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Suggestion on Badge Design
When I saw the Badge design (next to the Badge Count in the header) on this site, I noticed it was normal. I would think it would be at the very least interesting to have a LEGO brick there instead. I know it is possible, other SE sites have Badge Designs related to the site (Christianity.SE for example has a Christian Fish as the Badge design in the header). What can be done to change this? Who can do it? May it be done?

It can indeed be done - however currently we're still officially in beta (hence the "Beta" after our site name in the header), and so don't qualify for a custom skin or the other changes that come with a fully graduated site.
In terms of actions, one of the things that Stack Overflow is keen to do is reduce the impact of design-by-committee - which has historically been an issue, and they do have in-house designers that take care of this, but there are a lot of sites now.
In fact, if you sort that list by age, you'll see we're the first graduated site with our own logo instead of just our initials in a blue speech bubble.
We'd probably also want to be distinct from the Gaming badges which look like 1x1 round studs.
In terms of what we really need to do, we need to consistently get at least 10 good quality questions day, which would push us closer to graduation and then consideration for a custom site skin.

I've been wondering how far we were from leaving beta.  I just looked at the page on area51 with our stats/appraisal.  So it seems like we're going to need 10x as many questions before doing so.

Just remember that we don't NEED to leave beta anymore, given the fact that that stage has now been recognized as a valid long-term state.

True, we don't have to leave beta as such, but it's very rare that a site will get a custom skin while still in beta.

So our questions help sites advance?

Our participation helps the site advance, we need more questions per day, and more answers per question ;-)


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How about a tag for logos?
We've had a spat of questions this week that are amazing logo-centric:

Octan
The LEGO Logo Font
my favorite, The Coffee Chain

And it isn't hard to find older questions that might be easier to discover with this tag:

Chicago Blackhawks logo Lego building instructions
Where can I find the LEGO fire dept. logo in high resolution or in vector format
Did LEGO ever make bricks without the LEGO logo?
LEGO and fuel company commercial relationship?

Is this enough related questions to warrant creating a tag?

I guess the question is how related are they really? And what benefit do we get by grouping them as such.
A question about the font used in the LEGO logo is really about branding, or design, rather than the logo specifically, while a question about building a logo doesn't really benefit from being grouped with questions about finding stickers for a particular real or fictional chain.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Do we agree on how to capitalize LEGO?
It seems like LEGO is the official way to write it, but folks seem to like to write Lego or lego.

See also: FYI - informed LEGO of the existence of bricks.se - where TLG responded with:

Also LEGO needs to be written always in capital letters and should never stand alone so LEGO bricks, LEGO Sets...

Our general approach here has been that we don't go around capitalising every single instance (in the same way that we might not purge every single instance of LEGOs), but if you're editing a post for some other reason (spelling, formatting, etc.) then please do fix them up.
Although I'm sure you'll find examples where I've only fixed up LEGO...

I'm pretty sure the Lego company can't dictate how people spell their name. Trademark law doesn't forbid you from speaking about a company or product and doesn't impose any restrictions on the users of the site.
To the extent that the site itself wishes to be friendly towards Lego, and wishes to use the name Lego in its name, the site needs to respect Lego's own guidelines. But that is because Lego is allowing the site to use their name. If bricks.stackexchange.com weren't called "Lego Answers" then the Lego group would have no possible reason to expect any particular treatment of its trademarks.
In short: I think the site should do whatever Lego wants with regards to the trademark. However, I'm certain that the users, that is, people posting Qs and As, do not need to learn the Lego trademark guidelines and follow them. That isn't what trademarks do and that isn't how language works. Spell it however you want.

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


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moving towards fewer tags
I heard that having tags with few posts associated with them is discouraged in StackExchange and I've scanned the LEGO Answers tags enough to spot a few anomalies:

adult-lego and afol are quite similar and only have 9 questions between them.  Should they be merged?
identification's definition includes "Trying to identify a LEGO element or set that you possess or have seen somewhere?" yet we also have part-identification with relatively few questions which seems to be a distinct subset of identification and many of the questions carry both tags.
model-identification could also be a subset of identification and most of those questions already carry both tags
can someone help me decide when something belongs in building vs design?
aren't investment and trading too similar?
couldn't abs get merged into plastics?  One question is already in both.
brands only has two questions: 1 is already in clone-brands and 2 doesn't benefit much from the tag.

Should we be cleaning this sort of thing up at this stage in the Beta process?

What is wrong with it?

Thanks for bringing these to attention, I've made changes to the most obvious ones:
The adult-lego tag is now a synonym of afol.
The tag abs has been removed.
The brands tag has been removed and replaced with clone-brands where applicable.
Remember tags will be automatically culled and removed from the system if they are not used by at least 1 other question in a 6 month period, occasionally a few tags get used on one or more questions when they perhaps should not be.

The investment and trading tags are indeed very similar but there are quite a few trading questions that I would not consider appropriate to be classed using the investment tag.
sets + identification seems to be used interchangeably with model-identification, I have removed the latter.
I agree, identification, building and design tag could definitely be made clearer. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

That's awesome.  Thanks so much.


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Is it proper procedure to merge several answers into mine?
With regards to question Unidenitified LEGO set, I wonder if it is proper custom to take parts of other answers and merge them into the most comprehensive one to create one, all-encompassing answer?
I don't want to generate the impression that I am stealing answers from others to boost my own answer. User @shea just added another answer with a component that is new info. Since my answer was the first and is the most comprehensive at this point, is it okay to add the component of @shea's question into mine?

Ideally, we'd like to have a "definitive" answer to a question - this is exactly what Community Wiki was originally designed for - multiple people working on a single answer - you can convert your answer into a Community Wiki (which won't affect any other answers to the question) as you edit it - see for example my answer to What is the largest single LEGO piece.
As the OP can only accept one answer, it's not unreasonable for some dedicated user to combine other answers into their own to form a whole answer - however it is only polite in that case to note that inspiration/details came from the other answers and up-vote them (there's even a badge for that).


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How to close questions that are not useful to others
In particular, this is in regard to Infrared sensor behavior. The problem was user error. It's not likely that this question would be of use to anyone else and may in fact come up in searches where someone has a problem with the infrared sensor, but of course this won't help them. None of the options under close seem to match though. What are other moderators doing in cases like this?
For reference, here are the options:

duplicate of... This question has been asked before and already has an answer.
off-topic because... This question does not appear to be about LEGO Bricks within the scope defined in the help center.
unclear what you're asking Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.
too broad There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.
primarily opinion-based Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.

Originally these would probably have been closed as "Too Localised", however that was removed a couple of years ago and the recommendation now is to use "Off Topic", and then probably select "Other - add a reason".
That said, there might be some value in having your comment that points out that the Infra-red and Ultrasonic sensors can be easily confused turned into an answer for future readers ;)


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Are all these edits really necessary or even helpful?
I'm all for having fun with competitions, but adding prizes increases the stakes further in a game which already causes much unnecessary noise. See for example the flood of trivial edits from users of all reputation levels (some of whom are inactive on this site outside of Winter Bash) bumping old questions to the "active" page only to get the "Werewolf hunter" hat:

Or this example, where a clearly unanswerable question that was closed as a duplicate got edited and voted to reopen without any significant changes. All for another hat (180°).

I'd like to ask the opinion of the community, is such behaviour helpful enough to warrant awarding prizes for?
NOTE: I have explicitly avoided mentioning any users and it is just a coincidence that both the above examples are from the same user - I could have included other trivial edits from other users as well. The question is NOT about one user or two but the generic behaviour.

