text:
2019 Community Moderator Election
The 2019 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://blender.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
2020 Community Moderator Election
The 2020 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://blender.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.

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


text:
2022 Community Moderator Election
The 2022 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://blender.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.


text:
2024 Community Moderator Election
The 2024 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://blender.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.


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Pro-Tempore Moderator Nominations
Well, we've made it out of the rough, (Private Beta) and are well on our way into the Public Beta gaining more and more users daily. According to the Moderator Pro Tempore, the SE Team will pick up (usually 3) users to become Moderators more or less a week into Public Beta, until we graduate, so I think we can start with nominations. After graduation there will be actual elections where users can nominate and vote.
Please read the following carefully..
As per the blog post, Moderators should:

Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.
Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.
Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.
Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.

Bonus points for:

Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).
Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.
Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community.

Additional Info

You can self-nominate or nominate others. Each nomination should be posted as a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so everyone can see their activity. Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.
If the nomination was posted by a 3rd-party, the nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.

Candidates will be contacted and three of them will be selected to act as provisional Moderators until the community holds formal elections after the Beta period.

I would like to nominate myself..
Main

Meta

Some of the promotion I have done.

I am familiar with a very large portion of Blender, from its codebase and history to it's modeling and compositing tools etc.
I don't work at the moment (finishing up my CS degree) so I can easily dedicate several hours daily to the site.
My timezone allows me be around when the other mods more than likely won't be UTC 00:00 is 7pm here.

All that being said, I am very interested in the future of this site and wish to be a central part of it. Good luck to everyone else!

Main

Meta

Blender development log
I would like to nominate myself..

I'm a blender developer and have used blender professionally in previous jobs.
I've been involved with some of the open-movie projects, so have worked with small groups on projects and had experience helping artists.
I've been involved with GSOC and mentoring students since GSOC started.

I use stackoverflow for development questions and am happy this site is becoming available for blender users.

Main:

Meta

Area 51

Area 51 profile for CharlesL http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/flair/61430.png

I would like to nominate myself:

I have tons of experience with Blender and have been working with it since 2.49a

Even though I'm mainly a blender artist (portfolio), I have technical skills also (I know how to program in python)

I know how to answer questions clearly and concisely as I have a successful YouTube channel where I teach Blender tutorials(http://youtube.com/thespastickangaroo) (I also make sure to let my subscribers know about Blender Stack exchange on my channel).

I'm in high school, so I have free time to put into this site(I already put about 3 hours into the site every day and spend a lot of the day on chat).

Throughout the beta, I've been very active to answer questions/edit posts/vote.

Anyway, I hope this site is extremely successful as I believe it will be an awesome resource to Blender users.

Main

Meta

I would like to nominate myself.

I am very experienced with the technical side of Blender, having seven years of experience coding in Python
I am particularly experienced with all parts of the modeling process in Blender, having used these tools in an architectural context professionally for several years
I can, and do, dedicate a significant amount of my time to this site

I am very excited to see this site develop, and I want to do everything possible to help it become a successful part of the larger Blender community. Here's what I have done for the community so far:

I have read every single question posted on this site
I actively work to develop and promote good ideas, as evidenced by my voting, commenting, reviewing, and editing rates on the Blender beta. I am the top voter on the site
I am on the site for 13 hours every weekday (from 15:00 to 4:00 UTC), and am very often the first to comment on or answer new posts

Whether I am elected as a moderator or not, I will do everything I can to help this site grow and establish itself as a valuable resource for the entire Blender community.

Main.sequence(star):

Meta:

Area51: (I wasn't the alien that crashed there, sorry).

Area 51 profile for RolandiXor http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/flair/29867.png

Global Stats:

profile for RolandiXor on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/243378.png

I would like to nominate myself for the role:

I have a relatively good grasp of Blender and have been using it since about 2.32 (possibly earlier) or so.
I am not a Blender "expert" by some standards, but I think this helps to have good understanding of the position of the average user as opposed to only seeing things from the "professional" perspective.
I have actively promoted the site since I knew about its proposal.
I'm a moderator on Askubuntu, so I'm familiar with the mod tools and the duties of a moderator.
I spend a lot of time on the chat during the week when I can, and pop on to the site often during the day (I don't time myself, sorry) to check for questions/answers, review tasks, and tags.
This is a kitten.

Therefore you should vote for me.

Main

Meta

Area 51

Area 51 profile for Dan the Man http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/flair/42395.png

I would like to nominate myself:

Have experience with beta sites (History.SE).
I have been using Blender since version 2.47 in 2008.
I'm pretty familiar with every aspect of Blender, except video editing and I'm currently learning scripting.
I have spare time to invest into this site. I'm finishing up high school, and then probably going to study computer science.
I'm constantly editing questions and answers to make them more legible and to have appropriate tags.
Will try with enthusiasm (even if not a moderator) to get this site out of beta. I started the "Meet the Pros" chat events.

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


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How should we deal with tags about other software?
There are a few tags floating around such as unity, makehuman and yafaray. How should we deal with tags like these that are valid but about other packages?

I agree with both previous answers in a 50/50 ratio. There are some applications which will (or should) always been fringe-on-topic cases. Maya is one of these, and as such, should be synonymized with external-applications.
Some others, such as Make-Human, should have their own tags, because they are likely to be used along with Blender quite regularly (and in the case of Make-Human especially, it was once a Blender plugin).

I agree with this, Unity is a good tag but Makehuman is a bad example to justify this as I said above. In relation to Blender, all it really does is export models. Currently, all the tagged questions don't even ask anything about any correlations with Blender or any specific issues.

I could also agree with this this, but I really had an issue related to a mhx rig. Given that our site is still growing, tags to refine the structure could be added later.

Blender is frequently used as part of a process e.g. to create models for game engines.
When the question is related on modelling, import, export or restrictions of available features on the target platform it would be easier to find (or filter) questions by a tag of the related software.
On stackoverflow there are currently aprroximatly 37000 tags. Why so many?
Because there are several programming languages for each is a huge number of frameworks/libaries in different versions available. As a long time SO user I often use the tags to drill down to find  answers. Even a very basic control structure for-loop has already almost 10K questions.
Mostly the language java c++ is used as a primary tag, then the library spring stl serves as secondary classification followed a list of tertiary tags which give rough information on the issue conversion exeption errormessages etc.
How could this work on blender.SE?

rendering cycles artifacts
export three.js
export unity

Example of actual redundant use of tags:

scripting python python-api

Blender comes with the bundled addon for mhx import (Makehuman file format) the tags (mhx and makehuman) wouldn't harm as long the question is Blender related and not on the 3rd party product.
Same for game-engines like unity and external render as yafaray.
Tags help to structure content, if someone tries to add interseting questions to the favorites he will probably not find them again if the number exceeds a few hundred. Organizing the question by bookmarking in the browser could help, but the structure information wouldn't be shared.
Therefore please let us have more (non-redundant) tags.

You make several good points but remember that StackOverflow is a huge site. There are dozens of languages, hundreds of technologies and computer/programming terms etc. I think it is unfair to compare us to them, we are a niche site. We are small and growing, I think we should keep our content as organized as possible and not water it down with borderline questions/tags. Take a look at the makehuman tag, absolutely none of the questions asked have anything to do with makehuman really, just that they exported models from it.

Unity is a slightly stronger case but it is still borderline and localized and as I said above, it makes no sense to exempt a few and ban others so it's ultimately better to just unify them under one tag. As it relates to the redundancy you pointed out, see this question. Tags do allow us to structure content, yes, but there are already other more relevant tags that can do a better job. Rigging a makehuman model? - tags, (rigging).

@iKlsR I didn't mention SO to introduce unfair arguments, it was rather supposed to the show the analogy: A single language on SO is comparable to the implied (Blender) scope of blender.SE, a library or framework could be compared to 3rd party products because it implies best practices, scope, abilities etc.

I think that it makes sense to keep non-redundant tags for external software if that software is being used to compliment Blender in questions that use it. As stacker wrote, tags can be used to organize things in different degrees of hierarchy. For example, the tag external-applications could be used as proposed, but adding the tag unity could further refine a person's search. If somebody is interested in all external applications, they could search by that tag. However, organizing by specifics, like unity, can be very useful if the user is only looking for that.
However, when not used to compliment Blender, redundant/unnecessary tags for external applications should not be kept, for example an application which exported a model to a standard format where the question is not regarding the opening of the model. Also, questions should not tag external applications in a way in which they are competing, for example "I want to do _________________ like in Maya" and tagging maya.

Good point. Reading back, grouping everything under one giant tag would have gotten out of hand sooner or later. I think we could work with something like this for a while. It's pretty easy to determine what correlates more with Blender so we will know how to deal with those that don't.

