text:
Professional Way vs. Getting the image?
I just got into it with someone on BSE, and it lead me to a question about answers!
I do not work in a game/vfx studio but I do get paid to use Blender. So I do not know all the techniques that professionals use but I do know how to get a shot finished that can pass as high quality.
I posted an answer to help someone with a shader. I was then hounded by a long time BSE user about how my way was not the correct way and that I make it harder for people blah blah blah (Yet I was the only answer).
I assumed the upvote/downvote button was so the better answers can rise to the top, and the other answers can just be there so the OP has other options.
After going back and forth about my workflow this BSE user made me feel like its pointless to give answers unless they are 100% the "correct" way.
So that's why I am posting here. Although I know my way may not be the "best" way, should I still post answers even though I know a more experienced user will probably have a better way to do it?

If you have a valid solution, you should always be welcome to post an answer.
The goal of StackExchange is to give people answers. This includes not only the original asker of the question, but everybody else who sees the question later. Even if your answer isn't the OP's perfect solution, it may be a better help to somebody else who comes along later.
This doesn't mean that all answers are created equal, but, that's what voting is for. You should be welcome to post a valid answer, and, if a better one comes along, it will probably be voted higher than yours and/or accepted. The system works.

There's the answer for your (generally applicable) question, but I'd like to address something specific to your case:
From the BSE Help Center, we learn that comments should be used for "constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post" or "adding relevant but minor or transient information to a post".
It appears to me that the initial comment by the other user was intended as constructive criticism. It wasn't really received that way, though1, and your resulting conversation escalated to this comment by the other party:

Maybe it's just me, but I like to have my answers to be proper, not "something".

after which you were accused of being rude. My guess is that this is what prompted you to ask this question, with its emphasis of "professional" vs "what works".
In my opinion, one of the things that makes BSE great is the mix of professional and hobbyist users that we have here, and much of the time, there is more than one right answer to a question (each of those is a separate link). As stated above, there is sometimes a single "best" answer, but that doesn't invalidate all of the others.
Additionally, I think that your answer was more than just "something." It was a well-formatted, properly explained attempt at solving the question: the quality of content we want on this site. Just because your answer wasn't the "proper"2 way to do it doesn't make it bad3.

1 which is understandable, since applying it would have essentially meant changing your entire answer.
2 additionally, in this particular case, I don't think that there is a single "proper" way to do it.
3 "bad" answers are those that are "dangerously incorrect." I don't think that an answer that is not optimally efficient qualifies as "dangerously incorrect."

You are mostly correct. Almost any answer (I can't say any because I've seen a lot of bad answers) is helpful. Your example here is most certainly in the helpful answer category. I'd say 9 times out of 10 it could be a "helpful answer". (Even if it was not helpful to the OP it can still be a helpful answer.)
Take this as an example. I search for some problem, find a promising question with the exact same issue, but alas no answer. Well that is not helpful.
Now if there were an answer there, anything, no matter how far from being the best or proper solution, at least I have something.
Yes we should always strive to make the very best posts we can. But do not let some perceived notion of not being the best stop you from posting an answer. You do not need to have the 100% correct way to post an answer. (Who's to say it's the way anyhow?) In nearly every case something is better then nothing.
However you erred in the comments. The back and forth quickly went south. You know what comments I'm referring to.
PS good move coming to the meta to see "who was right" and not continuing a flame war.

Even not technically "100% correct" (but who's to judge that?) answers can still inspire people to think about the problem in a different way to that which a so-called "professional" might go about it.
There are many different ways of solving virtually any problem and different people in different situations will have different priorities and needs. Any alternative solution provides another perspective and is definitely worthwhile.
Keep posting - if someone disagrees they can always downvote or post their own answer.

On a side note (aka things I'd like to see re the SE way of things) : The ability for a user to  accept many answers, and prefer one,

Perhaps - although I do like the simplicity of having a single accepted answer. For any other particularly special answers you could award a bounty in recognition (and this shows against the answer to flag it for all time).


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When is showing cycles shader node setup appropriate?
Over the past couple years I have been using Blender I have watched many tutorials (paid and free) and have built up an extensive collection of shader materials that I have made from scratch and used techniques from those in the tutorials. When someone ask how to make a certain material in BSE I have a perfect (imho) shader for it but cant remember for the life of me where I learned that technique or how much I changed etc... I feel guilty if I show how I did a shader set up (even if it is tweaked to fit my scene) that I may have got from a paid tutorial.
What are your thoughts on this? Should I just not post anything if I cant remember where I learned that technique from? Or even if I do remember Should I not post at all to help someone if I got it from a paid service?

[Should I just not post anything if I cant remember where I learned that technique from?]  Yes.

If you went to college for a certain field, would that mean that you couldn't share the knowledge and techniques you learned there?
For me personally, the answer is no. I think that when you pay for college, you aren't paying for the ability to use certain techniques, but instead for the explanations that the teacher gives.
With that in mind, if you fully understand all of the concepts you learned from the tutorial, are comfortable explaining them and would use them in shaders you build from scratch, in my mind, you are in the clear.
This is of course just my personal reasoning, other might disagree. This is definitely a little bit into the gray area, as is pretty much anything related to intellectual property.

If we are talking just about your knowledge learned through tutorials, paid or free, then yes absolutely you can post.
However if this some shader you purchased, then you should think long and hard before you post that. In many cases, like everything on the blender market, you can redistribute it however you want, because of its license.
Now lets take the cycles material vault as an example. The license is about as restrictive as you'll find, yet even here I do not see anything that would prohibit you from showing part of a node tree. You can not redistribute the material, so definitely no blender file, and I would err on the safe side and say don't even post a picture of the whole node tree.
But, for example, if you say watched some tutorials on cgcookie and used that information in your shader, I would say that is ok to include that in a post.

Obligatory disclaimer about me not being a lawyer and do not take this as legal advice

I wonder if a node set up is even copyright-able. They might supposedly restrict it but a node setup is a technique, not a creation. I don't think it would have much legal weight if you made tutorials based on all the cycles material vault and Reynante tried to sue you. Quite honestly, it's a bad business model.  I only took one term of copyright law so I'm not a lawyer either.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Should OP comments be added to question by non-OP?
I just reviewed a suggested edit and rejected it because it was essentially just pasting a comment into the question. It seemed to me that the person who suggested the edit is farming for easy rep points rather than trying to improve the question. A new user could obviously flood the review queues if he decided to just go through questions and add information from the comments section into the question. I tried in vain to find anything about this as far as Stack Exchange policy or precedent.
Should I have accepted this suggested edit?
This is the review in question:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/55721

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


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Can a question be a duplicate of a future question?
This question was recently marked as a duplicate, but when I reviewed it, I noticed that the question it was supposedly a duplicate of was asked nearly a year later. It seems, however that there would be an automatic limitation that would prevent marking a question as a dup of a future one, but there isn't.
One solution would be to just, vote to leave it open with a comment explaining why, then mark the other as a duplicate of the older one. However, in this case it cannot be done because the older question doesn't have an upvoted or accepted answer. I simply left a comment on the other one linking back, but I have had debate about a similar incident in the past.

Yes you can mark any question as a duplicate of a newer question.
There are no time based constraints on what question is the duplicate.
There is one simple rule:

Always direct users to the best possible information.

If a newer question/answer is undetected as a dup long enough to become better, then I will close the older one as a dup of this one.
So for example (and this was a real case) someone asked about z-fighting. It is an ok question, and there are nothing spectacular about the answers. Now about a year later "the" Z fighting question got asked. This is the question we link all z fighting question to, because it is better. To end the story, last year the older question got closed as a dup of the future z fighting question.
Robert Cartaino's answer (Should duplicates be closed to the oldest question or the "best" question?) talks about this very issue in a bit more detail.

In short, you should not be looking at the time stamp to determine which to close.


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Remove the Development tag?
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/development
Since the actual development of blender is off topic for this site, I see no reason to have the development tag.
Most of the questions with this tag have been closed, should be closed, or are borderline off topic

http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2216/source-code-questions-in-2016

@iKlsR Hmm, I missed that post. We really need to fix the help center (although nobody uses it anyway) I was going off of this post http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1/what-questions-should-be-definitely-off-topic/6#6


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Move posts from game development to blender?
Some old posts before the blender SE like https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/18312/how-can-i-see-the-height-of-an-object-within-blender?rq=1 don't really belong in the game dev SE. Is there a procedure for moving them, or marking them as duplicates?

I was a bit surprised to see you do not have an account on game dev. What prompted this question?

Lol, I can see why you are confused, @david I googled a blender problem and was surprised when it came up on game dev

In short you can't, they are stuck on game dev.
Any question older then 60 days can not be migrated. (Just a hard limit SE has coded into their system.)
Now for questions newer then 60 days. Most of the time site's migration paths will not be set up, so you can not simply vote to close because it should be on another site, and choose the correct site. (Mods can do that.)
Instead, you can flag for moderator attention with a custom message. Say why the question is off topic, and what site you are asking it be moved to (put the whole http://blender.stackexchange.com so it gets automatically turned in to a link).
I've flagged on a few blender questions on SO exactly like that.
This is the message I used on one of my flags.

