text:
Moderator Campaign 2020
Since the mass moderators resignation last January David♦ and iKlsR♦ relinquished their duties, leaving us currently with only two active moderators, Gandalf and Duarte.
With the constant efforts of the community and tireless help from a bunch of very active users we have managed to keep the site barely in working order, but other that handling flags and doing regular basic maintenance work, that leaves us with little time and energy for much more.
We decided to have a moderator election in the near future, and would love to scan for potential candidates. To avoid finding ourselves in a situation where no one would apply or candidates would be unaware of the event, we are campaigning in anticipation of the actual election, as "publicity" for the actual application phase.
Many people are reluctant about the role but it need not be a a lot of work, nor an arduous task, in fact most of the tasks you already take on as regular users are the same as those of moderators, which helps lift the burden of actual official ones.
There are a few regular users of this site that know the community well, the ins-and-outs of this site, and would definitely make a very fine upcoming moderators. We would definitely love having them as colleagues in this task.
If you are interested or available to becoming one please post an answer below or leave a comment. We'd love to hear from all.

Okay then :). Since I'm not a good candidate for a moderator, I'd love to hear what can regular users do to help moderators carry the load. I'm currently just flagging dupes, but is there something that makes more sense? :)

As regular user you are probably limited by the system itself on how much you can help. If i recall correctly there is a limit on how many items in a certain queue you can review, flags can also only be handled by mods. Maybe you would make for good candidate. Why don't you try running, there nothing to loose ;). You may be relatively new to the site, but you've shown quite a lot of dedication so far. I'm also quite new and inexperienced as a mod myself, compared to other mods that were all here since the inception of the site.

Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll have the time required for this commitment, so I won't be joining as candidate.

@RobertGützkow while a present moderator is always better than an absent one, there are no established participation quotas or hard set hours you must put in. Your application would still be welcome

Great idea! If I could I would nominate Ray Mairlot, susu and batFINGER, they all trying to keep the site organized anyway so... Ray, susu, batFINGER - What do you think?

They would also be among my potential candidates, unfortunately Ray has specifically declined it, and Batfinger has not responded so far.

Since Jachym withdrew I changed my mind and joined as a candidate. I still don't have much time to spend, but I thought it might still be a good idea to have another person to choose from.

@RobertGützkow You did well, glad to see you running.

Cue the drums...

Today I'm announcing my candidacy for a moderator of Blender Stack Exchange
(With Suzanne the Monkey as my running mate)

That's right

We all benefit from this site, it'd be nice to give something back :)
Duarte and Gandalf probably need some sleep
After a year on the site I know enough to be of help

Plus, I really enjoy making stuff organized, so that's a bonus for me :).

We Promise:
(Sorry, I can't keep anything serious)

Full transparency

BlenderCare for All

Protection of traditional (and clipped) values

This message was approved by APPLE PIES FOR SUZANNE LLC.
(Yeah and I'd definitely show you my previous experience, but it's under audit right now...)

I knew you would not resist! Glad to see you running :)

Thanks :). I wouldn't go for it without your encouragement.

+1 You have my support.

Thank you @RobertGützkow, you just made my day :).


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Custom Off Topic Close messages 2021 Edition
David recently brought up again on chat the matter of our site's custom off topic messages.
This has been discussed a number of times before here on meta, but got lost to time, and nothing fruitful ever came of it.

New off topic close reason
What should our custom off-topic close reasons be?
Custom off-topic close reasons: 2014 in review

The gist of it being that we only get three custom close images per site, we are currently only making use of two of them and should benefit from third one.

This time I plan to see it through and add myself the new message we agree on, with the approval of all mods.
Since the number of messages is limited we should use them wisely, and choose a well though out option. It is also a process that requires approval from several moderators.
According to statistics "blatantly off topic" seems to be the most commonly used custom message,  something along the lines of.

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

For questions that are completely off topic and not at all about Blender itself. Like say about game engines, about other FOSS like Inkscape, or about kitchen appliances.
With this in mind what would be your suggestions for our third custom close message?
Should it be something more broad and encompassing that can be used for a broader range of closed questions, making the life of reviewers easier at the expense of a less clear message for the OP?
Or should it be something shorter and concise, for more specific cases. Should it include useful links directing the OP to where he these can be asked for most common off topic cases?
Feel free to use the answers below to suggest your preferred custom close messages.
These are the fields we have available when creating a new message:

For current site moderators you can edit site custom close messages from https://blender.stackexchange.com/admin/flags/site-specific-close-reasons
accessible through the "mod diamond" menu at the top > Dashboard > Links tab at the top > Data Alteration Pages > Manage community-specific close reasons. Other users will probably see an error page.

looks good so far.

I'd suggest something more encompassing and informative including links that can be used as close message for more cases.
A more generic close text that covers more situations can make the life of reviewers easier, at the potential expense of sounding more like a generic canned response for the OP.
Including useful links to help the user make his question more on topic would be encouraged.
Close dialog option
Brief description
Briefly describe why the question is being closed

This question is not about Blender or asking for hardware recommendations.

Usage guidance
Give the user guidance as to when they should select this option

When the question doesn't seem to be strictly about using Blender or in any way related to the software, like game development, hardware recommendations or other third party software.

Post notices
Close description
When a post is closed with a single community-specific close reason, this message will be displayed publicly above any private guidance.

This question doesn't seem to be about using Blender or in any way related to the software as defined in the help center

Post owner guidance
Provide meaningful actions a user can take to either get their question reopened or have a more favorable outcome in the future.

This question was put on hold since it doesn't seem to be about using Blender as defined in the help center.

For general questions about Python https://stackoverflow.com
For questions about game development you can use https://gamedev.stackexchange.com
For hardware recommendations https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com

If you can, rephrase the question to make it on topic by focusing on the Blender specific part of the problem.

Privileged user guidance
Provide guidance for users with the reopen privilege so they can constructively engage the post owner and reopen the question if appropriate.

If you can rephrase the question to make it on topic by focusing on the Blender specific part of the problem [edit] it so it can be reopened.

I very much like where this is headed. To support this idea I counted up the custom close reasons (all that I have access to) That includes the last 90 days, and all from 2014. In 2014 we had 126 custom reasons, 68 of them were used on questions not about blender. In the last 90 days there has been 65 custom close messages written and 33 were not about blender. The second most commonly written message is about hardware recommendations, but with 8 in the last 90 days you can see it is far behind "not about Blender."

Well that settles it for me, I was worried it was not the most common reason, but I guess this clears any doubts. Good point about hardware, I included that in the OP messages as well, and make this more versatile

looks good to me, no objections here :)

Looks good to me as well.

Proposal has been submitted with a few minor adjustments to fit within character count constraints. It now awaits review by other fellow moderators. Thanks for the feedback

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Blender Stack Exchange now requires all users to be registered before posting
This is not really a question, more of community announcement.
Due to the recent spam wave that is currently affecting several sites of the Stack Exchange network, we decided to request that as of today all users are required to be registered before posting on Blender Stack Exchange.
That means anyone attempting to ask a question or post an answer must now go through the formal process of registering by creating an account and providing a valid email address.
This is in contrast to how it worked until now, where any users could post on our site or propose edits as guests, that is without a permanent registered account or providing a valid email address.
This will not affect any of the current users or existing accounts, nor how the site works, but will hopefully provide for a better experience in a few ways.
Will hopefully make it harder for spammers to intrude our community, and reduce the amount of unwanted posts. This is by no means a full proof solution, just a very basic first line of defense that should at the very least discourage the least persistent or the least technologically advanced of the attackers.
As discussed with other mods we believe allowing guest accounts never really served us well anyway, which also affected our decision independently of the spam issue at hand. It does lower the barrier for new users and "one-off" users who have no long term interest in Blender and want to just ask a single question and move on.
This however comes at the cost of moderation overhead with little benefits. Lots of users who posted as guests lost access to their accounts, preventing them from editing posts, improving their questions, provide more details or accept answers.
These users are also more likely to post low quality content with little future value, and less likely to get involved with the community and provide any meaningful long term value.
If anyone has any questions or concerns please voice them, and don't hesitate to reach out.

Imho it should always be the default behavior on any forum that wants a minimum of content quality and user involvement, regardless of spammers. Great decision.

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


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We're turning 10 this year. Happy birthday to all!
Posted a few days too late but, Blender Stack Exchange just turned 10 years old seven days ago.
May 22 2013, the date of the earliest question ever posted on Blender stack exchange.
A question about soft body baloons on the now aging Blender 2.66, the post that started it all.
Is there a way to prevent soft body balloons from crumpling when they hit walls?
two years later we graduated on September 10 2015. Who would have guessed that ten years and 107,377+ questions later we'd all be were we stand?
Time does fly, it has been a long road, full of ups and downs, but here we are after all these years. I wont pretend I remembered the date, if it wasn't for the community managers I'd probably have missed this mark.