This site is about Blender and as such, all questions and tags should be about Blender or anything related (general CG topics etc). Questions about other 3D software or applications are on-topic however, provided that they follow the guidelines outlined here - Should questions that compare Blender and <insert competing 3D modeling software> be allowed?.
If we encourage these unique tags, there is no limit to this and as such, anyone asking a question can easily create an accompanying tag such as zbrush, sketchup and maya etc. These questions are already borderline and one will also notice that they are usually very localized. Therefore, I don't think other packages need specific tags on this site.
I propose that we synonimize every existing tag (and future ones) that relates to another application under external-applications.

I disagree. There's a big difference between competing software and complimenting software. OP's example of the unity tag is, in my opinion, a very valid usage because it involves Blender working with other software that does a different job.

So, based on all the discussion here. I think a good mix is that we keep those that closely correlate to Blender ([unity][yafaray]) but group those that compete and or are less relevant ([make-human]) etc.

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


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'Rendering' tag
I feel that this tag is not needed. Whenever it has been used so far, it's also accompanied with the tag for the render engine. Such as cycles yafaray freestyle. Shouldn't we just get rid of it? See for yourself: rendering

it can be useful.. say for discussing rendering techniques/theory etc..

@iKlsR good point.

@iKlsR but I think that if a question has a rendering engine tag, that it shouldn't have the rendering tag.

We should keep the rendering tag.

I personally prefer this option, by the way.

We should keep the rendering tag.
Although many questions regarding rendering are specific to a particular engine, there are still a good number of questions that might arise independent of the rendering engine, or questions that ask for comparisons between the different engines. Also, there are a number of features of the rendering process that are general enough that even if the user is working with one engine, the answers might still be useful in a different engine (such as speed/optimization questions).

Also, since tag nesting is not currently supported, if I'm looking for wide-range questions on rendering, I wouldn't want to go through all tags, having one is helpful

We should keep the rendering, but remove it from every question that already has a rendering engine tag.

We should get rid of the rendering tag.

why do you have two different answers?

@iKlsR He wants rep.

@iKlsR, I've seen this done quite often on several different other SE sites I'm a part of, mainly just to make it easy for the community to choose the option they like best.

@Dan the Man, no, you can't get rep from the meta site.

@PeterCassetta Ah ok. Didn't know.


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p3d.in embedding?
Should we have p3d.in embedding? It could be handy for geometry or modeling questions.

Is it possible here?

could come in handy, but then those discussions become dependant on p3d. At the same time we want to avoid using video as answer, how is that different?

As one of the p3d.in developers I can say that we certainly wouldn't mind embeds being used here :)

@iKlsR well Math.SE and mathoverflow have MathJaX which is considered a "very heavy dependency" by Atwood; as far as I know p3d.in is fairly light. As a developer it doesn't strike me as being too difficult to implement (although it's easy for me to say...)

Indeed. It should be enough to implement a tag that takes a shortid. Upon rendering of the tag it would be replaced by an iframe.

I can see how it could be useful, but in general I would have to say no, we should not enable it.
I feel that having this tool could potentially encourage more tutorial-style answers, which we should generally try to discourage. Most questions and answers on this site should be simple enough to be answered with text and screenshots.

Good point. We don't want tutorial-style answers.

I agree we shouldn't allow 3D embedding. I can't imagine many scenarios where an embedded 3d model helps illustrate a point.

Same here, it's bad enough we should even accept .blends at times. This is not a forum per say, answers should be concise and compact. I can only imagine this would clutter the site and encourage showcasing.

I think we should, because we already need screenshots to answer many of the questions. Why not have screenshots in 3D? Also, it will end up saving space where multiple screenshots are required.
If tutorial requests are too prevalent, maybe just enable p3D in the answers? That would allow people to answer questions (specifically topology questions) with a 3D model.

I agree it would be helpful to have it available for answers sometime. I don't see how it would result in "tutorial style" answers, since you can't animate P3D embeds or anything.

That might work!


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We need more Questions!
So, I've been looking at the stats on area51 for Blender Stack Exchange and most of them are looking pretty good... other than questions per day. When the site originally started, there was a pretty steady amount of questions(about 20 per day!). Since then, the stats have been slipping and we've come to a new low of 7 questions per day. We have more users(since we went public), but we haven't had too many more questions. Does anyone know of any websites or social media categories/groups where Blender.SE can be advertised to beginner users?

This is only natural, other beta sites I have been on took the same turn right out of private beta. Give it time.. http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/89/how-do-we-promote-our-site We have exhausted pretty much most of what is in our power, the best we can get now is a feature from BN.

I'm noticing a trend that people will vote for answers of questions but not necessarily the question, I can imagine this acts as a disincentive to put much effort into asking questions that you already know the answer to. Unless you are also answering your own question.. There's still a lot of low hanging fruit, I suspect we will see sporadic efforts .

Carefully advertise it as a Q&A though, not as a forum. Increased traffic and a rise in the number of questions is great, if those don't end up closed because the site is misunderstood. As @iKlsR says though, I wouldn't worry too much at this point.

Can we answer the questions with more questions to raise the question count? (Seriously though, I think given enough time, this will resolve itself. For a beta, it's growing fine)

@MikePan, yeah, we're really growing now. I asked this question when we were down to two questions a day and less than 400 views.

Added this now as blender.org frontpage news item, and on our main education/help page.
Thanks for all the work so far, it's very promising!

Most sites will start in private beta with 20-50-ish questions per day (QPD). After private beta ends, the QPD stat normally falls below 5, sometimes as low as 1 or 2. After that it will plateau a while and eventually start rising again.
This is all part a normal beta's growth. Don't upset yourself too much about those numbers on the Area 51 page. They'll improve when the community grows and the best way too gather a larger community is to keep the quality high. Publicity is important, but without quality we won't go anywhere.

+1 for the note about quality.


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Should questions that compare Blender and <insert competing 3D modeling software> be allowed?
I can see that a category of questions that would potentially be very problematic would be questions along the lines of "Which is better, Blender or Maya?". Now, such a broadly general question such as this shouldn't be allowed for other reasons, but what if it's more along the lines of "How does Blender handle materials differently from Maya?" or "Which renders faster, Blender or Maya?"? Should such comparative questions be on-topic for this site or off-topic?

Questions that do this should either

relate to any interaction the two software have. (file formats they might share, how to efficiently import/export from either to the other etc.)
ask if Feature X from from (other 3D modeling software) is available in Blender
ask what similarities they might have  OR
ask if it is possible to perform a certain task in Blender (for people who use other 3D software and are interested in trying Blender)

+1. Sometimes best way to describe a feature: "You know, like  has"

FAQ:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?
Avoid asking questions that have nothing to do with Blender Stack Exchange.
  This is not a random discussion area, it's a place for improving our community and website together.


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How do you delete a chat room?
I accidentally made a chat room. Is there anything I can do to delete it?
I created it by migrating a discussion I was having with another user in comments to chat, creating a chat room called "Discussion between Gwenn and Kyle Willey." I never really wanted to create a separate chat room, and since we've finished our conversation, it feels like a horribly irrelevant thing to have in chat.

It was created by the site to extend the discussion you were having. Average users cannot remove them, only moderators can. Just leave it be for now, it will be taken care of eventually or I think you can flag it for Moderator attention and post a message in it asking for it to be deleted.

As iKlsR said, only mods and SE employees can delete a room manually. Rooms can also be deleted automatically.
Per http://chat.stackexchange.com/faq#retention

Rooms will exist indefinitely, so long as there is at least one person actively talking in the room. A room is considered worth retaining if it has more than 15 messages by at least 2 users.
Rooms not worth retaining which are inactive for 7 days will be deleted. Rooms worth retaining which are inactive for 14 days will be frozen. Frozen rooms do not allow any new messages to be sent, and are not shown in the default room list to prevent cluttering the rooms interface.


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Should 'scripting' and 'Python' be made tag synonyms?
I've noticed that nearly every question about scripting ends up getting tagged with both of these tags. Do we really need them both?
As I see it, scripting in Blender can only be done in Python, and the only time while using Blender you would encounter raw Python would be while scripting. Is there anything one adds that the other doesn't?

There's also a python-api tag.

No
There are currently questions here that use python but aren't directly related to scripting and there are sure to be more in the future.
Example: How to make Blender use Python2.x?
Also see my answer to a similar question

why not using a "python-scripting" tag instead of "scripting" to exclude C/C++ and easy tag choice (auto-complete)

We're looking to change this soon @Bithur. This is showing its age.

No.
As blender expands, they may also be referring to OSL. They also may be referring just to Python(as stated in iKlsR's answer).

OSL does not belong under either tag and should have one of it's own.

Agreed, but I'm saying that an OSL script may be tagged.

To share my 2 cents . . .
They might also be C/C++ scripting/plugin development.