This question has nothing to do with programing, and should be moved to blender.stackexchange.com


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We or I? Should we (or I) edit?
I found this question: Object rotation in game engine
Should I edit to replace all the "We"s to "I"s for consistency or is it fine that the OP referrers to him/her self as "we"?

As an aside, the OP could be working in a team so then it would really be "we."

^^ Similarly, I think it's common to use "we" in an answer to refer to both the question poster and the answer writer.

Does not matter (at all). This would be a case of micro editing, and if that is the only thing in the post to fix, you don't even need to edit it.
There are no set standards on what pronoun, or what tense the questions must be written in. If one user uses "me" and "I" but another uses "you" and "we", it does not make any difference. The information is going to be there either way.
Unless you are a grammar professor we you are not going to care, you came to BSE to find out about blender.
Unless it really detracts from the question, or there are other things that you need to fix, there is no need to try to make everything perfect.

Correction: "Unless one is a grammar professor..." :-)


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Answer using stable or master?
Taking into account that Blender release cycle will be pretty fast from 2.80 up, is it ok to answer using features available in master branch?
Pros:

Answers could be simpler
They can be future proof

Cons:

Not all users are comfortable using not-stable branch
???

Personally I'm using master for my daily work without any issues. Also I can see that more and more people in Blender community are using it, but it's only my observation from Twitter/BA/DevTalk/YouTube.
I'm not asking about experimental branches like sculpt or functions. Just master.
My heart say yes, my brain - hell no! What do you think about it?

At this point it's safe to say a lot of stuff have been ironed out whereas several months ago just the icons underwent several iterations so very little harm could come of this IMO. I agree with both answers below, just make a note that it might not exist currently or at all in the stable version.

I do this already. I don't see why not, but make sure to link the commit where the feature was added (and/or a relevant discussion on the tracker) and include the version number of the release it is expected to be be in.

X feature doesn't work like that currently, but as of commit gf098d0j (September 12 2029) you can use magic unicorn button to get the effect you want. This feature will be in 2.93, or in a recent development version.

Also of course explain how to use the new feature to solve the OPs question, with the caveat that the explanation applies to how blender works as of now and may no longer apply by the time the release rolls around.

The same applies to experimental branches; if there's a branch which solves a problem the OP has, by all means, mention it. Just be sure to note the caveats involved with using it (unstable/maybe hard to install/etc)

I tend to stay with the stable main releases for answers, however that is not to say upcoming feature should not be in answers.
A good example of this was when cycles got the shadow catcher. There was no good way to do that before, so having an answer that pointed people to the daily builds was immensely useful.
Plus when feature X rolls around to the stable build we already have an answer documenting how to use feature X.
Like gandalf said (not that Gandalf) if it is clearly labeled that this is a experimental/master/daily build/upcoming feature then there is no reason not to put master branch feature in answers. Its no different then when we answer with a feature and say added in blender 2.xx.
TLDR:
Sure, just make it clear that this feature is not in "normal blender."

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


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Should we inform users about Multiple Vulnerabilities in Blender?
Sources:

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple Unpatched Vulnerabilities in Blender Identified
Talos security advisory for Blender product (TALOS-2017-0451)

Secondly, I'm not asking about discussion how dangerous is it, what's
  the BF stance on it and other unrelated things.
There are vulnerabilities, there is possibility to use them and that's all I care about in this question.

Introduction:
If you read from sources there are some vulnerabilities regarding opening .blend files which could be prepared to do nasty stuff.
I myself had couple of times thoughts about downloading .blend files from questions/answers but it was all. Still I've downloaded them, opened them and even run scripts inside them (if the question/answer needed them).
Citing from Talos:

An attacker could weaponize these vulnerabilities and utilize social
  engineering tactics in conjunction with a spear phishing email to
  remotely exploit and compromise a targeted user. Other possible
  scenarios where attackers could exploit and compromise users include
  cases were malicious files are uploaded to sites like GitHub, Google
  Drive, and Dropbox for sharing with intended victims.

In our case it's even easier. Attacker can just ask question with malicious file. I don't know statistic how many of users is downloading them from Q/A. Still this could be dangerous.
I know that you can't trust anything from the internet (yet it doesn't prevent from opening every .blend file from here) but .blend files are probably for many like .jpg. It's not .exe, .vbs, or .js so it can't be harmful right? Especially when it comes from good people that are politely asking us or answering our questions. They should be good. Right?
Question:
Should we in any way try to inform users that maybe not now, maybe not in near future but .blend files can be harmful for them?

I always never load automatic scripts, from those files, but... Imho the reputation system could help to avoid any random user to post evil .blend files, but that will impact the chance to get an issue solved (from new users) and anyone can put another link from anywhere... or not?

Blend exchange does have a disclaimer on the download page noting that .blend files can contain malware. I doubt many people read it or heed it, but it's there. I'm not sure what more we can do?

The preferences include an option to enable/disable Auto Run Python Scripts. My understanding was that this would protect against malicious scripts - and I always check scripts before running them. However, someone not familiar with scripting could easily enable Auto Execution and open a malicious script or run something inadvertently. The Auto Run does include Excluded Paths options and I ensure my defaults are set to exclude anything in /tmp and /home/..../Downloads/ - on the assumption that this would protect me when opening files. It is a worry though.

@RichSedman those vulnerabilities (most of them) are related to Integer Overflow Code Execution by images and videos. So any packed and prepared beforehand texture could be dangerous and we cannot block them before opening file.

Eeek! That is a concern then. I didn’t realise that and thought the big risk was scripting.

@RichSedman adding to that, other found issues are about older .blend files (that new blender versions convert at opening, triggering buffer overflows) and also some common transform/modifier operations, even on new .blend files, trigger buffer overflows... no media and no script needed. also thumbnail preview feature can trigger those errors with "crafted" media.

Are we talking about the risks associated with running unknown scripts, or something else? Because with the out-of-the-box settings Blender doesn't allow you to run scripts. A user has to intentionally change the settings to enable this feature. So unless this is about some other non-script related vulnerability, this is all old news, and nothing I'd be concerned about. You might as well say "don't run suspicious Python scripts you find on the internet (including from within Blender)".

@Mentalist this is about issues from first two links from my question and you can also read comments here which also describing those issues. TL;DR this is about non-script related.

Thanks for clarifying. So, I suppose we should all be a bit more cautious about what we download. It seems Blender is not the only CG software vulnerable to exploits, just more likely to be a target because of the size of its user base. From reading the developer.blender.org link it looks like developers are addressing the vulnerabilities they realistically can, but the task requires more people. Anyone care to launch a crowdfunding campaign to hire 4 more full time developers for several years to come? ;-)

I think the disclaimer on the blend-exchange site when downloading files should be more prominent and more strongly worded since this is a real threat. This does risk scaring people off from downloading and opening blend files but perhaps that’s no bad thing if it stops an attack.
For blend files submitted as part of a solution it’s up to the person downloading to judge whether they trust the person providing the file, judging their trustworthiness based on their answer.
For blend files submitted along with questions it’s more tricky as there’s very little effort needed for someone to post a convincing question along with a malicious blend so in that case it should be generally encouraged to post screenshots and additional info instead of just a blend - if they want people to take it seriously.

Ok, I'm going to give my opinion, simple as that. This has no weight because I'm a mod nor am I speaking for SE, BSE or blender (you get the idea).
You use blender, thus you have a computer. You are reading this, thus you have internet access.  Because you have those two things we can not protect you.
End of story. (you can keep reading)
We all have known about the script dangers for years now. This "new" threat is just fresh jolt. Which should remind us all that we are downloading something from the internet, we really have no idea if it is safe.
I am of the opinion that there is no disclaimer that will help. (I mean really, look how many people download those shoddy youtube intro templates.)
Blend-exchange already has a warning, I've read it, its short and to the point:

Download this file at your own risk. It could contain viruses or other harmful material.

Yet that has not once stopped me from dowloading a file. Truthfully I don't even read it anymore. I just look at the name, size, stats and download it.
In the end here nothing has changed. You are as safe downloading a blend from one of my answers today as you were before the security advisory. (PS I will not put any malicious blends in my .)
Aside from all that, BSE has no built in blend hosing. So you have to go to a separate site to download a malicious file. You are 100%* safe on BSE, for that reason alone I think there is no reason to put a disclaimer on BSE.
* as safe as you can be online

Imho it's not the BlenderSE's job to inform about this. Answer a question about it yes, but it's a job for:

issuer of the software to inform (blender.org)
places where the files are hosted
Blender forums
news sites related to CG and Blender

There is no defense against this other than running Blender in virtual machine. I suspect only few individuals have VM's ready with Blender installs to do this, so in the end the warning does not even help fix the problem - the solution is not to avoid any .blend downloads.
The solution is to have an internet police (a bot or real people) that will scan files online and verify that they are OK (similar to verified torrent downloads). Anything else is lost effort for now.