Image shamelessly stolen from original(see image #6) by Wawawiwa Comics
Blender has evolved tremendously in the meantime, from the now distant 2.6# days, through the great jump of Blender 2.8, which brought a huge influx of new people, all the way through the latest geometry-nodes novelties, and hopefully far beyond the upcoming Blender 4.0 series.
To mark the moment we're posting this question to celebrate the occasion, and request that all members of the community, recently arrived or that have accompanied us through these years to reply with their best moments spent here with the community.
Share any fun interactions, interesting chat conversations, link to great answers, shameless self promotion of your best posts, or any entertaining moments you spent here, or perhaps tell us your origin story. How did you first join Blender Stack Exchange? How did you start using Blender?

Since I've only been here for 12 months, I'm afraid I don't have much interesting to report, and can only tell my own little story...
But first of all, this is the opportunity for me to express my heartfelt thanks to this wonderful community!

In March 2022 I started learning Geometry Nodes, and was looking for an answer to a problem. That's how I came across this platform. Since the answer was unfortunately not to be found here, but I found a solution in the meantime, I wanted to share it.
However, my question/answer was so clumsily worded that it was immediately closed by Duarte...
This motivated me to write a more serious post.
In the process, other solutions to open questions came to my mind, and I started answering those questions.
And from that point on, I couldn't stop doing it, and I've fallen into this "addiction" of engaging here to this day.
However, the most incredible event for me personally was after I became the first user to achieve the Gold Badge in geometry-nodes, after only 172 days. ...That made me very happy, because it gave me confirmation from the community that my answers here can actually be helpful, and it motivated me to keep going.
For some reason I don't know, you elected me as a moderator and I'm trying to fill the big shoes that others have left before me.
I have no idea why all this, but probably it has to do with the fact that I now consider this wonderful community as a kind of Blender family, from which I can permanently learn something interesting, and I'm happy to contribute a small part.
Even if I could answer one or the other geometry-nodes question, in the end I could learn the most from all of you. Thanks to your constant fascinating and head-scratching questions (and answers!)!
And for that I am infinitely grateful.
I have already written it in the chat:
The past 12 months have been the most exciting and beautiful time of my life so far regarding 3D and Blender!
Thank you!
...now its time to learn shader-nodes I think ;-)

"For some reason I don't know, you elected me as a moderator" From my part at least, quoting Ton Roosendaal himself, "I decided to go for the nicest people, not the best technology. (Choosing for people you never regret.)" ;)

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Haha, are you saying I'm one of the nicest people here, or one of the most unqualified!!!? :D

XD One of the nicest; your rep totally excludes the unqualified option ;)

In a sadder note we also saw the departure of some of our oldest moderators, who were here from the very start and really shaped the foundations where we stand today.
Respect and nostalgia for our missed members David and iKlsR which despite currently no longer being active within our community, still remain some of the highest reputation users off all time, thanks to the long list of lasting high quality contributions whose content still remains relevant to this day.
David♦ Moderator resignation
A goodbye to the community - iKlsR Moderator Resignation

the golden days surely were with gandalf, david, and iklsr. the three of them probably answered more than 75% of the question asked for a 3 year period :/

@ruckus Still among the highest rep users to this day, despite recent years of inactivity. I see you are one of the "old guard". Care to share a story from back then? Maybe how you first joined BSE, or how you started using Blender

Thanks for the recognition. Although there were other even before I was a mod. I still venture into the realms of Stackexchangia every once in a while.

Always nice to see you pop in every once in a while ;)

Congratulations BSE. 10 years its crazy to think back, and realize its been a decade. I remember first finding this site from the post on blendernation, then six months later I started here.
It was a great time when I was daily active here. I got to know many of you as internet friends.
I have to mention a few users, not active anymore but each in their own way really built this site into the resource it is today.
cegaton Super knolagable blender user who was dedicated to this site. When he left (deleted his account because of SE corporate) he had the second most reputation, and by far the most questions and answers.
batFINGER another powerhouse of knowledge, if you had a python problem batFINGER probably helped you.
moonboots An amazing answering machine. To this day has written over 4.5k answers! It is hard to comprehend that kind of number. This one user has written 6% of all the answers on BSE.
I have to mention that there have ben many power users over the years (if I miss one, or some I did not mean to, but I may not have been around.) Just scrolling through the user list I got nostalgic.
One such example is Shady Puck, only around for a year or so, but in that time broke near every record. He was one of the users that did it all.
troy_s a master of digital color. So much so he was the one that originally got color management into blender. Troy you taught me a lot, thanks.
GiantCowFilms Aside from everything done on BSE, this is the one user behind blend-exchange the site that to this day we all still use to host our files for questions and answers.
J Sargent (or better remembered by "NID" or "VRM"), JakeD, TARDIS Maker, Thom Blair III, CharlesL, p2or, someonewithpc, X-27, pink vertex, PGmath. All from the same era, and all played a part in this site.
Going back farther we have users like CodeManX, Ray Mairlot, sambler, or the former mods A Wild RolandiXor, Gwen, ideasman42 (yes the ideasman42 who was the main blender dev for so many years), Daniel Node.js (better remembered as "Dan the man"). Thank you all for making this site the huge resource it is in the blender community.
Milestones were crossed, swag was given out, Hats were collected, and possibly one blender broken (deleted question image link).
Blender has grown so, SO much. It has been amazing to see this shunned "open source" 3D creation software become mainstream, and used everywhere.
The time on this site, the knowledge I gained and shared, the people I worked along side, the interactions with others, will always remain with me. It was truly a life experience.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Long live blender, and long live BSE.

Nice post. Thanks for reminding me of all those users I still crossed paths with in my first times here.

I'll start to get the ball rolling:
This has got to be one of my favorite posts of all time here on meta:
Life On The Surface where our sorely missed member batFINGER posted one of the most entertaining posts of our site that sparked some of the most creative and best formatted answers meta has ever witness.
Likewise this remains my all time favorite answer on main
Paul Gonet answer to How do I make a 3 dimensional character out of flat picture?
Out of the ashes of a poor question that is too broad for its own good, was born an answer that started out with a joke and evolved in a very comprehensive "tutorial" few would have the passion and dedication to type and illustrate as well as Paul did.
Lastly an amusing, if a bit cryptic moment that happened over on The Renderfarm chat room a few years ago, where an unintentional chain of deleted replies sparked cascading "removed" posts for for comedic effect.

Here's what was really said

My has it been a long time. Look at how you've grown :D
I know I'm not around much these days, life has been taking me for a ride in a different direction for a while now. But I had a dream iKlsR told me off for not leaving a comment here.. anyway,
Happy birthday BSE <3
Thank you for being an amazing resource for so many people, as well as a foundational part of my life. I will always look back on the hours I spent and the friends I made here with fondness. Thank you all.
And thank you to all the people who have kept this site thriving, especially Duarte Farrajota Ramos (who must surely be our longest active mod!?) your dedication and kind leadership has done so much for this place; quellenform, whos immaculate geometry-nodes answers and persistent enthusiasm really lights the place up; Moonboots, who will no doubt surpass my #1 reputation spot soon enough, and so many more who deserve just as much praise.
Here's to many years to come!

Moonboots is indeed catching up, we'll have to celebrate the occasion, but your reputation still reigns supreme, even after all these years. Thanks for the kind words and the custom cake. Looks yummy

Thank you so much for your appreciation! I honestly tried for a long time to outdo moonboot's performance, but finally had to realize that he must indeed be a bot. I can't explain this number of wonderful answers any other way ;-) ...and thanks for the great cake!

Damn, now curiosity is killing me, now I have to ask. Is this cake real or a render? I thought it was a photo, but now I noticed what I though was a cherry is actually a Susanne. Are your render skills that good, or are you a prolific baker as well?

ahaha its a render, alas! I could really go for some cake to be honest

Great job, the little imperfections on the icing and the handwriting really fooled me

I didn't realize BSE was "only" 10 years old
Happy Aluminum birthday!
BSE has a weird place in my life. I arrived here running away from other sites, trying to find a new old-school forum in French. It shouldn't have worked, and yet here we are.
I am not 100% sure when I started using Blender. I have faint visual memories of the old UI and the old website:

I think my first contact was seeing the first minute of the Durian Project. Judging by the date, I guess I had to  open the page in the evening and come back the following morning to hade it all loaded.
For what it's worth... If I trust the splashscreens, I'd think I might have seen Blender for the first time with 2.54:

It seems to have landed somewhere in early 2011, so I guess I was not even 15 years old. I was learning Blender from an old french tutorial on the then-famous Site Du Zéro (SDZ), which back then was in the process of updating itself out of v2.4 to 2.5. This tut alone was probably responsible for most of the French-speaking community of the late 2000s early 2010s. We had lots of community help, projects, challenges, events and whatnot. The old days. Still a moderator there somehow.
BSE would emerge into existence only a few years after I started using Blender. But probably due to my poor English and having all my needs fulfilled by Frenchy sites at this time, I didn't leave the nest yet. Well, kind of.
But good things have an end. SDZ changed, a lot, replaced its "tutorials by the community for the community with a cool forum" formula by online state-recognized online courses, I tried many other communities without ever settling, and the people I knew got older, moved on, or went to the English world and never came back. And eventually, so did I...
I was on blenderartists first, but it never really engaged me much. I do not know when or how I discovered BSE.
It seems my first participation here was an answer back in March 2018. I remember at first I didn't really get the Q&A formula, and found it lacked the very social side of classic forums.
A year later I asked my first question on Meta, TL;DR is "I'm frustrated someone edited my answer". Guess it took me a year to get the difference from a 2000s forum. I'm a slow learner sometimes
I would have never thought I'd stick around, it wasn't what I was looking for at that time. I also realize I have posted only 6 questions in all that time.
Yet, here we are five years later, still going and loving it.