Anything C/C++ is off-topic and "C/C++ scripting?" :)

@iKlsR off-topic? C/C++ scripting

From a developer or even average user viewpoint this is actually not directly related to Blender. See #5 here http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1/what-questions-should-be-definitely-off-topic (I did not make this list by myself, it was from bits and pieces contributed here and there)


text:
Tags in need of synonymization
There are some tags that are very much in need of synonymizing, but there isn't anybody on the site with enough rep to request tag synonyms yet. Until then, can we make an informal list of suggestions for tag synonyms here? That way, hopefully the mods will see and make the edits as necessary.
Comment or answer this post with potential synonyms.

Here are some suggestions. Feel free to edit this list.
.blend-files  →   blend-files (discussion)
.stl      →   stl
user-preferences  →   preferences
modelling     →   modeling
node-editor   →   nodes
keystroke     →   shortcut

Some of these spelling variations don't usually constitute adding a tag synonym. Text completion when entering tags are best for that. Synonyms are for different words that essentially refer to the same tag context.

*This is just a comment that got too long to fit neatly in the comments section but still applies to the scope of this question.
IMO we don't want to be using too many extensions as tags regardless of the fact that they will popup in a search ignoring the prefixed period. Also, some of these are conjugated and make no sense as extensions making it even worse, like .blend-files for example.
Regardless, as there are multiple terms or similar words for most of the topics that can be discussed here, it makes sense to set the appropriate ones from now. I agree with Robert Cartaino on his comment that some of these spelling variations don't usually constitute adding a tag synonym for several reasons, one being that sometimes a tag should correlate with the tense or manner the accompanying question is phrased.
For one light could refer to lamps and their settings, while lighting could refer to best lighting techniques for product renders etc.


text:
What should be the standard format for file-extension tags?
We should definitely standardize how we want to handle file-extension tags, because there's already been some confusion.
Should we have:

.svg or svg?
.stl or stl?
.blend-files or blend-files?
etc...

This is closely related to the blend-files/.blend-files synonym request, but I think we should discuss this as a more general issue.

I'd opt for without the dot, but I'm interested to see what other people think

Tags generally avoid characters that are not either alphanumeric or a hyphen, from what I've seen on other sites.

@ObsessiveSSOℲ: So far as I know, hyphens are used to separate words when needed. So it's not so much avoiding their use as simply not overusing them.

We should avoid the dots, as those refer to file extensions, not formats. Formats should be specified in the form of "svg", "blend", "obj-format", etc.

+1. No dots please.

Agreed. Some formats have multiple extensions anyway.


text:
Are platform-dependent questions off-topic?
Blender is, for the most part, cross-platform in nature. Surely, there will be some platform-dependent issues that might be relevant, especially for Unix/Linux users. However, most 'platform-related' questions are probably going to be outside of the actual Blender development process. For example, questions about image export, Blender's compatibility with other, OS-specific software, and external image manipulation software (IE GIMP and Photoshop). I feel these tags are going to have an abnormally high percentage of off-topic posts, so should we keep or ditch the platform tags?

In my opinion compatability issues are not off-topic. If the question involves Blender and possible issues, even if they are connected to other software, they are still Blender issues to an extent.
Let's say someone doesn't know how to import a certain file into Blender that's created with another software. The question will still include Blender.

Whether something is off-topic or not will be filtered naturally through voting habits. I suppose we will see soon enough how many degrees of separation will be considered appropriate by the community.
There will be instances where it is useful to include a platform tag, because platforms can have different behaviours. Think of keyboard shortcuts, path variables (for python related things), and graphics drivers.

I agree with @Leathe above.. as long as the majority of the problem is with Blender it is valid. Depending on how it is worded and what the OP seeks to achieve however, is what will be the deciding factor won whether it gets an answer etc.

I think that they will not be so many. Also, as the site is Blender specific and Blender is multiplataform is normal that you need to specify you system in the answer (if related).
For example I want to ask how to change Transform Orientation with keyboard because in Ubuntu (and many others) Alt + Space are a system combination to show app menu. I think this question is ok (although is my own question, so it may be a little biased viewpoint).


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Is video editing off-topic?
The FAQ currently says this website is for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games. However, Blender is a full-featured and very competent video editor. Especially since the release of Tears of Steel, the software is a state-of-the-art special effects tool for live action film. Should questions related to non-animation video and compositing be allowed, since this is a very large (although lesser-known) feature of Blender?

This was asked eight years ago and the help center page https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic still suggests that only questions about modeling and animation are on-topic. This should probably be fixed, as the non-modeling uses of blender are now well established.

No it is not, the site is about Blender, if topics such as the compositor, tracker and the game engine are on topic, so is the vse. However, the question must relate to a problem within Blender or with Blender's VSE and not about just video editing or video editing techniques etc.

NO
The FAQ is still WIP, so don't let that define your view of what the site is for. If you have good Video Editing questions or knowledge, feel free to add them/it.
(The yes I had originally was answering the question in the body of your question).


text:
Combine prism topics into the caustics tag?
Does anyone see reasons for or against the caustics tag including prism topics?
Caustics are not explicitly prism-rendering, but caustics are often prismatic in small degree.
Or, could we create a prism tag for following related topic?

Look at the google quick answer box for both "caustics" and "prism."

While they both are about rendering light based effects, that is where the similarity ends.
No I would not include prisms in the caustics tag, nor synonymize them.
If you feel we need a tag for prismatic effects, then I'd normally say just create a new prism tag (even though I think that is is rather ambiguous), however seeing the very low usage of the caustics tag how about we rename it to something like "rendered optical effects." That would include both prisms, caustics, and other effects like refraction.

I like a group tag, but would be worried that someone may not find it.  caustics and prisms are common search terms.  Can we synonymize both of them to whatever is the group tag, so when someone types 'prism' for the tag, they see the group-tag + hint text?  I'd try to add these, but I think my rep is too low

While there might not be many uses of the 'caustics' tag, there are plenty of questions mentioning caustics, they're just not tagged correctly. In my opinion 'rendered optical effects' is far too vague and would probably be immediately misused by people who see the word 'rendered' and presume it relates to anything related to rendering. If anything, a new 'refraction' tag could cover anything prism related (caustics does include refraction but also includes reflection).


text:
What happens if we fail to get 1500 daily visitors?
Does all the content just evaporate or what?
How long does the public beta last? At present we are only at 180 daily visits, what happens if we don't have a nice 1500 visitors (as seems to be a required amount) after the public beta period ends?
from area51:

1,500 visits per day is good, 500 visits per day needs some work. A
  great site benefits people outside the community. Eventually, 90% of a
  site's traffic should come from search engines.

Would be a shame to see this just vanish.

it's currently over 300, so it looks like it's heading in the desired direction!

From When Will My Site Graduate?:

How long can a site stay in beta?
The simple answer is, it takes as long as it takes. We’ll wait. If a site needs more activity, go out and evangelize it. As long as your site shows steady progress and continues to make the Internet a better place to get expert answers to your questions, it will march on. We don’t want to kill a site because it hasn’t reached full status in 90 days. Nor do we want to set a hard 90-day limit and launch a site too soon.

We'll generally only close a site when it has become clear that it is dying - if you're growing, even slowly, you have little to worry about. (And even when we do close sites, the data is made public so that you can take your work with you)
So far, Blender.SE is doing very nicely.

thanks for the concise answer, i'd love to get hold of the current site stats as json is that possible?

Expanding on Yu Asakusa's answer..
This is something that happens over time, some sites have been in public beta for months and longer, we haven't been up for 2 weeks yet. We also already have alot of content and our userbase is expanding nicely, 300 users so far. I wouldn't worry about it too much as we have already been planning ways on promoting the site. See How do we promote our site? and Migrating Blender related questions from other SE sites?.
However, as an answer to your question, if we don't get enough content or our visits stay low and or users are inactive, there is a high possibility that the site will be closed, but as I said, so far its early and the site has alot of potential. Also, one factor isn't really enough to determine the fate of a site, it usually is based on several or more problems. We will graduate when the community moderators deem us ready.
See How can we ensure Blender.SE doesn't share 3DGraphics.SE's fate?
On a more positive note, we are well ahead of the other site that was closed. The stats look pretty good to me so far.
Here is where we would be in trouble.

We are already way past where they were closed so our stats are pretty ok at the moment.

29 visits per day. o.O

It's a shame 3D Graphics didn't survive that beta, the premise was (and still is) brilliant. With a potential to be the rosetta stone of 3d software.

@zeffii see http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/77/does-cad-se-border-with-this-one/78#78

@Dan the Man: To be fair, according to the Area 51 page, 3D Graphics was in private beta for its whole life, so it is understandable that the average number of visits was low.  I do not know why it did not become public beta.  Anyway it is unfortunate it did not grow into a great Q&A website.

Months? Sometimes that can be years. It took about 21 months for Christianity.SE to graduate. So, don't despair if it seems like it'll take many months before graduation; that's actually kinda normal.