EDIT The answer to the Meta.SE post pointed out by Eran in the comments promises a rework for next year and changes the triggers for this year's event:

For this year, to reduce the disruptiveness that the original hat definition has introduced, we have

Reduced the requirement from 5 to 3 edits
Changed the hat to trigger on editing of 3 questions on either meta or main sites

Which has propagated the phenomenon to Bricks.meta as well (this time the examples are from another user):

And here:

cross sire duplicate : https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/340049/retire-werewolf-hunter

To be fair, while all fairly trivial in those examples, they are correcting typos, grammatical issues and brand capitalisations...

While I would prefer that this didn't create noise for us, I believe that it is a beneficial trade-off.
Our site isn't very noisy, so a few more edits to review probably isn't a big deal. The noise also primarily impacts our most active users who are managing review queues while not harming the experiences for new users who are interacting with our community for the first time. I want to be clear that I value all the hard work that our most active users put in, but I'm working under the assumption that we're all willing to put in a bit of extra work to facilitate growth of this community into the future.
My hope is that Winter Bash can help increase engagement between current users and new users over the next several weeks by encouraging current users to be active on the site.
I'm certainly open to suggestions on how we can run this better. This is our community, so if there is consensus that it would be better not to offer prizes for Winter Bash you will get no argument from me. Offering prizes for this creates work for me during a busy season and provides no benefit for me personally, as I obviously exclude myself from winning anything.

I agree that these edits are helpful and needed. But they shouldn't be done in such odd fashion. It just looks a little strange, at least, to see multiple questions from many years ago bumped in short period of time. I believe this kind of reviews should happen gradually during all the year, not just during Winter Bash.

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


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Don't bite the newcomers?
I don't have a ton of SE experience, so take what I'm asking with a gain of salt. I am a fairly established Wikipedian, and over there we have a policy called WP:BITE which basically explains how to be nice to the new users. While it seems like we aren't being particularly hostile to newcomers in the things that we say, I have been noticing that we tend to down vote bad questions from new users into oblivion. Here's one example:
Why are new LEGO bricks softer than old ones?
This is admittedly a somewhat vague and biased question, and could use some work. We seem to have done a good job of explaining what the issues were with the question, but then we down voted it a bunch (at the time of writing this it has 4 down votes). If I were a new user on an SE site, I wouldn't want my first question to be a -5. It would make me feel rather unwelcome. I'm not sure what we can really do about this, but I'd encourage us to not continue to down vote poor questions which are already negative.

I had hesitated to close the first question myself, considering it was essentially just a long rant and not a real question. However, seeing it did came from a newcomer, I considered trying a more gentle approach, but I knew this would take some time (as it required a well-written comment) so I didn't do it immediately, and then the question was closed by someone else. Frankly, I didn't shed a tear on that.
On the principle, I do agree that we should be welcoming to newcomers, so that the community can grow, and that so far we haven't been that gentle.
However, we are not wikipedia. We strive towards good answers as well as good questions. And sometimes, questions are just junk which just isn't salvageable. Maybe we should let the voting system do its job, but then we risk that junk answers are affixed to the junk questions, increasing the total junkiness of the site. We don't want that. So sometimes, it's better to just root it out as fast as possible.
Sure, it'll shun the poor newcomer who asked his question in good faith. But in all honesty, I also feel that if the newcomer is to become a valuable member of the community, he well be able to learn from the experience and understand what good questions are. And if he doesn't, well, that's harsh to say, but do we need him that much? Of course, there we have an important thing to do which is to document the reason for closure properly. A well-written comment is usually the best way to do. Possibly including some basic element of answer as well as the reasoning for closing.
I did close one speculative question recently myself, instead of relying silently on other moderators to do so.
I can't quite shake the feeling that I have been harsh in doing so, but on the other hand maybe that's the best way of working.
Note that when we finally graduate, we will elect proper moderators, and maybe they will have other views on the subject; at the very least it should be a discussion point during the elections, so that the opinion of the community as a whole is better represented.

Edit: to expend on the "we're not wikipedia" part, keep in mind we're part of a network of Q&A sites, and while our focus is very different than, say, the one for Stack Overflow, it makes sense to follow the same guidelines to be consistent across the network. More importantly, if the approach worked on SO and contributed to make it thrive, maybe it'll work for us too.
In that regards, there are of course posts on meta.so which deal with new users, and I found the question On closing new users' questions quite close to this one. The accepted answer goes "If a new user asks a bad question, it should be closed."

Personally, I think the spec question you linked to should have been closed - a more generic version would have been closed as a duplicate anyway. In general yes, I agree we should be trimming the bad stuff fairly fast, I'm just aware that (Ts & Cs not withstanding) we may attract a slightly younger audience that might appreciate a slightly gentler approach.

Thanks for the response. Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we keep bad questions open or refrain from down voting them. I just don't like seeing questions from new users that have down votes piled on to -5 or so. I know that when I see a question that I think isn't constructive and is already at a negative score, my instinct is to flag it as not constructive if it isn't already closed, or just leave it alone. Obviously, those with more rep can just close it straight away.

I think, having some experience with the other  SO sites, that it shouldbe a good habit to comment when downvoting. I don't know  if the system asks for this, but if not, it could. This remark refers to all SO sites.

Forcing comments on downvotes has been discussed ad nauseam on meta stack overflow, and it won't happen. However, users with less than 2k reputation should get a message advising them to comment when downvoting. I guess users having more than 2k rep are considered wise enough to understand it's usually good etiquette to comment.

I have to admit I did notice the other day an fairly swift close on a question that could have had a gentle comment added to it prior to the close.
While I'm not saying that the question isn't without it's flaws (there are still many even after the first edit), I'm not sure what the best option is.
I think my preferred approach is probably:

Comment on issues with question, maybe with a down-vote. In the case of the set quality question this could have been salvaged with some specific examples of what the perceived issues are - however even then it may end up being too subjective.

If the question isn't updated after period, close.
If the question is updated and has merit, remove down-vote.

If there's absolutely no hope of salvage, close, but with a comment beyond the boiler-plate.

I think the "give it some time" approach included in this is probably the wisest as it gives a chance for the newcomer to understand what's going on.


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Moderator Pro-Tem Announcement
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: Moderators Pro Tempore.
I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed.

We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.
Did I overlook anyone?
Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in no way a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why you'll have your elections once your site has graduated.
Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone.

I am too caught up moderating SO, so these guys will do for now :)

@BoltClock Why thank you ;)

@BoltClock: Nice to see you here, colleague ;))


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Can we incorporate some building block colors somewhere in the LEGO Answers banner?
Is there some way we can get StackExchange to incorporate some classic LEGO colors somewhere in the LEGO Answers.SE page banners? Some old school yellow, green, red and/or blue would fit in nicely.

Really we should have some more traction on Can I suggest a more LEGO-y skin ;) Perhaps we can get Jin to take a look and make us a little more welcoming.

Nice. I'd say the skin post makes my question a duplicate. I voted the other question up +1.


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we need a "linux" tag
I asked Can I use the WeDo USB hub with normal Linux distributions? and tagged it with linux, which was subsequently removed along with the comment "I don't think we need a linux tag".  Another user asked https://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/698.  While I don't expect Linux-only users to be in the majority here, I do think that linux would be useful for those who are looking for Linux+Lego information.
As another example, LPub doesn't natively support Linux, but I've ported it to Linux.  (Published on my blog.)
So I think there is room for questions that are directly related to Linux but Lego-centric here.  Given that, I think linux would be useful.
What say you?

