Seconded. Having version-specific tags is too messy.

@iKlsR: I'm not sure if you're arguing for or against a plain [tag:blender] tag. Can you clarify?

@El'endiaStarman The first paragraph I was evaluating what could happen if one were to be used and the second I clearly say why it makes no sense. I have edited it to be a bit clearer.

@iKlsR I agree that this would be quite messy, but I think there would be a use for a single tag. (though maybe call it something more meaningful than [tag:blender]) See my answer


text:
How to post gifs on this site?
Most replies to my comments have "gif" images. How do I put them in my posts? Adding a new image doesn't work.
Also, this will help with asking questions because I always need to show examples.

This belongs to meta  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75491/how-to-upload-an-image-to-a-post

Depending on your browser pasting an image from clipboard doesn't work (Ctrl-V) In this case you need to store the image as a file and upload it.

I got an error: 'For security reasons, framing is not allowed; click OK to remove the frames.'

LICEcap does not have this issue

Does this answer your question? What is the process for creating gifs for questions and answers?

If your gif is under 2MB (IIRC), you can upload it the normal way when asking or answering a question, by clicking on the image icon, drag and drop, or by pressing CtrlG.
Due to link rot hosting images on external sites is no longer recommended on Blender Stack exchange.
See the section about reducing Gif sizes on tips to get your captures under 2Mb so they can be hosted on i.stack.imgur.

If it's larger, then you will need to use another hosting service, e.g. [gfycat][1] (it's free, no registration required, and the images stay around "forever").
Once you have uploaded your image to gfycat (or the host of your choosing), get the link to it. If you are using gfycat, press the link icon and copy the url for "gif":

Then add it to your post with the following markdown:
![image description](http://giant.gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth.gif)

where http://giant.gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth.gif is the link to your gif, and image description is a description (alt text) of your gif.
Since gfycat encodes your gif as a video as well, I also like to include a link to the html 5 version. You can make it so the gif is in the link, so that clicking on the image will go to the gfycat page with the html5 video of your gif.
To do this, simply wrap the image link in another link:
[![a bunch of bouncing spheres](http://giant.gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth.gif)](http://gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth)

When rendered, it looks like this:
a bunch of bouncing spheres http://giant.gfycat.com/WiltedIdealCottonmouth.gif

For more information, see the markdown formatting guides.

Doesn't work anymore

@Dr.jacky It seems gfycat doesn't give out links to actual gif files anymore, but you can still get a gif by appending .gif to the url manually. It does seem to watermark it, however.

For me, this worked: [<img src="https://i.imgur.com/qNuuNEP.gif" title="Click to enlarge.">](https://i.imgur.com/qNuuNEP.gif). I uploaded directly to imgur.com.


text:
Can we re-upload .blends to more permanent hosts?
So, if I find a link in a question or answer to a blend file that is on an ephemeral site like Pasteall, would it be considered a violation of BSE etiquette to move the blend file to a more persistent site, like Blend-exchange?
Just before posting this question here, I did a search on the BSE site, and found that there are 382 hits for files on Pasteall.org.

I think this is more of a legal issue than one of etiquette. AFAIK, by uploading a .blend to blend-exchange you grant blend-exchange rights to distribute the .blend. If you do not own the rights to do this, then this may be a violation of the rights of the copyright holder. That said, I think it could be that the uploader may have already waived such rights when uploading it to xyz hosting service. Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and this should not be taken as legal advice. Perhaps ask on law.SE?

I am not a lawyer, either. But I think that case law covers what I am talking about here (see Copyright circular 21, page 4, column 2, first paragraph, "...reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace
part of a damaged copy;...". While Blend-exchange is not officially a library, it is a de facto archive, and in some percentage of cases, a missing ~.blend file "damages" the question and answer.

For starters, only the owner of the .blend can relinquish the rights to BE and you must have full rights inorder to upload it to BE

Pasteall doesn't have TOS or licensing afaik.... Which makes this a nearly intractable problem D:

I would expect that Pasteall does have a TOS, but that it applies to the one uploading.

@GiantCowFilms This is the closest I could find to a TOS on pasteall. It appears to imply that uploaded content is considered public domain.