The site graduates the beta when it is ready.  Graduation from the beta is not judged by a single metric, and I do not know if 1500 visitors per day is a must.
But if the administrators at Stack Exchange Inc. decide the site is not likely to become ready to graduate in the foreseeable future, they will close the site.  In that case, the content of the site (data dump) will be available for download at the Area 51 page for possible reuse.  For example, see the page of 3D Graphics Stack Exchange.  Other than the data dump, the site will indeed vanish unless someone revives the content from the data dump.

thanks for your answer, if it results in a datadump at least I will have some interesting data to visualize with d3.js on a rainy day.


text:
Off topic "other stack exchange network "-- limited options why?
is there any merrit to having a new more options in that list, like :

SuperUser.stackexchange
Graphicdesign.stackexchange
Photography.stackexchange
stackoverflow

this is extra step seems so useless if there is only one option to pick.

This yet another thing which is addressed when we graduate.

cool. could I have read that anywhere?

How soon can we have the option to suggest that a question should be moved to a different stack exchange site than Blender meta? It seems to me that question 46813 belongs on Hardware Stack Exchange.

I have talked to two stack exchange employees and the short of it is we don't have enough questions needing to be migrated to warrant a custom list.
I know this comes as a bit of a disappointment, but I will share their reasoning for us not getting it.
First and foremost we have only migrated 33 ever, in the whole history of our site. That means we migrate about 1% of our questions away. The stats for this year are January: 3, February: 2, March: 0, Apil: 0 (so far). We just dont need to migrate questions that often.
Sometimes questions migrated to other sites can cause problems and tension.
With that few question needing to be migrated, and the problems it can cause they feel that BSE does not need the migration targets list.

So what are we supposed to do now?
Just flag any post you think should be on a different site. Use the "in need of moderator intervention" flag type, and use a message such as:

This question belongs on < site name >

(Your flagging screen may look a little different, but the custom flag reason will always be at the bottom.)

It would seem reasonable and proper to have at least one option besides the meta BSE option, namely a blank field in which we could nominate the SE to which we think the question would fit better.

@brasshat not really. First a "custom migration site" would not get the question moved there particularity fast. (that has to do with how the CV system works). Second simply flagging it with a custom message (the same amount of work) will guarantee a mod sees it and can move it. So I would ask why you want a field to nominate the the site, when you already have a field where you can nominate what site it should go to.

Quoted from
What is migration and how does it work?

If you don't have 3,000 reputation, the site isn't in the list of available migration targets, or the question got closed without being migrated, do not fret.

When we graduate we will get 5 sites to have on that list to migrate to (the devs set that up and it is all data driven). So in the not to distant future we will have other options (probably the sites you listed.)
For now just flag it with a custom message saying what site it should go to, and one of us mods will migrate it.

Well, we graduated a while ago, and as of the date of this comment, I still only see one site to nominate as a migration target: this one.

@brasshat after a (too long) delay I have the answer for you. Sorry for the delay.


text:
Can we add a three.js plugin for questions?
After using Atlassian's Confluence, I have gotten dependent on their Gliffy plugin that allows me to quickly draw up a diagram to illustrate my thoughts. For 3D questions/answers, the Three.js editor would be a nice tool to have to quickly demonstrate a simplified 3D scene. Since the Three.js editor is a Javascript plugin, it seems like we could utilize that here on Blender SE.
Devs, is this a feasible feature?
Users, would you use a simple, browser-based 3D editor to illustrate ideas in your questions or answers?

To be honest I think I personally would end up firing up blender every time instead.. Maybe that's just me though.

I can not speak to how easy to would be to implement, as I am not a dev.
However, as a user I can say that that no I would not use it.
This is a site about blender, and in most questions some feature of blender is at heart. So I go not see the benefit of adding an in browser 3D editor, that cannot come close to all the features blender has, and are asked about.
Even if I was to make a simple scene to demo something, I would just make it in blender (often times blend files are a plus).


text:
Policy for linking to blend files
Sometimes its so much easier to give a blend file as an example, or to give a blend file as part of an answer.
I think in some ways using blend files goes against the notion of having a concise text (search-able) answer, but in some cases to explain these things becomes tedious too.
Is there some rule of thumb we should use to distinguish when its OK to include blend files as answers (or with answers)?

As long as we aren't fixing stuff and sending the file back, where no-one but the OP can learn from the experience.
Use our best judgement. If we think we can help the OP faster by getting them to send a portion of the file or a new file with the same problem, why deny ourselves that facility? It can be counter productive to keep asking questions or to speculate, cut out the middle man.
it's like debugging code
It can be very instructive to the original poster to try to reduce the issue to the smallest possible .blend, sometimes simply getting them to remove all the other possible variables will prove a solution in itself. Just like asking someone to debug their own code by scraping away things that have nothing to do with the problem.
It is important to do a short write up after solving the issue with the .blend so that the knowledge is text searchable and not dependant on the .blend still being available.
Ultimately the file itself is irrelevant, but an accurate problem description and resolution clarification is.

We are not a direct support group like a forum per se, but sometimes the question does merit a .blend for several reasons, be it the question is difficult to put into words or there is a problem with the actual file and not what OP thinks it is.
For example:

Cycles Subsurface shader: GPU compute and CPU compute give totally different results
Artifacts in rendered geometry which appears okay in openGL / Solid view?

In such cases, it can be ok to post a small .blend. Also, we have PasteAll.org and Blend-Exchange which handles these specifically so that could be used safely in these cases.
So I say, we should but we should be very careful and accept files only when and where needed. Obviously we wouldn't accept a file from someone who wants a mesh tweaked or his 300 line script optimized.

You mention using PasteAll.org, But this removes blend files after a while which would get annoying if you find some questions is a year or two old and the answer-blend is lost, of course this can happen with any URL but pasteall is definitely not great if we want to keep blend files for useful answers.

@ideasman42 well, a good point. PasteAll was just a suggestion and it says files are kept for about ~5 months but granted the problem was solved, I really doubt anyone would be interested in looking at the file after that.. and also, said questions are usually very localized.

disagree, one of the best things about stack-exchange is you can benefit from older Q&A and see how others came to a solution, otherwise you may have to ask the same Q again.

@ideasman42 ah fair enough, this might prove true for a few cases. But PasteAll was just a suggestion, users are free to use whatever they want to and not everyone knows about PasteAll anyways.

sure, but we could discourage linking to temporary file storage -- just as you wouldn't want important aspects of an answer to be linked to in a temp pasting service.

Indeed. There's even a "don't provide link-only answers as they may become useless in the future, provide some text from the page you are linking to as well" rule because of future visitors. @ideasman42

I just encountered this problem this week. I did attach a blend file linked from pasteall, but 50 days from now it will be a broken link. It's better to encourage users to explain their process because that procedural list of instructions can be tracked within the stack exchange system. It can be read in plain english. It can be proofed and updated. Blend files can't be proofed and updated. As much as I want to link a blend file and plead that the community help me fix my problem, some future version of Blender might not be as backwards-compatible as the ones we're used to right now.
I think it's okay to include a blend file to supplement detailed instructions.

I agree with this. Unless it is extremely necessary, better to write it out as best as possible.

Be nice though. It is always a first priority to help someone. If a user doesn't know about this policy, let's still do our best to help them and point them towards a policy page. Not just one or the other.

I think answers should be as self contained as possible, but I'm not against providing a blend to provide more detail for an answer. I do expect a blend with a question to be more popular, in this case I think it would be used more as a way to find the exact issue and to edit the question to be better address the problem encountered. After the true issue is discovered and explained the need to keep the blend available diminishes.

EXACTLY. We're on the same page, sambler. High five! o/\o


text:
Policy for questions about older versions of Blender
There have been questions about older versions of Blender, in some cases this seems like the user could have updated their installation before asking especially if its an area thats getting large updates for each release.
Also with Blender theres rarely a good reason to stick to old version.
In the case when a question asks about some problem thats been fixed in a newer version of blender I would be inclined to close the question, but is this good practice?

I personally think we should not accept any questions pre 2.5x but let's see what people say, this was partly the reason why we didn't want version specific tags. It might encourage questions like that.

I have to agree with @iKlsR except for one thing: certain addons and scripts are specific to 2.4x. I don't think there will be too many questions like that, but there may be a few. I don't think most of the 2.4x questions most users are asking are relating to this anyway.

@iKlsR, You say. pre-2.5x but why would we even answer 2.5x specific questions? Theres always the very small chance that there is a valid question for an old Blender version --- but for the most part, I would think anyone asking a question for 2.5x would be advised to upgrade in the case where new versions work differently (or resolves the issue they ask about). This still begs the question How old is too old ?