I think the questions on which a linux tag would be helpful are the kind of questions which are actually borderline for this site. Sure, they are about LEGO software, but if the answer is going to be along the lines of how to install and run a virtual machine or whatever, then maybe whether the question is asked on the right site is debatable.
Anyway, I don't mind the questions that much, but I'm pretty much against any OS-specific or computer-specific tag. software should be more than enough. AT the moment, anyway.

I think single general software will be enough for the first time.

Yeah, and besides that, if you want to look for question that involve a certain OS, just type something like "windows" in the search and you immediately get your results, which renders OS tags useless.

I'm not convinced that we do need a Linux tag for a couple of reasons:

We'll almost invariably end up with Windows and Mac tags as well, and then someone will argue that they need an Ubuntu one too "How do I run LPub under Ubuntu?"
I'm not convinced that we'll really have enough questions that are specifically about Linux related issues - the search works fairly well to find questions and answers with Linux in them, and really I'd rather see the tags here related to the software packages in question, rather than the host OS.

If someone has a question about how to generate a manual in LPub it shouldn't matter whether it's the Linux version or a Windows one really.
However, I'm happy to see what the rest of the community thinks, and go with the direction.

Creating instructions in LPub is not OS-specific, but running LPub on Linux is, particularly since you'd have to apply patches.  The latter being what I was trying reference in my example.

Yep, I realise that it's the "running LPub" aspect that you were getting at - what I meant was that people might well tag a question about creating instructions in LPub and tag that "linux" when it should really just be "lpub". Like I say, if we end up with enough questions that are truly improved by having the Linux tag (or Windows or Macintosh) then great :)

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


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Should questions about LEGO events, themeparks and other things unrelated to building be allowed?
I saw this question today about Legoland, which led to wonder whether such questions should be on-topic: Will it be fun to go to Legoland with my family?

I am 31 years old . My elder sister and mother are going to visit me. I want to see whether it is suitable to bring them to LegoLand. Thanks

The question strikes me as low-quality (it's subjective because different people enjoy different things, and very localized to one person's family situation). Besides that though, I'm not sure if it's on-topic, or whether it should be. The FAQ outlines the following as appropriate questions:

Building techniques for a particular part of a model
The history of The LEGO Group or elements
Care and organisation of your bricks
Techniques for getting the best out of your Mindstorms Robots
Replicating advanced building techniques in CAD applications (i.e. LEGO Digital Designer or LDraw based applications)

This question is only tangentially related to Legos, as it asks about the Lego themepark. It's not at all about building, history, etc. though. Should we be allowing questions like this?

While I agree that the question is rather localised (especially with the "my family" element), I felt that the question had some broader merit - I know a few other AFOL's without the excuse of kids whose partners/family aren't interested in LEGO - and so answered the question from that interpretation.
We mod's had a brief chat about it, and I felt that it might get lost over at Travel.SE, and that it was just about on topic for here - perhaps the question could be reworded to:

Will non-LEGO fans have as much fun at LEGOland as me?

Which was the question I tried to answer.
Note that the list in the FAQ is introduced with "In general, if you have a question which covers", the list isn't exclusive, it's a guideline, and we've not explicitly excluded the topic in the list of things that are off-topic.
As you can see from the answers and comments over on Six sites due to be scrapped we've taken a fairly lenient approach to borderline questions - if they get traction (good or bad) from the other users we'll act accordingly - if you feel strongly that something doesn't fit then please flag it so we know what you think - we're Pro-tem moderators, so unlike voted mod's we don't really have a full mandate from the users to act with autonomy ;)

I think this is exactly the kind of question which in a general sense should be considered as off-topic (or too localized), but also for which if gets asked once in a while, doesn't pose any very serious problem.
At some point, we'll probably want to have one CW FAQ question about LEGOland parks (which are of interest to LEGO fans anyway), and point to it when closing other questions on that topic. But as long as we don't have one, I'd tend to leave these questions live. Notice that no one even voted to close it.

I was considering closing this question as overly broad or off topic but my vote would have been binding. I do think it's a question better suited to Travel.SE but it would probably be closed as 'too general'. As it stands the question doesn't suite the current scope of the site and I've decided to close the topic.

In my view, some questions about theme parks are right on topic. For example, questions about the LEGO models would seem to be well within the scope of this site. These questions need not be considered too localized, as we can all see pictures / videos of the models even if we can't see them in person.
So, the following could be on-topic:

What scale are the buildings at the theme parks?
How do the model cars at the theme parks know where to go?
Does LEGO use special colours / moulds for the bricks in the theme park models?

On the other hand, questions about rides and outlets would be outside the scope. The difference is that these questions aren't really about LEGO, but about attractions that happen to be LEGO-themed.
Of course, there are grey areas. We'll have to deal with these on their merits.

YES.  This site is too niche not to.
Having been to LEGOLand (Florida) recently, I do not believe there to be that many possible questions regarding it, so I do not see the harm in allowing questions regarding it and tagging them with a LEGOLand tag.
Here are the types of questions I'd expect:

Where are the Legoland parks?
What is the difference between each Legoland park?
What are the attractions at Legoland {name of location}?
Where are the official Lego places to go and their differences? (Legolands, LEGO Stores, and LEGO Discovery Centers)
What things can I do at LegoLand that I can't do at a LEGO Store or Discovery Center?
What is there at the LEGO Centers (wrong name?), like the one in Chicago?
What is the age range of visitors allowed at the LEGO centers?
(note recent news article)

Heck, we can pre-answer some of this stuff and that would drive page views, visitors, etc.

I see the point here, but I still don't think these questions belong. Almost all of those questions are a) general reference, and b) likely to change frequently as exhibits/activities change. I suppose there could be times when a question might work, but most of those examples seem ill-fitted to the site.


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Are questions on the sociology of Lego fan culture on topic?
This is in reference to  What is the basis of purism in LEGO building?, recently closed by Dori.
I can see how this question might seem subjective, debatable, or even frivolous if one hasn't been a part of or observed Lego fan culture. But if you have, some serious answers are already probably springing to mind — or would, if you'd stop and think about the background. It's something I've discussed at length with other Lego fans, but I've never really put anything into writing. I thought some of the other experts and fans here might be able to articulate it well, and indeed we already have at least one answer that's a great start.
The culture of Lego fandom is a big part of why we have this site. If we can't ask questions about that without having the questions closed, we're missing the mark. And if you think that sociology in general is "bad subjective" or all "not real questions", well, I guess you can take up an argument on Skeptics or somewhere on whether sociology is a real science or not.
Can we please have this question re-opened?

I would say that questions about the sociolgy of Lego is off topic here, but I'm not sure the question you are refering to falls into that category.
As it stands, the question asks about why people choose to build Lego in a certain way. The answers seem to suggest that this is as much a quality of the Lego bricks themselves as it is a question about the builders. Lego has unique qualities (reuse, quality of production, versatility, limitations that lead to challange etc.) that inspire some builders to take a purist approach to their building.
I would argue, therefore, that this is a question that can uniquely be asked about Lego, and that it leads to answers that meet the "good subjective" criteria listed in Dori's (helpful) answer.

I've tried to remove the parts of the question that are most likely to be "bad subjective" and leave the bits that are "good subjective", and voted to reopen. I realise that the question is a little different from the original, and that it still might not be to everyone's taste. Hopefully, however, @mattdm can still get what he needs from it.


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What are the requirements for the beta badge?
What are the requirements for the beta badge? I know that I have to actively participate in the private beta. What does actively mean? Is there a minimum number of questions, etc?

Duplicate: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/81833/when-do-i-earn-the-beta-badge

Beta badges are in! http://bricks.stackexchange.com/badges/30/beta Yay, got one.