It can be argued that since the original user has been advised that the file (or files) uploaded to PasteALL has been warned that the files should be considered in the Public domain, and uploads anyway has given implied consent to have the files moved. Further complicating matters is the fact that I have been unable to find anyplace on Stack Exchange generally, and BSE in particular, where one can determine the identity of a member of the community beyond an chosen user name. One of the members who posted a question on BSE is identified only as "User48719".

Be very very careful. By uploading a file to BE you must have the right to do so, as per the TOS.

Your user content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any third party's legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action whether against you or blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com or a third party (in each case under any applicable law).

By breaking this you are essentially stealing the copyright to the file, which is an issue. What I would do is download all the files to your hard disk, so they aren't permanently lost, and then contact the owner.

I have already gone back about 8 pages into the list of results from the Google search I did of the BSE site and copied all of the files that were still available, and as GCF suggested, I downloaded all of the content that is on PasteAll. From now on, when I see that one who proposed a question, or provided an answer has used PasteAll as a file host, unless someone else has beaten me to it, I intend to politely ask the person who provided the upload to move it to Blend exchange, or some site where the one who makes the upload controls the persistence.

@brasshat I'm doing the same. I think we should all watch out for these "stray" .blends and try to get them moved (legally) to Blend Exchange or a similar service.

@TARDIS Maker, I've come to a different conclusion. I think the ideal solution is for PasteAll change the policy, so that blends linked to from BSE are not deleted, as long as the question is active on BSE. I've contacted one of the Prinicpals to make the request, but have not yet received a response.

@brasshat That would be great. I'm hoping that we can get something setup for our graduation.

As long as the blend is uploaded by its author and only contains content created by the author, including images, reference drawings, etc... I think it would be important to have such a permanent location for files.  Mainly for the purpose of preventing dead links to what would otherwise be helpful content.
In my opinion, if a blend or graphic is created, and intended, for the sole purpose of assisting others, it should be copyright to the author and placed in the public domain by the author in order to reach the most users, not only on stack exchange, but throughout the entire WWW.  This would still require the person using the content to acknowledge the copyright, but also allow the person using the content to not be required to display a credit of some sort, like a majority of open source licensing options require.
If I offer help to someone and it is useful to them, and they think they can make money from that help I offered, more power to them.  I wouldn't require them to credit me with anything.  Just them using the help is credit enough for me.  I know many people don't share this same opinion but to me it just makes the most sense.
I cant imagine anyone having to keep track of everyone that offered assistance with some issue or educational material.  You would have to credit all your school teachers, the authors and publishers of school books, pen and pencil manufacturers, paper manufactures, PC manufacturers, etc... etc... etc... that all assisted in giving us the skills required to do what we do.
So if it was posted to help others, the author most likely would appreciate the fact that others are still using and sharing it.  If the author included an email or postal address in the content, send a mail to it explaining where and why you are keeping it available.  Even if they don't respond they will at least know who to contact if an issue arises or if they want you to take it down or update it at a later date.

This isn't really an answer to the question

However, we ourselves cannot act this out. I can see the value in making public domain contributions, however, only the author can do that. In the case of files on pasteall and such, the author has not done that so we cannot re-share the files. As far as contributions in the posts on this site they are free with credit, which I think is fine.


text:
How do we enhance the SE spell check dictionary?
Ever notice how some common Blender words that we use on a regular basis, e.g. viewport, SHFT, CTRL, and wireframe, always throw a spelling exception? Is there any way to get these, and other common Blender terms added to the Blender.stackexchange spell check dictionary? And if there is a way to do this, what other words should be added?

Spellchecking is handled by the browser, the site has no control over this. (Even the browser likely uses external libraries and dictionaries from other packages)

As gandalf3 said in the comments, the site has no control over the spell checking, that is handled completely by the browsers.
However you can add the trouble words to your own browser's dictionary.
You can just right-click the word and select Add to dictionary.
Instructions for Chrome and Firefox, (if you need instructions for a different browser try this link)
Words such as: shader, compositing, outliner and viewport are already in my browsers dictionary.


text:
Links to blend at Blend Exchange and https issue
I saw today that pasting links from Blend Exchanges gives this error:

I've checked older answers/questions with Blend Exchange links, and images are still working fine (error shows up when you try to edit), but adding new ones gives only text link.
Do GiantCowFilms planning to switch to https:// protocol?
Or maybe better (and cheaper) solution could be changing from:
[](http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/xxxx/)

To external image hosted on imgur:
[](http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/xxxx/)

I like the cheaper solution. I do own one domain with an SSL cert, I might host the picture there. At least that way it will be easier to change all the images if there is a need to.