@ideasman42 I did just to set a reasonable limit as this was where Blender changed direction, I know people who are still using 2.5x because they fear or rather know that upgrading might break their pipeline/workflow etc. A good point indeed, we need to know where to cap it.

We could choose to leave this topic open (and simply not have any policy).
In the same way stack-overflow doesn't exclude developers from asking questions about Python-1.0 for example,
Users might just have to accept if they ask questions about older versions, they might not get a good answer, or the answer may be to upgrade.
Having a policy could reduce noise --- questions about issues resolved in newer versions, but since there is not so much incentive to keep using older Blender versions, this may be worrying about a problem that isn't.
Note that this is more to post a point-of-view, if others share - it can be up-voted

2.49 is still available for download on some platforms (for example the irie PPA has it), but I don't think we should support versions older than 2.5x, regardless.
Supporting older versions can lead to a lot of confusion and to abandoned, unanswered questions. Our policy on Ask Ubuntu for example is to only support Ubuntu versions that are not yet at their End Of Life.
This would work perfectly for Blender IMHO.

Even supporting 2.5x I think is too old, If you are wanting to use Blender why use a version from 2011? (2.59)

@ideasman42: Because it comes with your distribution.  One reason a distribution is so nice, is that it takes care of all software updates for you.  I don't want to check if firefox, blender, libreoffice, gimp, etc etc have a new version.  I just want to run my distribution's upgrade program and be done with it.  Now I personally like to use the new features of Blender, so I chose to get it from the site.  But I definitely don't want to recommend, or even require this from people who just have a question and are happy with their packaged version.

People can ask questions about pre current Trunk releases, but it will be down to a dedicated few to bother engaging with localized issues that will effect only 10 people on the planet.
We already have a policy to avoid localization, unless the answer leads to some form of enlightenment and lifts the question into a wider context.
perhaps. a canned response with the core of this discussion:

'This question might not get many answers or indeed a satisfactory solution as it
  relates to a pre 2.6 addon or feature, please realize that the site is
  run based on the best intentions to answer all questions, but
  especially those that are likely to impact, and be useful to, the most
  users'

As the age of Blender and this StackExchange site grow, we will end up with questions that are "too old". It is inevitable. The best we can do is tag things early and often. If we stay in the habit, then users can filter out "old" results in their searches for questions that have already been asked. If you want a good example of this question answered, look at any of the other StackExchange sites that have been around for much longer.
When Blender 3.0 comes out, we can't make all these 2.x questions suddenly irrelevant.


text:
Community Promotion Ads - 2018
It's almost February in 2018, which isn't supposed to be the proper time to cycle these, but for this year it'll be once again, so we'll be refreshing the Community Promotion Ads for this year now!
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.

copy/paste from 2017

copy/paste from 2017

Aside from being a promotion for Animation Nodes. I also wanted to inform the community about the "animation-nodes" tag as users seems to confuse it with the "animation" tag thinking it has something to do with the animation workflow of blender.

I like the idea of an ad to promote Animation nodes. The title font feels a bit boring to me, though. Also, could we get a picture that updates automatically, like the Blend Exchange ad?

@ScottMilner What font do you suggest we use? I am currently using Roboto Slab. I was not aware that the Blend Exchange ad can do that, I am not sure if we can do that, a requirement is that it "Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)" and it should be an image, so we can't really dynamically update the image without manually editing the post.

I think you should use the same font as you use below, only bold face. That way, it looks like a title, but is more coherent with the rest of the image. Alternatively, another sans-serif font would work. It's the difference in serifs vs no-serifs that's making it look off.

As far as the dynamic image goes, the Blend Exchange ad is hosted here, not on Imgur. There is some PHP code that updates it automatically. I don't know what the best place to host this would be, though.

@ScottMilner Like this: New Image? As for the dynamic image, my point is, the rules in the post states that images should be hosted on only imgur, so we can't use external domains, I am not sure if the Blend Exchange one will be a valid ad because of this.

That looks better, yeah. Since the new font is taller, I'd move it down a little bit. The Blend Exchange image has been hosted externally since 2015, and hasn't been a problem thus far.

SE has that only internal images rule, but they let that slide for any dynamically generated images. (there are lots of examples across the network.) Do note though you will need a host with https support.

@GiantCowFilms The font is a light and bold "Roboto Condensed". The design was created in Gravit Designer. Here is the SVG and gvdesign files.

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:
How can we ensure Blender.SE doesn't share 3DGraphics.SE's fate?
For those not in the know, an older, now defunct 3d graphics.SE never made it out of private beta.
What can we do to make sure Blender.SE has the best chance of at least making it out of private beta?

Its been only a couple hours and we have nearly half of what they had after 33 days! It's a good start!

@iKlsR, How did you check that?

@DantheMan in the link in the question above, it said they had 177 users after 33 days. I go to new users on our site and see that the newest one is 60.

Is it something we do, or does it happen because of the need and objective popularity(and better focus) of subject?

There are several variables involved but the major one is publicity. Even in our commitment phase which took nearly a year, I myself had no idea of it until I randomly stumbled across it. What we need is publicity. IIRC every Blender release totals around at least 200k downloads which means that there are lots of people out there, people who want to learn.
My main suggestion is to share the site wherever and whenever you can, tweet a well written question or answer you found useful and or share a new tip or trick you learnt via your social and personal pages. Invite or tell a friend.
This site is a refreshing take on Q&A and Blender in general. It also helps us to stretch ourselves from dusty IRC channels and lengthy confusing forum threads. Lets make this into a great community!

One of the problems I've faced with publicity is an antagonistic community. Even Blender Nation's editor refused to report about this site when I suggested it.

@RolandiXor if we can't go big, we can at least start small. :) Several prominent persons in the community and a few developers are already here.. so lets see what happens.

To help with publicity I'm happy to help promote it across the Blender Cookie facebook and twitter.

@JonathanWilliamson That's awesome! What do you think about hosting a scheduled chat with us once we get into public beta?

@DantheMan sure I'm game. Shoot me an email via jonathan (at) cgcookie.com

Voting is important.
It feeds one of the stats on the Area 51 site (Avid users) which is used to determine how well this site is doing and whether to keep it running.
If a question receives a lot of votes and/or comments, it can end up in the "Supercolider" which is the "Hot questions" section of the main dropdown at the top of each page.  This brings a lot of users to that question from other parts of StackExchange.  I don't know if this happens during the public beta (and it certainly won't during the private beta) but when it does, even obscure questions can end up with hundreds of votes and dozens of answers.
Voting also encourages new users to contribute more by "rewarding" them.
Voting is also important in the long-term. Once the site is well established, the votes on the answers is how people who find a question through search engines can tell which answer is the best.

Ah yes, I saw a question there this one time. Said question now has over 3k views.

Another important difference with the 3D graphics SE is that the Blender SE is more specific. It is about one program instead of a whole area. It's hard to see as a user of the 3D graphics SE which subjects are in the scope of the site and which aren't.
Therefor i think that a specific Blender SE has a lot more potential and change of success than the 3D graphics SE.

It did work for 'stack overflow' though.


text:
Does CAD.SE border with this one?
Speaking of other sites and other 3D designers,
How close to here is this proposal?

Very far apart IMO. Keep in mind that the only reason this site is/was ideal is that Blender is a complete package! While other similar software can only model, render etc. We have a Game Engine, a Video Editor, Compositor, Text Editor, Tracker and the list goes on.
There was a previous proposal to this that was called 3D Graphics.SE which died after a month or so. While there might have been one or two Blender questions possibly, IMO modeling and mockup questions alone cannot constitute to keeping a site as dynamic as SE sites are populated and busy. Also people who use those commercial software are usually trained, working professionals who occasionally might have a few questions about this or that but not enough to need an entire site. We are open source and the majority of our user base are hobbyists and or amateurs, plenty of questions to be asked and answered and experience shared.
Here is also another overly broad one for CG Artists which appears to be going nowhere anytime soon.

I think the CAD proposal is targeting a different community. Yes, they'll get some artists who use those programs for modeling, but the main part of their target audience is probably engineers of various types and architects.


text:
Migrating Blender related questions from other SE sites?
Will there be some time soon an effort to migrate blender related questions from other SE sites? I.e. Stackoverflow is full of 'em, and I'd imagine it'd be good to consolidate those into one place.

Most likely not (at least for the existing ones), but when we get into public beta, new questions probably will be.

While it's technically possible to migrate questions, the migration paths are not set up until a site becomes well-established.
But beyond that technical limitation, building this community from the old, pre-answered questions of another site would do this site a terrible disservice. That's not how you want to build this site.
Forget for a moment that other site may not want their content removed like that (along with the the knowledge and reputation earned). Consider that, from day one, your brand new site will be filled with old, pre-answered "anonymous" questions — remember, the  original authors are off on another site.
So, unless Blender questions have been deemed off topic on another site, we will not be migrating another site's content here.
Respect the community – your own, and others’
I wouldn't start out this site by glomming off the content built by others. It would be very difficult to build a comprehensive, functional community by migrating a bunch of questions en masse.
I would also be really careful about trawling other communities for their users/posts. Unless a particular question is being closed as off topic, please don't start soliciting users to bring their content elsewhere. That would not be appropriate.