A full list of badges can be found on Meta.SE
The user must earn at least three bronze badges during the private beta period. The badge will be awarded when we move into public beta.

It's exactly the same answer

http://bricks.stackexchange.com/users/105/tim - only 2 bronze and a beta badge.

Since the answer isn't really given elsewhere, on purpose, I'll chime in with what I remember being told when commiting to another beta: one must at least post 10 answers and/or questions for the commitment to be considere fullfilled.
I don't know if it's correct or applies to he beta badge, and I wouldn't bother too much. More participating and less worrying should get the job done.

Yep, the fact that badges are awarded slightly opaquely is discussed on podcast 23 (http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/10/se-podcast-23/) where "mystery" is considered one of the six tenets of games, and they want the badges to be "mysterious", where you have to puzzle out how to earn them. Otherwise it's not fun ;)

This applies to the area 51 commitment, but the Beta badge is easier to get than this.

I knew I answered too much


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Shopping Questions?
I've recently suggested we close the following question:

Where to find older sets (eg. Classic Space)?

I've given my reasons in the comments. They are (I believe) broadly in line with the policy on shopping questions on other SE sites. Indeed, I'm even not sure that it is a question that applies specifically to LEGO - I could ask the same question about other things (Action Man figures, Comics, etc.)
However...
Joubarc, for one, sees merit in the question, and I can see his point - there does seem to be value in providing a comprehensive list of places to obtain old LEGO. Moreover, we already have numerous questions tagged shopping, and to be honest, most (if not all) of these seem to fit well within the scope of this site.
The other thing that bothers me is that questions that promote list-style answers and "requests for resources" have also frowned upon elsewhere on SE... but I'm not sure that the "rules" have always been applied in a sensible way, nor that they should apply to this site in particular. There are already several questions whose answers are lists, and questions whose answers provide external resources. To me, the seem perfectly fine - indeed, I may even have contributed to some of them. In my opinion, then, they provide value to the site, and I'd be sad to see them go.
So, my question: as a site, what is our policy on shopping questions? Assuming we allow them, how can we differentiate the good from the inappropriate?

I must admit I forgot about the policy on shopping on other sites - whihc is a very valid point, and seen as such, it should apply here as well.
However, I still believe shopping questions are actually a classic interrogation point for a lot of fans, and this goes back to rec.toys.lego. As such, I believe such questions have a room here, although we should make sure there aren't too many of them, and that they are as broad as possible. The one referred in the original post is, in my opinion, a very good example: "where to find old sets" is as broad as it gets, and fans still need to know that.
I'd suggest to CW these question/answers though.

The classic post about shopping questions focuses on such questions being temporary by nature.  It's a lot harder for such questions to stand the test of time.  If a LEGO set is currently on sale at one retailer, that's the best place to buy it today, but not tomorrow.  Temporary questions are just not the best use of a Stack Exchange site.
Shopping questions can also be a problem because of Parkinson's law of triviality AKA bikeshedding.  The idea is that if you are designing a nuclear power plant, it's unlikely that there will be many people who will know enough about the problem to offer solutions.  But if you want to design a bike shed (for the operators of the plant to park their bikes during the day), you'll get as many suggestions as there are people you ask. Of this sort are purchase questions with fairly boad criteria (Lego set for 17 year old,  LEGO for a 1 year old, How to start with technic?, etc.).
So one criteria to evaluate this and other shopping questions is: Do you need to know something about LEGO to answer?  If there's something unique about a purchase that only a LEGO enthusiast could know, then go for it.  Collectors go about shopping far more deliberately than the average shopper.
Now reading the shopping questions I see the same answers recurring:

BrinkLink
Ebay
Pick-A-Brick
LUGBULK

So it would probably be best to create (or designate) a few questions to be canonical.  For instance, you could probably merge questions about buying in bulk or buying discontinued sets into a pair of questions addressing these issues.

A valid set of good points all round.
My thoughts are:

Shopping questions need to be applicable - this has been covered in a number of places, most notably in Q&A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping! - there are ways that these questions can be asked and answered helpfully.
These questions should be CW - most of our other list questions are, and are better for it.
I think there is some value in a (one) general "Where to buy Old Sets" question, but we should probably close as a duplicate the "Where can I buy older sets such as the VW Beetle" as it's a little too specific (remember we don't have to close the most recent, only the least useful), and any others that crop up.


text:
Are questions relating to LEGO.COM on-topic?
These questions don't relate to a product, but a service run by The LEGO Group (the LEGO website).
Here are a few similar questions based on star-wars and advent-calendar relating to LEGO.COM:

How do I unlock the daily surprises?
Can't open the page to enter my LEGO Advent Calendar code
I have entered codes for days 1-7 on the LEGO Star Wars Calendar site
and now can't enter any more

Dec 2013 Update
We've been getting many more advent-calender questions this advent month:

What are the codes for the LEGO advent game?
Star Wars 2013 Advent calendar codes
We have a 2013 advent calendar and have entered the code from Sunday
but there doesn't seem to be any codes for the 2nd or 3rd
Star wars advent calendar 2013
How do I unlock the sunday surprise on the 2013 Star Wars Advent
Calendar?

Do we really want these kind of questions? Most of these questions would have been closed as 'too localised' prior to June 2012.

closed as too localized
This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only
  relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an
  extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to
  the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question
  more broadly applicable, visit the help center.

¨Per se, I don't mind questions on LEGO's websites, but my problem with these uestions is that they're very localized in time - there's a good chance LEGO will pull the plug real fast on these pages, and by then the question pretty much makes no sense.
I guess this would be true for a lot of other pages though, but especially for these.

Should we have an off-topic close reason for these kind of questions considering we no longer have a 'too localised' flag?

Not sure - I guess they are similar to the ones we've had on Software support:

LEGO Mindstorms NXT Software Error

We're not really the best people to help with these - as they are really support issues for LEGO to resolve, but we've got a group of people here who may well know an answer.
Personally, I felt the first one (How do I unlock the daily surprises) was fairly "on topic" and easily resolvable.
The second one is certainly dubious, as it's more general Mac/Browser support (probably not even a LEGO Support issue).
The third one I'm unsure of - not having the calendar myself nor the daily codes, I've not seen this issue, so can't comment one way or another.


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AFOLCON / BRICK 2014 - Sponsorship Proposal
AFOLCON / BRICK 2014
What?

AFOLCON  is a 1 day fan convention, it is the UK's first and only LEGO convention dedicated to adult fans. Attendees will be able to listen to guest speakers, including those employed in the LEGO company as designers.

BRICK 2014  is a 4 day public show with support from The LEGO Group. Like most LEGO shows, BRICK 2014 will feature models from both fans and professional builders.
When?
AFOLCON
26th November 2014
BRICK 2014
27th-30th November 2014
Convention Timetable
Where?
ExCeL London
Why?
Representing at AFOLCON is the perfect opportunity to promote LEGO Stack Exchange.
AFOLCON has an audience of mature LEGO enthusiasts, many of whom are already active and familiar with online communities but may not be aware of LEGO.SE.
The goal of visiting this convention is to raise awareness of our community and promote the Stack Exchange Q&A model.