@giantcowfilms can I ask why did you use image with file id? I'm just curious as I'm mostly web dev.

Its there so if, in the future, we want to gather statistics about how many times each file's link is viewed on the page, or possibly display a unique image for each file we can. Changing all the links after the fact to achieve those goals would be nearly impossible, which is why I did it from the start despite the fact that currently it isn't used for anything.

It has been fixed!

^^Now with SSL Certs (you can see that image link points to https). Thanks to @gandalf3 for recommending https://letsencrypt.org/, which allowed me to get free SSL certs for blend-exchange.
I still have to update the copy-paste on the website. I will do that soon. in the mean time links can be manually fixed

Superb! Thanks for the tip with letsencrypt.org, I will need to contact with my shared hosting provider as they don't allow using SSH.

I don't want to add another question as I think it's connected. When I try to add files to Blend Exchange it gives me error: "The provided url is not valid, please copy and paste the entire url, including the "http://" header." I'm pasting all of it as always.

@LukeD I'll look into that the url handler was updated.

I ran a batch replacement from http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ to https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/, ~2k posts affected

@m0sa Thanks!!!


text:
Cannot upload .blend through Blend Exchange
I am trying to upload a .blend via Blend exchange. But after uploading, instead of getting a url to copy and paste, I am getting this. Any fixes?

Do note that blend-exchange is run by a member of our community and it is a private site separate from the SE network. Thus this is not the best place for bug reports about that site. On the bottom of the help page it says to contact the site owner (GiantCowFilms), or open a github issue.

It was probably caused by the filesize. 10 MB shouldn't be a problem, but I recently reconfigured PHP, and the upload limit might not be correct. I will look into fixing this now

Thank you so much for pointing this out, this issue affected a large number of other users.
The exact error, verbatim from the log:

POST Content-Length of 12143120 bytes exceeds the limit of 8388608 bytes in Unknown on line 0

What was happening (to ALOT of users it seems, based on my error log), is that the file, which is sent in the HTTP post request, was to big for the post request limit set by PHP in the PHP configuration.
I swear I had expressly set the value to be big enough, but apparently it didn't work.
It has now been fixed.
The learning takeaway for me has been to actually test if config values have been updated, since sometimes something goes wrong in writing the new config.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Did I thank you for your AWESOME .blend upload thing? [LOUD AND CLEAR] THANK YOU GiantCowFilms FOR WHAT YOU'RE GIVING TO US !!!! and thanks a lot also for the HDRs :)

@Bithur Thanks for the kind words :)

I just can't say how much you deserve my (our) thanks.

@GiantCowFilms - there seem to be errors during upload again, regardless of the file size. Again, many thanks for this awesome service!

@metaphor_set Rewrite coming soon. I'm hoping that we will a) not have this many issues, and b) I will know sooner (I actually have some kind of error reporting). Anyway, I think the issue was caused by either a mysql or a php upgrade that I did in preparation to launch the rewrite, and did not fully test. Now Fixed.


text:
No 100 rep received at 200 rep
Listen guys, you know that 100 points you receive when you reach 200 reputation, I am now on 300 and I still didn't get, it's quite weird.I am not sure why, help is appreciated

You only get the 100 rep association bonus when you join a stackexchange site while having another SE site that has 200+ rep. How does "Reputation" work?. You only have (one) account.

So for instance if I go to stackoverflow will I get 100 rep on stackexchange?

@IgorTatarnikov Yep, on that site.


text:
Community Promotion Ads — 2019
2019 is here! And with the new year, as usual, comes a new iteration of Community Promotion Ads! Let’s refresh these for the coming year :)
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

the site's twitter account
interesting Blender addons, tutorials, and other resources
relevant events, conferences, or meetups
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

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

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

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

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

Image requirements

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

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

Does the file size limit double when we make a high DPI image? If not can you use a jpg? (I can not get a good looking png at 150kb)

(Submitted on behalf of the Blender Foundation)

copy/paste from 2018

@GiantCowFilms none of the images on your website seem to render.