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New tag for fun challenges
This question What's the fastest and / or craziest way to model an arrow in Blender? made me wonder if we need a new tag - eg, ‘Challenge’ - to flag such questions to make them easier to follow and spot for anyone interested in this kind of thing, so i wondered what everyone else thought... or is there already a preferred method of handling such things? Or are these kind of questions not appropriate for BSE and should be migrated elsewhere? Any thoughts, comments, objections, suggestions?

I just realised noClue beat me to it to ask this question https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2445/29586


text:
Delay before closing a question
Should there be some kind of delay between a new question being asked and it being closed for certain reasons - such as not enough clarity? It seems a bit harsh and unfriendly to me for a new user to join a community and ask a question, for it to be flagged as, for example, "too vague" and then to be closed within the space of an hour or two. This seems like insufficient time for them to have been expected to spot the flag and to be able to provide the information.
As a recent example, see Compositor nodes - holdout and combined at once. The question was raised and is, admittedly, quite vague - I didn't understand what was being asked and requested more information. Two hours later it was flagged as 'closed' as needing more clarity.
Now, I completely accept that the question needed more information and as it stands should be (eventually) closed - but to that new user it seems a bit harse to close the question so quickly. I know it can be updated and made active again (and the users have just followed the proper site procedure by flagging the question as it is) but it seems to me to come across are rather unfriendly and unwelcoming.
It would be better IMO to leave the question outstanding - but with the 'close' votes still present for a certain amount of time and only actually 'close' the question when that time has expired - at least 24 hours and preferably more. If the user hasn't responded to update the question in a couple of days I think it would be fair enough - but I think two hours turnaround would come across as unwelcoming to new users.

I agree in part with what was said, and some times refrain from close voting on certain questions for this same reason, since a mod vote is binding and the question gets closed immediately which can scare off inexperienced people.
I understand this may seem harsh or hostile to new users who expect to get an answer, but  closed question is not an irrevocable state.
In fact that is exactly what closing is for, the message box on top clearly states what procedures to take to get the question reopened, and saves both time and energy of writing the same comments repeatedly.
It also gives us access to convenient tools like queuing it up for review automatically if the question does get edited with more details, both increasing visibility, and the chance of getting an actual answer, while ensuring it does actually get new eyes on it again. Unlike a comments asking for clarification, which may get buried on the avalanche of new questions.
I think the issue stems mainly from the wording and terms used in the automatic messages. Closed sounds too "final" and irrevocable and may seem harsh for new users. Something like On hold or Awaiting Edit would be more adequate.
The issue isn't new and has been raised before, and the broader issue with close messages has been brought up on several occasions on meta like:

How could we improve our planned post notice improvements? or
Remove the suggestion to post a new question from the closed questions post notices

So the staff is aware of it, maybe something will be done about it in the not-too-distant future.

Thanks Duarte. I think you’re right about the process and that it’s more down to the wording. “Awaiting edit” would be a good state IMO - gets the message across and seems far less “final”.

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


text:
Is there need for an overall 3D stack exchange?
I have a question about 3d in a different program than blender but there is no stack exchange for just 3d , there is programming and graphics.
Can I ask questions about 3ds max here anyway?
The question is about decimating my model with too many polys in 3ds max.

First, ask this on meta. Second, no. Third, ask about 3DS Max on Graphics SE.

@ShadyPuck 3D stuff is now officially off-topic on Graphics SE.

There is currently a proposal on Area 51 for a general 3D non-programming stack exchange, including questions about 3DS Max.  As of this writing it is in the "commitment" phase, so not usable yet.  It needs more committers before it can move into beta.
Update: The above proposal expired.  After spending a year in a particular stage, Area 51 automatically closes a proposal, but they do so with a nice message explaining that some of the most successful Stack Exchange sites have come from stalled proposals that were closed and restarted from scratch.
So, follow the new 3D Modeling and Animation proposal, and add some good sample questions to it, or just vote on the questions there.  The proposed site has potential benefits even users of this site, since it will cover questions about getting Blender assets in and out of other tools like Substance Painter, Marmoset Toolbag, and other rendering packages and engines.  What happens if an artist exports a model from Blender into Unity 3D and it doesn't look right, and Unity settings need to be tweaked?  You shouldn't ask here about Unity settings.  That's why the new proposal is needed.

I'd like to add that this has been tried once before without success, so if this is an SE site you'd like to see in action, please do consider committing and participating in the private beta. They need everyone they can get

With the upsurge in these creative tools from Quixel, Allegorithmic etc, a bit feasible but again one of my main arguments was that people who use these things are usually trained professionals. Same went for the last proposal that centered around Max, ZBrush etc, you have to shell out serious dollars to get access to these tools as opposed to us (Blender) being free. Also arguable seeing how Graphics.SE runs on PS and AI but that is a different niche and this will probably fail again for the same reason(s), lack of traffic ie.

@iKlsR Yep, points well taken.  Still, a lot of engines are embracing this "free for indie devs" strategy lately, and even the lower-tier 3D pros don't always pay for top-tier tech support.  Several packages have demo periods and educational bundles, etc.  Plus, there are a lot of interoperability questions between tools (including Blender) that experts in a single tool may not be familiar with.  So I think there is a community waiting to happen.

So, the 3d graphics proposal died.. That's big news and not good one.

@MrZak bad news indeed!  But it's part of the Area 51 mechanism, after spending a year in a particular stage, a proposal must be closed and restarted from scratch.  For some sites, such as Mathematica, the rebooted proposal is far more successful than the original.  So don't abandon hope, follow the new proposal and add some good sample questions.


text:
Add content to make a post easier to find
I was looking for this answer.
Luckily, I remembered the post was about two displaced meshes which were joined by the shrinkwrap modifier and the data transfer modifier.
With these (is:answer shrinkwrap data transfer) keywords the answer is the first result.
But my initial searches failed.

mesh(es) displace join
mesh(es) seamless join

I am tempted to add content to the end of the question.

Is there a way to solve this problem and make the edges align seamlessly?[How do I join/connect the two meshes?]Or is there maybe a completely different and easier approach to this whole idea?

That way, keyword searches would show this answer in other contexts as well.
This applies to many questions I often see.
Is such an edit approved/encouraged/accepted?

From the site rules edits should be reserved for making a question clearer from the readability and interpretation  point of view like fixing typos, bad language, or poor explanations.

When should I edit posts?
Any time you feel you can make the post better, and are inclined to do
  so. Editing is encouraged!
Some common reasons to edit are:

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

Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged - try to make the post
  significantly better when you edit, correcting all problems that you
  observe.

There is no specific mention about making it easier to find, maybe because 'easier to find' is possibly subjective.
While I would not condone such editing per-se, it is a highly personal subjective matter; the terms and words you used to find such answer may mean nothing to someone else, or even inadvertently make it harder to find by having it pop up in unrelated searches.
It is true that Stack exchange search is not the best at times, and I have frequently found myself searching through Google instead to find answers here.
So my suggestion is, if you can, improve the tags of such question, fix any misspellings, lingo, technical terms and official names (modifiers, tools, operators, UI etc.) as per the Blender Manual or optionally commonly used terms among users, but don't just add random text to answers.
Maybe if necessary do it in the comments section instead, preferably in an intelligible and constructive way like say posting a comment along the lines of:

This answer may also be useful for seamlessly joining mesh(es)

Hopefully comment texts are included in search results thus achieving in your initial intent.

This answer may also be useful for increasing question or answer applicability, increasing question or answer searchability or adding synonyms and relevant search terms. ;)

Haha, nice one, made me laugh. I have to test if comments are included in searches though , but I don't think they are by default unfortunately. Wonder if there is any way to include comments in search results.

@Mecht Using a search with an external search engine, this works.


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I am unable to suggest edits
I suggested some edits which were rejected yesterday. Since then, I am not able to suggest anymore edits. I wonder, how can I lift this ban?

Scott Milner did an excellent job of explaining the ban. I will speak to why your edits were rejected. In short you were adding tags that were irrelevant. Take this one as an example. That question is asking about naming objects, it has nothing to do with selection-tools, python, or scripting. That is why your edits were rejected, and thus auto blocking you from suggesting any more.

I lifted the ban since it was a first time offense and your intentions were well intended if a little misconstrued as to how we approach tagging here. We love edits but prefer those that make the question better in terms of readability and or visibility. It's a tentative topic and oft lies with one's best judgement for vague posts hence why we confirm these for low rep users. So picking seemingly related keywords to tag a question isn't how it's done. Try to deduce what tags a question merits by what the asker wants, not what you think it will entail or possible ways to do it.

@iKlsR Thank you so much! Will be more careful next times

From this post on Meta.SE:

You [can be] banned from suggesting edits, either automatically because a large number of recent suggested edits by you were rejected, a moderator manually banned you, or you triggered the anonymous insta-ban filter.

It appears that you fall under the first of these categories, "a large number of recent suggested edits by you were rejected." This ban will last for seven days, after which you will be able to suggest edits again like normal.

The formula used to mete out edit bans can be found here:

When deciding on whether we should ban or not, we now look at your last 7 days of activity.
If (rejects - (approvals / 3)) >= 5, you will be auto-banned.