How can I get sponsored?
If you're interested in promoting LEGO.SE this year at BRICK 2014 and/or AFOLCON please read this Meta topic and tell us why you should represent LEGO Stack Exchange.
(Please give your proposal as an answer to this question)

Are you an active, engaged member of the community? Have you organized
the community around events like contests or important meta posts in
the past? Do you leave guiding comments on newbies’ posts with great
regularity? Have you attended an event before and told everyone far
and wide about Stack Exchange and its awesomeness? Have you been
sponsored by us before? The more you can show us that you’re a deeply
committed user and an engaged member of the community, the better your
chances of approval.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/132283/157163

Ambo100
I have supported LEGO Stack Exchange since its infancy at Area 51. As a pro-tem moderator of the site for over two and a half years, I have become very familiar with how Stack Exchange works and I feel comfortable explaining to other LEGO fans what LEGO SE can do for them.
I would like to be able to bring the site to the attention of a wider audience. To do so, I plan on working closely with the Stack Exchange community managers to develop suitable promotional material (such as t-shirts, pamphlets or business cards).
I plan on producing a daily photo report of my experiences which I will share with the LEGO.SE community as Meta/Blog posts.
I'm familiar with London having lived there and visited many times. By Rail and DLR I can get to ExCel London in 1 hour and 20 minutes from my nearest train station.

I'm going to try and take my kids to the main event, but I'm not sure I'll be able to attend the conference itself unfortunately, so I wholeheartedly endorse Ambo100's application ;)


text:
How can we deal with unanswered questions?
Something noticeable about the unanswered questions is that the majority of questions (19 out of 23) relate to the robotics software and hardware.
Do we have too few experts on this subject, are theses questions too specific or is there some other reason?

I'd say that most of the truly unanswered ones are very specialised: either skiing for help with a specific error that perhaps out haven't seen or using some combination of set ups that are fairly unique ("How can I control nxt 2.0 robot with a Wiimote in labview?", "Guide me on how to use my Mindstorm RCX kit on OS X Mavericks") - perhaps these should be closed as too localised. Others seem to be suffering from the fact we're not a discussion site something's not working some suggestions have been made and then there's no further response from the OP.


text:
Are speculative questions on-topic?
There are a few questions on this site about future sets/themes. This site is not affiliated with The LEGO Group and we cannot expect to find a statement from LEGO for every question posted.
The most our members can do is speculate, and until a certain set/theme has been confirmed or discredited there is no right or wrong answer.
It's also important to consider how valuable these questions will be considered to future visitors of the site.
Under the current Stack Exchange guidelines for closing questions these questions can be considered 'not constructive' or 'too localised':

As of November 2011, should I buy the NXT 2.0 now, or wait and buy
the NXT 3.0 later?
Are there plans to release new trains for AFOL?
Is LEGO testing the market with the Minifigure Series?
Is there going to be a lego simpsons advent calendar

The text for "too localized" goes as such:

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable

Which for me is a good enough reason to close such questions, and as you'll notice, I've ended up doing so for the NXT 3.0 question, as it was very obvious in that case.
My feeling on the two other questions is slightly different, however, as I feel they are more general in nature, not really asking about what LEGO does right now but more about what they're doing. Still localized in time, but less so. Well, I contradict myself as my first comment on the train one is that it's speculative, and the answers so far indicates that the question is indeed going nowhere. Yet I can't bring myself to close it, not sure why - I'd feel more comfortable if it was closed by regular users, actually.
The question on minifig could be interesting, and seems less speculative, but again, maybe we'll be able to judge from the answers.

I think we should add a custom "Off-topic" reason to cover these - "Off-topic - Speculation" - I didn't catch the question Is there going to be a LEGO Simpsons advent calendar when it was asked, but I don't think we can answer this one until it's either released/announced (along with the other usual Advent Calendars: City, Friends and Star Wars) or not, and eventually it will be "too localised" under the date reason.
While these are often questions we'd like to know the answer to, I don't feel we're ever going to be able to answer them officially before any other source - so we won't be adding any value to the internet.
I've added the following "off-topic" reason, but it needs another mod to approve:

Questions asking when or if sets are going to be released or retired are off-topic because this information is controlled by The LEGO Group and not something we have access to.  For more information see Are speculative questions on-topic?.

I have to admit that, since bricks.stackexchange.com is not is good health, I'm trying to generate more questions lately.
I'm trying to approach LEGO from different perspectives and I do indeed ask questions that I would normally not ask.  On the other hand those are things that I really would like to know even though, in the case of the Minifigure Series, only an official LEGO statement could really settle the question.  So, in a way, it is possible that LEGO has or eventually will releases information proving or disproving this (e.g. through an interview or a YouTube video).

I'm not denying some of these questions are interesting and are popular with LEGO fans, but they do seem better suited to something you would find on a forum.

I agree. I stretched the rules a bit on the last ones.  I trying to find a new line of questions that would help the site.  I wish I had more 'building' type of questions.


text:
Proper usage of the 'Mindstorms' tag
The two tags rcx and nxt which both represent the two flagship Mindstorms products have all been tagged with the mindstorms tag. Perhaps we should use the Mindstorms tag to refer to general Mindstorms questions instead?
We had a similar issue on Bicycles.SE (albeit the regional tag was a meta tag).
I think it's important we establish this tags usage at an early stage.

If the question is specific to nxt only, tag it nxt.  If it's more general, but your use-case is the NXT, then tag it with both.  It's more general, tag it with mindstorms only.
For example, my question from yesterday, How much depth does the NXT battery pack add? I tagged nxt, but NOT mindstorms.  The mindstorms was added by someone else, and I would argue isn't needed for that question, as it is very specifically about the NXT and not applicable to any other mindstorms series.
Then How to get started with Mindstorms? is mindstorms and not nxt, which, due it its more general nature seems right to me.
With Can I use RCX sensors and motors with the NXT brick?, I think it make sense to have mindstorms+nxt+rcx as you're crossing mindstorms lines and beginning to get a broader scope.

To add further weight: since this was discussed, the SE engine now pre-pends the most popular tag to the question's title <meta> tag all these posts will appear as "mindstorms - ..." in tabs and some searches, instead of the more relevant "nxt" or "ev3".

I'm not sure about this, one one hand I would tend to think nxt and rcx questions are clearly about Mindstorms and as such don't require an additional tag, as you suggest.
Apparently, we discussed some of this before (well, it was more about merging tags, but it's the same tags we talked about) and from there we recommended to use either nxt or rcx in the wiki description of mindstorms - although we didn't say to use it instead.

I don't think they're quite the same questions. I would strongly disagree merging the two tags, as you rightly said they are very different.

I look at it in a similar way to SO's having a .NET tag as well as C# and VB - indeed looking at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/.net you see questions tagged .NET and C# even though .NET is pretty much implied by the C# tag.

I admit that my argument doesn't make it right.

Right maybe not, but it's interesting anyway, I was wondering if SO had such examples but wasn't sure what to too for - I know there are so many variants of [tag:excel] for example but you example is more similar to ours

On SO we have .net and c# tags, and most of the questions are tagged by both, because at least C#-questions are the subset of .NET-questions.
So I would expect all the nxt questions to be tagged with mindstorms, but not vice versa.

But not all c# questions are tagged with .Net.

@Zhaph: ~85% from my pov

Hmm, a quick look at the tag pages shows me: Questions tagged "C#": ~245,761; Questions tagged ".NET": ~100,484; Questions tagged both "C#" and ".NET": ~50,979 (and only 4,772 tagged "VB.NET" and ".NET"). So it's closer to 50% of .NET questions are tagged with C#, and less than a quarter of the C# questions are tagged .NET.

@Zhaph: Statistics beat me :) But actually I think that in previous years it was not in common use to tag by both as it is now day. For example, I have 1k in [tag:c#] and 850 in [tag:.net].


text:
Are questions on 3rd party software on-topic?
I'm considering this question in particular. This seems like the kind of question that belongs in the developers documentation or support forum.