@asoftbird I recently upgraded the server to an entirely re-written version of Blend-Exchange. That is probably the cause of the problem. That being said, it seems to me like the image serving is working. Are you still having issues, and if so, can you provide some information about what the response is when you request the image from the servers?

@GiantCowFilms https://i.sstatic.net/l2QmD.png This is what I'm seeing; in the source code of your edit you don't actually seem to use the image anywhere as it's commented out.  See this for reference: https://i.sstatic.net/o63l2.png
It's not visible on both the current PC and on the one I use at work.
I hope that's enough information.

@asoftbird I did a bunch of checks, and cleared the CDN cache. Everything seems to be normal, and the images are being served correctly by the server. Is it possible you have an add blocker or firewall that blocks cloudflare's CDN?

The topic's about advertising images, though I hadn't considered it might have been the ad blocker just doing it's job. Guess that works well, at least. I'm a dumbass, sorry for wasting your time :)

@asoftbird I just checked with uBlock Origin on and off. It''s the adblocker at work which seems to be picking up "ads" in the URL. This answer,  and Omar's answer are blank, while rest have images with Adblock on.

@asoftbird ankii Thanks for reporting and debugging this issue. I have updated the URLs to ones that won't be blocked by ad blockers.

From 2018.

Just saw this as an ad and noticed it is outdated. Can this be edited to say "Spring, latest open movie?" - since this makes it look like it still hasn't been released.   (I un-upvoted it so the outdated version wouldn't be shown as an ad, but would obviously re-upvote it later)

@X-27 thanks for noticing. (I forgot about it). You already fixed it (ad is not being shown) and I do not think we still need an ad for spring running.

copy/paste from 2018

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting


text:
Cannot download Blend files from questions
Anyone else having problems downloading example .Blend files from blend-exchange in posts?  I have tried a couple posts, and the download link to the example blend files leads me to a blank page.
Below is the specific post/link I'm having issues with at the moment.  The OP says he can download it.  Everyone else downloading it ok?  I have tried two browsers on two different computers.  Either I get a blank page (Firefox), or an error, this page doesn't exist (IE10).  I haven't tried at my home, only work, so maybe a firewall issue.
The Post:
Cloth sim; Cloth Pin and Self Collision making very bad/weird behavior?
The link to the file:
http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/b/1151/
Thanks, just trying to get to the bottom of this so I can help this guy out!

This is self hosted by a community member. We are looking into it, thanks for the post.

I'm the guy who wrote the code for blend-exchange and operates it. The issue has been resolved, thanks for posting this message so I could be notified.
The issue was caused by a crashed database due to a ram shortage on my server. This is usually caused by Denial of Service (DoS) attack on the server that hosts blend-exchange. I'm going to do an in-depth investigation as to why this crash occurred, and try to avoid repeat occurrences in the future.
Sorry for any inconvenience caused by unavailable files.

Thank you so much for taking the time and resources to provide this valuable service, and support it.  Damn DoS attacks are from the devil.


text:
How do I start talking in the chat room?
I've tried to use the Blender chat room and I can see posts there but I can't find any way to start to talk. I clicked everything imaginable and I could not get in.
Help? Thanks.

This is actually the right place to ask, and welcome to Blender.SE!

You need 20 rep to talk in chat. You can see your current site privileges here. Also, this should have been on a banner when you entered the chatroom.

Why do I need 20 rep to talk in chat?
Your reputation on chat is the same as your reputation on the parent site.
You can always enter chat rooms and listen with no rep at all.
We can't allow anonymous participation on chat, so we require a small
  bit of parent site reputation to ensure that chat is reserved for
  active, engaged members of the community.

In addition to the 20 reps,
I think something in a database somewhere might get updated only overnight. Yesterday I had over 20 reps but could only read the chat but not talk - but when I tried again today, I got in and could talk with no problem.

Yes, the cache sometimes takes a while to refresh.