Looking at your recent suggestions, it appears that you have 2 approved suggestions and 5 rejections. Interestingly, this doesn't fit the formula: 5-(2/3) == 4.333. Perhaps the formula has changed since 2011, when that post was made.


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Compatibility Tag
I added the compatibility tag for "Blender's computer requirements".
There is a comment to close vote this question which states:

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about hardware.

But the tag states:

Questions about software, hardware and operating system compatibility with Blender.

Either doesn't make sense, can a mod please edit/remove the tag. Otherwise we should stop closing specifications question or make it clear in the help center.

The thing we are trying to avoid with hardware questions is "questions" which typically turn into long-winded discussions and don't end up with any real answer. The close reason at What should our custom off-topic close reasons be? elaborates a little bit:

This questions appears to be off-topic because it is about the operating system, hardware, performance, or compatibility. These questions are considered off-topic because there is often no definitive answer, so they tend to require too much discussion to be suitable for Q&A format.  Try asking on BlenderArtists for support instead.

I'd say it's okay for questions to pertain to hardware; our "hardware = off topic" policy originated more from a desire to have a more concrete definition for a class of questions which typically fell under either "too broad" or "opinion based" (e.g. most hardware recommendation questions) or "too localized" (e.g. extremely specific hardware problems). Somewhere in there there is a middle ground, and those questions do get asked and answered from time to time.
Since we've graduated and we don't have to care quite as much about closing everything that we can't answer right away, I'd say we don't need a hard and fast rule to close everything hardware or compatibility related as a matter of course anymore. Using "too broad"/"too localized", while more general and fuzzy, serves effectively the same purpose.

As for this question in particular, I'd guess it's in "too broad"/"opinion based" territory, but it's really unclear, so I took the liberty of closing it as such.

I didn't say that the intentions and reasoning aren't clear to me. I just meant that the restriction "off-topic because it is about the operating system, hardware, performance, or compatibility" and having a compatibility tag are counter-intuitive.

@Leander I didn't state it very clearly (will edit), but I'm proposing that we ditch the "no hardware/compatibility" thing (it never actually made it to an official close reason in the first place) and simply close based on too broad or too localized.

Sorry for the stupid question, but how do I close as too localized ? I get the too broad option in the closing dialog, but not too localized. Is an 'other' commented reason?

@Leander Close> Off-topic because...> This question is too localized because...

"Too-localized" close reason was replaced by other more specific close reasons since 2013, unless you're suggesting to use a custom close reason... //cc: @Leander


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Markup code parsed unexpectedly
I usually present code by indenting lines with four spaces or using the respective button in the editing menu.
line_of = "code"
another = "line"

However, after a numbered or bullet list with

some item
another item
code_is_formatted = False
behaviour = "INCONSISTENT"

Just after adding some other item.
code_indentation = "works"

Is this a bug or am I using the markdown wrong?

You just need another 4 indents (so a total of 8). There is mention of this here. Seems that the markdown specification isn't clear as to what should happen in this specific case. For some reason adding another 4 spaces solves this.

@RayMairlot But then the codeblock is indented as if it were part of the list. What if I want to end the list and add the code block?

More information here. You can place an empty line after the bullet point then <!--> then another empty line and then code.

This is a well known problem which would be fixed by the addition of fenced code blocks, but there's no information on when or if those are to be implemented.


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Why the comment privilege needs 50 reputation?
Why comments need 50 reputation? Everyone needs them to get more info from who asked the question in order to answer and get more reputation! I usually find questions that aren't very clear so I need to add a comment telling who asked the question to provide more info or the .blend file so I can answer the question and get more reputation. Because of this people with <50 reputation can hardly answer a question, and that will keep their reputation low, and that will keep the comment privilege locked, and the loop continues...

Related  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214173/why-do-i-need-50-reputation-to-comment-what-can-i-do-instead, http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252133/50-reputation-points-to-make-comments. If you post an answer even without asking for details but still provide some potentially related and useful details the answer will have great chances to be upvoted.

It's mostly in place to prevent spam.


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Duplicate but original is out-of-date
The new question Bone to mesh - convert is pretty much a duplicate of Convert bones to meshes. The new question is asking for something a little bit different, but it appears @lemon anticipated that as there is commented out code in the original answer to do what the new user wants.
My question has two parts:

The original answer is for Blender 2.79 won't run under 2.8x. Should I make the edits to the original answer's script, add a second script in the original answer, or put the updated script in the new question?

I think a GUI to ask about bones shape would be a good improvement to the original script. If I do add a GUI,  Should I make the edits to the original answer's script, add a second script in the original answer, or put the updated script in the new question?

So I ended up making the needed edits to the original script, and added the UI version as an answer to the second question.

Hi Thanks for the update. If it is a simple and most importantly backwards compatible update it should probably be an edit to the original post. If you made major changes and significant improvements to the script it may warrant a new answer so feel free to post. You may even gain some deserved reputation for it. Don't forget to credit the original author, and link to the post containing the source script

My general advice is to not overwrite the original answer, but to either add a 2.8 section to the existing answer, leaving the original code intact, or add a new answer.


text:
What should we do with outdated answers?
Sometimes we have outdated answers like this one:
How to unattach an object and reattach it somewhere else in an animation?
There is no information about disable and keep transform for example, probably because where was no such function at the moment that the post was written. And community keeps linking as duplicate at these answers.
So the question is - what should we do with outdated answers? I don't mean outdated screenshots, I'm speaking about answers, what have to be rewritten completely due to new tools and functions.

Change the original answer
use your authority and destroy original answer or maybe keeping it in the end just in case
Add another answer
But in this case, the new answer will be at the bottom and not marked as correct
Add the new question in QA-style, seems to be reasonable because you can make question itself more common and appeal to others
probably, new answer will not be used as link for duplicate because outdated answer has more votes.
Breaking duplicate links, and leave answer as it is.

I didn't mention "disable and keep transform" because I wasn't aware of it.  It probably existed; that answer isn't so old.   You should add your own answer to the question.  (It doesn't seem like such an innovation as to worry about adding it, not to me; it saves a single operation from something you don't need to do very often.)

It is just for example to clarify what I mean

It would actually be ideal if answers could be marked "outdated" and thus simply lose the "Accepted Answer" marker (like when closing a question once a certain number of votes exist)

My take on this is always to never remove or deface old answers or workflows.
They may always help people that for one reason or another are stuck with older versions of Blender. Say support old hardware, LTS versions, finishing an old project part of a larger studio pipeline, or if something breaks on newer versions beyond reasonable efforts to repair. At the very least they may be historically relevant, maybe as a reminder how (hard or convoluted) things were before.
First attempt should always be to update existing answers to reflect changes. Insert additional screenshots, add a line describing the new menu structure or shelf where it can be found, etc. without removing the old ones.
If this is unpractical, like say changes to the workflow were significant enough that an answer would be hard to follow if it tries to cover multiple versions, there are more than two possible workflows for different releases, or a completely new (or deprecated) feature changes the fundamental way to go about it, then post a new answer.
Last resort would be to post an entirely new question and answer it there. Having a new answer in an older well established post helps for a few reasons.
It reduces information scattering. By having all possible solutions in a single post makes them easier to find. From the point of view of a user looking for answers, it is also easier to have a single long list of solutions than to jump around a multitude of tangentially related posts that are easy to miss.
One of the biggest hurdles of people pointing new users to duplicates is finding the actual duplicates. To the extreme that more often than not it is easier to just type a new answer than to look for that darn old duplicate. Stack exchange search isn't always the best either, and finding relevant answers potentially worded differently can be hard even for veterans, let alone for new users.
A single well written and comprehensive post is easier to follow than ten superficial ones scattered all over. Updating a single one in the future is also a lot less maintenance work then keeping ten posts relevant when there is a change.
Having all answers in a single post makes it more comprehensive, more memorable and easier to go back to. It also helps people who deal with review queues, making the canonical post used more often and hence easier to remember. Gaining more votes also gives people looking at it more confidence.
Conversely having different questions with multiple answers each for the same problem makes it all the harder to dealt with. For these reasons I would urge anyone posting an updated answer to an old problem to prefer doing so in an original "canonical" question.
I understand this is less appealing for users trying to build reputation, and get their hard earned points for their efforts. Earning points these days is hard enough as it is, and answering in some dusty question of yore makes it even less visible.
All the while the new and updated answer, that is arguably more desirable, is pushed down the list and made less visible, since it hasn't yet gained as much points compared to the old and tried one. Maybe it never will.
For that I don't have an easy solution and would like to hear the opinion rest of the community.
If the price to pay for that is having duplicate answers then let it be so. Post your new and shiny answer in two places, the newer question for points (or at least a "lite" simplified or summarized version of it, pointing to the older more complete question for more details), and a full version of it "for future reference" in the canonical post, complete with all the details where it would ideally gather more points in the long term.
Again this is my take on it, that definitely has its shortcomings like duplicate answers, data buildup, and extra work for the poster which can be discouraging, and maintenance work enforcing it.
Lets hear what others have to say about this, looking for better solutions.

