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how can newly joined members to blender sa correct serious mistakes they find
Moving the 'center of the object' to the actual center...
this is not a duplicate. the answer provided (alt g) accurately answers a distinct question to what is asked in the purported "original question"
inaccurately marking this question as a duplicate of an unrelated question obfuscates the solution to what should be simple-to-solve situation.
please correct this.

I don't see how that question is not a duplicate since it specifically asks about origin positioning which is what linked question is about. Alt+G in the answer to dupe is addition and wasn't generally asked in the question itself. More than that Alt+G won't do anything if executed without repositioning origin first so it is not answer by itself

while i'm sure you make some good points...
the cold, hard facts are that one has the correct answer, the other does not.

"the cold, hard facts" nope, that can't be a fact since it's disputable and generally subjective. "one has the correct answer, the other does not" Both have correct answers which is Set Origin menu. Alt+G mentioned by you is not an answer to the original question "how to move origin of the object to its center", rather to the question "how to bring object to the center of the scene when its origin is in its center". In the marked duplicate mentioned above Alt+G is not an answer. It will not work without setting origin.

Looks like a duplicate to me? Both questions are asking how to move the origin to the center of the object (or perhaps the center of the object to the origin). The answer on the duplicate also mentions how to move the object to the center of the world, but as far as I can tell neither question asked for that originally anyway.
If you'd like to add your own answer or, perhaps ask/answer your own question, please do!


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Add version tags
Can tags be added for major releases of blender? For example version2 and version3. There are different features and some questions are only relevant in one and some questions have different answers depending on the version.

"Some questions are only relevant in one" That is incorrect, question are always relevant (save for new features), it is answers that may get outdated, in which case they should either be edited into current versions, or an entirely new answer should be posted. This has been brought up quite few times already https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-should-be-the-version-tags https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2696/argument-for-allowing-the-2-8-tag https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2565/was-2-8-tag-created-intentionally-or-should-we-remove-it

This has been brought up quite a few times before, and comes up again every now and then. There has been lots of discussions and back and forth about it, and there seems to be a lack of consensus about whether to have version tags or not. Some moderators are against it some in favor and nothing decisive ever comes out of it.
This should be a community decision along with other moderators and I won't offer any resistance if we decide by majority in favor of having version tags.
I'll start by saying that I can totally see how these are useful for someone looking for answers for the shiny-newly-released-version, or how someone else stuck with older hardware can be looking for solutions specifically for Blender-of-Yore version 1.XX.
I oppose version tags however for the following reasons, mostly related to potentially alienating good content and maintenance burden with little benefit.

Outdated answers should be updated rather than discarded, if significant changes happened that warrant an entirely new solution then new answers should be posted, rather than post a new question, which leads us to:
Version tags will worsen information scattering. A user searching for solutions will have to visit 2, 3 maybe 10 questions all trying to solve the same issue, rather than visit a single comprehensive post with all solutions in a single place.
Maintenance wise, for moderators and community members helping with review queues, it also will be harder to gather a collection of memorable easy to find "canonical posts" with comprehensive answers covering all possible solutions and high vote count to close questions as duplicates of.
The way the site works we tag questions not answers, and questions should ideally be timeless and remain always valid regardless of version. This can have many adverse implications like:
Limiting the scope of the answers. There may be relevant answers that still address your issue and are not version exclusive.
No one stops you from post an (updated) answer for say 2.8 on an older post, nor posting a solution that also works in older versions (exclusively or mutually) in a post for a new version. Now the question tags are misleading, or alienating.
Blender changes rapidly but many question for older versions still apply today, hiding away potentially relevant content for users filtering by tags. Some times updating a single keyboard shortcut or menu entry will suffice.
Planned obsolescence: By version tagging a post we are intentionally labeling an expiry date on answers. Say shiny new Blender 3.0 is out everyone wants relevant answers for new Geometry nodes. Questions tagged 3.0 now are highly desirable, but tomorrow 3.1 will be out and in two years when 4.XX series are the shiny new toy there may be many things about Geometry Nodes or Asset Libraries that haven't really changed all that much, but since no one searches for obsolete 3.0 tag anymore there may be high quality content being ignored because of unnecessary tags.
Some propose major version tags only, for bigger development jumps like from 2.49 to 2.5, or 2.79 to 2.8 or 2.93 to 3.0. I'd say it may some times be fuzzy where major versions are really relevant. From 2.93 to 3.0 a lot changed for say Geometry Nodes for example, but for most other areas answers are still valid. I bet barely anyone still searches for 2.8 tags these days, let alone pre-2.5. Version tags are most useful in the short-ish period after a major release, and become mostly irrelevant months after when the dust settles and new answers crop up; again exacerbating the maintenance burden for a limited benefit.
For all other cases of newly introduced features that didn't exist before, or for the case where users may be searching for solutions relevant to newer versions only, I suppose mentioning the version number or the name of a new feature in the body of the question will suffice. I bet there aren't any questions tagged Geometry Nodes for version 2.8 now.

Don't take my words has written in stone though, again I'd be entirely open to allowing version tags if the rest of the community makes a convincing case backed with strong arguments for it.
I'd definitely like to see what take on this other current moderators have, and I'd encourage every other community member to post answers pro and con so we can make a solid decision.
Vote away, may the amount of points on the answers be the deciding factor.

I agree with respect to question tags; but I wonder what you think about the possibility of answer tags, if StackExchange every implemented such a thing as described in Version labels for answers.  Besides adding work for moderators  and volunteers what other objections would there be to such a system?

I see those much more positively, because they are actually applied to answers, not questions. They may still have undesirable effects for untagged answers, or misused version tags, but other than the maintenance overhead answer tags do have the potential of better informing users. I can see those being useful if they ever see the day of light.

I think it's not a good idea for BSE. They would only complicate edits, and further confuse new users who do not know how to use tags in the first place. I know that I have lost count of how many times I have seen questions tagged with something akin to  blender-id blender-internal-render-engine blender-osm because the user assumed that was how to ask a question about blender.
I think that continuing to use workflow related tags make more sense, as they  inform answerers of the problem and potential solution as well as which version is most likely being used.
As of this writing, there are 89,605  questions, and only 389 of them have 3.0 in the search results, so I have hard time seeing the benefit of version-3.0 or version-2.7x orversion-2.8+ or similar tags
All of that said, I'm interested to hear what the rest of the community has to say on the matter.

fair point but blender 3 did just get released this month.

Independent of the consensus now, I think we should wait for "Version labels for answer" to propagate, if it does, before we do anything specific about version numbers.  I don't think it's a good idea to introduce version tags if version labels are forthcoming, as having both will be confusing.
If version labels propagate then we should discuss how they would be most useful on blender stackexchange.

Ooh nice. Of course it'll add to the overhead of the community and moderators work, but it might help reduce data duplication ? Provided newcomers learn to use the feature (which I'm not very hopeful for...) or if it's really trivial in its use (which I'm not so sure about either :p), so wait & see I guess

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Do you know of any trustworthy blender tutorial forums?
I was wondering if you know of a trustworthy blender tutorial forum, as in with tutorials that are up-to-date and idiot proof?
I don't want to ask questions on Blender stack that are not acceptable for the site.
Thanks and sorry if I "put my foot in it" again.

Blender.Stackexchange definitely isn't the right place to ask these questions as it's asking for tutorials. However I don't quite think there are any sites for that. General recommendation - try BlenderArtists.org, but the most useful is use tutorials from known tutorial creators (BlenderGuru, CreativeShrimp, BlenderDiplom, BlenderHD etc) and search engine to find the rest from what you want

Here's a list of resources, if you haven't found it already

Thank you everyone <3

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


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What is the blender internal Vs regular posts?
I'm relatively new to blender. When asking a question on this forum, I noticed one of my post got edited with (blender-internal) in the tag, could someone explain this?

Tags help organize the sites content. Questions about Blender internal will be tagged as such, questions about Cycles the same, modelling, animation, etc...Don't worry about it if your question gets an edit,  edits help the quality of the site overall (as long as they are useful). If you disagree with an edit, you can always roll it back. But I see this one to be useful myself.

From the Blender SE Help Site:

A tag is a word or phrase that describes the topic of the question. Tags are a means of connecting experts with questions they will be able to answer by sorting questions into specific, well-defined categories.

In your specific case, since your question dealt with texturing in the Blender Internal render engine (as opposed to the Cycles render engine), the tag was edited in by another user to help clarify this.
As @Timaroberts said in the comments, tags help to organize the site's content and to help other users easily find questions relating to the topic they are wondering about.

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


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Dubious 'You have reached your question limit' ban leads to counterproductive user behavior
My last two questions were not well accepted, and now I have this ban. But I am trying to make a living out of video editing among other things, so getting my questions answered on time is above any other consideration. Luckily I have no questions for the moment, but if I need something, you bet I will be tempted to do one of the following things (and I bet I am not the first user to think about it)

Registering under another name/address and make my question.
Simply editing one of my older questions, for which I don'g give a s**t any more, and rewriting it with the new question.

Both of them equally counterproductive for the site. Having duplicate profiles / erasing old contents that might be interesting. I have not done any of them for the moment, er, this time, but... I wonder who was the genius that invented this rule. Kudos for him or her. Yes, this is irony. Please change that.