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How to distinghish 2.8 question (and the corresponding rendering settings)?
What can we do to understand the subject when the question can be 2.8 (or not) and can be Eevee (or Cycles)?
I think all is said, except that the OP rarely (never) indicate this context.
Previously this was coming by itself: Internal or Cycles. In 2.8 I've not seen any indication about it.
Do you think this is a problem? If yes what can we propose to solve it?
(for information, I don't know which tag to set about it. Version? no, 2.8? no, context?... so 'discussion' will be the good one)
An example : Weird reflection in glossy material when camera is in front of the object
The OP indicates 2.8 but which rendering system?

I'd say just ask them in a comment. However in this specific case I doubt the render engine is of relevance.

I think render engine is quite related when the question is about  materials with caustics (transparent / glossy), but anyway not much anyone can do on BSE except for usual "what's your render engine" comment and asking for a blend. Regarding tags - there is "eevee" one instead of "internal" and "cycles" so I think all the same here

@MrZak, less obvious in this deleted question https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/146356/let-light-through-solid-object-in-2-8 . Marked as duplicate but was it really a Cycles question?

Not visible for me since it's deleted, but anyway the general principle stays - if OP didn't take a minute to include useful screenshots (which in 2.8 isn't quite related anymore since engine dropdown isn't visible always) and didn't include engine specifics etc then only with comments

Aren't there tags for that? Shouldn't we just ask users in comments to add tags to the question (or add them ourselves)?


text:
Low contrast wordmark in chat transcripts

Really minor, (maybe even intentional) but it bugs me all the same..
Thought I'd report it just in case it wasn't supposed to be like that :)

Note the same logo/background is used on the list of Blender.SE rooms

Sorry, I forgot to check and fix that part in the excitement of the launch :) The logo has a darker background now in those places.

Now it looks very weird in the chat room list page...

I would add that this same issue is visible on the site chat page: http://chat.stackexchange.com/?host=blender.stackexchange.com (oddly none of the other chat pages are styled with the new blender site theme.)

Why would they be? AFAIK only the site page is specific to blender.SE

This also occurs in any of the B.SE chat rooms.
For example, part of the conversation with Mike Pan today: (Don't hate on Mike, he realized his mistake soon after :P)

You can barely see the "Blender Stack Exchange" next to the new logo.

LOL, a wonderful addition to our site history.


text:
Placing a colon after a link with title formatting hides it?
If I type
[Blender][1]
==

 [1]: http://www.blender.org/

Every thing works as expected:

Blender

However, typing
[Blender][1]:
==

 [1]: http://www.blender.org/

Results in

Until this is fixed you can use the inline link syntax:
 [Blender](http://www.blender.org):
 ==

Which renders as:

Blender:

Update
The problem was that due to a bug in the markdown code, the Blender][1 part [Blender][1]: was considered a link hash (a normal link hash has the format of [{id}]:) and was stripped out.
Fix will be rolling out shortly. Watch for rev 2013.11.13.1150


text:
Should we have pixel-art tag?
I've created it, but @RayMairlot expressed doubt that there is enough questions to warrant it.
I think it's needed because it is a unique art style that requires specific settings and unique compositing setups as it's partially opposite to goals of approximately half of renderings, realism, and is different from cartoon renders too. I've started working on pixel art in Blender to help filling a new tileset for Cataclysm DDA game and there is at least two other artists in the chat of only that small project who were excited to learn that Blender is partially feasible for pixel art because they can work in Blender too, not counting likes on the forum.
I've also published my setup at https://github.com/int-ua/blender-pixelart if you would like to learn more and maybe help.
Edit
List of questions that I think are relevant:
Any workflow recommendation for 2.5-D pixel art style?
Pixelate the viewport camera in Eevee for previewing live pixel art / low-resolution render?
Is there a way to force pixellate the viewport render?
How to not distort pixels?
Pixelart style render in blender
Rendering a pixelated image
Freestyle without anti aliasing for pixel art (2.8)
How do I generate pixel-art friendly UV maps?
Pixelate Node: Scaling Produces Missing Pixels On Border
How can I render pixel art images with no AA and transparent background?
How to render small object, as pixel art, without losing any of the pixels (Cycles render)?
Creating 3D pixel modeling?
How to disable anti-aliasing in the background images
How to generate a fake hand painted texture (Blizzard like), Borderlands effect or Pixel Art effect
How can I keep low resolution textures pixelated?
How to render a model with pixel art/sprite textures and have it not be blurry? (duplicate of the previous one)
Can't crop image's size in Blender 2.8
... I'm tired of this, maybe I'll continue the list later