Post your new and shiny answer in two places. I think this is quite a good solution. I can see quite alot of positives to this methodology with very few drawbacks

Agree strongly with your thinking here.  I think one of the things that makes people less likely to answer old questions is the "solved" mark.  Good questions are forever; solutions are temporary; and really, the person asking the question is often not very qualified to designate the solution to the problem, not in the general sense, and often not even in their own specific sense.  "Flag as probably a duplicate" would be a good feature that would help people spread the work to those willing to do it.  Algorithm for bumping old Qs could use some work; it doesn't choose good ones.

And, it wouldn't hurt one bit to have somebody saying which question should be canonical.  There are thousands of duplicates, and when I have to mark something as a duplicate, I just pick one (usually one that I've answered, because I know for a fact that it's a duplicate in that case, and because I can actually find the link that way-- I know what I've said, so I know how to find it on Google.)  A way to do this would be to start marking even older questions as duplicates. and we could trace the close messages to figure out which Q to refer people to.

"A way to do this would be to start marking even older questions as duplicates. and we could trace the close messages to figure out which Q to refer people to." Indeed, I've done this on an occasion or two, for the most well known cases, but it starts becoming unpractical for longer "chains" of duplicates.

Well, it's probably always going to be a thing where the workload grows faster than it can be done, but if the problem is impractically long chains, that is solvable with coding-- it should be possible to have a "closed as duplicate" iterate through linking questions.  Although if duplicates get closed to Google, and SE search remains bad, it might not help any.

That would certainly be an interesting project. Not sure how algorithms handle that, but if a question as answers and/or positive score I think they are still considered for results, I hope

Sometimes we have outdated answers

From my experience, it's not sometimes. I'd say more than half of the answers seem outdated and don't work with 3.1. For a software with such major changes between versions it is not surprising posts are outdated relatively quickly. Without a mandatory version tagging procedure Stack Exchange format is not effective to manage such obsolescence.
Time is wasted reading outdated posts
For someone following a link in a search engine, unmarked outdated posts are a waste of time, instead of helping they can even add to the problem.
(Note the number of upvotes is not helpful to assess the current value of a post, a post may have been upvoted a long time ago, but never in the recent period. Downvotes are a good indication though, as it's not very common to see a poor answer suddenly becoming a useful one.)
Mitigation
Outdated answers should be either updated or marked outdated and if possible deleted.

Marking posts as outdated is an effective solution to prevent wasting time reading useless posts, but is not an incentive to increase posts value.

To increase posts value outdated posts could be deleted. Deleting an answer is indeed a problem from a reputation standpoint, but reputation is an indication of how much someone else can be confident in the author's content value, hence it should be decreased for authors concentrating outdated content. Regularly updating posts according to Blender changes should be the normal way to prevent reputation decreasing with time.

The simplest solution would be to downvote outdated posts, but as we know trying to help this way costs reputation to the helper, and possibly triggers some negative assessment of the user by SE AI.
Possible solution at moderator/user level
When a user detects an outdated post (e.g. not valid or not effective for any version released in the last 18 months), it should exists a mechanism in the stack rules to inform the author about the outdated content and the need to update it. I wonder if it can be done by flagging the post "to moderator attention". In case no update is provided, or the question or answer is not relevant any more, it should be edited to mention its outdated status on the first line.
Stack Exchange solution
Indeed the actual solution is in the hands of SE: Put in place a vote based on versions instead of a vote with permanent validity. Alternatively gives the vote a time limit, when it times out delete it, this way posts that once had a high ranking will just die if not regularly upvoted. I'm pretty sure SE, including SO, cannot remain attractive with time without such mechanism as the number of outdated posts is becoming a problem by itself (it's not specific to SE/SO).

I'm not sure deleting answers is the right way to go here. A LOT of people are still using 2.79 for various reasons, we sometimes see people with way older versions because their video game plugin only works with that. There is no limit to the number of answers to a post so up to date answers can be added to the list of existing, maybe outdated, answers. It's the responsibility of the searcher to find what solutions works for them. I don't agree that outdated answers have no value. It can be informative to understand the thought process behind a seemingly wacky solution. Cheers

you can now sort by date of creation or edition instead of upvotes

Stack Exchange itself has proposed, but not yet implemented what may be a better solution:  Answer version tags.  Any sufficiently privileged user can tag any answer with tags indicating what versions of the software the answer is good for.

@MartyFouts: That's good news and now much awaited. Search engines will be happy too.


text:
Accept an answer that answers the general question but didn't help in specific case
So I asked this question yesterday about what I thought was my problem. I didn't provide any screenshots or blendfiles as I thought my problem was more general.
I got exactly the answer I was looking for but unfortunately it didn't solve my problem. BUT if another user searches BSE for the same answer, it may be exactly what they need. Should I accept the answer for this case even though it didn't help my sepecific problem but would have helped if I had the problem I thought I have and answered the question I asked?

Hi. If the answer didn't really solve your issue you'd be invited to answer it yourself stating what did. Nevertheless if the user helped you you can still upvote his answer for gratitude, despite not solving your issue directly. Having a positive score on his answer will likely help search engines direct future users towards the post, even it is not the accepted one.

If the answer didn't work for you, you don't have to accept it, let the uses who answered know why it didn't. But if any of the answers allowed you to discover what the problem was, you should update the question with the new findings or additional information, to make it more specific and useful.
If you found a solution by yourself, be kind enough to share it. Write an answer to your own question, so that other users can learn from you.


text:
On topic: A question about how to design a 3D planet?
I would like to create a 3D model of a planet with rings, complete with sun, so that I can better visualize what the rings would look like at various times and locations on the planet.
I have some experience with Blender, but there's a lot I still don't know. For that reason, I was considering asking how I should go about designing such a model. It is imperative that it be scientifically accurate, both with lighting and the reflection from the ring, but I am unsure how to properly simulate those things (particularly the light from the sun in relation to the distance from the planet).
Before I asked the above question, I wanted to know if it would be on topic here on Blender SE, or if it would be better suited for the more general atmosphere of Graphic Design SE. It's not specifically tied to Blender, after all. That's just the program I'm familiar with.

I just want to say, I personally think your project sounds like a very interesting one (I have a bit of an interest in planet rendering), and I would be more than happy to help you get started. Please don't hesitate to ping me in chat if I could possibly be of help!

@gandalf3 I've decided to investigate the Universe Sandbox, as provided in a comment [here][1]. But if that doesn't pan out, I will certianly take you up on your offer. Thanks! [1]https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/112076/6620

... Seriously... how on earth do I embed links?

Comments only use the inline link syntax. [link](https://targetaddress.whatever)

Thanks asking in meta :) The question "How to model a realistic planet with rings?" sounds a little too broad as stated, but you would be more than welcome to ask around in chat.
Once you get a start and encounter specific questions (e.g. something like "How to fit real-scale planet rings in a scene without z-fighting?" or "For planet rendering, should I use a sun lamp?"), then by all means ask those.


text:
Image Error "Imgur redirected you too many times"
All browsers, Windows 10.
As of last night images from Imgur have been broken for me. In Chrome, attempts to load the image directly result in the 'redirected you too many times' error. Last night, the problem was just in Chrome, but now it's in all browsers. Deleting cookies has not helped. Is this problem shared? Is there a known fix, or is it server side?

This is a issue affecting more then just you. There were four of us in the chat with this problem. It has happened before (like when s3 went down), and will probably happen again. SE and imgur will fix it. Nothing we can do, and no there is no need to re-upolad images to "fix" them.
There were a few reports (1, 2, 3) of this over on the main meta. For some (me included) it seems to be better.


text:
What is BSE's attitude to 'Promotional' Q&A's?
A few times, I've seen questions posted, and self-answered immediately. The answers are often good, and link out to a tutorial on the subject. An example might be:
How to create a perfect circular or elliptical motion without curves or addons?
While the posts can contain useful information, they are tantamount to an advertisement for the tutorial. How should we treat these posts? Is this OK?

An answer should always stand on its own without replying on external data to fully reproduce the presented solution. If the solution cannot be fully reproduced without visiting the link,or the answers seems to exists solely for promoting a link , then it may be considered unwanted and flagged as spam.

As for addons and external downloads is a bit of a gray area. A valid answer that requires an addon or downloading some external file is possible, but ideally it should be self contained. If it is a commercial or payed product then I'd say it is a no go. For non commercial products I'd say the answer should still be substantial and present a descriptive solution. If possible transcribe the required script using code tags

@Duarte, that's kind of the way I was thinking. It's not as if BSE is becoming an Exchange and Mart for monetized videos. If the answers stand on their own, they are useful.


text:
Handling of off-topic questions
I know it's technically correct to close this question, for example.
Rephrasing of off-topic questions is unlikely to bring them within BSE's remit, so the standard explanatory message is not quite appropriate.
If I was a brand-new user who had gone to the trouble of creating an account, and then had my question clobbered, however justifiably, without a suggestion of alternative sites to visit, I would feel I had been treated brusquely, and probably never visit BSE again.
I see this has been raised before.. posts such as this.. Is there any action we, as ordinary users, can take to provide more helpful canned off-topic messages, pointing to authoritative alternative sites?