My event memory isn't that great, but thanks to you all, I got reminded of a lot of things I've seen here. Between the funniest ways to make things topics (which sometimes did made some sparkles) to usernames whose avatars I used to see in my sleep (I mean, look at this!). Sadly, viewing all of these names and avatars only makes me realize I haven't seen them for... A while.
Sometimes at least I think about saving stuff to keep some memories. Unfortunately, most of it is somewhere on a laptop, itself lost somewhere in my room...
But to make it up for the lack of crispy old fun memories, here's a fresh arrival from today on the renderfarm:
hostage-taking Duarte's rep.
Anyway, thanks a lot for all you people's presence, past and hopefully future!

Thanks for the post, and reminding me of the old 2.49 website. Glad you moved on into the English side of the web and stuck around BSE, it grows on you after a while. So you were a moderator there, huh? I know who I'll fish for during he next election now

Now I wouldn't necessarily say the situation you mentioned was one of my fun moments either, but it was definitely an interesting moment. Anyway, I'm happy that it was made clear that I'm not Duarte, and that there is a difference between those users who create answers and those who edit answers. ;-)

I technically joined in July '18, but wrote my 1st post on 30th April '19, asked a question, answered it myself and left. I had an impression this is more like a stub SE site, very niche. Then B2.8 was released, I couldn't find "Remove doubles" so I searched, Google has led me again to BSE, the answers (t)here didn't work, but after I found an answer elsewhere, figured I can go back to the BSE thread and write about my findings¹. Every now and then, using other websites in SE network, I would see $+10p$ reputation notification, which would remind me about the existence of BSE.
Throughout next 1,5 years (!) I wrote nothing here, but that answer accumulated many upvotes: not only those are nice tokens of appreciations motivating to write more, but it also made me realize BSE is not that small. So on 27th January '21 I wrote my 3rd answer and continued from there.
It seems like subtle things have led me to spend years learning Blender; if there's a multiverse, I imagine in many universes I remained a Blender noob.

reply with their best moments spent here with the community […] Share any fun interactions

This is the best joke I've read on BSE, by already mentioned batFINGER - I don't know if I would be able to learn bpy without him:
Using force field to move clamped objects (difficult task)
There are more jokes to be found on BSE, though sometimes it's hard to tell if the pun was intended.
Also great questions by Jachym Michal [another person, who had a great impact on my activity here, rewarding me with a generous 500 bounty when I was just starting]:

What's the most fun way to make a Snowman in Blender? ❄❄❄
What's the fastest / most fun way to create a fork in Blender?

Which inspired at least one user:

What's the fastest/most fun/craziest way to make a flowerpot in Blender?

¹ - I remember a situation where I would wait together with a stranger at a tram stop at night and no tram would arrive for a long time, so I decided to walk to a parallel street to see if maybe the pathing changed - it did, but I never went back to inform the other person the tram won't arrive there, haunts me to this day…

I miss Batfinger around here. Jachym as been another remarkable member of the community. Those "most fun" challenges always make the community liven up. I actually meant to mention those, thanks for reminding us.

Personally, I'm still in favor of introducing a separate tag for challenges! There should at least be the possibility to give these questions a place, because, as you rightly say, these help to liven up the content a bit and attract people.

@quellenform that is an interesting idea, never though about that. Tags for challenges pose a few questions I'm worried about, like on-topic-ness and frequency, but maybe we could make it work. Perhaps this warrants a meta post of its own for more in-depth discussion

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Well, I think the idea is not entirely new, but so far it has always come to nothing: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=challenge

A mod once said that in the absence of a more definitive decision, the most voted answer for a meta post is to be considered a binding decision. The main opponent of these challenges idea was iKlsR which is no longer active here. I'd say new moderation new rules. I can understand his concerns, and I have a few of my own as well, but I think we can discuss them and establish some ground rules to make challenges happen within the scope of our site


text:
Searching answers that you gave
According to stack exchange meta, to search one of your answers, you have to use the search bar as follow:
User: my_username is:answer keyword_of_the_answer_that_you_need
But that only shows me answers and comments with my user name mentioned inside.
Is there any way to search only for my own answers?

You may want to look at the search FAQ for more details.  If by 'keyword' you mean tag, enclose it in square brackets, id "user:me is:a [python]"

To search for your own answers include user:me in your search terms, or a specific user number like user:19307 or user:66870; not the username.

Yes, worked, thanks


text:
Why does Blend-Exchange say my file is not a blend file?
When I upload my Blender file Blend-Exchange I get a message saying my file is not a blend file. Why?

This is a known issue: https://github.com/GiantCowFilms/Blend-Exchange/issues/56, which has now been resolved. I apologize for the slow response in getting this addressed.

You are awesome! People like you make the world a better place. Much gratitude!

Where did you upload?  That looks like blend-exchange.  If it is, you have probably tried to upload a compressed 3.x file.  For some reason, blend-exchange sometimes doesn't recognize the new compression algorithm.  Try uploading without compression.

Probably compression is not the only one reason ... I tried several 3.1 without compression now, with this error ... https://imgur.com/2CfdBdh

I have been experiencing the same internal error every time I try to upload recently. For now, we can use PasteAll, but it's only temporary hosting (about 5 months). Hopefully @GiantCowFilms will be able to resolve it soon. Our community really benefits from Blend Exchange.

@Mentalist Issue is now fixed, I apologize for how long this took to be addressed... my (multiple :( ) jobs are quite demanding right now.

@GiantCowFilms You are doing this community an incredible service.  You never need to apologize for how long it takes you to cope with changes in Blender's implementation.


text:
How to post code snippets
How do I paste properly formatted code in Stack Exchange?
Whenever I try and post code snippets it gets posted as regular text

I prefer to use triple backticks ``` as they clearly define borders of code, as opposed to the default way of indentation (what if you have empty lines in your code? You can't see if it's supposed to be two separate codes or not). Put both opening triple backticks and closing triple on separate lines, additionally make sure there's an empty line after the closing backticks, as I noticed otherwise formatting can get broken... Finally, you may make it clear which triple is the start of the code, by putting "py" afterwards. In some places it tells the syntax highlighter that it's supposed to use Python rules, but here on BSE it changes nothing. Edit this message to see how I use this below:
print("Hello BSE!")

If you want to put some code inline, just wrap it inside single backticks - it also works in comments.

just select your code, then click on the brackets here

Thanks.
How do I paste code snippets in a comment?

You can, but they would never be formatted

If my answer helped you, please click on the checkmark left of my answer. Thanks


text:
Suggestion for new node name formatting guidelines
Once upon a time, there were no nodes, the world was still simple then.
There were main menus, context menus, input fields, keyboard shortcuts, etc. and the highest of feelings were a few lines of Python code. That's probably when the style guide on BSE evolved.
But then came nodes.And more and more came.
And no one thought to consider a new style element for it consistently!
As surely some of you might have noticed, in all my posts I write the names of the Geometry Nodes available in Blender in backticks.
Why do I do this?
I have noticed with some test persons (primarily beginners and students) that there is much less misunderstanding, because it is always clear that a certain node is meant.
I generally understand the desire not to use this kind of formatting in other posts, especially when it really is about code, or just to highlight certain parts of the text.
In the case of Geometry Nodes, however, we are dealing with a universe all its own.
There is no code here, there are no submenus scattered anywhere in the game, here we have a playground largely separated from all other areas.
The problem I see here is that in my experience the recognizability of input values, socket identifiers (inputs/outputs), and node identifiers are given too little distinctiveness if you don't allow formatting with backticks. Writing the name of a node in italics or bold is not a solution and only causes confusion.
For example, I do not distribute points on faces, no, I use the node Distribute Points on Faces. And if I mean a certain input of this node, then I write e.g. Distance Min. This is clearly stated in the universe of Geometry Nodes and does not get in the way of a nice line of code.
I ask for some thought and discussion here before another one of my posts becomes a victim of styleguide corrections and I have to revert these changes.
My goal is that the current style guide states: "Use backticks only to mark up code, or when you want to express a particular node.".
Another possibility I see is a new formatting tag, such as <node></node>.

I'll use a concrete example:
In this text I write:

So that I can also control the rotation of the object, I use the Tilt property of the curve. However, so that the value defined via Group Inputs also always generates a rotation from one end to the other end of the arc, I use the node Map Range and feed it additionally with the value Factor, which the node Spline Parameter gives me.