I agree that we should definitely transfer all the Blender-related questions we can, in order to help direct users to our site. In particular, I've noticed a significant number of Blender questions on:

Stack Overflow
Game Development
Ask Ubuntu

Comment to this post if you know of another SE site with a lot of Blender content.

Posts on those sites' metas would be helpful in this aspect.

But on Gamedev, they have questions related to the Blender game engine. Would we still migrate those?

@DantheMan Blender is Blender, it would also depend. I don't think they handle technical issues.

Encouraged by this discussion I asked Setup of PyDev and Eclipse for Blender Add-Ons now this question is likely to get closed as off-topic.
After it has been closed I will simply post it on SO. Anyway it represents a type of question that seems suitable to define the limits of on-topic.
Update:
The post on SO was ignored (no upvotes, less views): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16821865/setup-of-pydev-and-eclipse-for-blender-add-ons
At here it has currently 5 upvotes which indicates that more users than me have an interest to get this solved. having that said we could rethink whether questions like that should be on-topic.

Although I am not opposed to the idea of concentrating questions like yours on this site, I am not sure it will attract the needed attention of programmers as it could on SO.

Re: update, keep in mind that this was in private beta where votes were flying around. Try bumping the post on SO to see if it gets any new hits. I am somewhat inclined to agree however since the last meta post related to [external-applications]. At the same time however, seeing that programming questions are already borderline and we are talking about an entire different package from CG here (an IDE), I still think that this might be out of the scope of this site.

@iKlsR It was a recent upvote of the closed question which awoke me. What a shame that there is no place to ask something like that.


text:
Where can tag proposals go?
Where should tag proposals be made?
(I want to suggest dupli or duplivert)

you add a tag, like any other tag, then submit the post. Then you click into the new tag and add an excerpt, which is then vetted by moderators.

"Creating the new tag 'dupli' requires at least 150 reputation. Try something from the existing tags list instead."

i'm not opposed to the tag, if you can write a concise excerpt for the tag wiki (and a longer description..if you feel strongly about it). I will add the tag to a post if you link it here.

This is meta, anything about the site can be posted here if you are unsure or just curious, so you can post those here in the future and the community will respond.
Once you have the privilege to create tags, you can do so if you think your post is unique enough to merit a new tag.
Don't abuse this though, we keep strict tabs on the tags already in the system and as they are added. Often times you might find that your new tag can be generalized under a broader tag or the other way around. That being said, you can also just leave a comment under your post suggesting that the tag be added and someone with the privilege will add it if it's necessary.
Additionally, you are not obligated to do so, but if you create a new tag, again, feel free to create the tag wiki for it.

If you take a look at the awesome new Privileges page, you'll see Create tags, awarded at 150 reputation. With this privilege, you can create new tags simply by adding them to a question.
If you do not have the reputation to create a new tag, you can just leave a comment on your question asking someone with enough reputation to add the tag to your question for you.
There's even a badge for creating a tag used by 50 questions.


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Should the 'sapling-addon' tag be renamed?
I've just noticed the sapling-addon tag.

This tag seems to be the odd one out compared to other add-on tags in that it has 'addon' in the tag name whereas thers don't (fspy, animation-nodes, sverchok).
The official name of the add-on seems to be 'Sapling Tree Gen'.

I propose we rename the tag to sapling-tree-gen.

For consistency sake I agree, sapling-tree-gen seems like a better name. I actually wouldn't mind seeing all addon related tags have the "addon" word in them for search and aggregation purposes, though I do see how it would get unwieldy and cumbersome

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Yeah, I don't mind either way as long as it's consistent.

For now I think you can go ahead and rename it to [sapling-tree-gen], the other one seems more disruptive and would probably take a lot of work to retag

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I thought moderators had the ability to rename tags (I don't) without having to re-tag? https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87437/how-to-rename-a-tag

Indeed, thanks for the link. Wasn't aware of that, learned something new. You'd make a fine moderator ;)

Either way if we are going to rename things I'd go with a better name structure and rename all addon tags with "addon" prefix, and all render engine tags with "render-engine" prefix. We need some consensus here, what are your thoughts?


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Should popular tutorials get their own tags?
Recently I noticed the donut tag had been created. Initially, I was a bit unsure about having a tag like this; it seems like one of the first 'non-technical' tags and I wasn't sure whether there was a point to it. I understand there are a lot of donut questions that further categorisation could be useful, but do the other tags available not correctly describe what those questions are about, be it modelling, rendering or particles? If people asked a lot of question about rigging humans, would we really need a human tag when we have a rigging tag?
I understand the donut tag doesn't necessarily reference a specific tutorial, but I think we're all aware it really is just Blender Guru's tutorials generating these questions. Personally, if we were to tag such questions then I would prefer to tag them as donut-tutorial to make it clear we are referring to a specific tutorial and not just using a synonym for a torus and not just naming something that happens to be in the question. That also begs the question as to whether other tutorials (Blender Guru's Anvil tutorial comes to mind) could also do with categorisation or whether existing tags are satisfactory?
My questions are:

Do we need a donut tag?
Should the tag be renamed to donut-tutorial?
Should other tutorials (I can currently only think of the Anvil one) also get their own tags?

I'm not specifically against this new tag, I just wanted to make sure we have some kind of consensus before I retag old questions I come across.

It could be more logical to have "tutorial" tag to get them all under one roof. Other than that I didn't think any of tutorials deserve specific tags for them since after all they are about the same problems covered by usual tags

Not the bloody anvil again...

Further to  @MrZak above  could perhaps blender-guru (or some such) encompass all tutorials from that popular site. A popular addon can get its own tag outside the umbrella of addons tag.

NO, no, no and no. It is a useless categorization for BSE. A of donut tells us nothing about the question, except that the OP is probably following Price's tutorial - not really helpful for us. Each tag should be able to tell us what the question is about, (examples: modifiers, rendering, animation) not how the OP got to the point of asking that question.
For example when we get a Z fighting question we do not care what the OP is modeling, it could be an anvil, a watch, a spaceship, a submarine, etc (all tutorials we have gotten question from) nor do we care what tutorial the OP was following. The question is about Z fighting, period.
If I ask a question tagged eevee you know I'm using eevee. Or if a question is tagged shadowcatcher we know it is about the shadow catcher.
I am definitely against adding tutorial tags. The only possible benefit would be that it could make finding dups easier, but that is not a valid reason to make a useless tag.
So please nuke any tutorial inspired tags as they pop up.
Donuts are great, everybody likes them, we will always take questions about making them, but we do not need a  tag.

PS sadly this is not the first 'non-technical' tag, see error, artifacts, effects, lego and other ambiguous tags that should be cleaned up actions, splines, loop, looping, project (used as both a "blender project" and "UV project modifier").


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Logo of blender SE
I notice that every major SE site has its own logo. I don't know who has the power to set a logo, but I think it would also be a nice promotion to do a blender SE logo contest in the blender artist forum or something like that.

this is a bit early.. besides we don't get a logo and fancy visuals until we graduate, however this is still valid and will be addressed when the time is right.

When the site is about ready to graduate, the SE team will ask a question here on our meta looking for ideas about how the finished site will look. This will include the logo and graphic design. The team will design us a custom branding which will include the logo.
https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/400/24168 is one site's design suggestions and you can see how it turned out.
As I said, this will all be decided when we get closer to graduation, but it can't hurt to think about it now.

And now it has been posted: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/782/blender-site-design-ideas-input-welcome?cb=1

I think we get a logo once Blender.SE is out of beta.


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Is there an issue posting your own for-sale add-on as an answer?
I have recently created an add-on, which is for sale on the Blender Market, that I think answers a question by a user on the main part of site. (A question that doesn't yet have an accepted answer).
Are there any guidelines as to whether I should or how I should proceed with an answer that features an add-on that is for sale without it seeming like an advert for my own product?
I don't want to come across as self-promoting, but the answer would inevitably drive traffic to a product and potentially drive up sales.
I will of course provide a link to the product and the question I think it answers if required, but I thought that even mentioning the add-on here on the meta might come across as promotion.
How should I proceed?

It is ok to post an answer that uses a product you made or are affiliated with, when it does answer the question, and only if you disclose your affiliation.
I would caution you that it will not get UVed as much (because it is a paid addon), and possibility DVed. However there is nothing wrong (when following the guidelines) with you linking to your addon.
Think of it this way, I right an answer that uses your addon, or any other program or service; and there is nothing wrong with me linking to the tool(s) I use. In the same way, the creator of the tool is not outright banned from mentioning it.
The SE help pages have this to say.