I think this is another case of multiple users picking different close reasons.
When this happens a "generic" close message is used rather than one of the more specific ones, since non matches all users choices.

In this case I chose to close as off topic because it is not strictly about using Blender. Should all other users have chosen the same, the user would be shown this message, which I think is descriptive and points them in the right direction.

This question doesn't seem to be about using Blender or in any way
related to the software as defined in the help center
This question was put on hold since it doesn't seem to be strictly
about using Blender as defined in the help center. - For general
questions about Python https://stackoverflow.com - For game
development you can use https://gamedev.stackexchange.com - For
hardware recommendations https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com If you
can rephrase it, [edit] the question to make it on topic by focusing
on the Blender specific part of the problem.

In this situation, I don't think there is a better solution other manual intervention.
When voting to close it is not always immediately obvious what reason other users have chosen, and as such what message will be displayed afterwards, unless a user navigates back to the post after closing. The generic message the user sees also doesn't seem to be editable by the community.
A mod would have to manually reopen and close again with the "correct" reason to enforce the desired message, or manually post it as a comment below. But this seem "dictatorial" if not all users agree.
As a non moderator in this case one could optionally post it below as a comment as well.

Ahhh, OK! I see. A comment looks like the best possible option, when close-reasons are mixed. Thanks!

Since you called attention to this one I posted the comment there, though most of the time this is not immediately obvious when one votes to close, unless you manually navigate back.

If you see a situation where a canned comment doesn't seem appropriate for a particular question, either insufficient explanation or just wildly wrong, you can leave a personalized comment.  I see that I can leave a comment on the linked question.  This is probably related to points earned, which are necessary to even see deleted questions, but you have more than I do anyways.
My understanding is that questioners will see comments on deleted questions, but if I'm wrong, hopefully someone will correct me.  If they can't, that's not good design.
I try to leave comments when I vote to close a question, because canned responses seem rude to me.  We are humans, not robots, and other humans deserve our personalized explanations, no matter how abstracted they seem on the internet.  However, I don't always.  Sometimes I recognize that this isn't a time when I can be diplomatic enough; other times, I'm simply lazy.  But I think it's the decent thing to do, and I make some effort toward it.
I am not a fan of BSE putting words into my mouth.  I'm happy to attach my identity to an initial close vote, but not to the words, "Does this answer your question?"  I would much rather BSE offered those words and allowed me to say something else, provided I still gave the appropriate link.  I would still sometimes just let BSE say that on my behalf, whether out of recognition of my own bad mood, or out of laziness.

With you. Sometimes, I think, though, a canned comment can be better than a personal one? In this case, (good sites for hardware recommendations,) it would have been more authoritative than me. What I hadn't understood, until @Duarte filled me in, was the behaviour of the system, when  given mixed reasons for closure. The resulting falling-between-the-stools default response  can seem very abrupt and unhelpful. It would be better if the system generated all the canned responses, one for each reason?  I don't suppose we can do anything about that.

@RobinBetts I think it can be better, when it's more diplomatic than a personal response would be, and that's going to be the case sometimes. In this case, of mixed closes, personal messages from users would communicate the mixed reasons better-- probably with far more accuracy than even SE categories can ever encompass.  The user may have found the ultimate message useful in this case, but I think that's rarely going to be case, because the system is never going to take the actual question into account the way that a human can. And too much info, especially canned, is not any better.


text:
How can a new user bump a question?
Here's an example of a new user doing the right thing, and looking to see whether their question has been asked before. However, it was unanswered, and their only option to bring attention to the question seems to be to do the wrong thing, and ask it again in the answers section.
I apologise if I'm missing something obvious.. how should a reviewer advise the new user? It seems unfair just to slap the post down.

"However, it was unanswered, and their only option to bring attention to the question seems to be to do the wrong thing, and ask it again"
The correct thing is to ask a new question. If a question is technically a duplicate but original has no answers, there is nothing wrong with asking it again.
Do so by making a new post (not a commenting or writing in the answer section), and ideally mentioning the original post with a link to it, so as to acknowledge it and show research efforts.
It is not consideres a duplicate nor a wrong action, and except for mods you can't even close vote as duplicate of a question with no answers, or if any answers only have no upvotes or negative score.
To answer your question directly, to bump an old question a user can:

As Glorfindel mentions add a bounty if you have enough rep to spare.
Improve the answer by fixing any mistakes or adding proper tags.
Add new details or additional information that can help solve the issue, if those don't conflict with the meaning of the original author.

Ahh! Thanks, @Duarte I didn't know comments count as activity, and I'm glad a fresh ask wouldn't count as a dupe. That solves  the dilemma.

Shouldn't this job been done by Community ♦? I mean, it should bring some searched post in front of the queue using some algorithm (or it is randomly poke now?).

As far as I know Community user has limited goals, but any activity like commenting or editing does bump questions into the top of the queue automatically. In-Site search is admittedly poor, I often have an easier time finding posts through Google than built-in search

Definitely agree with in-site search, then it seem to be a design flaw for new user to bump up a question. There is no (quick) way to know what will happen after user did an action mention above. I mean, there isn't a guide to let a question been notice by more people. Or did I miss that tutorial?

I also thought comments didn’t bump the question - only edits and answers.

You are right, commenting does not bump it up the queue, my mistake. That leaves the other options left. It does notify the original poster, and at least the last person to comment, so it does get some attention on the question.

That answer will end up in the Low Quality Posts review queue (because of its length, and because I flagged it as Not An Answer), where one of the options after 'Recommend Deletion' (or 'Delete') is to post this comment:

This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. You can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question once you have enough reputation.

That post is not an answer, so it should be deleted, but the new answer did bump the question, so perhaps somebody stumbles upon it now and can contribute to a solution. That would be a nice side effect.

Sure .. I just thought it would be nice if a new user had a way of reviving an unanswered question without inviting insult.. Maybe the right thing to do is suggest the user rephrases the question and asks it again, but then they would get closed for duplication. It seems they can't win!


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Would this community benefit from documentation like stack overflow?
As the title says, would we benefit from having documentation?
It's a useful aspect of stack overflow and it's certainly something that I would find useful.
As it stands there is a blender tag on stack overflow that we can create documentation for. But it would be good to have blender documentation reflected or moved here.

For those interested in helping with the documentation, here is the link for SO https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/blender/commit


text:
Deleting answer by deleting content
https://blender.stackexchange.com/posts/115940/revisions
Is that an acceptable way to delete your answer when you feel you overthought the problem?

See When is it kosher to delete one's own answer?
Beyond the "no deleting accepted answers" enforced by the system, there aren't any particular hard and fast rules regarding deleting one's own posts. The usual etiquette mostly boils down to "avoid removing content which may be in some way still useful". It could be that this is the reason the delete button was not utilized in the answer you linked, as editing leaves the comments and edit history visible for all users.
That said, when going the edit route, I would suggest leaving the body intact (or in spoiler tags), prefaced with a warning which explains the reason the answer is no longer favorable. That way casual readers can see for themselves what the fuss is about without having to poke around in the revision history.


text:
Bad answers for bad questions?
Many people can profit from a well described answer to a relevant question. But in practice a good part of the questions in Blender Exchange are asked by people who are just starting out and don't know how to describe their problem. Some have obvious errors in their scene and haven't learned the basics of the features they use.
I think a good answer requires a good question, but what if most of the questions are bad? I feel like one of ten is worth a good answer, and those usually get answered rather quick.
Spam short answers or leave those questions unanswered at all? It concerns me since most of my answers are short and not very interesting.

oh BTW and if people do help you, you should mark their help as answer  (ea https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/88494/how-to-rig-a-chest-lid/88503#88503 ) you ask but dont mark as solved, and that almost a tutorial what you got back there.

Thoughts: 1. Many of the bad questions are also duplicates, so let's all remember our due diligence and vote to close those. 2. Sometimes prodding a newbie to add more detail, reference images, post a .blend via Blend Exchange, or explain what they have tried so far, is all it takes to help a bad question grow into one with potential.

Great answers, thanks.

I wouldn't consider short answer to be bad. On the contrary - if I get to the solution fast without reading an essay it saves me time. I think you are implying answers that contain a hint but are not full tutorials on the matter (like this one that inspired this meta post).
Lot of questions are newbie type ones and for you it might seem obvious (or how to search it might seem easy), but on the contrary it is usually better to go into more detail than it seems necessary (and go full tutorial mode). There is a high probability such question will draw in more newbies and if they don't understand how to get to that solution they might leave downvote. A hint clear to you might not be so clear to a newbie.
An answer containing the full solution (or even related extra info) that doesn't require for additional searching yields the most upvotes.
It is also ok to edit a bad question to make it better searchable, more general or with better tags. This will draw in more people that will see your work you put into the answer. Duplicate questions should be marked as such, yes.
It's not a crime to post hint-like answer, anyone can add another answer and compete with you and for some users the hint might be enough. But there will likely be people not getting the hint and leaving that downvote.
I would summarize it's about estimating the experience of the artist asking (and searching it) and tailoring the answer to that level (or level below).

actually i think that more often people should provide a short answer here.
That encourages people to look things up, or to study.
"Your rigging is wrong because you didnt apply scaling first", instead of someone describing the complete rigging process.
As if StackExchange where a wiki site (which it is not) we could as well take down the only site that tries to be the free book of blender, the place where newbies should learn.  https://wiki.blender.org/
StackExchange is a site for good correct best answers not tutorials, there are plenty tutorial websites (Linda, youtube, blender wiki etc).
Short answers also make this site load good on the mobile app.
If you dont know how to say things i'd recommend to include the .blend file and add some images as well. People like me just look around here to find unanswered questions with no solution and we still help you, to us it are just funny puzzles. But most of us dont intend to be teachers here, just telling a good correct answer, as this is a QA site.
But even various moderators forget its basically just QA that made stackechange a great site.