Sorry, but this site is not really a personal help desk, but a repository of high-quality Q&A, and everyone is just a volunteer. So, no one is under obligation to solve your problem within the time constraint. Also, doing any of those could make your account suspended for abusing this platform. Also, Why are questions no longer being accepted from my account?.

Yeah both of your suggestions are exactly what not to do.
Editing an old question into something completely different just does not make sense, and thus is not allowed.
Say you asked about the compositor, got some comments maybe even an answer, but now you need to ask about the VSE. After the editing the compositor question (SE would call that vandalism) none of the comments or answers make any sense anymore.

The more commonly tried loophole is simply to make another account and try again. (PS Did you make a new account in the last few days?)
If that works, because "bans are at a lower level then accounts" you still will get your accounts suspended. Creating a new account to circumvent a question ban is definitely a no-no.
With what not to do out of the way, start by editing your existing questions. (The deleted questions are counting too.) Make then clear, specific, and something that is answerable.
This question is a good one (also happened to be your only positively voted one, voting really does tell you something of the quality...)
This one is not a real question. It is more of a rant with a question mark. We as users have no way of commenting on the distribution of developer's time. "Questions" like this will always be DVed and closed.
Your newest question would be fine with a bit of editing to make it clearer and direct to the point (don't forget the title). I already edited that one for you to give you an idea what I mean.
PS when someone tries to help, gives you advice whether about one of your posts, or in a comment. Don't get an attitude and sarcastically retort. Not only is that counter productive, but it gives other users (like me) a disdain to even try to help you. I was very close to not writing this answer.

Thanks for the good will and the editing. However I think you don't get the purpose of this question (this one, in meta). Not ranting, not attacking, but genuinely pointing out what I consider a counterproductive rule. I appreciate the help, but not the ban, and I am pointing out at how counterproductive it can be. And I know you can identify if I opened another account, but when people really want to circumvent that, they will do it anyway. Just opening the account from the mobile phone network will have a different IP and OS... Again, thanks, but consider my point: that rule is no good.

@Mephisto I get where you are coming from. But think about it from the other side. The reason the question or answer ban is in place is to try to keep some measure of quality on the SE sites. In SE's eye's if you can not make posts that are good, then they don't really want you here. (that is probably over stating it.) They need something to keep quality standers. This is what we have, if you have an alternative then the [meta.se] is the place to suggest it. (be forewarned though, the meta is not a friendly place.)

Unluckily, those somethings designed to keep quality standards, quite often lead to mediocrity. I cannot forget what happened in 2013 with Physics SE. It was brillant. On a daily basis you would have there answers, questions, comments and general interaction of a Nobel Prize, a former Cambridge Professor, research-level scholars and university lecturers, and even some crazy independent maverick genius. But SE started banning and censoring and imposing PC, and in a few weeks all brilliant people went away and since then it is a crappy repository of elementary school questions.

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


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Create tag(s) for questions that cover very narrow or specific problems
This is a suggestion to create one tag (or more if need be) for questions that are about very specific problems or techniques. It would allow to distinguish them from questions that cover more generic blender topics, ones that would benefit broader situations and user base.
For example:

How do I create a Drag Strip Material? or
How to do a seatbelt as part of my scene

Though one could learn many things from good answers, it would pretty much only help these guys specific problems.
On the contrary, Hair coming through the mesh? is a fairly generic issue, answer to which can benefit many people about how particles and meshes behave in Blender.
I couldn't find any existing tag that would allow that. Maybe selfishly, I'd sometimes rather browse and try to answer broader questions that benefit more people instead of problem specific ones.
Here are a few tag name ideas:

[problem-specific]
[how-to-do-this]
[dis-n-dat]

Here are additional example questions that would qualify for this tag:

Rigging telescopic pistons
How to make this petal shape a mesh?
Spheres colored in models image texture
Is there any way to rig Tinkercad models in Blender?

Some more example of questions that would NOT qualify for this new tag:

How To Spiralize Mesh
Darken a shadow on a shadow catcher without changing the light on the object casting it? (Blender Cycles 2.81)
Fast way of creating a total union of two objects

What do you think? Any tag name suggestions?

Oh and I forgot one requirement: avoid adding too much headache for moderators

Technically many of those questions would possibly not even be on topic to the site. The goal of the network is more to create a high quality database that can help anyone, rather than a one-on-one personal assistance to individuals

That's pretty much my point... But I agree with Ray's comment that it also brings some good ideas to the table sometimes. Thus the dilemma and the idea of using tags to filter them in or out.

I don't think this is a good idea.
Firstly, these are considered 'meta-tags' because they do not describe the actual content of the question. From the tagging section of the Help Center:

Avoid meta-tags
Do not use
  meta-tags
  in questions. Here are some tips to help you determine whether a tag
  is a meta-tag:

If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more
  or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags, like [beginner],
  [subjective], and [best-practices], are not helpful by themselves
  – they do not communicate anything about the content of the question.
If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it’s probably a meta-tag. For example, the meaning of the tag
  [subjective] is, itself, subjective; the same is true for tags like
  [best-practices] and [beginner]. Best practices to whom? Beginner by
  what criteria? Use only tags that have a broadly accepted, objective
  definition.

The important sentence from above is:

If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag.

This is true of the specific tags you have suggested and the general idea behind them. problem-specific doesn't tell us a single thing about what the question is about.
Secondly, as someone who does a lot of re-tagging and has recently been involved in discussions about the prevention of misusing tags I can pretty safely say that, at least from the tags you have suggested, people would use these generic types of tags on nearly every question asked, regardless of relevance.

"I have a problem, I'll use the problem-specific tag!"
"I want to know how to do something, I'll use the how-to-do-this tag!"

This would require a lot of work to re-tag questions correctly, which we already do a lot of. Aside from that, I think it could be subjective as to what is a specific problem and what counts as a more general problem.
I appreciate those tags were just suggestions, but I don't think you could come up with something that wouldn't be misused, simply because their intention is to be quite general.
To summarise:

These are against the Help Center recommendations.
In my opinion these tags are subjective.
They would probably be heavily misused.

All valid points. Thanks for all the pointers btw. Those are definitely metatags so I see your point against that... Now with regard to the two other points of your summary: what if these tags could only be added by moderators? That would reduce subjectivity and misuse.  It opens up the idea that some questions are closed/flag for being too broad or for subjective, so why not then flag/close questions that are too specific?

If tags could only be added by moderators then that would simply increase the work for moderators. More importantly, that isn't possible. It also wouldn't reduce subjectivity, it would just change who is in charge of the subjectivity. We do flag and close for being too specific it's just that there some incredibly creative answers have come out of asking specific question so we tend to err on the side of caution.

Also, I do think there are a lot of questions that are too specific and should be closed. We could come down a bit heavier on specific questions - often they have other issues as well and are closed anyway - but unfortunately we get a lot of questions that I view as too specific and we would end up closing an awful lot. A lot of modelling questions are very specific for example. Maybe that should happen maybe not.

... that is the question...  :) thanks Ray!


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Why is saying THANKS forbidden here?
Simple as that, WHY?
I always put a 'Thanks in advance.' at the end of my question and after a while it always gets edited, some stuff get added and some removed, probably from a moderator, including the  'Thanks in advance.' at the end.
Also feedback is not recommended in the comments, like I can't say a god damn 'thanks' to someone for helping me out...
Thanks in advance. :3

To show that moderators are not the cruel power stomping internet dictators that some imagine we are, I am not going to edit the "Thanks in advance. :3" out of your question. Even though after reading my answer you can see why there's no time for that kind of thing.

It's not that saying thanks is forbidden, it's that we say it differently (with upvotes and accepts)

"Thanks in advance" in particular might be taken as passive agressive by some people; the ones that complain about "thank you for not smoking" sign, since it feels a little implying-that-i-will-help when read.

"Thanks" salutations, greetings, "please help" and any extraneous text in the question, is (no offense) but a wast of time to everybody that comes along and reads it.
All extraneous text should be edited out of posts.
If you have a line at the end of your question that says:

I would really appreciate any help with this.
Thanks in advance.

Sure is it "harmless" it only take what 2 seconds to read. But it is useless to the question. I can answer your question just as well if that was not there. Now what if your question was viewed by 200 people? You've now wasted nearly 7 minutes of peoples' lives just because you wanted to be polite.
Save the thanks for when you really do get that answer. The green check mark to the left of an answer is a great way to show the answer helped you.
There is a plethora of info on this all over SE.
This guy here has a good answer on concisely conveying the relevant information, with quite a few relevant links.
He even asked a question about it Editing questions to remove “thank you” etc.

Comments are another matter entirely (well for me).
I too have the same frustration about "thanks" in the comments.
I mean what is the big deal? It a comment. I often express thanks for a particularity good answer.
Comments by design are not meant for long term information, they get deleted and cleaned up often. I for one have no problem with a thanks comment. However SE thinks otherwise, and we have people that go around flagging "thanks" comments from data queries.
So your thanks comment probably will get deleted at some point. Don't sweat it. The post author will get notified of your comment, and he is really the only person that needs to see it. (As a mod I often leave comments on posts I'm about to delete. My comment get deleted, but the OP will still see it.)

TLDR (yes I put it at the bottom so you had to read the posts first)
Keep any and all extraneous text out of posts.
I'm ok with a thanks comment, but don't tell SE I said that.