Here you can see that I mean the Group Inputs, but not the node Group Input. I could of course write Group Input and Group Inputs, but the difference would then no longer be clear from the text in extensive descriptions.
However, writing a node in italics is not practical because it is quite possible to mention a node in an italicized text.

Here I mean the Node Cube, and not the Cube created before.

But i could write:

Here I mean the Node Cube, and not the Cube created before.

But bold text should not be used to highlight nodes, as this type of highlighting should rather mark places in the text that are of appropriate importance.

Furthermore, I write in the example above:

PS: I have hidden some of the irrelevant sockets to save some space. You can show them again with the key combination CTRL+H.

But I could also write:

PS: I have hidden some of the irrelevant sockets to save some space. You can show them again with the key combination CTRL+>H.

Or even:

PS: I have hidden some of the irrelevant sockets to save some space. You can show them again with the key combination CTRL+>H.

Why don't I do that?
Quite simply because a key is something that, although it is actually quite clear and understandable in the text, is a kind of marker and reading aid when someone is trying to follow instructions and filter out the essential steps from a text.
This has been common practice here for a long time, and it makes sense.
But now it's time to create such markers for nodes as well, since the existing stylistic means are not sufficient in my opinion.

Or a fictional example:

Create cubes with the Node Cube and instantiate them with Instance on Points at the corners of your cube previously created with Cube. Then instantiate them on the grid you created with the Node Grid.

It would be better to write:

Create cubes with the Node Cube and instantiate them with Instance on Points at the corners of your cube previously created with Cube. Then instantiate them on the grid you created with the Node Grid.

Here is another fictional example:

Plug the geometry from Group Input into the input Geometry of Group Output to make your geometry visible with Geometry Nodes.

Plug the geometry from Group Input into the input Geometry of Group Output to make your geometry visible with Geometry Nodes.

Summary

Thanks to Duarte Farrajota Ramos for the wonderful picture!
In summary, the question "Backticks or no backticks?" can be answered with the following words:

The code is more "guidelines" rather than actual rules.

There are (especially here on Stackexchange) obviously at least two dominant camps of users:

One relies on structures and approaches that have grown over a long time and are generally considered proven and stable. This tends to be the logical type (I won't say "older").
The others (mostly younger users) are fast-moving and flighty and are used to "skimming" texts and are dependent on certain "markers" that, from their point of view, increase the readability or comprehensibility of a more complicated text. This tends to be more the visual type.

In fact, it's not about breaking or following rules, but about providing purposeful answers.
The solution is what matters, not the backticks!
So, strictly speaking, this question remains unanswered, but not because there are too few profound positions on it, but because we humans are simply too different to lump them all together.
Different generations, and different learning types, different cultures & perspectives.
And that's a good thing! Long live diversity!

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I think the current formatting is sufficient. Italics to indicate node names feels adequate for highlighting them, I don't think they deserve any further distinction from other UI elements like menu structures, panels, buttons or other interface components.
Contrary to what this question suggests, nodes have been around for quite a while, we've had Cycles Shader nodes for what feels like an eternity now, for more complex computations in the modelling area before Geometry Nodes existed we've had Animation Nodes and Sverchok, and long before all of them we've always had legacy Blender Internal Material nodes and Compositing Nodes.
I don't feel geometry nodes are any different nor deserve special treatment.
When I mentioned "the formatting rules" I probably used too strong a word. That was not what I meant, they are more guidelines than actual rules.

They've been around for a while, far before I was even participating here, and we do tend to stick to them for consistency sake. You're free to follow them or ignore them (though we'd prefer if you stick to them), the same way other users are free to enforce them by suggesting edits. I never really questioned them because they seemed adequate, and judging by how consistently they've been used so far, and how this never came up before despite the visibility our edits provide, I'd say most users would tend to agree as well, or at least are not bothered enough to question them.
Now I don't feel strongly against using different formatting for node names, nor stronger highlighting. If we do decide as a community to use something different I'm all for it, but I still think using code ticks are too disruptive and potentially misleading so I'd go against that specifically.
As suggested by Campbell Barton backticks can be used for actual code or some times for values, but for node names may cause confusion with actual code, file paths, driver expressions or other truly monospaced data which may coexist in the same answers.
As moderators we don't have the ability to introduce new formatting markup or methods, that would require an accepted feature, and corresponding development and testing from the site administrators.
One possible alternative if you really feel any node requires further highlighting, and I may actually be useful and educational is using documentation links in node names like Curve Circle Node or Add > Geometry > Convex Hull in addition to Italics. This seems to create enough distinction and value, at the expense of extra work for the writer.
I wouldn't enforce it for the overhead it creates neither for answerers nor editors, but would certainly welcome users who went to the trouble of including documentation links in their post.
This has to be a community decision, I'm open to other suggestions, so lets see what others have to say about this.

I fully agree. The combination of italics with links to the documentation could be a good compromise that is fitting both our current style, provides additional information and has highlighting as requested.

So first +1 for the picture :D

And you mean I should link every node now? That can mean quite a lot of additional work for me. I think the idea itself is not bad, but there may well be errors (and outdated links if I don't always link to the exact node of a particular Blender version).

But I only partially agree with you. You as a moderator and other experienced users don't see it anymore, but for younger users and beginners highlighting node names provides a huge support.

@quellenform No, as mentioned in the paragraph before the last it is a lot of additional work for both answerers and editors. So I wouldn't enforce it, even if the suggestion was accepted by the community, which it hasn't. The work it requires could be minimised by an extensive list of macros or snippets, but I wouldn't really want to maintain one either, so take it as a suggestion if you really really feel the need to highlight something very badly ;)

So according to the number of current votes, I will probably have to include a lot (!) of links in the future ...but possibly that was also a very disastrous image choice! :D

Well don't claim defeat yet thing may still sway the other way. On a more positive note, I'd be very interested if you curated an exhaustive list of snippets including node names and links to corresponding documentation.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I'm afraid I don't quite understand: what exactly do you mean by "...exhaustive list of snippets including node names and links to corresponding documentation"? So you would be happy as a Mod, if in my posts actually links to (sometime outdated pages) to Blender documentation would find their way in!? Wouldn't that be a lot of work for you (or other moderators)?

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos OK, let's wait and see what else happens.... By the way, I would also like to compliment you (This has to be said, although you are known to some as "The Spanish Inquisition" ;-): I find it positively outstanding how you are able to clarify your point of view without saying: "Your opinion has no place here and it's pretty crap". In the three months I've been here on BSE, I've observed a behavior that makes me doubt the competence of some people. Now I understand why you are a moderator. Thank you for your constructive suggestions and your responsible use of this platform!

@quellenform not everyone agrees, but thanks for the kind words. And it would be the "Portuguese Inquisition" btw ;). As for the list of snippets it would look something  like a list of *[Curve Circle Node](https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/geometry_nodes/curve_primitives/curve_circle.html)* but for every node. Obviously I was just joking ;it would be a tremendous amount of work to do by hand, and probably pointless. Maybe an interesting challenge to write a script to scrape it from documentation, for it to be posted here in some canonical meta post

I've since had a realization about this in the meantime that may be an acceptable compromise for this.
What if we instead use Unicode characters, combined with some clever help from Mathjax for color, to highlight node sockets, input and output, and their respective colors, as well as the name?
This would still be inline with our current style formatting, is not excessively visually intrusive, while still being clear to read and graphically informative
Sockets
$\color{#96F}{⬤}$ Vector (Input)
Vector $\color{#96F}{⬤}$ (Output)
$\color{#EE0}{⬤}$ Color (Input)
Color | $\color{#EE0}{⬤}$ (Output)
$\color{#96F}{⬤}$ *Vector* (Input)

*Vector* $\color{#96F}{⬤}$ (Output)

$\color{#EE0}{⬤}$ *Color* (Input)

*Color |* $\color{#EE0}{⬤}$ (Output)

Data Types
$\color{#AAA}{◆}$ Field (Input)
Field $\color{#96F}{◈}$ (Output)
$\color{#EE0}{◇}$ Field (Input)
$\color{#275}{[]}$ Multi Input (Input)
$\color{#275}{႐}$ Multi Input (Input)

$\color{#AAA}{◆}$ *Field* (Input)

*Field* $\color{#96F}{◈}$ (Output)

$\color{#EE0}{◇}$ *Field* (Input)

$\color{#275}{[]}$ *Multi Input* (Input)

$\color{#275}{႐}$ *Multi Input* (Input)

Nodes
Add > Texture > $\color{#C62}{◼}$ Image texture node
Add > Shader > $\color{#275}{▢}$ Principled BSDF node
$\color{#07A}{}$ Map Range node
$\color{#B26}{❑}$ Object Info node
*Add > Texture > $\color{#C62}{◼}$ Image texture* node

*Add > Shader > $\color{#275}{▢}$ Principled BSDF* node

$\color{#07A}{}$ *Map Range* node

$\color{#B26}{❑}$ *Object Info* node

For nodes I think I like either $\color{#C62}{◼}$ or $\color{#C62}{}$ which have more presence and show color better.
Downside being it is very verbose to type, formatting is lengthy and not very easy to memorize, or type by hand. We'd need some sort of macros or canned templates for this.