Technically, all support for software belong in the associated forum/bug-tracker...yet we have a ton of them on SU/SF/SO.
If you want to allow software questions, you have a gray zone which overlaps with SU. The next problem is, if software is allowed, should games be allowed, too? That would overlap with Gaming.
Personally I'd limit the scope to exclude software/gaming questions which are not directly related with building stuff or blocks.
On-Topic:

How do I build structure x in software y.
What is this part in software y, and does it really exist?
Does this structure in game z really exist?

Off-Topic:

Software y crashes, why?
I'm stuck at level 42 in game z, what to do?
My harddisk crashed and all my blue Lego bricks have been eaten by a grue but I want to build a lake! HELP ME!

But I've built a multi-colour Grue hunter with my Mindstroms that Might help with the blue brick problem ;)


text:
Providing a link to a question and the system recognizing your user?
I am thinking about providing a link to a question, but I have one question before doing so. How can you provide the link with it recognizing your user? I know that in area 51 you can create your own unique url so that it will recognize that you referred all users who clicked that link, but what about in a beta/launched site? Apparently you can earn this badge if your link gets clicked on by 25 unique IP addresses in 3 days. But how can it tell which user is providing the link? Is there something extra I have to do? If so, what?

Please do announce your questions or indeed answers - it helps get the word out and will increase awareness of the site :)

The format used by the "link" function is https://bricks.stackexchange.com/q/<question ID>/<user ID>, but you can type it yourself as well.
Note that answers and questions share the same ID space, so you can also refer to answers that way — the "link" function there seems to forget to include your user ID.


text:
Should we try to get all Mindstorms questions from robotics.se?
I noticed the beta for robotics.se has started.
Not too surprisingly, they already have a question about LEGO Mindstorms robots, and the corresponding tag.
This may mean there is some overlap with us, and in order to make sure both sites don't lose visitors through confusion, maybe we need to establish which kind of questions are best asked here, and which ones are best asked there. We could of course try to get all Mindstorms-related questions, or we could make sure they all land on robotics.se, but these two solutions look too extreme to me.
I'm not sure if we can even pinpoint subtopics as pertaining to one or the other site; for example I'm thinking of the following sub-topics:

Programming and typical robotics algorithms - line following,...
Firmware issues - flashing new firmware, custom firmware,...
Mechanical robotic construction - stability, sturdiness,...

I thought at first to list such topics as answers and ask to up/downvote if you thought they belonged here or not, but then I realized this didn't make much sense - these questions are always more or less valid on robotics.se insofar as they could be asked about other types of robots as well.
Yet I'm sure some questions would be best asked here if they specifically pertain to the LEGO aspect of things. Maybe we could warn the users in the corresponding tags, both here and on robotics.se?
What do you think? When we have some more input, we can contact the robotics.se community and try to negotiate. Or send our Mindstorms robots destroy their puny non-LEGO creations and impose our will.

We've kind of covered this a bit before when there was a separate Mindstorms proposal - and even then we noted that there was a Mindstorms tag on StackOverflow (which is small but still active).
We should certainly accept any build specific questions that are sent our way, and perhaps encourage their Mods (eventually) to direct them over - as they seem to be fairly happy so far to have "Software only" questions:

I think Mark captured it with "when the problem domain of the questions is specifically robotic in nature." The question can be purely software, or hardware, or a mix. But the problem domain should be robotics.

Also, we've not got a great answer rate on our mindstorms questions, with only around 54% with accepted answers, and 10% unanswered :(
Perhaps we should offer and ask for a cross site link in their Mindstorms tag wiki?

thanks for the links on their meta, it seems they've discussed the issue quite a bit yet

I don't think that you want all Mindstorms questions moved away from here.  You certainly need a deeper bench here for answering that tag though, and I may be stepping into that arena soon.  I would encourage the view that "software only" has a home on StackOverflow, and Robotics-centric has a home on robotics.se, but there will always be some cross-pollination.  The central challenge is determining what level that you want to enforce.  A zero-tolerance policy would make sense if there was a Mindstorms.SE site.  The depth of the bench at each SE site will help to self-select the questions that gets asked and over time, a little guidance to the new users will augment this.  For my own personal case, my interest in Mindstorms is coming from an interest in LEGO, and I would rather go to one SE site for those questions and answers.  There will be others that approach it from an interest in robotics, and they will be likely to come from robotics.se, and may not be inclined to visit bricks.se.

Thanks for your input, it seems a rather wise position. Hope you'll be able to answer a lot of Mindstorms questions in the future!


text:
Code to insert parts
On lugnet, it's possible ot insert specific parts in posts with the help of a specific code.
It's very handy, while here it's quite a challenge to insert a part image, and with its full name, id and link to the part it's even more cumbersome. Not to mention the source becomes completely unreadable.
Could we have a similar feature here? At the very least, picking a part and its color, the rest may not be as useful.

The question this raises really is: How easy is it to get some custom script/markdown added for this site? For example adding something like: [part:3700] which results in an image of a Technic 1x2 with hole would be great, but quite specialist - do any of the other SE sites do something similar?

I see that http://mathematics.stackexchange.com has some custom JS in the form of MathJax.js added to it for formatting equations, so it's not out of the question I assume: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/77655

LDraw licensing is here: http://www.ldraw.org/Article227.html which seems to imply either: Use with attribution, or render your own images.

Which actually begs the question: is it OK to use LDraw images, or BrickLink ones, on this site? Especially considering our own license?

@Joubarc Not sure - there's the whole option of "derivative works", if we generate our own images using the LDraw part files I think we're ok, alternatively someone should ask them nicely...

The ldraw parts library license is CC-BY, which means we're good to go in that regard.

@mattdm not sure this covers prerendered pictures though

As I noted in chat, I also found the following statement on: http://guide.lugnet.com/partsref/colors/ "Note: These images are presented here for anyone to reference as needed. You may link directly to these parts images from an off-site web page. To repeat: Yes, it's O.K. to link directly to these images from your website."

Right, now that you mention it, I remember the "Yes, it's O.K." part. Unfortunately, I don't think their bandwidth is that great.

@Joubarc I'm about half way through an initial POC site based on Kevin Carthcart's JS fiddle and polling lugnet once for images and caching data around them, returning it all in one hit to the client...

Install/Update BrickJax UserScript | Source - Updated 06/07/2018
  (Currently tested in Chrome with Tampermonkey and Firefox with Greasemonkey)

While uploading and converting a stream of LDraw mark-up might be nice, it’s certainly not all that intuitive (for me at any rate), whereas writing something like [part:3700] and having it converted via some script into an image call for that part  would be a great first step - and would then tie in with the way we can link to tags (for example [tag:feature-request] is replaced with feature-request).
Any more advanced building images could then be manually created and uploaded by the answerer, allowing finer control over the camera position, layout and finish.
LUGNet offers their images up for use - however their servers can be a little slow and we’re hoping to grow quite large, so using their bandwidth might not be great:

Note: These images are presented here for anyone to reference as needed. You may link directly to these parts images from an off-site web page. To repeat: Yes, it's O.K. to link directly to these images from your website.

What Have We Done?
To that end, Kevin Cathcart and I have put together a script and web service that could be used to replace [part:32181c02:0] with a nice picture of a piston ([part:32181c02:0]) – details of this work, and some examples of it in action can be seen here:
https://brickjax.doodle.uk/
The web service builds up an internal database of parts as they are called, I’ve pre-populated all the supported colours, however at the moment it doesn’t auto-populate the part names, but I’ve got some plans for that.
The script now also replaces set ids with links to various sites, based on this question.
If anyone has any more advice or feature requests do let us know in chat, or post a question here on meta.
What Can You Do To Help?
I would be very grateful if people could test out the GreaseMonkey/UserScript I’ve built (at the suggestion of nhinkle) and provide any feedback you have as this will help my case when talking to the SE Devs about getting this script formally added to the site.