Courtesy in interpersonal communication is an integral part of society. That's a shame to remove this aspect off of BSE specially when it allows to distinguish between nice people bullies who just want answers immediately. That said, courtesy can be quick and concise. There is definitely place for a middle ground here without wasting anyone's time rather than stripping it off completely.

This reasoning seems absurd to me. The stuff doesn't feel right for the format, but basically implying that you should feel bad for wasting people's time with with nonsense just feels wrong. Much of the rest of the world isn't getting enough of it as it is.

Hello and thanks you are very important communication techniques that date back the entire history of communication. Even modern electronic protocols have hello goodbye handshakes. StackExchange is trying to re-write the rules. The website is moral swiss cheese and illogical. They'll ban this comment and the whole question soon.


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Update the game-engine tag
I would like to open an... Open... Discussion... Damnit I said that twice!
We often get questions about third party engines, some based on Blender like Armory/UPBGE, some completely unrelated like Unity/UE. Yet they are frequently tagged as game-engine like this one.
In other words: we get questions related in different ways to game engines as a whole or specific game engines, that are almost all tagged as game-engine with no proper alternatives.
But as per the game-engine description:

The (BGE) Blender Game Engine (discontinued, blender 2.41 - 2.79) allows you to create interactive 3D applications, game prototypes and simulations.

Besides, I think it would be interesting to have more detailed tags, because they require different knowledge, people should be able to watch and blacklist these topics.

I think we can divide game-engine questions in 4 main topics, and therefore we could maybe have 4 tags:

Making or reverse-engineering game-ready assets for/from game engines
Questions like specifics of topology and rigging for games, channel-packing, ...
Tag: game-ready-assets
Using the BGE
I know it's dead, but we still see a few questions about it every once in a while. We could just edit the current tag into that one so to keep the assignations and then edit posts as we go.
Tag: blender-game-engine
Using Armory/UPBGE or other Blender-based game engines
I don't know other similar engines, I reckon we could regroup them as one if there's only two? But otherwise we could maybe have distinct tags. But otherwise it's self-explanatory.
Tag: armory-upbge
Exporting assets to external game engines like Unity/UE
I am not so sure either if this one deserves its own tag as it could be part of game-ready-assets and we have the export tag too, but if tags are a tool for the users to filter questions, follow/blacklist topics, then why not? Let me know.
Tag: game-engine-export

I don't have authority to edit tags (and I wouldn't do so without proper synergy regardless), so if what I spat over here makes sense, "someone else" would have to do it

That sounds like a reasonable idea to me!
I've also seen questions like this time and time again and even as a moderator I wasn't sure which category the question should fall into...
I would therefore have the following to say about your suggestions:

game-ready-assets
This tag makes perfect sense to me. It's mostly about questions concerning the export or preparation of geometries and materials, but the topic of game-ready assets usually contains very specific concerns (of course primarily concerning Unity or Unreal Engine), and is therefore certainly worth its own category.

blender-game-engine
Here I'm not entirely convinced whether an outdated topic deserves its own category. Yes, there are (equally outdated) questions, but this should be tidied up anyway. And as long as BGE is not actively developed further, I see no point in a separate tag.

armory-upbge
To be honest, I don't have enough experience to be able to judge this precisely, but as far as I know there are UPBGE and ARMORY3D that would fall into this category. I am generally in favour of using a separate tag here, but it should be more generic and read upbge, for example.

game-engine-export
The current description for the tag export is:

"Questions involving export-compatibility with other graphics software. Exporting involves converting Blender-native file into an external file type, for the purpose of editing or viewing that file in another program."

Here I see more of an overlap with the existing tag for exporting data from Blender. I think here the combination of game-ready-asset and export should be used for a search and no separate tag is needed.

So let's continue the discussion and examine the relevant tags (it should be noted, however, that new tags should save work and make it easier to find answers. Too many tags usually have the opposite effect).

To summarise here and to include the comments from Duarte's post, the following tags are up for debate:

game-asset (singular)
upbge-game-engine
blender-game-engine

Thanks for bringing this up, I'm always please to see users other than moderators interested in the meta side of our site.
I share most of the thoughts of Quellenfrom, but I'd add the following.
UPBGE runs inside Blender and may be considered a continuation or spiritual successor of the late Blender game Engine, even if one developed by a third party.
Armory is a third party game engine, that as far as I know (through addons?) provides some editing facilities directly inside Blender, though it is not really an integral part of, or an evolution of deprecated parts of Blender, unlike UPGE.
I think the distinction is important because I would not include Armory tags in our site, since I'm inclined to consider it off topic here. I have nothing against Armory, but it seems like a whole large topic on itself, and having the tag here would potentially open a can of worms. It may give the impression that we'd be able to give support here or that third party game engines would be on-topic. I'd give the thought some consideration it if some official developers or knowledgeable members would pledge to be around to provide quality answers, otherwise as far as I know we don't have enough Armory informed users to provide any meaningful support here.
That is to say I'd make an upbge-game-engine parallel to blender-game-engine but I'd be inclined to exclude any "Armory" mention.
For game asset related assets I'd probably simplify to game-assets.
I'm unsure we need a "game-export" dedicated tag, existing export seems to cover it well, as Quellenform mentions, and combined with any new game-assets would suffice to narrow down those topics, I think.
If we do find a need for it, maybe I'd prefer something like game-engine-io (input/output, but maybe we can come up with a clearer name) to cover both imports and exports.
I don't have strong feelings either way, and I'm open to find some consensus.

Thanks for your expert feedback on this! That would mean that we could consider and discuss the following new tags: [tag:game-assets], [tag:upbge-game-engine], [tag:blender-game-engine], ...if I understand you correctly. The tag [tag:game-engine-io] would rather fall into [tag:game-asset] (in combination with [tag:import]/[tag:export]) from my point of view.

Yes that is correct, good summary. I'm up for debate though, I confess I'm not very versed about Armory 3D


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Blender.sx font issues on Ubuntu
Recently, and I cannot pin point a date, in this website and its meta all fonts are bold-faced and its rather unpleasant to the eye. I've seen this on two separate machines (both with Firefox though) and using clean profiles.
At home, using OSX and same version of Firefox it is fine but on Ubuntu I have this issue. Other sister websites for stackexchange network are all fine. Below are some screenshots.
Any ideas?

Is it possible you have any extensions/userchrome stylesheets which could be doing this? If you start firefox with a fresh profile, does this still happen?

@gandalf3, I did restart my firefox in safe mode but still everything is bold-faced. However, I checked it with my colleagues machine (FF@Ubuntu) and it seems fine. It seems there is some strange problem with me only... I guess you could close the question.


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Should fixing AI generated Python scripts be off-topic?
Should questions like this be off-topic?
I think this is not really a suitable type of a question for Stack Exchange.
It seems to me that the idea of Stack Exchange is to share knowledge, but in a case like this it's more like a job or a task of fixing output on an AI model. The person asking is not really interested in the knowledge, instead they want to get a product - a working script. Also it seems to me that questions like this are always going to be about very specific scripts that are only useful in very narrow context so it doesn't seem to me like they are likely to be useful to others in the future.
Should fixing AI scripts be considered officially off-topic on BSE?

I have already left my personal opinion about this in the comments of the question.
Personally, I do not see a suitable place for questions that arise from insufficient knowledge and the use of ChatGPT.
As you correctly say, in most cases such questions are problems that arise from the fact that the questioner has no idea about the matter, asks for a solution at ChatGPT (which also has no idea about the matter), but the solution is faulty, and the dear people here are then challenged to look for a very individual solution to a very individual problem.
And since the questioner actually only wants others to solve his personal problem quickly, without searching intensively for a solution himself, I think the effort is too high and the competence and time of the answerers would be better spent elsewhere.
This has little use for this platform from my point of view, and the questions should be closed as "not suitable for this site" or "too localized in its current form" in my opinion.

If someone posted random garbage and hoped the community would turn it into code for them, that would be out.
I guess, for me, the question is: 'How close is this post to doing that?'
OP has made some effort.. but it looks like guesswork.
The comment I would be tempted to make would be : 'Go back a few steps, follow some tutorials, code some simple things by hand, get an idea of the landscape you're working in. Then you'll be in a  better position to see and fix the flaws in the slightly screwy maps GPT has given you to it, and the questions that remain will genuinely be your own, not GPT's.'
But I don't know how that translates to policy.

Until we can find a counter-example, I propose to generalize all questions with ChatGPT code as "low effort".

It's not off-topic: it's about using Blender, and an error related to a Python script. Perhaps in this case it could be considered off-topic, as mathutils is not a Blender-specific library - though whenever I google python vectors, I only see numpy vectors and Blender related docs.
It's not too localized: while trying to import bpy.mathutils hasn't been a problem historically, I predict it might become more popular as chatGPT repeats its mistakes.
The ultimate problem of ChatGPT is that solving a single problem like this will help no one; after solving one bug, there's probably 10 more bugs waiting in line. Also agreeing to solve ChatGPT's mistakes is agreeing to eventually solve every possible syntax mistake.
Maybe it belongs to Code Review [Apparently Code Review accepts only working code, thanks Andrew!]
If someone writes a question with a good title, explains what he wants, then pastes ChatGPT code and describes what this code does that he needs, and where the code fails, the code snippet will serve as a clarification of the problem, rather than too localized definition of the problem, then such a question I would find to be valid, with the chatGPT part being a valuable addition.