I like the idea! ...but it might be difficult to create consistency here and cover all possibilities. Just think of geometry nodes, where you have inputs that can accept single values, fields or both, and where the types are different.  I'm not quite sure if it wouldn't lead to even more confusion.

Hum hadn't though about those. Diamonds and multi inputs could be covered as well ◆ ◈ ◇ , ႐ but it is bound to find some limitation at some point. More than this only actual screenshots

Sometimes less is more... Recently I have been using Mathjax less, because the BSE content is sometimes consumed in a way that doesn't support mathjax. For example, the answer text may be downloaded from SE REST API, or public data export. Someone could also have Javascript disabled. So while $x = 10$ is not much worse than x = 10 when mathjax isn't used, a heavy use of formatting makes such text unreadable. As for using special Unicode codepoints... You'd think it's widely supported... https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/284723/how-can-i-create-a-pentagram#comment489780_284723

I am more of a passive user in this part of StackExchange (reading posts only). I just read through all of this and  very much have to agree with @quellenform that for new users its almost impossible to understand alot of the things written about Nodes. Not just Geometry Nodes.
Having an extra formatting available for them would be great. The post which was litterly linked here and blames about missuse of Backticks has a lot of informations about Backticks and that they are quiet often used for other things than code as 0.5 Numbers or telling where to find options File > Settings > Window > Mode. Also for keys to better differentiate between l and I.
Me as a fairly new user in this area can hardly ever understand post about Nodes because of bad formatting and have to read the same part 2-3 times. This post here I understood the first time reading it.
I understand that having an extra formating as html tag would not fit the html rules but it is fairly often used to have an addapet version of Markdown in use. Even Subscript, Stroked, underlined or Superscript was not always 100% default Markdown Syntax (sad enough <u> does not work here) and in some Editors have to be enabled first. Still they are widly used as ~sub~, ~~stroked~~, __underlined__ and ^superscript^. Sometimes they may have slightly different chars as marker but they still are part of a Markup language just maybe not the 100% default Markdown.
What I am trying to say is, that one could just add a new type of char that then translates into some html tag or html div box with inlinestyle. I understand that the div box may not be appropiate but a standard would be to have ==highlighted==. Which is fairly widly used and still does not exist here on StackExchange.
I think having some more options to style your questions/answers easly would be very helpful and would lead to less "Wrong" Styles.
I know these were not needed the early days but we have alot more technical things to talk about today than we had some years ago. In that way also the ways to Style your questions may have to adept to the greater amount of information, technics and problems we have today.

The moderators of Blender's Stack Exchange are not employees/developers at Stack Exchange, Inc. We are users that have been elected by the community and as such we cannot implement new formatting options. What we can do at most is set guidelines how the existing formatting options should be used and edit answers accordingly.

@RobertGützkow I am very well aware of that but having enough users - and esspecially well known users - that want a change in something should lead to the point where the developer team decides to bring wished changes. As w developer I know such things dont  change from one day to the other but as a developer I also know how little work it would be to add a formatting option, document it and release it.

@RobertGützkow Besides that what I mainly wanted to say is that I think allowing Backticks for certain things would be very useful if no other way of formatting is provided. And in my - most likly many peoples opinion - having only 4-7 ways to format (yeah you can combine them I know) is not enough. I am speaking of: Italic, Bold, Backticks, Links. Cuz the other options as Tables or subscript are not very viable in comments anyways.

@AtLeastVision That sounds very ambitious! But as far as I know, here on SE a RTE from the stone age is used (WMD, lightweight/stable), and RTE is not only about usability, but always also about security. Theoretically it might be easy to implement, but probably nothing will ever change there, because it costs money and (at least from the site owner's point of view) doesn't bring significant benefits. I think granting the possibility to extend the use of formatting is the only viable way for now. But hey, who knows, maybe you'll send an application to SE and they'll hire you as a programmer!!?

@quellenform looking at how much they work on features I am very sure I do not want to be part of that developer team. I know secuirty is important but adding more formatting options should not change anything in terms of security and if it does they may just overthing the code they created :/

@quellenform It may not be beneficial in terms of money in the other hand it shows users they are still working on things they want to have which should be beneficial in some ways too. Also giving the possibility - as other sites do - to contribute your self would be more beneficial for them than anything else.

"I am very well aware of that but having enough users - and esspecially well known users - that want a change in something should lead to the point where the developer team decides to bring wished changes." - Unfortunately this is nowhere close to the truth for many years now. There's a lot of drama in the SE network regarding that.

This is a bad idea for at least these reasons:

Perversely, adding typographic styles to text often makes it less readable: It's hard to use consistently and used inconsistently leads to confusion.

English has had a convention for such situations for at least 100 years and it is called out in most style guides, especially those used for technical publication.  If you have 'foo type A' and 'foo type B' and you need to disambiguate you either

Always specify the second part of the phrase; or
Specify in advance that if the second part is left off it always means 'type B' and always specify the second part of the phrase for 'type A'.

Here are two contrived examples:

Now we apply the cube node to the cube object and see that the cube object has been transformed by the node.

Now we apply the cube node to the cube and see that the cube has been transformed by the node.

This is the convention followed in the Blender manual and I'd score 'consistent with manual' much higher than 'another convention to learn'.

Meanwhile text is reserved in technical stack exchange for code and other computer text to simulate what the text would look like on a monitor.  I think it's a bad idea to overload that meaning with what amounts to an attempt to use bold text.

Aside: The manual uses Modifier–Key to signify that a key is typed while a modifier is used.  I prefer this endash format over other ways of tying the modifier to the key for consistency; and wish that were part of our standard.

The - I will call it "English Convention" is nice to have do not get me wrong. But having a lot of text and complicated stuff to explain it is much easier to actually have less text and better designed. There is a reason graphics work better for explenations than text. Formatting is the closest we can get to have "Graphical Text". So giving formatting a appropiate and standard meaning is much more appropiate than "just write something behind it". Because as fast reader you may skip suffix or prefix but you will not skip a formatting because... well you litterly cant overlook THIS or That

Typography rarely works better than text consistency. Text book publishers have studied the use of typography a lot, and they've found that typographic conventions using visual weight tend to cause  people to skip over and ignore other text.  The result is that you get different confusion when visual weight is used but usually more readers are confused rather than fewer.  The idea of using visual weight has ben reintroduced about every ten years since the 1950s, so this proposal isn't even a novelty.  People like it for a bit, but it tends not to work and is discarded fairly quickly

It may work better for plain information which is complex by it self already. Even then having examples as graphics and in that way text which is more graphical than just plain text is not only much more appealing to read (essepcially for younger people) but also easier to skip over and get the information needed. Obvioulsly formatting is a skillset to and using it properly is a part of creating a good question/answer which if used correctly provides a more friendly studing experience. Having a book with 100 words and no graphics is a type of book a teen will neever read if not rly needed.

No, having text that is more graphical is not more appealing to read, not even to younger people.  This theory has been proposed at least once a decade for 60 years, tested, and rejected.  Yes, it is easier to skip over information.  But the consequence of that turns out to be the opposite of what you suggest.  Note, I am limiting this to visual weight in typography.  Additional graphics is an entirely different matter, and not what is being proposed here.

And frankly, you do teens, who devour young adult novels with no graphics, a disservice by asserting that they will not read text-only material if not needed. Again, we're talking typography, not additional graphics, in this setting.

The Problem is I can speak from personal expirience and expirience from people in my university. Texts with no graphical processing are not appealing for a younger audiance. Please go ask 10 students and 8 of them will tell you that. (the other 2 study law xD). Its simple as that nobody likes to read 5 sites of text. But having a decent typography makes it much better to read because the author can mark important areas and the reader then can read them and if he is interessted or needs more information can read it again. That just how younger people tend to read.

Just because you seem to like to read 10 sites of plaintext documentation does not mean everyone does. If Typogragphy is so bad and not used for 60 years and each decade again deneid why does everyone use it in their posts. Why do adds have special rules for it so the reader reads a certain part faster and is more appealed. Why do modern study books use it? Not every brain works the same ofcourse but as I stated already. Most younger people today grew up with the media world and can find things here much more easy than older people may find in a library.

Technic changed so much over the last years and so did our basic understanding of design, simplicity and so on. ANd what I meant with graphics btw is not that you have to use graphics. I was speaking of transforming text in some kind of graphic because thats what Typography is about if you ask me. You make text more appealing and easier to differentiate certain things.

Typography is not bad, but the way its being proposed here has been shown over and over again to cause more problems than solutions. You hit the key issue: adding visual weight causes people to skip over information and become confused.  This isn’t about what I like; it’s about what practice has show works and doesn’t. Mixing type multiple type faces doesn’t work. It creates visual clutter and confusion.  The rare use of typeface change for emphasis works until the use becomes common. Using bold the first time you introduce a term is good practice.  Using it on every occurance dilutes value.

Typography is far more that what you call ‘graphics’ but a typographer would call ‘frequent font switching. It’s about line length and word spacing and kerning and so forth. Nothing about changes in Blender justifies adding the degree of visual clutter being suggested here — a degree that is well understood to make text less readable.