Install/Update BrickJax UserScript | Source
  (Currently tested in Chrome with Tampermonkey and Firefox with Greasemonkey)

Currently it only runs once on page load, so live/AJAX updates aren’t supported.
It's also posted to StackApps:

BrickJax: Brick Image Replacement for bricks.stackexchange.com

How Can I Use It?
The scripts current support the following mark-up – if the versions at the end are replaced with images or links, then everything’s working as it should.

[part:3700:4]Draw a part (Technic Brick 1 x 2 with Hole) in a colour (red) [part:3700:4].
[partlink:3700:4]Draw a part (Technic Brick 1 x 2 with Hole) in a colour (red) and link to it on Peeron.com [partlink:3700:4].
[set:5590]Link to set 5590 on Peeron: [set:5590].
[bl:5590]Link to set 5590 on BrickLink: [bl:5590].
[bs:5590]Link to set 5590 on BrickSet: [bs:5590].

The first step to getting that accepted to to write some proof of concept javascript code, and publish it. The proof of concept need not have all parts availble, but have several different ones, and host them someplace. Once we have working code, then we can discuss whose images to use. Hosting may be problematic, since imgur does not AFAIK support user chosen filenames, and I'm not sure Jeff Atwood and friends really want to put that much on sstatic, but until we have a working poof of concept, that is all moot.

@KevinCathcart You mean something like this? My jQuery's not that great, so there's probably a more performant way of search/replacing for the string - http://www.doodle.co.uk/UserFiles/files/code-to-insert-parts.html

Much like that. The copy I've half implemented is very similar. Like yours, my proof of concept code also rips straight from lugnet. Mine uses a slightly more correct regex. Part numbers can contain letters (to include the pattern codes), you really only want a maximum of one second colon, etc. Mine in based loosely on the rules used by MathJax for deciding where look for text to replace. Things you got right that I missed include the alt text, and making the regex case insensitive. When I get home, I'll upload what I have so far someplace public.

@KevinCathcart Sounds good - I'd not considered patterns, so that's good to know - to be honest I'd have said the colours were an optional extra, generating one set of images would be work enough without generating them in 50+ colours ;) Looking forward to seeing yours.

Let's continue in chat

You may want to post this on stackapps if you haven't yet. Neat tool!

@nhinkle Possibly - I think here or Meta.so should be sufficient, however as a Mod I have other ways of getting in touch with the devs to work it in too ;)

@Zhaph-BenDuguid I'm suggesting that you release it as a userscript for now - stackapps is the official way to do that, as it's the central place for all userscripts and apps related to SE. I'm a mod on another site, I know there are other ways to contact them, but this would be a good way to let your users test it out in the meantime until it gets official support.

A simple way to insert individual parts in a post would be very helpful.
I might argue for something a bit more general.  Essentially, allow markup that wraps a LDRAW-compatible text, generally like this:
<ldr>
1 1 24 -6 0 0 -1 0 -1 0 0 0 0 -1 3005.dat
1 1 48 -6 0 0 -1 0 -1 0 0 0 0 -1 3005.dat
</ldr>

Then display a basic render of it.  Maybe have it link to the raw text.
ldview can render reasonably quickly and with reasonable visual output, and the results would be straight-forward to cache.  (I'm using this approach for my own endeavor.)
Being able to post a model with source like that would open up a lot of interesting possibilities.  Answering questions about how to solve a particular set of space constraints for instance, could be initiated with a model illustrating the constraints, and answerers could start from that model and propose solutions.

I wouldn't mind to see full LDraw code insertion, when illustrating Techniques it would be very useful. Animated GIFs with one image per LDraw step would be even nicer.

http://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/627 has a number of answers that include multiple model suggestions.  This is a prime example of where having the ldraw code embedded in the answer would be beneficial... others can learn and build on what has been done here with less duplicated effort.


text:
Tag descriptions
I just approved a bunch of tag descriptions I'm not exactly heppy with, as they all begin with "Questions about...".
I'm slightly too lazy to rephrase them myself, but I thought it's better to get the momentum going by starting with something rather than nothing.
And anyway, I think we should make sure we have a consistent format on tag wikis and descriptions. i'm not familiar enough with SE to know the best way to deal with it, so can veterans please chime in and say what's best?
I suggest we take one or two tags as examples and discuss here the best formulations. Maybe one respone per formulation, upvote= agree, downvote= disagree, as is the custom?
Let's take customization. don't forget to state wiki and excerpt.
It would be nice it this can be settled before end of private beta, but that may be too optimistic.

Well I didn't want to change them myself not only out of laziness, but because I think there's no reason to try to impose my style. As for yours, I wouldn't say they are bad, in the contrary I think they're a good starting point and way better than nothing, which is why I approved them. (Plus, you have no idea how much I love the sensation of being able to approve things)

Excerpt

Custom-made modifications done to original LEGO elements.

Full wiki

Customizations of LEGO elements are a way to obtain new elements better suited for one's need.
These may include: custom stickers, brick painting or printing, cutting of rope or hose to desired length, cutting of a baseplate to desired size, brick engraving, brick melting, trimming, merging, or even custom molding.
Customization can also cover inclusion of non-LEGO elements in LEGO creations.

I like this format and it's good for many; But I'm having great difficulty coming up with one for Buying - a general excerpt would leave it too open, so being more specific and starting with "Questions about..." or "For questions around..." seems to fit there.

Yeah, the same goes for [tag:identification], I don't really see how to get rid of the "questions about..." at least in the excerpt. Frankly, I'm a completely useless at tagging :-)


text:
FYI - informed LEGO of the existence of bricks.se
I've just sent the following message to Jan Beyer, LEGO community manager, to inform him of the existence of bricks.se, now that it's moved to public beta.
My reasoning if twofold: one, make some publicity for the site, possibly reaching out to fellow experts; and two, make sure everything is OK from a legal point of view. Better knowing about issues sooner than later.

(snipped gossip not related to bricks.se)
There's a new site on LEGO which uses the question and answer format
pioneered by Stack Overflow, a programming Q&A site.
So far, there have been quite a few interesting questions, including
the one with the minifig head, and things look promising.
The site is https://bricks.stackexchange.com/ and is thus focussed on
LEGO questions.
However, I have a feeling that there aren't many experts on board now,
and it would be great if we could attract more.
Could you pass the link around? Via the ambassadors, we should be able
to reach a few more persons.
Of course, having actual LEGO employees provide canonical answers
would be even better, but I understand that's going to be very though
to organise, since they may not always speak freely. Maybe your team
can survey the site and see if there are questions which you feel are
worthy of an official answer from LEGO, and if so interrogate the
right persons internally.
One last thing - could you check that everything is OK from a legal
point of view?
I think the most important things are covered, but if there's anything
which bothers you, it's better that the site admins know it sooner
than later.
Thanks a lot for the answer, and I hope to see you on bricks.stackexchange.com !

Edit: here are some preliminary comments from Jan — note that these don't mean that LEGO approves of anything else; as a matter of fact I think they'll probably want to contact SE owners directly as Jan also asked who was running the site, but it's a start:

Regarding the website - it should not be called LEGO Answers - this imply that the LEGO Group answers but perhaps "Answers regarding LEGO bricks".
Also LEGO needs to be written always in capital letters and should never stand alone so LEGO bricks, LEGO Sets ...

I'd love to have product designers like Jamie Berard answer question on Lego...