Avoid overt self-promotion.
The community tends to vote down overt self-promotion and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, that’s okay. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.
If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details. We also offer free community promotion ads for open source projects and non-profit organizations.

taken from https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/behavior
Limits for self-promotion in answers and this answer are good overviews of SE's position.


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Questions lacking research
There are increasing numbers of questions that are "How do I do this" + picture.
The basic rules of [SE] are that questions should be focused, show some research and are basically non-forum type begs for help.
Something is seriously broken on [blender.SE] as the help vampires are quickly becoming the norm, they aren't being flagged or down-voted.
While I appreciate the need to be polite and good, the blatant lack of effort by those posing questions is becoming more than a little grinding.
It is getting to the point where folks aren't even watching / reading a tutorial before jumping onto the site to abuse the generosity of others.
This sort of thing used to be quickly stamped out on [SO] but seems to be rampant here. Does the community really condone this type of question?

It depends, if the question is useful for others and not just a "solve my very specific problem from start to finish" then I think it's ok for a new user to make that mistake. Remind the user in a comment about the rules, be stricter the next time this happens. Personally I'm glad that moderation isn't handles like on Stackoverflow, which I don't consider a good example in this regard, and our moderators apply common sense. Enforcing rules is ok, but it should still be a welcoming community.

Thanks Robert, I do try to be gentle with the new folks, I understand that learning is daunting at first, but I will try to apply the same methodology as best I can.  I am concerned though that the [ask] and [answer] pages are not clear on [SE] policy and that they need to make more effore in asking a question.

If you've got suggestions to improve the linked pages, I'm sure we can discuss them as a separate meta post.

This right here is the beginning of site rot, and is actually very demanding and quite exhausting for the community. Unfortunately I know of no good solution to the problem, downvoting/harsh reactions are frowned upon as per the CoC, so ignoring such questions is all we can do. Luckily we have been getting a recent inflow of active users who have the positive energy to deal with it.

Would it be possible to get an option to filter questions from people that have 1 rep? 9 times out of 10 new members have very poor quality questions, that could be resolve in one simple google search, and if you take the time to answer them properly (which takes a lot longer than the time it took them to ask said question) they will not mark the topic as answered and you get no rep at all. I can totally see why this could become detrimental to new users that genuinely try to ask good questions but isn't that still better than having experimented users going burn out from all the spam?

@Leander I was asking if it was technically possible to the moderators. I guess my answer is more of an opinion (I'm not sure how the Meta forum works and what should be an answer actually) which is: I think something needs to be done, we can't just simply ignore the vast majority of questions as Duarte suggested. Reasoning behind this is that people like me who enjoy helping others and finding answer to tricky questions will end up leaving somewhere else.

Of course it's possible, you can just write a tampermonkey script which requests info from the api.

The thing is that a lot of the people on this forum are not able to down vote yet because of the lack of reputation also that many people don't know how this community works.

It isn't that it is something we condone, but more a case of all the active users who used to discourage it became tired of constantly trying to keep the site clean from the no-effort-leeches, and moved on. And now there is very little effort to try to keep the site clean. Hence why on the first page it is not uncommon for 30+ of the posts to be from new users, be very low quality, have no votes. Of course no one wants to help people begging for help, so they remain unanswered.

Why not make it so that you need at least 10 rep to be able to ask a question? This will force ultra beginners to go elsewhere for answers when they have extremely easy questions (any google search will yield them a result anyway) or try to help other first.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos downvoting should be the solution for poorly researched questions, and perhaps a polite comment to push to user in the right direction (what have you tried? have you searched for a tutorial? can you edit to add a screenshot of your setup / upload your blend file?) This is the sort of thing I've been doing on GD.SE and it helps interested users to learn how to use the site.

"a polite comment to push to user in the right" That would be the correct thing to do, but review queue stood at 30+ posts by new users last night. It is hard to find the time or energy.

@RobertGutzkow It's not a welcoming community anymore, since this dead brain above me is in charge for spreading his stupidity.


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How do you determine when 'comments' have gone on too long?
How do you (the powers that be) determine when 'comments' have gone on too long, and add the message stating such, and to move the discussion to a chat room? This happened to me after seven 'comments' were posted:

Whereas in this case:

there are ten! - I was a little annoyed. :(

Often short incomplete questions lead to lengthy commenting sessions where the community attempts to elicit more information necessary to provide decent answers. I think we should avoid entering chat, and instead delete our comments that have been dealt with (and update the question with added information). Chats get deleted automatically after a set amount of time if there is no continued use.

@zeffii those chats are not deleted; they are made invisible and locked after they haven't been used for some time.

@RolandiXor, pretty much the same thing on a user-level then?

@zeffii I'm not sure I understand that question.

it wasn't really a question. It appears that discussions that moved over to chat may or may not be viewable after a certain period. To a user who stumbles into such dead ends it will appear that the chat no longer exists, in effect it will appear deleted.

The message that too many comments have been posted is actually partly automated. It comes up as a message to moderators (and IIRC, some users with certain privileges) suggesting to them to move the discussion to chat. Sometimes the message is ignored, hence why comments may go on longer than they should.
It is not so much of a bad message/move, just something that is done to keep the site clean as comments are second class citizens on Stack Exchange :)

thanks for that, it makes me feel a lot better :) I must apologise for being so 'touchy', I am relatively new to all this 'communicating by keyboard', and I am learning!

@SteveW that's good to hear (read) :). If this answered your question, you can mark it as answered by clicking the tick next to my answer.

I was waiting to see if there would be any more answers, but... oh, alright, he he he.

This becomes really easy if you look at the comments as if they were going to start fading away automatically by default (let's say after a week or so). Would that be disruptive to the content of the original post, or the users who search out that information later?
Comments are supposed to be there to request clarification or suggest improvements to that post. Period. If the comments are not actively working towards integrating those improvements directly into the post, it's time for it to go.
Comments are not supposed to be used like a miniature discussion system or a personal chat room. When they start being used that way, we simply say "sorry, that is outside the purpose of this site."


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Are 'text abbreviations' really necessary?
Although they may be useful on mobile phones, to avoid the cost of speaking, and to save time due to the totally inadequate keyboards, - oh, and of course to save time while typing in chat rooms and on forums, - they erode, and cause deterioration of the language.
On a site like this, the asking of questions, and answering them, depends on understanding and being understood. There are a vast number of Blender users to whom English is their second language, and it can be quite a difficult language to learn! Why throw in 'curve balls' which, even to English speaking people, can be hard to understand?
There are times when I'm not sure whether I'm reading a typing error or a 'text'! We should try to keep it clean and precise (or we'll end up with no language at all!).
I post this at the risk of upsetting a few 'lazy' people. :)

Yeah.. this is a bad habit.. blame it on english itself! This is not something that can be easily 'fixed' however and it is prevalent everywhere, not just here. While abbreviations are suitable and intended for chats etc., they tend to creep in our everyday writings and even speech. We can discourage it.. but to what extent, it's not a rule is it?
They say if you can't beat something, go along with it.. and teaching english is not the point of this site either.

@iKlsR Like this:
OK, TIL, IIUC (FTR), WRT acronyms, they are not necessarily OT. OTOH, IMHO, PEBKAC - SCNR. ;)
Wow, that IS easier!! I'm learning. :)
or: OK, today I've learned, if I understand correctly (for the record), with regards to acronyms, they are not necessarily off topic. On the other hand, in my humble opinion, problem exists between the keyboard and the chair - Sorry, could not resist. ;)

I don't think we need a stiff and straight rule against this, but if you see it, I doubt anyone would object a kindly edit converting the abbreviations to standard English.

A few well-known abbreviations such as LOL, OTOH might not bother anyone, but stuff like "r u using cycles" puts pot holes in the road of reading for most of us.
Let's not have a harsh rule banning it, since we want this site to grow and newcomers need time to become familiar with what's preferred. Be nice; not everyone is coming from the same place.  Do make it known, on the FAQ and in comments, that we frown upon textspeak.
Do allow users to edit slipshod English to be more readable.

+1 Not to mention FAQ is an abbreviation, also.

I agree. The last thing I want is harsh rules. In fact, I find this site more than a bit overrun with rules and regulations for me! Really, all I am suggesting is that people should be discouraged from too much abbreviation.

Yes some abbreviations are OK especially when they are not replacing parts of 'speech', like NURBS, BSDF. etc.. Convenience to the writer of things like 'OTOH' ,however, is not as important as the negative effect of lost legibility.
Maybe this is related:
I'm surely not the only person to frown on capitalizing words mid sentence to place emphasis on something, The trick to making points is to avoid writing walls of text around them in the first place.