I see Typography as a form of graphic. You may or may not like it. But in the end letters are just graphics we gave a special meaning and Typography is the placemant and art of it. As I stated I think having a little more styling opotions esspecially styling options hwere the style fits the purpose dependign on the stackexchange you are on would be very useful. I see you dont like the idea of skipping text at all. That is... sry to say it like that... a "You Problem". You may not like it but in a worl of rush as we have it today it is needed. But lets talk here in the chatroom

https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/137558/discussion-on-answer-by-quellenform-once-upon-a-time-there-were-no-nodes

So as Duarte Farrajota Ramos recommended, here is my suggestion so this can experience votes:

Bold and italic are essential for formatting text and giving certain words a specific meaning. They are not an option for highlighting nodes.
What is not an option is:

italic
bold
underlined
Key

Which sounds interesting, but is not practical:

linked
other highlighting that would require HTML code

What might get in the way of code:

Backticks

But since in the universe of Geometry Nodes usually no paths, code fragments or things are used, and if then only in absolute exceptions, only one possibility remains: Backticks.
So, since there is no single way to format a node differently, my recommendation is:

Use backticks (`) to delimit a (geometry) node as such from the text
...but avoid it if it is not really necessary

This allows to distinguish Cube from Cube.
But the irony of the whole story is: Those who would benefit from the better readability and subsequent comprehensibility don't even read (and vote) these meta posts, but it's only those who make the rules anyway or are already so familiar with all the stuff here that any irregularity immediately catches their eye...

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.


text:
How can I search for questions?
I'm brand new to the Blender Stack Exchange and relatively new to using Blender.
My first question is in regards to using the Stack Exchange itself. How can I search for questions so I don't have to post a new question if the answer I'm looking for is already answered?
I don't see a "Search" input anywhere.

Welcome! (1) See the top bar. (2) You have to download 2.82 from here: https://builder.blender.org/download/, Also see the release notes: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.82/Physics

Thanks to both of you. After down;oading 2.8.2 I now seem to have Mantaflow installed! I couldn't post this on the meta section originally due to being a first time poster. Thanks agian!

Glad we could help. Consider to accept Duartes answer: https://blender.stackexchange.com/tour

Builtin search is in the black header top bar above
While search can be done on site the builtin search engine, the results are not always the the best. It can't ignore typos, find synonyms nor similar terms.
Google is a good alternative. You can narrow down searching to this site using the filter site:blender.stackexchange.com like
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:blender.stackexchange.com

Thank you Duarte! I didn't see the top black header as it kind of blends into the Google search bar. I will use this in future. I did realize that this question should have been posted in the "meta" section, but I didn't think I could post it there as there was a message saying that I needed to have a reputation of "5", and I didn't think I had any reputation as I'd never been to this site before. I'm still fumbling my way around, but hopefully I'll get the hang of it.


text:
Tried to Help User By Editing Their Question But They Rejected It
There is this question that lacked alot of details so we were exchanging comments until i realized what their problem was. So I was kind enough to help them out by doing this edit so they could get more help and attention to their question especially that the question did get 3 downvotes for being unclear. But unfortunately the user rejected my revision. Is there no way i can escalate this to be approved by a trusted user to approve it? I think my edit was very reasonable and made the issue more clear.

Users are free to allow or reject edits to their posts. Why the user rejected yours is up to his discretion, no one other than him can tell for sure other than speculation.
The message at the top states it deviated from his original intent.

Your edits seem to focus around an error message while opening the file, but the user never mentioned finding one. From skimming over the contents his files seem to open fine, only the parenting is lost or the rig misbehaves, which seems to conflict with what your edit focused on.
That would justify the rejection.
That is a very poorly written question, with very sparse information, the user also seems to be uncooperative and offering resistance to requests for clarification.
You efforts would probably be best spent helping users who actually want to be helped.

That's a good point. Well the error does show up and quickly disappears so he might have missed it. He only mentioned it didn't work so it's pure speculation for the community to think what exactly did not work.

wow the user edited his post using curse words for his post after it was closed. he probably should get suspended or banned.

It has been removed by the moderators in the meantime. I rolled back your edit so as not to promote unwarranted fowl language so prominently here, since it seems unrelated to your question.

ok fair enough


text:
Clarification Needed on Voting to Close vs. Requesting More Information for Incomplete Questions
Many times, I get confused about when to cast a vote to close a question as Needs more Focus or Needs details or clarity when the OP has not provided any information on what they have actually tried and where they got stuck at, assuming the OP has provided a descriptive title, about posts like How can I create a procedurally stained wall material? and How would I create the texture and bumpy moss covered trees in this image? and Need help for tube like surface in geo-nodes.
It's understandable that some users are newcomers and genuinely don't know where to start. However, how can we distinguish between a user who genuinely needs guidance and one who hasn't made any effort to research or provided anything that they have tried?
I noticed that sometimes users cast their vote to close the question without first asking for more information. Is there a standard procedure we should follow? Should we wait (how many hours?) for additional details before voting to close, or is it acceptable to cast a close vote and simultaneously request more information?
I'm a bit confused about how to handle these situations. Sometimes, these questions get immediately closed for needing more focus, but other times, they receive answers from experienced users willing to go the extra mile to recreate exactly what the OP asked for, even if it was a huge task more suited for a freelancer.

I haven't got to this yet, only because I'm finding it hard to answer :)

Hey @RobinBetts thanks for your attention. No worries no rush! It's also okay if I don't get an answer either haha :)

Hi, Harry,  Welcome to mod-world! I've put a comment under Duarte's post. BTW, my personal stance, (given that our sole function  is to be helpful) is to try always to give posts the benefit of the doubt: 'needs guidance', unless truly egregious. I just wish the system made it easier to return to previously commented posts.

This is a good question, and one that is hard to answer concisely, among other reasons because I don't think there is one true objective answer to it all, but I'll try my best to tackle the issue.
I'll open my answer by highlighting the fact that closing a question is a democratic process that is subject to voting by the community. Why is this important?
I think it hints at the fact that evaluating the quality of a post is to a certain degree subjective and always subject to a some amount of opinion.
Some might think a question is too broad, some might think it needs more information, while others may be more concerned that it is too localized. Who is right? Everyone and no one.
A post may suffer from any number of those issues simultaneously some more apparent to a group of users, some to others; and yet even when the question indeed objective and clear some users may vote it for it being too broad. And on comes one of those highly experienced users and post an incredibly simple and effective solution to a traditionally complex and long winded task, or maybe he actually bothers to post a long and thorough answer to an unfairly broad topic.
What I mean is, some times even evaluating something as apparently objective as the "ontopicness" of a post may be down to individual users perception or even level expertise. What one may see as too broad or vague, may be explicit or simple to others.
Summarizing, the reasons for voting to close aren't always necessarily objective or perceived equally by everyone. While we may not always pinpoint a single exact reason for closing, I think we as a community have become quite good in general at spotting troublesome posts, even if we can't quite agree on a consensus.
I have yet to find an unfairly closed question by the community, even if I don't entirely agree with the reason. That being said, we might be able to establish some guidelines to help us be more consistent.

When to cast a vote to close a question as Needs more Focus or Needs details or clarity?

Needs More Clarity  - When there is not enough information to identify the  issue, when the particular constraints of the user are not well exposed, or when the issue is clear, but there is not enough information to identify an adequate solution.
Needs More Focus - The question is clear and concise, but there are multiple different issues that need to be tackled differently and all added together wouldn't easily fit in a single answer; or the issue is too broad that an adequate answer would be too long or require a "tutorial".

New users often miscalculate or underestimate the complexity of certain tasks which leads to often being unaware of how broad a topic may be.

Should we wait (how many hours?) for additional details before voting to close, or is it acceptable to cast a close vote and simultaneously request more information?

One long standing pet peeve of mine has been the wording Stack Exchange sites use when closing a question. The word "closing" has a very "final" and immutable weight to it. A more adequate term for me would be something less binding like "on hold" or "on wait", that would transmit the owner that is a temporary state that can be reversed once the required actions are taken.
Closing questions as it stands can seem hostile and scare away new users, that is even more pressing for moderators, which lose the ability to "vote to close" questions. As a moderator your vote is binding, and the question is closed immediately, placing a lot more weight on our decision.
That being said it should not be perceived as irreversible or a bad thing in itself, and I don't think we should ever refrain or withhold voting to close a post that deserves it. The act of closing in itself is not final, leaving a comment is optional, and the builtin close messages for all the various close reasons are designed to leave clear instructions for the post owner on how to proceed so it can be reopened.
Users are also expected to be around for a while after posting their questions for any followups deemed necessary (clarification, edits etc.), so any actual waiting should ideally be kept to a minimum. If they take no immediate action on any of the requests we can safely close the question.
If one is feeling particularly helpful and wants to put in the extra effort to leave an additional bespoke message, then we totally encourage it, especially if it is a new user, or the question was closed without any prior comments or requests for improvement. It is certainly encouraged, but not at all mandatory, I often, but not always try to do it myself, but that takes time, and is a luxury one can't always afford.