I think if someone asks specific single question that is meaningful but related or illustrated by AI generated code, that's awesome. But I also think we are going to see people just pasting generated code and asking "why doesn't it work" or "I would greatly appreciate any help regarding the issue." My concern is that it is no longer a question then.  I think Crantisz made a brilliant point. I like the concept of minimal level of knowledge to understand the answer a lot. If it's not there, is it still a question, or "fix it for me" request?.. If it's not a question, I think it is off-topic.

@MartynasŽiemys by definition of the "too localized" flag, your question should be useful to other (future?) users of BSE. Therefore I'm not so sure the answer has to be useful to the OP. It's probably a useful heuristic, however.

Sure. It does make sense that in addition to that, usefulness should also be judged in wider context considering more than just the person asking.

Just want to clarify that [CodeReview.SE] doesn't accept non-working code, so "fix my code" is off-topic there. The usual site for debugging questions is [so], but if it's due to a trivial issue/typo (missing import statement), then it will be closed anyway.

Personally I don't have a particular problem with ChatGPT related questions per-se, as long as they abide by our rules and code of conduct here.
Whether we want to accept them or even answer them here as a community is a very valid question of its own, that probably warrants a dedicated discussion.
The issue I see in this particular case is that, as you correctly described, it is essentially a "job post". Also more broadly seems to me like a general programming question that probably belongs in stack overflow instead.
It basically reads as a "fix it for me" post, with no apparent broader goal of learning, just an attempt to get some working solution with minimal effort.

Although the answers given are good enough, I feel the need to add a few thoughts.
Of course, as a good question involves independent research and study of the topic, that is not the main point. The main thing is that the questioner must have at least minimal knowledge in the area in which he asks.
By minimal, I mean the level of knowledge that allows you to understand the answer, to assess its correctness and importance. You will never respond to a request to model something (within this site) but you will give answers to questions that a beginner may have in the process of performing this task.
Correcting code is asking you to do a task, but not finding an answer to a question. So that it is off-topic.

I agree with you but I think it also depends on the framing of the question. For example I think it can be beneficial to help someone who used a script that doesn't work in one of the recent versions because of an API breakage : It can be helpful to others having the same issue in a separate script using the same API functions. In the case of GPT it's almot always a very specific usecase that the asker didn't frame correctly within the constraints of GPT and so the script is terrible and is barely salvageable : It will only help 1 person to fix it, and only in this very specific scenario.


text:
How to warn users about AI generated content?
While it seems still undetermined if AI-generated posts on BSE are outright banned, should be marked as such or no action is needed:
Should posts generated with the help of AI be marked as AI-generated content?
I find it reasonable to discuss possible design of such warnings, even for the purpose of proposing a template for post authors to use willingly if no such requirement is in power at the time of writing the post.
First, I propose some general principles:

should be concise - might not be very important, as GPT answers are lengthy anyway,
if not concise it should be structured to encourage reading the parts of the warning related to the reader,
it should be visible (pop out), as not always do we read from the beginning,
it should be accessible:

can it use emojis, or can they display incorrectly on some devices?
likewise can it use other formatting enhancing like mathjax?

it should explain or link to the explanations of the problems associated, the links probably should point to pages within SE framework,
while a warning is useful to everyone, the explanation should target less informed part of the potential readers, who are unaware of AI-related problems.

I'd encourage all interested members of the community to post their proposals so the most voted one is elected as "official".

I, for one, welcome our new AI overlo-

Agreeing on a unified warning design for AI generated content and making it standard and available to all users seems like the right way forward.
Markus makes great points, I agree it should be descriptive, succinct, and briefly explain to less informed the dangers of AI generated content, linking to in-network posts for more in-depth explanations.
The point to use an image or icon "so that who has already read it in the past can easily recognize and skip it" as Markus points out seems like an excellent idea I'll also plagiarize.
I'll make one important distinction to Markus's post though. As already well justified by other members in the linked meta post I don't personally think AI generated content has any place in our network. As such, I'd take a stricter approach and vote for entirely removing content that is clearly AI generated.
But one could then ask: "If AI generated content is entirely removed, then why do we need these warnings?". I'd say we reserve them for posts where it isn't immediately clear the content was AI generated or not, or there is reasonable doubt about its origin, like cases where the content was heavily edited, or there isn't enough content to ascertain the origin.
With that in mind I'd go for something along the lines of

 Warning, Potential AI generated content⚠
This post is suspected to have been generated with the help of an artificial intelligence, chat bot, or other language model tools without proper attribution.
There is reason to believe this post was not written by a human due to its structure, and grammatical construction, and has been marked by our community.
Current AI chat bots are a language models, that means they are like a parrot, they can mimic human language well, but they are built to write seemingly logical, seemingly factual grammatically valid text, rather than actually be correct, like a human would.
The veracity of the following content cannot be ascertained.
See the Concerns regarding AI generated content.

Copy-pastable snippet:
> ### ![AI Icon](https://i.sstatic.net/zNrQD.png) Warning, Potential AI generated content⚠
> **This post is suspected to have been generated with the help of an artificial intelligence, chat bot, or other language model tools without proper attribution.**
>
> There is reason to believe this post was not written by a human due to its structure, and grammatical construction, and has been marked by our community.

> Current AI chat bots are a language models, that means they are like a parrot, they can mimic human language well, but they are built to write **seemingly** logical, **seemingly** factual grammatically valid text, rather than actually **be correct**, like a human would.

> The veracity of the following content cannot be ascertained.
> See the [Concerns regarding AI generated content](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/384396).

Since I have yet to see AI-generated content that is useful, I'm inclined to agree with this, the pictogram is also a nice upgrade.

Here's my most recent iteration of such a warning.
It uses the blockquote to wrap the entire warning, starting with a robot emoji, so that who has already read it in the past can easily recognize and skip it, then it tries to explain in simple terms how AI-generated content is misleading in how it seems much better than it actually is, and points to a thread that can elaborate on it…

 The below content is AI-generated❗
GPT outputs text with similar statistical relations to training data; in practice this means text that seems valid, seems confident, seems logically consistent etc. While humans write text to be correct → and therefore it seems correct, AI writes text to seem correct → but it doesn't necessarily make it correct. Consider this analogy: an engineer puts wheels on a car in order to achieve the goal of the car moving. An AI will put wheels on a car, because it's trained on cars with wheels. But the wheels won't necessarily be connected to the engine, and so the car, while seemingly functional, is worthless. More reading: Should posts generated with the help of AI be marked as AI-generated content?

First of all thanks for caring this topic, expanding over the internet. I just read your links for a few hours and this seems to be endless hole of thoughts and opinions.
My post here is a reaction as contributor, that his post was marked as AI generated warning (seen in Duarte's post).
I agree - notification is needed, but current paragraph is really scary for me and it occupies a lot of space. One negative icon, word "warning" and warning sign at the end seems to me too much.
Wouldn't be enough just a single warning icon and short sentence with a link to a page with explanation of such warning? Link also gives you a more freedom for later adjustment of the explanation and synchronicity with older posts marked by this warning.

⚠ This post is created with the help of an artificial intelligence.

Thanks for your opinion :)

I agree with you exactly! My wish would have been to do without even a short text hint of this kind and use a colored marker or tag instead, but unfortunately that's not technically possible here. I think your suggestion is currently the most useful in this respect. Thanks for your contribution!

Hmmm... I don't agree and I don't disagree. Maybe the warning should be scary and explicit... The size otherwise doesn't matter - it's not really a problem that you need to scroll a few lines more, right? The text is designed so that you can easily skip reading it entirely if you want. So a question to be answered here is: how much do we care to alarm a reader, who wouldn't necessarily click the link? Also the point about normalization is sound and in spirit of other SE conventions...

Also keep in mind the "suspected" part. You can't be sure if the post author doesn't attribute the AI.

@MarkusvonBroady ... sure it should state as "there was a possibility (potentional) of AI use" ... I'm not saying I found the best ... but current version is such toxic, that I wanted abandoned  the post immediately, but I don't thing that is the purpose (especially if answer is correct), I think we want to warn users (not scare) ... no problem to scroll? For me it is ... I became fun of BSE for tendencies to create straight forward Q with clean and clear structured explanation in A ... such intense warning message works in opposite way.

From the position of graphic designer, the warning title is repeating the same thing, the same info. It takes you longer to identify and recognise all parts, than one simple triangle that is saying all the story at once...


text:
I see soo many questions, low views, and almost no answers
Title explains it.
Weird, right?

PS please never write a question with the body "Title says it." or such.

I do my best as I can answer some questions (I've been learning Blender for 4 years), but often the question is very badly formulated, or doesn't give enough details, or no screenshot, rarely any file... even after several demands, so people should make sure that their question is clear and simple

also it looks like a lot of people who don't know anything about bones and rigging use pre-made armatures or pre-rigged characters and want them to be fixed, I don't think it's the right way to help... Also very large questions like: after rigging my mesh is completely messy, it's obvious that some people have not even followed tutorials on the topic and it can't be summed in three lines...