I am not a moderator, but I try to keep on top of new tag creation to try and keep the number of tags ordered and manageable.
I am generally of the opinion that it's only worth creating a tag when there are a 'good enough' number of questions about the topic that may need the new tag. For example, if there was only 1 question that could benefit from a new tag, I would say that the tag is not necessary. So how many questions does it take before a tag might be useful? 15? 20? This is what I don't know. If there were 20 I would certainly start to think that a tag could be useful.
Regarding the pixel-art tag, while I am not wholly against it, I searched for "pixel art" and "pixelart" and it seems there's around 10 questions on the site about pixel art. I am unsure whether this is a big enough amount of questions to warrant the new tag.
However, it may be that I need to change my way of thinking about tags. The Stackoverflow Meta question, 'When is it appropriate to create a new?' tag says:

If you have enough reputation to create the tag, and if you think
there is a clear need for a tag, go ahead and create it yourself.
Uncommon topics are perfectly valid for a tag, as long as they're
still clearly defined.

But the comments on that question seem to throw into doubt what "clear need" actually means.
The help centre says:

When should I create new tags?
Most common tags already exist on a mature site. You should always
favor existing tags; only create new tags when you feel you can make a
strong case that your question does cover a new topic that nobody else
has asked about before on this site.

After reading these pages, I am inclined to say the new tag should exist and I shouldn't be basing it on numbers.
I am interested to hear what other people say. If others are fine with tags being created for a small number of questions (as long as the new tag is for a distinct topic, which pixel art is), then maybe I should be too.

Thank you! I'll try gathering the questions I consider relevant in a separate answer to discuss them briefly maybe.

@int_ua If you're going to add them I would maybe add them to your question.

There are currently 44 questions containing the phrase "pixel art", 24 of which have accepted answers, though 10 have no answers. I think this indicates enough interest to justify the tag. We currently have 72 tags which have fewer than 44 questions. Some of those tags may be of questionable value admittedly, but certainly not all (e.g. blend-modes).
Welcome pixel-art!

There is a difference between search results that match pixel art and questions that are about pixel art, but just mention it in passing.

For example this seems like a regular texturing question.

There does seem to be a surprising amount of questions about it, by the numbers alone it would indeed seem to warrant the tag existence. My questions is mostly about its actual usefulness, tagging a question "pixel-art" tells us very little about its content. Is it about texture filtering, is it about rendering, compositing, antialiasing? It can encompass wildly different things not necessarily related

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos As it is quite distinct in terms of settings/setup, people who work on pixel art and will supposedly be subscribed to the tag either will benefit from discovering a new challenge or method to solve it or will already know the answer irrespectively of the actual topic, just because the result that is required is relevant to what they do. That's an approximate description of how I see it.

Well I don't often work with pixel art, but if you say so I won't disagree. I have my reservations, but I don't have strong feelings about it. Anyway I have accepted all your edits to include the tag in questions so far, so those should be easier to find for all interested in the future.


text:
Is there some way to force the user to indicate render engine in use?
Just wondering out loud if there is some method or process when a user submits a question to make an indication of render engine (BI, Cycles, Game Engine, or external) a mandatory data point?
It seems a lot time is wasted when users don't indicate what engine they're working with.
In a broader sense, what if there was a pre-question checklist of common questions that Answerers ask in comments when trying to understand the question?

Don't waste time trying to answer something without first asking in the comments what Render Engine the OP expects to use.  If it's not clear, don't jump in.

That's what I mean, we waste time having to ask what render engine every time.

I think the site does not yet acknowledge the massive differences in Blender awareness between new users and people with 100+ reputation (to pick a reasonable value is hard). I also think you have a point if you're saying there should some kind of in-text-box message for the first few questions of an account, a checklist as you say.

Weclome! We notice you haven't posted any questions on Blender.Stackexchange before. Help us help you by including the following information in your question, often we need to know a few simple facts before we give useful answers.