Can you give an example to clarify your last sentence?

Go to c++ or c# dev site of stack exchange to see how its supposed to be.

No.  I am asking you directly for your assessment.  I will not burden you further.


text:
why did i get hold on my question?
I want to know  how to make fireball spell and do not know how.
And i research for method yet don't know in detail.
So i go for here and ask then i got on hold for my question. Why?
This is my question.
because i want to do it with  blender and unity, is it the reason i can't ask in blender forum?

i can't do it. It need 5 reputation to do it but i only want to ask this question and  don't want to ask anymore.

Please edit your first question.

I've upvoted your question - you should have enough reputation now.

First off, thanks for asking why.
Your question was put on hold because it asks for an entire tutorial.
The Q&A format of stackexchange works best when the asker asks a question specific enough to be answered directly, without requiring explanations of numerous sub-topics.
The point is, questions which start from scratch "how to make <thing>?" generally involve too many aspects to cover in one answer. A much more stackexchange-friendly question might be "how to make <thing> a different color?".

All that said, the above still doesn't help you make a fireball ;)
If you are not sure where to start, there are plenty of blender and unity tutorials out there. In this case, I'd suggest looking for unity tutorials, as that is what you'll want the fireball to be in at the end of the day. A quick search turns up quite a few promising results. There's also some popular blender resources linked in the Beginner's Reference, but a search engine is your friend here.
So, no worries, and good luck!
If you hit a wall on the blender side of things, then please do come back and ask a question about it then.


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What is the best time (day, hour) to ask a question?
Sometimes when I ask questions I don't get a lot of views and they go unanswered before, eventually, nobody ever sees them again.  What's the best day of the week and time of the day to ask questions to get the most attention?

There is no best time, you can sift data and observe as much as you want but it ultimately boils down to your question content. The best tip I can give you is to ask a well worded question. Use all the tips and tricks, big images, express your problem clearly and state what you've tried. Nothing screams skip me like a badly formatted wall of text or a vague title. See https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/608/how-do-i-ask-a-question-that-is-hard-to-describe for some tips.

@iKlsR No, I totally agree.  But I asked a simple, to-the-point, well worded question that just didn't get any attention.  Not even a comment to say what I was asking wasn't possible.  I've noticed that there seems to be lulls in traffic at certain times but a pattern hasn't emerged yet.

We have other resources as well, there is a room dedicated to color management and has cycles nuts active there. https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/34814/the-rabbit-hole

@cegaton - Ha, good point

I'll try to give a slightly different answer.
Looking at the Most Active Users page I am going to roughly guess that based on the percentage of people that decide to reveal their country of origin, very roughly about 30 to 40% of users are from Europe or neighboring regions.
Lets assume for the sake of this answer that they are a majority, and the most active users, are also the most 'knowledgeable' and more prone to answer a question.
If one assumes they visit BSE at regular European waking hours, and only check the Newest questions queue, and not the Active (I am guilty of this sin, and I am ashamed of it) then one could roughly estimate that a question posted at the "rush hour" or when more "experienced users" are present would have a slightly higher chance of being spotted right away, and thus an ever so slightly higher chance of being picked for answering.
Now this is a lot of 'ifs' and 'buts' and far fetched speculations. I am also being slightly dismissive of people from other regions of the world (no offence meant ;), for which I apologize.
Could this translate to a real measurable accurate time frame? It just could not, there are so many variables and different people, with different habits and variables in their life that it would be impossible to say for sure.
Over my time here I seem to have noticed a slight pattern and possibly spike in activity roughly during late afternoon/early evening between 18 to 20h GMT, maybe corresponding to that free time at the end of the day people find to play around with Blender a bit after a day of work or before diner time(?).
Some times also during weekends especially those late bitter Sunday afternoons, during that depressing pre-Monday time, when the dread of the incoming work week sets in, and you realize it is already too late to accomplish anything useful with your wasted weekend, so you just resign and try to make the most of what is left of it.
Maybe posting then would be more beneficial to post, I don't know...
Sorry for the rambling post

Interesting question. Fortunately it is not that hard to pull such data:
data.stackexchange.com/blender/query/new
With a querry:
SELECT Id, CreationDate FROM Posts WHERE PostTypeId=2 ORDER BY CreationDate

You get a .CSV file with all the answers since the beginning of time and their timestamps.
From this data visualized in GoogleDocs we can see that the most answers are posted in Wednesday , with weekends seeing less traffic:

Sorting this further based on time (data.stackexchange returns UTC times):

For maximum correctness the timestamps were rounded, so for example if an answer was posted after 8:30 and before 9:30, it is counted as posted around 9 o'clock.
It is clear most answers are posted at 6 pm, least at 4 am. Since both answer and question take some time to be written, I would say the best time by statistics to start writing your question is at 5pm UTC.
To generalize some rule of thumb, most answers are written on weekdays after Europeans had eaten lunch (12:00 UTC) :)

Nice.  This is what I was looking for.  I'd already seen a pattern on weekends but the time factor in your graph is very strong.


text:
How to get clarification on old answers from inactive users?
I thought I had seen this question asked before on Meta but now I can't find it.
I had a question recently about "how to convert a large particle system to an object efficiently?"  I found the question on BSE and it has an accepted, well-received answer.  However, to me the answer's unclear as it seems to assume a certain level of understanding that I apparently don't possess.  Both the inquirer and responder are now inactive.
So the generalized question is: How can I get more clarification on an answer without asking a duplicate question?

Without asking new question? Well, probably impossible if meaning using only the site tools. You could ask that in chat maybe and probably answer which is unclear for you will be edited (or maybe you will end asking that question and receiving an answer, or you will search fori info elsewhere and edit the answer yourself). I don't think you can generally avoid asking new question, and maybe you shouldn't

link to this answer please.

@David - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1389/convert-large-particle-systems-to-one-object-efficiently


text:
narrowing down terms of blend-exchange
Recently I read a comment here about very long-range licence regulations on blend-exchange. It states:

You grant to blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, adapt, publish, translate and distribute your user content in any existing or future media. You also grant to blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com the right to sub-license these rights, and the right to bring an action for infringement of these rights.

This indeed is very heavy. I'm allowing them to do nearly anything with my blend file. Until now, I often recommended new users this service, as is usual here, but after reading this, have a bad feeling about it.
I understand that a website with user content need some kind of long-range rights to host and distribute this content. I know that this service is offered with best intentions and free of charge, which is greatly appreciated. But following these terms it would also be possible to sell all blends there, or am I wrong? What happens if giantcowfilms is sold itself? Couldn't the terms be narrowed down to what is just neccessary to allow permanent storage and for using them here on BSE?

I've let giantcowfilms know about this question. He is the one that runs the whole blend-exchange site.

The reason that is so broad is to try and make the site as permanent is possible - I didn't want any license restriction to get in the way of a plan to finance additional storage (I have no intention of ever selling them for profit). For example, if I were to take donations to buy additional storage that I could not afford, I would want the license to be completely permissive of that. If it came to it, I might even need to put ads on the website (heaven forbid), which in a round about way would constitute selling the content. Either way, I want the current blends to stay and I want to continue being able to take in new blends.
If I had a a lawyer, I'd look into changing it to make it explicit that the blends could not be used for profit, but I just don't know the full implications of such a restriction (for example, maybe the fact that the advertising service I use makes a profit would be an issue), so I think I will leave it for now.
As far as GiantCowFilms.com selling itself, It's my personal site, and I see it as very unlikely anyone would even want to buy it (and they'd need to make me an offer I could not refuse), and if they did, blend-exchange would probably at long last get its own domain (the use of the sub-domain is a cost saving measure), and there would be restrictions on what the new owner could do with the blend-exchange sub-domain.
P.S.
Speaking about costs - blend-exchange has used up roughly 75% of its space, so at some point we will have to start looking at either finding more free methods of getting space - or look into ways to finance more space. If that falls short, we might have to start removing infrequently viewed/downloaded files, which would be sad.