WTL:DR  yep same problem on nearly every site, need more users to do all the other things (like answer).
Not weird. It's sad but, normal. You can look at any SE site and see the same content decline. (Its a big problem).
However here on BSE it's more pronounced. Why? Because we have many, Many new blender users. They only come here when they get stuck in a tutorial, or when their import fails. They do not (at the start) want to answer any questions, and in many cases they do not know enough to answer.
So, many brand new blender (and SE) users hits at both ends of the problem. They ask lots of questions (more on that in a bit), and they do not care to look around, and do not know blender enough to answer.
Now what about the rest of us that have rep? (hooray for useless internet points) Sure we may view the questions, even answer some every day. But there is simply not enough of us to answer. We get about 40 questions per day. I simply do not have time to read all of them. (Back in the day I use to go through every new question that was asked... but I digress)
Now what lies in these many questions? Looking at the top 30 newest questions right now there are 8 answered, and 1 UVed. Out of thirty.
No UVs could mean low quality posts, again a common problem with new users.
There being more answers then votes means either people are not voting on the questions (a couple of reasons for that), or the people getting to these questions can not vote on them (less then 15 rep).
The not voting could be because it is a new user and we want to be "welcoming" and not DV their post. Or it is not quite bad enough to DV, but it sure is not UV worthy.
The other reason for the more answers then votes, could be because there are new users answering them (because they all need more rep).

What can we do about it?
Good question. There is no "quick fix". In fact there is no solution. As long as there is an influx of new users we will have a huge question gap (and quality issue).
So tell everbody you know that knows blender to get over here and help this site out.
We need people to answer question.
We need the people to write the comments to the new users saying "we need more information, to be able to answer your question."
We need people to find the duplicates (there are LOTS).
As someone coined it we need more "curators."
Wow that turned out long.

Plus, with the insane policies being put in place, I don't want to risk being "offensive" in an answer or comment -

Any SE site except for interpersonal, they literally have no unanswered questions. It is probably the most successful network on SE.

Another important point is that everyone answering questions is doing so on their own time, out of the goodness of their heart, to help people.  It takes time.  Often times, answering a question means opening Blender, adjusting settings or doing some light modeling, perhaps rendering, and taking a bunch of screenshots.  It can take 30 minutes to an hour to answer a single question depending on the complexity.  Most of us have jobs, families, and other things to do besides answer Blender questions, so we have to find the time.  The only reward is reputation points, and many times people don't even "accept" the answer as correct so there's no reputation reward, only knowing you helped someone.
TL;DR - it takes time, expertise, and can be thankless, so there aren't enough people able and willing to do it.

Truly have nothing to add, except that your points are true. It's how it is. Imagine a different situation where the community is so well known amongst each other, and everybody usually know what theyr doing, it would probably bring more help in need as it acts as one, lets just call it 'family'. But like this, one just doesnt have enough time to take care of those massive amounts of questions, speacialy being asked mostly in the way you brought up in the comments above.

As for tbe newbies (im no pro in blender to make it clear), i only recently have become familiar with it. BUT, from the another field of creativity from which i come, i do know a fact that you best learn by trial and error, and errors will come in giant waves as you (they) go. Yes tutorials and help comes extra handy specialy in this time when there are lot lf thing to be done in shorter amount of time, but tou really absorb material when you actually 'get burned', when you hit the error. Time go ahead, and methods kinda stay the same, just that they come in a little different package.

This is normal and will get even worse with time.
As this site matures, it gets filled with all the questions and answers. Even now it provides a pretty complete manual covering almost anything you might encounter with Blender. This is because old questions are still relevant for new Blender releases.
Users that know how to search will likely find a solution, the problem is not that there is not enough information anymore as the site gets filled with it every day.
Because of this it is more likely to have low quality questions now, it got to the point that cegaton had to write this, which some would consider common knowledge.
Low quality questions generate low interest, low votes and low views. They also make spotting good quality ones harder between them.


text:
How to deal with the "AMD breaks Blender" questions?
You've probably noticed the huge influx of questions, where (often very new) users encounter glitches in Blender (maybe?) caused by the AMD driver issues.
The problem with these questions is that while I definitely have no idea how to address them (since I do not know what exactly causes these problems) I am also not comfortable flagging them as duplicates or off-topic (since I do not know what causes them).
I'm also not happy with just ignoring them since they clutter the website and the people who write these questions seem to be genuinely looking for help.
Any advice on how to deal with these kinds of questions?

I would suggest you mark them as duplicate of this answer, if it is the same problem. Should it be a different one then vote to close with a "community-specific reason" and select that it should be reported on the bug tracker.

The problem is that some of the screenshots look vastly different from the one in the question you've linked. Example: (https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/206219/red-purple-light-in-rendered-mode). So while I suspect your answer would be fitting, I do not know for sure.
Also is it smart to suggest that such incidents should be reported on the Blender bug tracker? Is there anything the Blender-devs can do about this issue?

To figure out whether or not devs can do something about it requires triage on the bug tracker. In this particular case the GPU is below the minimum requirements and thus not officially supported. Graphics glitches or even crashes can occur due to issue with the graphics drivers. Reporting this on the bug tracker would not be helpful. Hence I've written a guide here  that is also linked when a bug report gets closed with "report on the bug tracker".

Totally concur. There are currently 67 questions linked to the dupe QA . https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/204297?lq=1   To reinforce answer above When they are obviously a duplicate (only an outline in material view) please get the ball rolling and vote to close as dupe ASAP , rather than commenting. (or worse answering..)  using info from dupe answers.

https://youtu.be/Nlqjfj1lL5A?t=2209  potential update on this?

@AllenSimpson It is a workaround for the issues (see T82856).


text:
Should we ask users to indicate what version of Blender they're using?
Given the changes in 2.8, should we ask the users, whether they are asking or answering, to indicate which version they are using, in order to make sure that the answers provided are correct?
Or, alternatively, create versions tags 2.79 and 2.8?

It's not necessary. On the one hand, if the users are experiencing an issue, we would usually ask for screenshots, which makes it very clear whether they are on 2.7x or 2.80.
On the other hand, if they are looking for a feature or requesting advice on a workflow, the good answers will spontaneously start to transition during the Beta period from a majority of 2.7x-based to a majority of 2.8-based (and will be mostly independent from the version, apart from the hotkeys). They will likely contain the necessary remarks about "if you're using 2.8, you will find it in this other menu / with this other hotkey", either straight away or after an edit/comment by another user.
Of course, if the question is about fast PBR visualisation, or advanced creative uses of the Grease Pencil, the answerer will very likely push for 2.8.

I'm also against version tags. What the users need are answers about how to use Blender, regardless of version. A question is rarely about a particular version of blender: answers may be. So the solution is to slowly edit the answers we come across to be up-to-date.

See https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-should-be-the-version-tags as well. Eventually 2.8 will be the standard and Blender has excellent backwards compatibility.

That's a good argument as well. I haven't used Blender for that long and backwards compatibility is a problem in so many softwares that it's not even funny...

The real question is, when a new version comes out that moves everything around, who is going to go back through all of the old questions and post new answers with new screenshots for the new version? And then which answer do you mark as "accepted"?

Today I'm for the umpteenth time looking for answers on a Python API problem I'm having and I get only irrelevant and outdated answers. It's tiresome. Please allow 2.8x tags at least.

Editing to be up-to-date is kind of a pipe dream.  It'd be great if it happens, but it's not going to happen.  Looking forward to 3.0, we're going to see massive changes to any geo-nodes questions and answers.  Most solutions are going to be useless for 3.0 users and cause confusion.  And even if we were to edit stuff, we're not going to edit up/downvotes, which were made in the context of a specific version.  Unfortunately, sometimes, questions and answers are specific to versions of Blender, and this can lead to problems with new users finding the best info.

I don't agree that version tags are unnecessary. There's a ton of tutorials on how to use Blender, but as I am testing 2.8, and learning blender at the same time, most of my questions are "where did they move [feature name] to in the new 2.8 user interface?", which is a 2.8 specific question. I may already know what the feature does, but not how to invoke it in a version that moved everything around and changed hotkeys which differ from a tutorial created based on an older version. There may also be version specific limitations or bugs.

I also think that from a (n educated) supporter's point of view such tags may seem unnecessary, but from an (uneducated) user seeking for advice such tags may be very helpful. Consider you think you've found the solution for your problem, and then you discover that it does not work for your version. Frustrating, isn't it? And don't assume or demand that users always run the latest version, please.

So many of my answers now begin with "As of Blender 2.8x...", not at least including a nod to the version seems insincere, especially when we mark questions as duplicates against 2.79 answers.

I think we must include a 2.80, especially for python questions. The API did unspeakably things to backwards compatibility. Please, please consider allowing at least a [2.80] tag.

Disagree, there a just a few minor API changes and the old posts can updated easily based on the official guide. Also if you look around, python answers are usually got less votes but they are much more labor intensive than most of all the non-python answers - to respect the effort of the original authors updating the old answers is the way to go (IMO).

The two versions of the API are not compatible in any meaningful way. Affirming otherwise is simply wrong.

Again, there is only one version along with minor changes, recommend reading: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/Python_API (as mentioned) and you'll see that all the "changes" are more like improvements...

Again, you must not have ported any code. I have, and I've seen that page, and pretty much all the documentation regarding changes between versions. That documentation is pretty much useless once you pass the "hello world" examples.