What rendering engine are you using? (show image of the dropdown)
What operating system? (show how to find)
What version of Blender (show how to find)
Add screenshots (show how to make, and crop)

wording can be debated, but the overall content covers it right?

Weclome! We notice you haven't posted any questions on Blender.Stackexchange before. Increase your chances of getting a useful answer by including the following information in your question, often we need to know a few simple facts before answering.

SE could do blind-tests and roll out different messages, to see which messages work best, -- things like this can be measured objectively.

And I don't think it would hurt to emphasize in an automated way for new posters the following (shorter wording would be nicer).

If someone adds a comment below your Question feel free to edit your original question to include additional information. Avoid going into discussion in the comments, you can delete your own comments to keep that area less noisy for any additional questions.

While a message like that would help in a lot of cases, adding the OS blender version, and render engine would not make a big difference for questions like this.

Blender bug reports also don't often really need half of the required fields to be solved, but they are asked anyway so in the event that it is important it doesn't need to be asked. Picking out that example where it is irrelevant misses the point. My utopian brain thinks about a self diagnostic test which guides a new user towards a nice question..

On the other hand I also don't want a new user to see that as too much effort, so it would have to be really short and incredibly well conceived, and offer a pathway like " It's OK, I know exactly what i'm asking " to let them jump straight in.

While it is a good idea that could work rather well for our site, no it is currently not possible.
This was suggested on the meta a year ago: Can meta-style 'required tags' be implemented on non-meta sites?
Beyond required tags, there is definitely no way to force a user to add their render engine (or anything else) to the body or title of their question.

I'm not totaly convinced that requiring all questions to fit in to four categories is a good idea. What happens when a user asks about, modeling (second biggest tag), or python (biggest tag). Both of those tags can stand alone without any of your suggested four required tags.
While I sure agree that there is a lot of time wasted simply asking what render engine the OP is using, I think with a system like this there would be just as many cases where a question does not really fit one of the tags.
We would run the risk of:

Having too many required tags to make it worth it.
The tags become too general to be meaningful.
Miscatgorized questions, because a tag is required.

Take this question as an example, you had to pick at least one of these: discussion support bug feature-request
It is not a bug report, this is not really asking for support either. So you are left with feature request, and discussion. Now depending on whether or not you are asking the devs to implement this, would rule out feature request. Thus you are left with discussion, and cant we discuss anything.
That is my point, for the required tag system to work you have to have overly general tags.
It works on meta because only questions about the site come here, but in blender anything is possible and questions can be about anything.

Yes, I wasn't really thinking about enforced tags, which would have the issue you're describing. I was imagining something more along the lines of a pre-flight checklist to be shown to the user before submission of the question.


text:
2019 Community Moderator Election Results
Blender's second moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied and the new moderator is:

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

Thanks to anyone who voted, I'll be around if you have any questions.

Congrats @DuarteFarajotaRamos

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Congratulations mate! It was just natural choice for the community ;)

Thanks for the support :)

Congrats and good luck @DuarteFarajotaRamos.

Congratulations and good luck!


text:
blend-exchange: if .blend file name is too long, the three action buttons become partly unusable
this already happened to me a few times, but it happened again today, so I'm here to report. I used developer tools in firefox to understand what happens, and found  that this is probably due to extremely long .blend filename, which expands its div container so much that it (partly) covers the three blue action buttons below ("flag", "favorite", "download")

In the image above, the file I was downloading today (question is Can't identify where this lip is in hiding in this model).
As you see, all three buttons are partly covered (but normally you can't see where, in the image above the oversized div is visible just thanks to the firefox developer tools) and, if you click on their respective "uncovered" areas, their link works, but not on the "covered" areas.

What browser are you using? I can't seem to exactly reproduce this in Firefox

@gandalf3 That image was taken from FF 45.9.0 ESR (at work we use ESR)

Thanks for the report :)
I've submitted a fix, chances are it'll be live sooner rather than later.
EDIT: The submitted fix is now live.

I like your solution better, I will update the code to implement it.