However, how can we distinguish between a user who genuinely needs guidance and one who hasn't made any effort to research or provided anything that they have tried?

I like reminding myself from time to time that the ultimate goal of this site is building an easy to consult long term database of high quality searchable content, that above all else should help future visitors find valuable answers for their issues, rather that help the single individual that posted it.
With that in mind, I think the amount of investment one should put into a single post, should be proportional to the original quality of the post itself.
If it is well written, illustrated and shows a minimum of effort, the odds that asking for further details will be well met are higher. Otherwise users very often abandon their posts even when they get actual answers, let alone when met with downvotes, close votes or even simple requests for clarification.
My second favorite and most reliable metric for when and if to help a user (leave a response, ask for clarification, engage a comments, etc.) is how responsive a user has been to received input. If a user responds to comments, shows interaction or ideally even edits his post in response to input, it shows he is invested in getting help, that should in return encourage us as visitors to invest more in that post.
Has Gorgious very well points out in his answer all interactions collectively take considerable amounts of time and effort from users, especially if one considers the large volume of posts that come into our site daily. Hand holding every single one of them is impossible at this scale, and our format is simply not designed for that type of back and forth.
The harsh truth for me is that all the knowledge and effort from the many brilliant and dedicated members of our community is a very precious and scarce commodity, especially when considering it is altruistically given away for free for the benefit of any visitor.
The final decision of how to use ones time and energy is always to each users discretion, but I'd consider all that manpower squandered if spent solely coaxing information from low quality posts, rather than invested in writing actual useful answers elsewhere that could eventually help countless other visitors down the line.

Thank you for your detailed and insightful response; it has clarified many aspects of the voting and closing process for me!

Thanks, Duarte, for the work you've put into this, much appreciated. Part of the reason I've held off is to listen to the opinion of more senior mods. I want to distinguish user and mod close-votes. In a perfect world, as a mod, I would want to  avoid the immediate super-vote, be able to comment, awaiting clarification/improvement, and other community votes,  then 'Skip'. Then I want the post to reappear in my queue so I can re-assess after OP has had a chance to respond. By my reading of Meta, this doesn't happen..

Again, reading Meta, there seems to be a way to return to our review histories, so we can find our own skipped reviews? But I can't find it.

@RobinBetts Thanks for chiming in. Indeed some sort of "post reminders" or "snooze" button are high on my wish list as well, but sadly nowhere in sight. The closest thing I've found to a review history is the "All Actions" section of you user profile. There is a queue of comments, edits and reviews https://i.sstatic.net/I4rpx9Wk.png

@RobinBetts Another option that occurred to me is, since we now have a "Saves" system that allows saving arbitrary posts into custom user categories, one could potentially set up manual categories for posts we'd like to revisit for one reason or another, and save them there for later followups. This does requires some more manual management  though

@Duarte Thanks. I'll check it out. Another option (unlikely to happen) .. get rid of the super-vote, and make the mod:'close' action distinct from mod-as-user:'vote close'. More democratic, IMO.

@RobinBetts thank you for your input. Yes I used to be able to vote but now I tend to "skip" the "close" reviews for the same reasons, it would be nice if there was an option to vote or super-vote. Duarte good suggestion with the save question, I will use that for the "about-to-close" questions :D

"closing a question is a democratic process" - it usually looks like this: 4 people vote on closing a question, then Duarte comes in and closes the question. The question has now been closed: by those 4 people and Duarte, who could also close it single-handedly.  I'm not complaining just find it funny and it happens very often ( most of the time, I think). Other than that I agree fully and strongly and this post might become my favorite reference to link to, whenever I see people on the Internet complain on SE/SO posts being closed unfairly.

@MarkusvonBroady indeed, that tends to happen a lot around these parts  Our smaller site suffers from lack of critical mass, we often don't have enough users participating in community driven moderation that a decision can be reached without solely from voting, which sadly detracts from the democratic process and from the "self moderating" model. We need more Blenderhaeads around here. Thanks for the kind words

Just stumbled across this... "closing a question is a democratic process" is really funny, especially most of the time there is only one person voting to close for lack of details/clarity and then either Duarte or Harry close the question, or just one of them with nobody else voting to close :D On 11 questions closed for clarity in just one week, only 1 of them had two votes,  the others just one or none until a moderator closed them... so much for the democratic process :D That's just the "clarity" ones, for bugs or other off-topic things I agree there is no need to wait.

@GordonBrinkmann Indeed! We do have a shortage of demos in our democratic process. It is a small community, and the participating or portion of it actually engaging in the voting process is a very small percentage of the whole. That sadly results in moderators having to intervene more often than it would be desirable, which worsens the perception that we run this site as dictators with an iron fist over the oppressed people. The is nether not true nor at all the intention, but I totally understand where it comes from.

Like @MarkusvonBroady I mostly find it amusing just to read about the democratic process while seeing the actual close votes. I know it is not intended and understand the problem. More often I find it annoying that people immediately ask for more details and especially files while just reading a question thoroughly or looking at details in screenshots would provide all information needed. Especially uploading a file is not always necessary and I guess there are no unlimited resources here, so some people always knee-jerk asking for a file bothers me a bit more then quick closing of a question.

I'll go and suggest an answer that seems to satisfy my gut feeling about the specific examples you mentioned.
I try to calculate, what are the chances of this post appearing in a random person's search engine results in 3 years when they encounter a similar problem, and what are the chances it solves said problem ? If it's zero, then the question should be closed immediately, if it's more than zero, then more experienced users have a few solutions, but in the end it really depends on the person asking the question and the voting power of the userbase. Here's a list going from the easiest solution to the most tiresome solution :

Ignore : No harm, no foul. If this question is genuinely unsalvageable, you can always choose to let it sink into the second page and rot away until it gets garbage collected in a few years and deleted.
Vote up / down : There are more voters than commenters and answerers, so if a question is genuinely interesting even if not totally in line with the site guidelines, I think we should encourage potential answers by up-voting it and potentially making it appear in the hot network panel, which in general grants a bunch of "free" upvotes. And you can vote down if you want to manifest that you don't like this question for whatever reason. This will upset newcomers.
Vote to close : This may prompt the asker to re-think their question. In my experience this rarely works though, because most first time users get discouraged and upset because their question was closed, or voted to be closed, although they have ways to re-open them.
Comment asking for more information : This solution is more friendly towards first time users but can lead to useless back-and-forth because the user thinks we can solve their problem with a very limited amount of information. This is my preferred way to solve the problem but unfortunately it's very hit and miss. Sometimes the user will provide more information, sometimes they will get aggravated. It seems more experienced users have pre-canned comments that they copy/paste depending on the specific issues of each question.
Edit the title or body of the question : Sometimes it will upset askers because they feel like we're taking power from them when usually the intention is instead to draw more attention to their problem by making it more attractive to the experienced users or make it more search-engine friendly. IMO if someone rollbacks their poorly worded question, don't waste any more energy and let it sink into the second page / close it.
Answer the question : This is the most energy consuming solution. You run the risk of wasting your time because you didn't understand the user's question. Sometimes you did understand what they meant when others didn't and you genuinely help the user, but it's again very hit and miss. If you choose to answer a question that was poorly worded, or that missed on some vocabulary, I suggest also editing the question to make it more useful. But again, you might do all of that for nothing. And don't be upset if you don't get any upvotes ! Maybe someone having the same problem in 3 years will upvote your answer ;) The top reputation earners list is filled by people getting rep for several years old posts. Oh, and you encourage people to ask poorly worded questions, which doesn't bring up the global value of this site.

your suggestions on how to respond based on the potential long-term usefulness of a question are very insightful thank you so much! And you make a very good point with that last sentence XD

"And you can vote down if you want to manifest that you don't like this question for whatever reason. This will upset newcomers." - this is not true. If you vote down, someone will feel bad for the OP and vote up (otherwise he wouldn't vote up) back to 0. This means that by voting down, you're indirectly giving 8 rep to the OP, well on average maybe around 7 rep considering those nonredeemable questions that even the softest users won't upvote :D

As for your last point - I like and apply Cunninghams' Law - a quick, wrong answer to clearly show the OP why more clarity is needed in his question

@MarkusvonBroady Hehe two things can be true at the same time, OP can be upset and other users, too. I personnaly tend to prefer the solution that minimizes the global amount of entropy :p


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Question misconception on stackexchange
Unfortunately , staff on blender.stackexchange act like they're robots and won't read the peoples question and close them immediately.
I don't know what is this unlikely and unfriendly action means, I had a question for days posting days after days no one answers and always misguidance to getting lost.
Here is an example of me asking a question about : How to properly use specular pbr textures in blender? and waiting for answer for a long time and all of a sudden after my very own answer score hunters in stack exchange came up and dislike my very own answer and posted their nonsense meaningless and misguiding answer and comments and when they realize they don't have an answer or maybe any knowledge at all.
They tried to spam their way by reporting my question as duplicate to this question "How to plug specular map into Principled Shader?" and as the title says that clearly it has something to do with principled shader and it isn't related , the user is trying to close this topic and hides it from public *im sure is "Duarte Farrajota Ramos ".
I believe that he is abusing his own power (may I mistaken) to hide something like this from community* , for example people shouldn't know how to use physically accurate PBR textures in blender hence he get less competitor
How to properly use specular pbr textures in blender?