Also, there are lots of questions about API changes. You yourself have answered some. We are making things difficult on purpose here, determining by screenshots or by "context" if an answer apply is quite short sighted.

From experience answering such questions: Most people are just lazy reading the wiki page, eg: 'bpy_prop_collection' object has no attribute 'link'? -> 100 lines, swapped out one line of code. Re "useless docs": just your opinion... waste of time, no real discussion here. Any "useful argument" might be more helpful to understand why you want this.

Because when I had a problem specific to the API version I was using, I spent more time reading through lots of questions and answers that didn't apply (materials and UV mappings)

And here I am today, again wading through pages and pages of irrelevant answers because people don't want to add a measly tag.


text:
I want to embed YouTube videos. What should I do?
I usually include a YouTube link when I post a question.
But I want to embed YouTube videos.
What should I do?

I think you should format a question in another way then. Question should rely on information which can be gathered from the question body without any videos (short gifs as exception). YT videos can't be embedded on this site and in my opinion shouldn't be. If you really want you can include a link to it but summarize its contents in text

Related: https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/93/599

BSE does not have YT embeds on purpose.
It all comes down to two types of posts we are trying to avoid: Link only posts, and "fix this" posts. Adding a video embed would just worsen both problems.
A video embed does not fit well in the SE system. A post could too easily be totally dependent on the video (link only), which would just make the this kind of problem worse.
So what should you do? Write your question, then link to the youtube videos. Remember any external source (like youtube or blend-exchange) must be supplemental. Generally, a question should be understandable just from reading the question. If a video is really necessary to get the information across (in most cases it isn't), then by all means link to it. But under no circumstances should should your question be a video and "See video for the problem."
Same goes for answers. When you write an answer, write it first then link to the youtube video. Remember any external source (like youtube) must be supplemental. Your answer should still be helpful and understandable on its own, not dependent on any links. If a YT video helps get the information across better, then by all means link to it. But under no circumstances should a video be your answer.

It would be nice to have a button in the formatting tools that does the thumbnail link method.  While we're at it, it would be nice to see this for blend file uploads too, but I am aware of the difficulties and reasons which may prevent this.


text:
How do I upload a question with a moving gif image?
How do I upload a question with a moving gif image?
It is inconvenient to have to link only the video of YouTube every time.

Use imgur site and use their embed code (forums) here.


text:
How to insert blend files into a question
I wanna ask a question about something concerning parenting in blender but I know I’d be clear if I knew how to insert blend or .mov files into my question. How do you do that on Mac?

Use this tool to post a blend file into a question https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Thanks!........

Could you flag this as answer if it helped you?

How do u do that?

Click the grey check mark on the left below the up/down vote buttons and it becomes green.

I wanted to mark this Q as duplication, but I really can't find any. Every second question here use blend-exchange link in Question's comment. There is something wrong in a system. Seems to be still very hard discoverable ....hm


text:
How come nobody answers my questions?
I have asked numerous questions on this forum and almost none have been. I’ve never been this ignored on any other forum ever?! What do I have to get attention, and answers.

for example you ask in one of your questions if you can add an IK to an armature, but your question is much too vague, yes you can add an IK to any armature, but in that precise case, where are you trying to add an IK, what to do, etc... plus it looks like it's an imported armature, not sure it's very controllable...

maybe not enough people to answer ? / or the question is not clear ? / or too complicated ? you have another big blender website where you can ask your questions: https://blenderartists.org/c/support/9/l/new

Most of your question is not well structured to make people understand your question in a quick glance. Too much question mark, not sure what are you asking for, and those topics are hard to answer IMO. Try to add figure to show your problem and use markdown to format your question, then we can talk about those vague topic

Also, there is only 2,000 people own 200+ reputation on this website. And maybe half of them ask a question and gain a lot of reputation while never using this website since the first post. This forum might not be that popular compare to Blender Artists and other forum maybe.

also since this is not a question about using blender it fits better in the [meta]. Also check  [ask] to figure out how to improve your questions.

What should I do if no one answers my question?

Thanks for the feed back.

I will go through some questions and add some feedback. If you actually care about this site you will update them and make them be a good contribution.

I always sound very rude, because of my flavourless descriptive tone. Sorry about that. But ask yourself the following question. If you haven't fixed all of your previous questions yet (it's been 10 days) and improved them, how do expect other users to give their free time and not only help you, but a large number of other people on this site?

I was under the idea that this website was a simple forum. If this is anything more than that, then maybe I should look somewhere else.

This site works a bit different than most: is a questions and answers site,  it is not a forum or social media. At the bottom of the page in the regular site there is a link that reads "tour" click on it to understand how the site works.


text:
Why I don't get an answer?
I have my two questions pending, don't know why no one is answering. Only comments don't lead to any conclusion! Reading comments and checking if it is right or not and at the end there's no answer, it becomes only a discussion, instead of getting a good answer in Answer Section.
This are my questions:
Rendering without material when executed from command prompt
How to make forced Smoke simulation like spray?
I too answer to the questions which I know... and also expect that when I ask, I will too get an answer from someone. But nothing happens, I am stuck, and I will be stucked for longer time, by finding any other options!

Hi Yash, have you progressed on your efforts of the second question? Please update it or answer it yourself! This was the valuable advice of the answer you received below. Please help this site grow, by participating and adding not only good questions, but also answer. Even an edit to the question with new findings can help others who are searching for the same solution.

Well maybe nobody knows the answer to your question. You said it yourself, you answer questions that you know the answer to. One of your questions is about rendering using the CLI. There isn't a lot of artists that use the CLI to render, hence the lack of answers. You could try to promote your question by offering a bounty or sharing it through social media. If you still don't get an answer, ask in another forum or IRC and when you find the solution, come back and answer your own question.
As for your second question, let me quote ParallelMayhem's comment to your question:

It probably requires masses of tweaking.

Sometimes the effect you are looking for is achieved by spending a lot of time tweaking and tuning parameters. You have to understand that users won't spend most of their free time trying to achieved the effect you are after. Often you will only be given suggestions and pointers, it is your job to find the setup that replicates the effect based on user's input. And again, when you do, come back and answer your own question.

That's my answer, okay I will look after that.

+1 For the last sentence of each paragraph. I will repeat it again =) Yash, have you progressed in your search, please update your question or add an answer.


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how do I answer a question which looks to have been removed as 'ambiguous' (How can you render Eevee animations quicker was the original question)
I could not answer this question: as it had been deemed 'ambiguous', So I had to comment...(I would disagree that it's an ambiguous question, as I can answer it).
So this is in the hope of reaching the person who asked the original question.
If you're using Windows (can't speak for other OS's), and Nvidia GPUs (plural) you can DEFINITELY (DEFINITELY) render Eevee animations quicker, by running an instance of Blender per GPU. (Assuming you're not doing this already that is!)

Quick screen grab of me getting 3 frames in the same time as only one if you only render with the GUI, or 'run as administrator' the .bat file
Here's the link to what I posted on Blender Artists for the full 9 yards...
https://blenderartists.org/t/render-eevee-animations-n-times-faster/1177668
Cheers
Mark

Hi MarkS, I think it's great that your trying to help. You could post a link to this Question on the original question as a comment. However, your concerns are valid, Stackexchange Sites have a unique way of handling things, which takes a while to get accustomed to.

If you have some information you want to share (as you just did in your question), opening a new Q&A is the right way and I'm happy that you did the work. However, questions for questions and answers for answer. Please separate your post into a question (which should be the only content of the question) and add your own answer. Yes, it is not unusual to add your own answer to your own question. That way, you can (1) accept the answer (2) people can find it easily and upvote it and (3) this question will be remembered as "answered" by the system.

Hello peeps! Can't link to the original question as it's gone... Sorry, but I didn't know this 'meta' place even existed. I was only trying to pass on the answer the only way I could work out how to...

@marks in that case feel free to post a new question yourself and answer it all together, you may even gain some upvotes in the process

Write a proper question (you can check the help center if you're unsure how to write a good one) then add your answer.
Leave it open for a day before accepting your own answer. Who knows, maybe even someone else can come up with a better solution!

Read the previous comments: I didn't ask the question, was merely attempting to answer it when it was removed....

@MarkS I know that, but since the question got removed, write a new one and self-answer. The same as Duarte Farrajota suggested in a comment, I'm just writing it as an answer.\


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Is there a newbie forum?
Is there a forum for complete newbies like myself, where we can ask the really ignorant questions, like how to paint the surface of an object or make objects move together as one etc?
I just started today and I feel a bit awkward asking these really basic questions in here, but figuring everything out by myself will take forever. There's just so many options...
Thanks.

with google or with the search tool you may find that your question has already been answered, for example, how to paint the surface of and object: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/65853/can-i-paint-on-my-objects

There is also Blender Artists if you don't wan't to put the research effort first.

Possible duplicate of Resources for Blender

You can also ask questions in our chat or on the #blender irc channel


text:
What's the difference between Stackechange blender and blender artistes
What are the differences between them and in which way should we use each?