I think you hit the nail on the head with: 'Convenience to the writer of things like 'OTOH' ,however, is not as important as the negative effect of lost legibility.'Nice one! :)


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Why is there still a python-api tag suggestion?
python-api was merged into python a while ago. Why does it still appear in the prompt as a separate tag?

python-api appears because it is a tag synonym for python, if you chose either, it would give you the same tag. Originally, there was python-api and the less used scripting then there was a trial period when we were deciding whether or not to just make one giant python tag or keep separate variants.
However, since the python is shorter and the one being used, the other is no longer needed and has now been removed. python is now the sole tag.

I thought synonyms were only displayed underneath the suggestion for the parent tag (where it says "also:"). E.g. if you type in scr in the tag input field, you will get a suggestion for [tag:scripting] with a little "also:" for [tag:script], but no separate suggestion for [tag:script]. Am I missing something? Or . . .?

@gandalf3 That is one aspect, try it. For eg modeling has 2 synonyms, model and modelling, enter either on a question and it will change to modeling when you save.

I noticed that with python-api. However, both of those tags (model and modelling) don't seem to have their own separate prompt (like python-api does). Why does python-api seem to be the only synonym to have a prompt?

@gandalf3 This is because the python-api tag was still around. It has been removed now so it shouldn't appear.


text:
Are negative answers acceptable?
There are many, many unanswered questions asking if features exist or if certain behaviors are possible.
For cases where features don't (yet) exist, but have plans to add them or such promising information, I'll add a comment. If there is a working patch or some way to get the desired behavior/result, I'll add an answer.
However, if there are no plans (that I know about) to add such features, I just leave it.
It seems to me that most other users are doing pretty much the same things.
Since having a lot of unanswered questions is not good for our stats, should we start answering these questions with "no, xy isn't possible atm"? Or will this not really help as such answers don't seem likely to be upvoted or accepted?
How should we handle these questions?

Related, http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/177/12

Yes, negative answers are good, often users are unsure if some feature exists for their workflow. And if there is no way to accomplish the tasks its best to say so, And possibly suggest workarounds if they exist.
It's useful to know the limitation of technologies you use as well as the features.

In my own experience asking questions, I've noticed people often attempt to answer questions which solutions you wouldn't realistically use, personally I would rather a straight answer if something isn't supported.

That is it exactly. +1


text:
What are the policies for accepting meta answers?
I've been asking some meta questions lately, but I'm not sure when a meta answer should be accepted.
Since the decisions made in these posts affect the entire site, it doesn't really feel right for me, the OP, to pick which answer should be accepted.
Even if there is an answer which I personally agree with, should I wait until the question has a decent number of views? (if so, what qualifies as a "decent number"?)
Are there any existing policies around this?

There is no "policy", per se. Accepting an answer is a completely voluntary and optional activity and it may not apply to all situations.
The 'accepted answer' isn't really intended for one user to select which answer is "correct"; the purpose of the 'accepted answer' is to indicate which post you found most helpful, personally. If the original premise of your post doesn't really fit the 'accepted answer' model, I would simply ignore it. No need to force it into a use case that doesn't fit.

With that in mind, I'll now accept this answer (even though this post only has 6 views) ;)


text:
Tag cleaning discussions
How should we discuss and decide the scopes, synonyms, need for, lack of need, etc. of tags?
We have been discussing this mainly on the chat with whichever frequent users happen to be around, but would this be better done on meta?
This way old discussions would be easier to find for reference purposes, and current discussions are more likely to be seen by other users who may want to put a word in.
If we do decide to keep tag discussions to meta, should we have one big post which gets continually updated? Or separate posts for each discussion/tag?

We should be very careful when making a precedent for all future tag changes.
There have been lost of questions on the meta about tag changes, that have had no real consensus, and have gone nowhere. version tags, snapping tag, baking tag (which has sense been dealt with and questioned here)
I agree that a major tag changes, are better documented on the meta. However when I or others propose a tag change in the chat, it is talked about and dealt with right away. I'm hesitant to open up future tag discussions to such indecision as the old tag discussions have had here on the meta.
If the overall consensus is to move to the meta, I would suggest separate questions for each tag's major change. One massive question being edited and updated, is no better then having the discussion in the chat.

I agree with this. The community should get a say in any significant changes that occur, so anything relevant regarding tag changes proposed or discussed in chat should have an accompanying post here.

So just to be clear, as I understand it, the general idea is to discuss tag changes in chat, and then put a post on meta if it's a largish change?

@gandalf3 what you wrote sounds good to me.


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Why can't I propose a tag synonym on [customization]?
I tried to suggest the synonym user-preferences → customization, but received this confusing error:

I don't see any synonym proposals on user-preferences.. Was a synonym proposed on preferences, which was then synonymized with user-preferences?
What is going on here?

I see you're using your new theme... ;) +1 for that!

@GiantCowFilms Ha :) The normal site looks strange whenever I see it now..

It appears that was the reason. There was a relationship between preferences and user-preferences it seems. I went ahead and made both preferences and user-preferences a synonym of customization and merged all previous questions into that.

Is there a way to view information of a synonymized tag? I tried, but always ended up getting redirected to the parent tag..

@gandalf3 I have access to different tools than you so i'm not sure. In any case the system restricts you, just let a mod know.


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Etiquette for asking for files
Often times the easiest way to find the answer to a question is by inspecting the OP's blendfile.
I personally try and ask for a .blend in a way which describes a few possible causes (in case it turns out one of them is the cause, then the need for a .blend is avoided), or just saying something like:

There are many possible reasons this could be happening. The easiest way for us to determine the cause is by inspecting your file.

or sometimes:

Is it possible you could upload your .blend?

Acknowledging that some users might not be able to share their file.
Is this a good idea? Or does it create to much noise?

From my own experience i can tell that in the majority of all cases i could find answers much faster when i had the chance to look at an example blend file. So in the sense of "Help us to let us help you" i believe that a user can be asked to put some effort into creating a simple demo blend file to show the issue. And often while creating the demo the solution steps in automatically. In that case a user could post the problem and the answer in one step :)

I don't really see the point of this question. We've been doing this since the site launched. Could hardly be considered noise if you are discussing the question at hand.

@iKlsR Yeah.. I didn't really phrase it right. I've seen some users asking for a .blend with (imo) overly short comments like "upload blend.", and I felt that we ought to be at least a little bit more polite.. But maybe that's just me making mountains out of molehills.

Blender is a visual tool and explaining errors/undefined behaviour might be tricky especially for new users, so sharing a file is often the best means to communicate what the problem could be. Us experienced users can usually immediate spot what is off rather than reading two paragraphs of text and then assuming what the problem might be so I don't think calling for a file could be called noise.
If op for some reason cannot or doesn't want to share their file, simply ask them for a test blend that reproduces said error. I also don't think that we need to be extra formal, they are here for help after all and should make the effort to communicate what they want, a simple "could you upload your file" should suffice in most instances.


text:
Which tag needs to have 5 score?
I tried to suggest a synonym, but I still need 5 score on a tag.

Which tag needs to have more score? units or blender-units?
Perhaps the phrasing of this error could be clarified to specify which tag doesn't meet the requirements?

I checked my profile, and as I have 9 score on blender-units, it appears to be the tag which you are proposing as the master/parent tag (in this case, units).
I still feel like I shouldn't have to check my profile though.. What if I didn't have > 5 score in either? There would be no way to tell which I need to improve.

I went ahead and made the changes.


text:
Is it okay to embed screenshots hosted on 3rd party sites?
Often new users will upload screenshots to e.g. dropbox, instead of embedding in the post.
If embedded in the post via the button in the toolbar, SE will upload the image from the existing host to the default imgur host. This takes the image out of the OP's control, e.g. they can no longer delete it from the internet if they wish (as they could if it were solely on dropbox).
On the other hand, if embedded via manually entered markdown as a hotlink, e.g.
![some description](http://somehost/someimage.png)

Then the screenshot will disappear from the post if it's deleted or the host stops hosting it.
Which is preferable? Is there any legal issue here? (uploading OP's image to SE's imgur host without their permission?)

It's "okay" to use a screenshot if you have permission to use that image or the content is licensed for reuse. If you do not have permission to use the image, you are infringing on their Copyright. The issue of whether you are storing that image elsewhere or simply "embedding" their content from the original site has no bearing on Copyright.
The reason we automatically upload all images to 'imgur' is precisely as you stated: We do not want the screenshot to disappear or change if the image is changed on the original host. But if you have permission to use that image, there are no legal issues at all. "Embedding" an image instead of downloading it is not a workaround to Copyright law.
I would also note that, in the US, there are exceptions to Copyright law called "Fair Use" which allows for limited use of copyrighted material… but that is outside the scope of this post.

So does this mean it's not okay to upload an OP's images to imgur via SE without asking them first? How should this be handled?