Thanks for your detailed answer. Again, please don't misunderstand me: I'm not questioning your intentions. But even some of the most promising relationships may get divorced sometimes, or accidents happen.
So, it's to a lesser extent a question for you, but more for the community. If the majority is happy with so extensive terms, so be it. But all these rights should only be given as they are needed to provide a permanent storage for BSE.
Oh, and I would happily provide my part of donation to keep the service runnig, if it comes to that.   :)

Out of interest, how much space would you save by deleting all blends over (for example sake) 1 year old with no downloads?

@batFINGER Removing those files (no downloads) would save around 327 megabytes. If we were to remove files with less than five downloads would save around 1.73 gigabytes.

@GiantCowFilms and how much space they are taking in overall? Or to be more specific how much % could you save by deleting them?

I'll just give my opinion of blend-exchange's license, because I'm in no position to change it.
Yes, it is overly broad, and surrenders all rights to blend-exchange. Could it be narrower? Probably, but like GiantCowFilms said in his answer, we are not lawyers better to play it (very) safe then run in to some stupid legal trouble down the road.
Two reasons why the terms do  not bother me.

It is for storing blends use in questions and answers. Ideally it should be small test cases showing a problem, or the completed solution. There is no reason to upload a full scene.
This is the internet... Youtube and google drive's terms have very much the same effect, yet we all still use services like those.

Let me elaborate on #1.
Say I'm writing a question, and I need to include a blend. If I'm doing my do diligence I will start a new file and recreate my problem (that in its self will solve many issues). I'm not concerned that blend-exahcnge has the right to sell my blend; it only contains a problem!
Or say I'm writing an answer, this one as an example. Whenever someone writes an answer they are sharing knowledge. That kind of sentiment does not bode well with "you can not use my blend."
I made that blend just so people could see exactly how each method in my answer works. I gave the knowledge away in my answer, the blend is just another way of sharing it.
When you look it is like that, it is hard to come to the conclusion that the terms restrict usage.  If you have something that can not be shared, you probably are not writing your question as best you could.

As far as the Google Drive terms and conditions go, this is what they say: "When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content." So, you're not keeping any more rights by using Google Drive.

And Blend-Exchange using Google Drive internally, so we kind of need those rights to then give them to Google. This is exactly why this is so messy and why I'm nervous to change anything.

Oh boy, that's even worse than I expected. See, that's the problem with too broad rights – the uploaded blends are not only given to one person, but submitted to a giant worldwide data kraken without the users knowledge. I agree with David, its not a really big problem, since all blends are about problems, or cutted down to simple meshes or parts of them. Still, I'm not at all happy with this. But if the majority of people here is fine with it, I guess I have to accept it.

@ScottMilner That is why I brought up other sites' terms. Not to suggest one is better or something but to show that this type of surrendering all rights stuff is kinda normal on the internet.

Just because it's normal doesn't mean it's the way it should be, though. And it's within our power to control our little piece of the Internet. (:

That's what I hoped to start: a discussion about what should be. But most people here seem to be content with the status quo, so be it.


text:
I appear to have 'serial voted'. Would a moderator please explain the specifics so I can avoid doing it in the future?
When I logged on this AM, I found that I had been deduced 12 reputation points because "Serial Voting was Reversed". Would someone please explain what I did that triggered the deduction, so that I can avoid making the same mistake again?

We have since caught a few sock puppet accounts used by a well known perpetrator to undertake his nefarious voting habits. The accounts have been terminated and some points probably restored, which I hope will return some of your reputation. Apologies for not catching this earlier, hope this didn't discourage you from contributing any further

You most likely didn't do anything to trigger it directly, though you have led to it indirectly.
By raising a flag earlier to notify moderators about a case of serial downvoting, I ended up escalating the issue to try and have reputations restored to normality, which itself led to a chain of events that eventually culminated in a point recount made by the system.
From then on what the system does is really a black box to us, it may lead to favorable or unfavorable results to an undetermined number of users.
If you report a rep loss, then I presume among other things the system considered you were perhaps being favored by some other user, which may intentionally or unintentionally have upvoted an abnormal amount of your posts.

I see. It's weird that I lost 12 reputation and that I never did get any reputation back from the case where I was the victim of extensive revenge voting, but such are the vagaries of complex systems.  Thanks for the explanation.


text:
Workflow question: How to specify other StackExchange when closing because the question is on the wrong exchange?
I just tried to vote to close a question because it needs to be migrated to another site.  I got as far as this popup:

but the question belongs on the Python stackexchange, not blender.meta.
Is there some way to specify other sites in the popup, or are we limited to "not a blender question"?

As far as I know only moderators and site admins get to pick a different community to migrate questions to.
The dialog I started seeing after becoming a moderator changed, presenting a search box with actual listing of Stack network sites we can pick from.

From my freshly made research on the subject this has already been proven to be troublesome, with many sites being overwhelmed by incoming questions rejected from other sites and becoming an easy bin for sweeping away unwanted or poorly formed questions.
I can see this being abused and quickly becoming a pass the buck game, where we shove questions away to unsuspecting target sites without much thought, potentially flooding them with off topic questions.
I speculate the list was once populated with other sites relevant for our frequent off topic reasons, but is now featuring only meta; probably because our site is specific to using Blender the 3D software package, and no other "tangentially related" topics with a valid relevant network site were deemed worthy of being permanently featured in that list.
Of course one can argue that sites like,  Game Development,  Stack Overflow, or even  Graphic Design are sometimes relevant, but this was probably abused in the past.
This may also prove an unwelcoming experience to the inexperienced OP which unexpectedly "travels through a magic portal" and quickly finds his question migrated to a completely different "hostile world" where an innocent question gets massively downvoted on a dedicated site where beginner questions are poorly received.
Since I'm also often not that familiar with the rules and valid topics of other communities, I prefer to point the OP to other sites through comments, rather that do it automatically.


text:
Create 'gltf' tag?
Similar to existing fbx and collada tags, would others be open to creating a 'gltf' tag? See https://www.khronos.org/gltf/ for format details. It's a relatively new format, but there are currently ~40 questions mentioning glTF, and ~5 in the last month. If those 40 were tagged, it would be a roughly average popularity tag for this site.
Disclaimer — I'm part of the Khronos Group and help to maintain the glTF format. I'd like to use the tag to watch for new posts so I can answer questions and handle any bugs. I don't have 300 reputation, and cannot create tags.

Sounds good to me, created. Thanks for your time and initiative. Ton has also been a big proponent of the format for a while now and with Eevee, Godot and general support when moving between packages, curating these is a great idea.

As a type of addendum, please try to keep the answers on-topic as related to Blender https://blender.stackexchange.com/tags/gltf/info. This is an example of an offtopic question.

Sounds good, thanks!


text:
Are questions about Sheepit on topic? We do have a tag for it, after all
We, myself included, just closed this question about SheepIt because it's off topic, but I think that was a mistake.  Before I propose reopening, I want to discuss why I think it should be, to see what the sense of the community is.
The problem with Sheepit, is that we have a tag for it, and there are existing answered questions that weren't closed as out of bounds.  For that reason, I think it fits the rules about being on topic.
If it's off topic, then how should we deal with the existing questions?  If they're on topic, than shouldn't this one also be?

As far as I'm concerned I'm fine with questions about third party addons or services even commercial ones,  as long as they related to Blender and the question is about regular operation or learning how to employ them. If it is trouble shooting issues, broken functionality, bugs, service outages or any type of malfunction that is clearly unintentional, then I'm of the opinion that it is the job of the authors to give support. Especially if it is a commercial addon or subscription service the user is paying for, then support from the creators is to be expected.

I'm promoting the answer in the comments to what I believe should be the general rule about whether add-ons are on topic. Duarte Farrajota Ramos commented from their personal viewpoint, but I think the answer is a good general answer.  I've paraphrased a bit to make it so.
Questions about third party addons or services even commercial ones, are on topic as long as

they are related to Blender; and
the question is about regular operation or learning how to employ them.

If the question involves

trouble shooting issues,
broken functionality,
bugs in the addon,
service outages, or
any type of malfunction that is clearly unintentional,

it is the job of the authors to give support. (and thus off-topic here.) Especially if it is a commercial addon or subscription service the user is paying for, then support from the creators is to be expected.


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I suddenly appear unable to suggest tag entry edits. Does anyone know why?
According to this question there are three reasons to ban someone from making tag edit suggestions and two of them definitely don't apply:

because a large number of recent suggested edits by you were rejected  - Doesn't apply; I haven't had any suggestions rejected at all.

you triggered the anonymous insta-ban filter - All of my edits have been logged in. None are anonymous.

That only leaves

a moderator manually banned you

or the possibility that there's a 4th reason not given in that answer.  Does anyone know why I can't propose edits?

I believe there is a limit (5) to how many proposed tag/ tag wiki edits can be pending before the system blocks further edits. I've approved them, you should be able to continue editing now.

Ah, thanks for the info and the approvals.  I was sure there was an option 4, but I thought I only had two pending.

Relevant MSE post: Rate limit suggested edits

That's slightly misleading, in that if you are at 4 and submit an edit for both a summary and its tag wiki at the same time you end up with 6.

This answer is from Timaroberts in the comments:

I believe there is a limit (5) to how many proposed tag/ tag wiki edits can be pending before the system blocks further edits.