The two are totally different, Stack Exchange are question and answer sites with strict rules, while Blender Artists is a casual forum


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replies to thread box very restricted
one can write a question and have paragraphs etc, add images.
reply to a reply and hit enter for a paragraph and the typing gets posted !
small little box to type in.
also I have to wait 40 mins it says before posting another question !
also I cant post unless I choose a tag but the tags available dont cover my subject at all.
could blender get a better forum interface as others have ?
Steve

You have already asked this before Comments are not for extended discussions, hence the intentional limitations. This is not a traditional forum for regular conversations, tags help guarantee your questions are on topic. If existing tags seem unhelpful your question is very likely off topic anyway

The time limits are because you are new (basically spam prevention).
Comments
What you are experiencing is the difference between posts (questions and answers) and comments not some kind of "replies to a thread."
Comments are meant to be short and simple (not an answer). There are no need for paragraphs, nor a full blown editor in the input box. You rarely need a larger input box for a comment (comments are limited to 600 characters anyway), but it can be resized. Just drag the bottom right corner.
Questions and answers (the real content of the site) is where everything happens. It is here you get full formatting, images, pretty code, etc. Because SE is a Q&A site, not a forum, the comments are treated much differently then questions or answers.
Nope SE will never change this core model to incorporate more "forum like" responses or features. Why? SE is not a forum. The site tour does a pretty good job of showing what SE is and how it works.
As an example: with an ideal question, there is no "discussion" there are no replies, or digging through pages of threads to find the answer. Simply a question, and answer(s) to that question. PS Anything posted in the answer section that does not attempt to answer the question will be deleted.
blenderartists (a forum) is great for art feedback and discussion. BSE is not for any kind of discussion. (If you want to discuss take it to chat or off site.)
Forum = message board for open discussion
BSE = Q&A site for blender
Tags
I'd be very surprised if we have no tags that cover your blender questions. Yet if there really are none then maybe that is telling you that your question is off topic. You might want to double check that if you find no suitable tags.


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Is XY Problem question need to be rewrite/edited?
XY problem happens a lot in BSE, especially Python and bpy question. eg. Print all information about an object, KeyError: key not found Blender python.
Most of the time an coder write down some script, then run it, then Python throw out an Error. Coder will keep tracking that error, and ask a question on BSE if they cannot figure it out. The question itself will become that Error rather than the real problem they want to achieve in their works.
I'm fine with these question since most of the question itself is a good defined question without ambiguity. And also from a fact rather then habit or personal opinion. We could directly answer the X problem without referring Y problem at all. But somehow BSE are encourage to let OP ask the Y problem and others should use comment to clarify whether this is an XY problem.
Let's assume we do infer about Y problem and answer the way to solve it, should we:

Edit the question itself to make it Y problem.
Let it still seems to be an X problem, people with the same though might search this keyword.
Directly mark it duplicated with Y problem question if there exist one.

The first one seems to be rude and angry with OP knowledge about the Y problem. The second one make it possible to follow the solving flow but make answer not that directly link to the question. The third one just make the question been "closed" and may lose some other possible solution toward X problem.
Any other solution or a rule that we can follow?

#2 seems to be the best option here, making it easier to find for future users, reducing the chances of recurrence , unless a duplicate exists, in which case it should be closed. When answering ideally address X if any solution exist, then succinctly explain why Y is better before presenting a solution.

Option 2 and Option 4 (which is what I do): Explain to people what the XY problem is in the comments and try and get them to understand that it might be to their advantage to reword their question to be about the original problem. If they don't want to edit it, answer the X problem (if you have time) but explain why that might not help.

AFAIC neither example posted is an XY Problem  For the keyerror have offered up a Y answer (I suppose)  to prod OP  towards using context rather than absolute naming.  Your answer, which I UV'd btw,  addresses issue in question..    IMO this one is https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/191242/how-to-check-if-node-has-a-name-property-while-iterating-through-materials  (needs title fix as its a nameless nodetree)  in that to the OP the issue is a nodetree with no name, whereas the problem is a node_tree reference pointing to None.

Thanks for the replying. @batFINGER Yeah that's post is what exactly I want as an example but I couldn't find one at the time I search. That post could be possible looked same as the one with AttributeError with similar concept. These kind of problem should belong to unfamiliar with Python when OOP scripting. Which seems to be too localized to solving it's own context when title or the question itself is not change. This is almost making a dictionary with those question as key and link to the same answer. Is this good for BSE? Or there is a good way to handle, help this situation?


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What happen to code highlight?
The code highlight seems to change its theme, which make it very hard to distinguish between comment, string, normal text.
Did I break some setting in my browser? Or it is intend to change the theme?
If it is intended, why? Can we make it more distinguishable between those type?

test = {
    "string": "Run specified script in all context",
    "variable": desc,
    "module": bpy,
    "tuple": (0, 1, 0),
    "list": [2, 80, 0],
    "float": 3.14159,
    "comment": ""  # code highlight
}

Here on meta there doesn't seem to be any active code highlighting, as far as I can tell. On main it is working as intended for me on your second example. It isn't immediate thought, it takes a few seconds to "kick in".

Also this update from Prettify to Highlight.js went through, so you might have caught some maintenance off time or during transition period

Yes, can confirm it is a temporary change and now string colored as dark green.


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Why are questions about exporting to third-party game engines so often closed as “off topic?”
It seems that, more often than not, questions involving exporting from Blender to a game engine are closed as being off topic, specifically for not being about Blender. Why? Blender is the one doing the exporting, isn’t it? If I am trying to aim a turret at a target, the question is about the turret’s control mechanism and not where the target is, so it’s about the turret isn’t it?

Game engines tend to have extremely unique rules for how they import or export models. This is because they are quite literally entire world simulators, focused on making that world work. And so, the rules of I/O with that world are very different from other 3D programs such as Blender, which are usually general purpose tools, and thus are focused on I/O with the outside world.
Because of this, the metaphorical target is not your usual daisy rings, but a complex mini-golf maze, which the turret’s projectile must enter at a certain speed and direction, or else it won’t count. The details on this are indeed questions about the target I.e. the game engine, and the turret I.e. Blender may not even be able to launch the projectile I.e. export the model or whatnot in the correct fashion at all. Game engine developers know this, and usually provide documentation for what formats to export as. If they provide custom addons to do this, such as if the format itself is entirely unique, the question is about their addon. If the engine imports the model with extreme difference from how re-importing it into Blender looks, this is either a limitation / bug in the engine’s importer, or a bug in Blender’s importer / exporter.
Note that if the Blender re-import looks quite different from the Blender original, it could just be that the format doesn’t support some type of data (textures or skeletons for example), and the export dropped them. Even the transforms of the model might be different (different size, being rotated 90° on one axis, etc). It should never change the mesh data, though (moved vertices, faces being added or disappearing, etc).


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How to record and upload animated screen shot
A lot of posts and answers on blender.stackexchange have nifty animated screen captures to show where/how to select various options, or to show "live" examples of problems one is facing in blender. How does one record and upload an animated screen shot to post to stackexchange? (i.e., to capture cursor movements, mouseclicks, etc)

To record videos of your screen, you will need some screen capture software.
I use one called CamStudio.  It's very basic and doesn't have many options, but it does what I need and costs nothing.  It creates AVI videos.
When you create a question or answer, the toolbar at the top of the text editor has an Image button.  If you convert your video to an animated GIF, the Image button should accept it, but note that there is a file size limit, so don't think about adding long videos.
If you want a longer video, upload it to YouTube (or other video site) and include a link to it in your post.


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How to mark question as solved?
they told me to mark the post as solved .. so i did that in the title.. seems not to be allowed.. but i asked and don't get an answer.. maybe help beginners by answering would be a nice feature. Can't finsd info on how to mark post as solved.
Thanks!

Welcome to Blender.SE. Read My question was answered. please. Be a little bit patient as well. Even on a comment user may take a day to reply. Not everyone can dedicate that much time to help others for free.

@Tuur sure we may come off as "hard to use" "super picky" and lots of other names, but that is just us trying to keep the site in some fashion of order. See blender.meta.stackexchange.com is for question about https://blender.stackexchange.com (like your question here). https://blender.stackexchange.com (BSE for short) is the Q&A site for blender.

@Tuur It's a common misunderstanding, no worries. I hope you'll stick around, but if not, then that's okay too. Either way, good luck on your Blender endeavors :)

Thanks!... sorry.. i was a bit 'picky' myself i guess ... i'm back  then and will have a closer look to the 'rules' of usage of this site.

This is how you mark a question as solved.
From the help center's What should I do when someone answers my question? page:

Accept it. As the asker, you have a special privilege: you may accept the answer that you believe is the best solution to your problem.

Then on the What does it mean when an answer is "accepted"? page:

Acceptance is indicated by a colored checkmark next to the answer that has been accepted by the original author of the question.
Accepting an answer is not meant to be a definitive and final statement indicating that the question has now been answered perfectly. It simply means that the author received an answer that worked for them personally.

You will find the accept button on the left of answers to your questions below the voting buttons.


text:
Question(s) about asking Questions
I just need some clarification about links when we ask questions. Here is how I understand it at the moment.
1) We need to use 3rd party image websites such as Imgur.com to host pictures we need to use in our post.
2) However we can’t link to other websites such as Goodyear tires if I had a question how to do tread of a tire.
3) What if we need an image from a third party website to help explain a problem we’re having?
I hope that I have anything correct.
Thank you,

To clarify about the images. Yes they are hosted externally, however it is not the same as a 3rd part image site, like imgur. SE has an special agreement with imgur. All the images uploaded through the image tools in the editor (see Duarte's answer) are through this domain: https://i.sstatic.net/. All "normal" imgur uploads simply go through https://i.imgur.com/. Aside from the license differences, images through the SE channel will stick around forever*, there is no such guarantee for imgur images.
There should be zero externally hosted images. (That goes for images where you do not own the copyright, reupload it through SE, and give attribution with a link back to the original.) Here is one of my questions as an example.
For your Goodyear tires example, do something like this:

Image from Goodyear

Use the builtin tools to upload your image like you would a local one.
Just press the Image button from the toolbar, use the Paste link option and paste the URL of the desired image.