I received an email about this last Friday, and it was fixed earlier today:
https://github.com/GiantCowFilms/Blend-Exchange/commit/c83b20679e658be0a0037b9f79ce1326ed33abc2
Thanks for the report!
EDIT: gandalf3, true to form, had a better solution, the code has been updated to use it.

Hi thanks, now the long file name wraps, so it should be always usable, thanks. Which answer should I mark as an accepted answer? Your or gandalf3's?

gandalf3's since I ended up using his code.


text:
does user search form show results with wrong rep points?
I was searching for a user by name and the form found it but it showed 0 points (I know he has more than that). So I searched for MY profile, and this form apparently shows wrong rep points aside the user search results... maybe?

ok, not fundamental, but maybe it should be fixed, later.

Nope, no problem here.
Look over on the right of the users page, you will see five buttons "week, month, quarter, year, all."
In that screen shot you were viewing the "Month" page. Which sorts the users biased on how much rep they have gotten in the current month. The rep count displayed is also correlated to what page you are looking at (In this case a month).
Just hover over anyone's rep and you will see it says "reputation this month: X total reputation: X."

Just a note: It is a calendar month and not the previous 30 days, like in some other places.
If you want to have that rep number display total rep, just click on the all button.

oh gosh... of course... I'll never get used to all the options... :(


text:
Change BSE's site description and intro section
BSE is the featured site today (yay!) That got me thinking about our site description. Why do we have the "Who use blender to create X"? Why do we care what people are creating? As long as there is a question about blender this is the site for you.
This is our current intro section (from the tour page):

Blender Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about blender.

I purpose we remove the "people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games." Not only is that unnecessary, it also is excluding a large amount of what people do with blender. But that is beside the point, there is no need to list out what you can use blender for.
How about something more along the lines of:

Blender Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who use Blender an open source full suite 3D content creation package. This site is built and run by you, the users, as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about blender.

The site description is shown on every question page for non-logged in users and used  in other places across the network, like the sites list shown below.

The sites list says:

Q&A for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games

"As long as there is a question about blender this is the site for you." I'm in favor of emphasizing that, as historically that's not really been true. Questions about developing blender, for example, were originally considered off topic. I think we decided to allow them a while ago, but so far not much has been asked, perhaps because we were pretty rigid about disallowing them early on.

How about:

Blender Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for everything Blender, the open source 3D and multimedia content creation package.

To include things that might not fall under "usage", like development.

@cegaton Good point, I like it. Added it in, thanks!

Blender Stack Exchange For users of Blender

Still thinking about the usage on the sites list, how about "... For users of the open source 3D creation suite Blender" (that is if they allow link like that.)

I mean we've gotten a handful of smoothie questions in the past but seems unlikely nowadays.

... sigh. That would be for users of Blenders. My point here is to keep it short and sweet. Change to for everything blender, for lovers of blender, for q & a ... Surely a question here requires some knowledge of what blender is.  If they don't know then why not point them to blender.org and let our creator (who looks like  Jeremy Clarkson lol) ..  and the team define what blender is rather than feeling the need to spin it here.


text:
2019 Moderator Election results (unofficial)
The official 2019 Community Moderator Election Results

Here is the result of running the ballot file in openSVT using the Meek SVT method:

Loading ballots from file blender-stackexchange-com-2019-election-results.blt.
  Ballot file contains 2 candidates and 185 ballots.
  No candidates have withdrawn.
  Ballot file contains 185 non-empty ballots.
Counting votes for Blender Stack Exchange Moderator Election 2019 using Meek STV.
  2 candidates running for 1 seat.
 R|Duarte Farrajo|Pierre Schille|Exhausted     |Surplus       |Threshold
  |ta Ramos      |r             |              |              |
=============================================================================
 1|    150.000000|     35.000000|      0.000000|     57.499999|     92.500001
  |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  | Count of first choices. Candidate Duarte Farrajota Ramos has reached the
  | threshold and is elected.

Winner is Duarte Farrajota Ramos.

Congratulations to Duarte Farrajota Ramos

And thanks to everyone who participated!

My apologies everyone. I've finally got back to my computer to post the official results. Thankfully, there's not much risk of a discrepancy. Your new moderator will be getting a diamond in a moment.

Possible duplicate of 2019 Community Moderator Election Results

Thanks to anyone who voted, I'll be around if you have any questions.