Hello and welcome. If you feel any of you questions was incorrectly marked as duplicate or the linked posts don't adequately address your issue, see Help page about duplicates particularly the last paragraph. You can also flag your post for moderator attention with a short comment describing the issue so it can be reopened. Questions are frequently marked as duplicates (some times unfortunately incorrectly), it is a normal procedure for this site, don't t take it personally, they can always be reopened.

As for getting no answers see What should I do if no one answers my question?. Regarding the downvotes voting is a central part of this community, and every user gets to do it at his own discretion. If you got a downvote don't take it personally, in the end good content will rise and bad one will sink. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos sorry Im a little bit confused , can you please tell me the relevance between "connecting specular map to principled shader" and using "specular workflow in blender " ? if they have common words it doesn't mean they're related , yes i do edited my post and mentioned that it does not related to that question and wasn't answered there either .

We don't get notified of edits, but we do have review queues for reopen flags, which will be dealt with in due time.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos sorry my friend , i never meant to take anything personal , I do not know how to compensate ,you spend all of your time reading my problems , best regards ❤❤❤

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos check out the update

Please do not deface your post with unrelated questions. if you have a different issue that requires moderator action please post it in a new question, rather than edit it into you established question


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Mark comment as answer
I'm new to this style of forum software. How do I mark a question thread in this forum as answered (presumably beneficial for potential future viewers of the question) when the answer was given in a comment? Also, what tag should this post have used, since I can't post without one?

Hello and welcome. Take the Tour to understand how this works

Questions about the site should always go to meta (which is where the question is now). Please read through the [tour] and also read the What is "meta" FAQ page for some more information.

You can upvote the answer that helped you. If you feel it completely solved your issue consider marking it as accepted.

If an answer has been posted in the comment sections but the person didn't post it as an answer, you can go ahead and post it as an answer and mark it as answered afterwards.
Common "courtesy" is to wait a little bit (I'd say at least one day, but that is subjective)  before doing so because some people prefer taking their time before posting a fully-fledged answer. You can ping an user by using @ then their username to directly ask them what they think about it.
Notes :
Comments are often not posted as answers even if they solve your problem because they would objectively make bad answers : Answers should be fully fledged, include details, diagrams, documentation, references, which are impossible to put in a comment. If you're going to post a comment as an answer, try to include as much detail as possible.
If your problem has been answered by a simple comment, there is a chance that either :

It is a very simple problem that has already been asked and answered many times, and the person couldn't be bothered to or couldn't find a duplicate of your problem
It is very specific, and couldn't possibly help another user
It may thread on the site guidelines for questions and could be closed because of it

Leftside Under the up and down arrows for the score is a checkmark ✔ click it. It turns green.

You don't.
If you'd like to, you can repeat the answer given in comments in an answer you make yourself, and then mark that as the answer.  Anybody that helps in comments and not answers probably doesn't care about SE points (which are worthless anyways) so you should feel absolutely no shame in collecting the points they would otherwise accrue.
If your goal with marking an answer as correct is to say "Thanks," actually saying that is worth more than any points, but speaking for myself, it's hardly necessary, and some other people on SE might frown upon that.
If your goal with marking an answer as correct is to improve Blender SE, there are usually more important things to do than marking the correct answer.  Things get answered in comments for reasons.  If that reason is that the question is well dealt with elsewhere, it's better to get the question closed (with a redirect) than to get an answer marked.  If that reason is that the comments were part of an exchange seeking more information, it's more important that that information get added to the question than that the answer gets marked, although once that information is added, an actual answer becomes more appropriate.
If either of those things is more work than you'd like, believe me, I understand!  You can improve things just to the level of work that you're willing to do; SE is not paying you (in fact, they're getting paid because of you.)  If an answer doesn't get marked for a question, nothing terrible is going to happen.


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Unupvote after many days, no edits were made in the meantime
I've just been dinged for an upvote reverse on this question as witnessed by this summary

Earlier, the downvote showed in the time line and I've had the points deducted from my reputation but now it's not:

Does anybody know what happened / is happening?

I don't have an answer for this, only maybe an admin will know. My only possible explanation is that either the rep recalc happened at a later time then the unupvote, or the vote was not yet locked for some unknown reason

Both the vote reversal and the rep recalculation happened yesterday, more than month after the last edit.  Can you confirm that the vote should have been locked after that much time?  (I'm suspecting that this is a bug somehow, and I want to be very sure before I take it to meta.)

"Can you confirm that the vote should have been locked after that much time?" No, I can't confirm that. It is supposed to be in the order of minutes as far as I know, but I don't know how many, nor if there are other circumstances where it can be extended for one reason or another

Thanks.  I guess I'll just report it on meta as a bug and see what happens.

I don't think it is a bug, but let me know what comes of it. Or share a link so I can follow it, I'm curious as well.

I posted this on Meta as a question and the answer is that

The vote disappearing from the answer's timeline display is not a bug, but

It might be confusing but I guess it's status-bydesign.

From a comment on the accepted answer, paraphrased, votes are unlocked by an edit and never relocked until they are changed again.

So the conclusion is "not a bug".


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What are the actual GIF requirements?
Recently, the image hosting was changed (New service failing on .gif uploads) and now sometimes I have troubles uploading a .gif:

Image uploads are limited to 50 megapixels; please use a smaller image

So what does it mean exactly? Width × height × number of frames?
Here are two examples of gifs I failed to upload:
Align Vertices (constantly changing locations)

How to make Spiral in Geometry nodes [ but without node spiral ]

You can download these gifs and try to reupload them to reproduce the issue. The way I embedded these gifs there is using an  tag:

However, I know embedding images like that is problematic, for example some visitors to this site have the Imgur domain blocked. It's just that using gifs was already introducing a lot of friction given the harsh 2 MB limit. There's also some compatibility issues (or used to be), that made it impossible to upload gifs after optimizing them in some software, so there's at least 3 separate requirements for uploading gifs.

"Width × height × number of frames?" This was also my uninformed guess, both image size and number of frames counts towards total pixel count somehow, I've also been encountering that error. According to https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/399146/334476 there was an intentional pixel size limit added to prevent delays. Not sure what to make of it, the limitation seems restrictive and undesirable, but not a really bug strictly speaking. I'll tag this as [feature-request] for now, see if we can convince @slate to up the limit

Width × height × number of frames definitely seems to be it. I had a 400kB gif with 288 frames of 175,420 pixels each (that comes to 50,520,960 pixels) and got this error. I dropped about 7 frames to be safe, bringing it to 49,293,020 pixels…but I also increased the number of colors, bringing the total file size to ~750kB. The new, larger file was able to be uploaded. If the limit is actually useful, I don't mind it being in place…but it needs a more clear error message.

This is really annoying. Cannot share GIFs... Those were useful...

Based on my initial guess and a confirmation in comments and my experience, the animated GIF/APNG requirements are:

maximum of 2 MB file size;
maximum of 50 000 000 pixels counted across all frames: width × height × number of frames;
the file shouldn't use fringe settings, so using the best APNG/GIF compressors will produce a GIF that can be opened in a browser but won't be accepted by Stack Exchange.

Here's how I fix my GIFs:

Upload my GIF to Ezgif.com - unfortunately it can no longer read imgur links, so you need to upload a file from your computer; for those who use ShareX, dragging a thumbnail from ShareX onto the website works.
Below uploaded GIF, notice size info, e.g.

File size: 3.77MiB, width: 307px, height: 474px, frames: 542

Open a calculator, multiply dimensions together to get 1 frame area, then divide 50000000 by that area, this gives you the number of frames you need to decrease your GIF to.

$$307 × 474 = 145 518$$
$$50.000.000 ÷ 145 518 = 343.6001044544318$$
So you need to reduce the GIF to 343 frames

If you need to reduce the count of frames by a lot, consider cropping, resizing, or in the worst case, cutting the GIF by moving the end near the half, remembering where it is, and uploading another GIF that you cut by moving the start to the same time.

In Optimization settings, choose "Drop Frames: Remove every 2nd frame", click "Optimize GIF!"

In Optimization settings again, choose "Drop Frames: Remove duplicate frames". Repeatedly choose a "Fuzz" setting, and click "Optimize GIF!" until you find the setting that reduces the number of frames below calculated threshold.

You can right-click the generated GIF, copy image link, and use that on SE to embed an image.

If you also link to a mirror (because SE image hosting has problems), upload the original GIF to Imgur, rather than linking to Ezgif. If a lot of people load the image from Ezgif, the IP originally uploading the file will get banned! Of course when you use the link to upload an image on Stack Exchange, it creates its copy, so it's fine.

late to the party but I guess there could be some way to somewhat automate this or at least make the optimization have less trials to do?