If that fails you may also download it locally, then upload using the Browse button.
Make sure you are not infringing any copyright. As a matter of courtesy you should probably mention the source of the image and paste a link to the original as a footer note

...which might not be the best idea, when it comes to copyrighted material. It seems, StackExchange goes completely "nastyass honeybadger don't care" about that, but that might change in the future. Article 13 and so on...


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blender.stackexchange.com is the only site that does not reflect user profile changes
The following is a minor issue.
When I open my user profile page on blender.stackexchange.com, I fond my old contents. The other sites have reflected the latest changes of my user profile.

However, when I press the edit button, this site loads the latest version as follows.

I don't think it is due to propagation delay between sites. Is it  a bug?

I see your old content as well. Only a CM or Admin would be able to tell, I have no clue

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos: OK. Thank you very much.

Did you have a history of account merging? Your account is also not shown on the network profile.

@AndrewT.: I think I have no such a history of account merging.


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Reccomend including a .blend file in a new question
Mighty admins of Blender Meta,
Would it be possible to add a short text, suggesting to include a .blend file in a new question?
It could make answers more relevant and specific.
Just something simple like

Many questions are way easier to answer when a .blend file is provided. But only a small percentage of users actually does it.
So.
Would it be possible to add such a suggestion, or is it going against SE purpose?
Thank you

This is mostly a duplicate of this. My opinion is that ideally I would rather answer a well-worded, illustrated question without having to download a file, save for the cases where they really are required. Suggesting a user should upload a file may encourage them to be lazy in their question writing. This would make it harder for other users to tell whether this question is the same as theirs and whether the answers are therefore relevant to their own problem.

@RayMairlot Thanks for the link, I missed it. And also thanks for your opinion, I didn't think of that. Well I guess I'll just stick to asking for .blends on each question individually :).

I'd even dare say that if a question requires a file to be answered it is most likely a bad sign. It is either too localized or a "do it for me" job that is unlikely to be helpful to anyone else in the future.

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos You make a good point, sir. I still think it's a good idea to have a .blend available, but I can see the possible problems. Thanks everyone for sharing your experience :).

@RayMairlot Please, consider posting your comment as an answer, like `@Leander suggested. The comment section is a bit hard to navigate :).

@Leander Done. You're right, I should have done this.

Possible duplicate of Should all "Ask A Question" pages encourage the poster to upload their blend?

We do, as much as we can anyway. Unfortunately as far as I know we don't have any way to edit the ask a question page.
I disagree with some of the opinions expressed in the comments, I'd say a .blend is nearly always better than no .blend (there are of course times where it's not necessary, but it doesn't really hurt either). To mitigate "here's my project pls fix it" questions, ideally we want to encourage users to upload a stripped-down "minimal example" of their problem. Doing that

helps them, as often the process of isolating the problem leads to the solution (or at least helps with writing a clearer question)
helps us, as we don't need to dig through large .blends and try and reverse-engineer what the OP is attempting to do
helps blend-exchange by saving bytes
plus it alleviates some concerns users occasionally have over IP rights.

Unfortunately the only way we have to consistently communicate this to new users is by commenting and linking meta where relevant.

Good points over the pros of, especially the part about narrowing down the issue. My concern is that it all relies on actually getting users to strip the file down, which most newcomers never actually do.

Thank you for your thoughts, I couldn't agree more. This seems to be a situation where the Blender SE community can really shine :).

i totally agree with you gandalf3. And i wonder why Duarte is agreeing with u although he is the first to pin point on me when i am asking for blend files....! ..and not just one time.

My opinion is that ideally I would rather answer a well-worded, illustrated question without having to download a file, save for the cases where they really are required.
Suggesting a user should upload a file may encourage them to be lazy in their question writing. This would make it harder for other users to tell whether this question is the same as theirs and whether the answers are therefore relevant to their own problem.

Creating a totally Useless build up
Further to answer of @RayMairlot, another thing to consider is the hosting provider.
Policy for linking to blend files
Should all "Ask A Question" pages encourage the poster to upload their blend?
Often see a comment request to add a blend file to a question. The suggested host is often http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com ie permanent blend file hosting for bse provided by user @GiantCowFilms.  Similarly with those attached to answers.
Often the answer is change this setting, or plug this node in here, not here ,, As far as the Q&A is concerned there is no need for anyone else to DL the blend. From this point in time the blend file does nothing more than take up space. As we are aware from our download, pictures, desktop  and other folders that grow and grow and grow some maintenance is required, or  provide more and more storage space. (HD's have grown from Mega to Terra in 20 years, doesn't take 20yrs to fill them)
IMO In many cases using a temporary service like https://pasteall.org/blend/ would be much more suitable.  The blend file is kept for around 5 months.  Generally if the question is answerable and someone has requested the blend it is answered in less time than 5 months.
Could add a zillion links to questions / answers where I feel a permanently hosted blend file is totally unnecessary. (Sure you have seen plenty)  Does it matter if the link to blend is broken. How many answers over 5mths old even get looked at?
To sum up, consider requesting user upload blend to a temporary hosting site

Hello, bat :). I completely agree on this with you. While it's always better to have a file available, most of the files are only downloaded once/twice, so a temporary hosting seems a better idea. I'd reserve Blend-Exchange for answers only, it makes more sense there :).

Or build expiry into GCFs. ... then  assign "immortality or execution date" via a  new review queue?

That's a good point that we should be considerate of the Blend-Exchange server capacity. I try to keep the blends I post minimal in content, but I'm sure this does not occur to most new users. I also think it's case by case, and we should weigh the cost of the size against the benefit of keeping the content available.

I beg to disagree. I've downloaded quite a few files to further explore the answers, or play with the proposed settings (or the models or shaders) for my own needs. In the perfect world, a well documented answer would make downloading a file irrelevant, but in the imperfect reality of users that is not the case. Vanishing answers help no one once they are gone. Permanent answers might help some. Pasteall is of limited use... On top of that there are questions that are pretty much impossible to answer without the specifics of a file. Rigging or motion tracking are examples that come to mind.

Would concur re "imperfect reality of users"  that for the sake of argument  you have  totally missed the point.  Are you going to download the blend here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/209481/deleting-a-hook now.... in 5 months ... in 5 years time.  Need I post 100s more similar links  to make the case?


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First year with you and Blender. Thanks guys!
Today is exactly 1 year since I installed Blender and made my first ever 3D... donut.
And also 1 year since I visited this site for the first time to get help :).

You're all awesome, thank you!

Mad props to everyone for helping others navigate Blender.
It's thanks to your answers that I actually know what I'm doing most of the time :).

Moonboots - the best cookies in the business
Mr Duarte Farrajota Ramos - keeping this site a nicer place to hang around
Ray Mairlot - making sure people don't get lost here since 2013
batFINGER - thanks for all the nightmares :)
Robin Betts - aside from knowing everything, thanks for being the nicest person
Gorgious - modifier magician and node wizard :).
susu and troy_s - learning all the stuff like this from real pros is a nice change after art school :).
And also big thanks to others like Robert Gützkow, lemon, vklidu, Martynas Žiemys and Leander for their great answers.

That's it. I love it here.

I don't want to be a killjoy but, while I appreciate the spirit and sentiment (and your involvement on the site), I'm not entirely sure that the meta is the place for this...

I understand, I just didn't know where else to post this :).

Good old StackExchange, where being nice and saying thank you is officially discouraged. Glad to see that not everyone is taking the rules too serious.

Thank you @RobertGützkow :).

Thank, keep up the enthusiasm and great involvement.
Without trying to kill the mood, I do agree with Ray that Meta is not really the best place for this sort of post.
I think this post is probably symptomatic of the fact that we often deal with the same relatively small circle of users here at Stack Exchange, but in a somewhat cold and neglecting way that SEs policy enforces, without any sort of warmer social interactions whatsoever.
Instead of the usual flag and delete I'll try to turn this opportunity into a learning moment.
Not sure if you are aware of chat rooms.
They often go unnoticed, and users who never used them can't easily be coaxed into one. They are however an adequate place for the otherwise almost absent act of socializing on this barren Stack Exchange.
It's been slowly getting pretty deserted there for the past few years, and only got worse after the recent moderator resignations 1 & 2.
Maybe we can make good use of your enthusiasm and revive the once prosperous and lively chat rooms. Render Farm was created far before I knew about this site, and is the go-to off-topic general chat room around.
Feel free to chat away, I wouldn't mind getting to know some frequent users here a little better, maybe we can lure more users back in. Beware that users who never visited a chat room before don't get chat notifications even for @ direct mentions until you first visit a chat at least once.
Be sure to mention them in a comment linking to the particular room so they can join in.

Thanks for your kind suggestions :). I'll be sure to try chatrooms for expressing my enthusiasm :).