Yeah, I wish too, but I know from experience this isn't going to be easy - they have to be careful what they say, etc... so most of the time their communications go through other channels. But we can dream about it :-)

sniff  No more Brick Overflow, but that's all right.

Good call.
So far they generally show a positive approach to community activity as long as it doesn't go outside policy, and I think we've kept within the rules, so getting them in here to strengthen the community will be incredibly valuable


text:
Lego mindstorm proposal going nowhere

Possible Duplicate:
Is Lego Mindstorms on-topic?

With "Is lego mindstorm on topic" in mind, I see, in area51, a lego mindstorm proposal that is stuck in its raising commitment phase. I would recommend for both the health of our stack site and for their interest to tell them to join in once we get on the public beta phase.
(hint : there is even such a suggestion there "There are a proposal for general Lego. It might be better to use this with tag mindstorm instead of having a separate site for Mindstorms. – awe Aug 4 '10 at 9:00")

I intended to do that too, but seing Dori's answer, it's all taken care of already.

The issue that I see is that in general (as shown by this question) mindstorms related questions will almost certainly have an element of both build and program (otherwise they could just be tagged technic).
So a question that arises is "do we accept Mindstorms related programming questions?" because until the "Theoretical and Applied Robotics1" makes it out of proposal/commitment the only real place they have to ask is the Mindstorms tag on StackOverflow.
1 That being the only likely option now, as the robotics proposal has recently been deleted due to not enough activity.

I don't see anything wrong with using the Mindstorms tag on StackOverflow for pure programming questions, but I guess some will be asked here anyway. Wait and see, I guess.

I don't either, but I certainly found that my Mindstorms experiments usually went along the lines of "I want to create a robot that does [this], how do I build it, and how do I program it" - the available sensors and bricks limited both parts.

there are programmers lurking on this stack, but I think any programming question should go on stack overflow.

@joe, makes sense to me.


text:
Image background color
I tried to change the background of the animated gif on this post to black, as the yellow part, which is the most important of the design, isn't very visible on white.
However, even when using an html img tag, I can't change it as the style attribute isn't allowed.
Any ideas?

I changed the Gif's background to black in Photoshop

Yeah, I guess that's the easiest solution, thanks.


text:
Is there official SE or bricks guidance on linking to our own stuff?
I work with bricks daily and I wouldn't mind of future bricks visitors associated my, presumably, totally awesome questions and answers with my company.  Since SE doesn't have such a thing as a signature block, I think it might be worth while to establish, early in our coming-out process, our community's relevant tolerance for people pushing either their commercial or non-commercial sites.
It feels to me like this has probably been hashed out somewhere else, but what counts is what we want in our community.  I know, for example, Joel S. recently talked about this on a recent SE podcast.
I personally feel that "casual links are ok, but don't be annoying about it" is a good-enough guideline.
There is a tension, in that we obviously don't want the site to be spammy, but also, we don't want to exclude the people that are literally professionals, either.  The people that are expert enough to have their own site will always have a need or desire to associate their awesome answer back to their site.  If they can't link back, then they are driving traffic away from their own site towards bricks.stackexchange.com.  We don't people to have make that choice.
Here is a concrete example:
I recently asked this: LEGO Safety: Known risks and how to avoid them? I had already started writing a blog post on my website (Ascendly.com) on this topic and wanted to take advantage of bricks.se.com to make my post even better.  It is my intention to link to the SE question in my post, and add link in my question back to my post.  How would you react to such a link?
How did you feel that I inserted that link to my site in the above paragraph?
How would you react if somebody specifically mentions the they work with company X, or if they are a builder-for-hire?

If you you have some relationship to a product, website, or company that you mention in your post, that relationship must be fully disclosed in your post.
But be careful. If a substantial proportion of your posts seem to exist only to promote your product or website, that will not be tolerated. The community frowns on overt self-promotion and tends to vote it down and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some small portion of them happen to be about your product or website, so be it. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.
If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons.
If you can stay within the above guidelines, and offer questions and answers of genuine benefit to the community which happen to mention your affiliation or product in context — and with full disclosure — then your contributions are welcome.

There are a number of elements to this:
Signature Blocks: Nope, these are quite clearly frowned upon, but you can add links to your profile - in fact, if you do, they get picked up in the "Expanding user cards", which act as a signature:

You can see more details here:

Blog on User Cards
Meta post on User Cards

Links from Bricks.SE: In general, it's frowned upon to answer with just "read my blog post on this here" - ideally, you would also summarise the post in the answer so that if the blog were to disappear, the bulk of the information would still exist here.
Content from Bricks.SE: All content on the StackExchange network is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, meaning you are free to reuse the content provided that:

Attribution: You say it came from bricks.se, and link directly back to the original question following Jeff's rules about that
Share-Alike: You release your modifications of the content under the same license as this.

Links to Bricks.SE: As stated above, if you use content from here, you should link back to it, so links in are fine - indeed, once we're out of private beta, the Share links will be enabled and actively encouraged:

These were disabled while we were in private beta because unless you're in the beta you couldn't get in - see the comments to this question about Private Beta accounts not appearing on the account tab for more thoughts on linking to "brick walls".
There's even a couple of badges for high referrers:

Announcer: Shared a link to a question that was visited by 25 unique IP addresses
Booster: Shared a link to a question that was visited by 300 unique IP addresses
Publicist: Shared a link to a question that was visited by 1000 unique IP addresses


text:
Will all open ended questions be closed? I certainly hope not
I recently posted this question about how to build a good bridge out basic bricks ( Bridge from just basic bricks? ), which got closed as being too open-ended, apparently.  I found this to be, of course, extremely discouraging.  I would suggest How to Build X type of questions are acceptable.  They are fun, engaging, and don't hurt anybody.
Our community is young and traffic is still light, but I'm confident that there will be more questions like this.  The issue is whether we turn users with these question away, or welcome them.
As a practical example, if my bridge question is unacceptable, then I would suggest that following must also be unacceptable:

How can I build an (automatic) Mindstorms charging-station?
What is a good ratio to buy bricks in?
How would you make a good pivot-arm suspension?
How does one get a job as a LEGO designer?

Personally, I think all of the above questions positively contribute to the community - I would hate to see them go away.

Open ended questions should be allowed, as they encourage engagement, deeper insights, and professional opinions, which will keep the site from being Just the Facts.  That would be boring.
If we find an open-ended question that is too subjective, or not specific enough to answer well, then we should tactfully and professionally make suggestions as to how to improve the question.
This would contrast to pure discussion questions like, "what is your favorite set?"


text:
Will many piece identification questions end up diluting or hurting the site?
I have been going through some new Lego I have acquired, and because of that have been posting a lot of identification questions. I noticed that there had only been a couple before, and I have added a few(and might add more soon ;) ).
But now I wonder whether a lot of these question are good for the site. They help me very much, but I can't really see hem helping anyone else, as it is a very niche situation. I can also see them cluttering the site if many people start asking them.
I also know of another type of identification question on another SE site: Identify-this-game on Gaming.SE.
The questions can sometimes get very vague and some people on Gaming.SE have disputed it's usefulness.
I don't know if we will have the same problems with Lego identification questions, but I think there could be potential for problems.
Could there be problems with identification questions, and if so, how will we alleviate them?

A good question encourages research effort, asking a question on SE should be used when every other method has been exhausted: Looking through instructions, online databases, checking brick number and so on. We already have a few general identification questions that can help:

Is there a convention for part and/or set numbers?
Is there a database of original Minifigure configurations, including
their personal gear?
How are LEGO bricks categorized?

To avoid repetition, questions should be unique, detailing the set/piece as clearly as possible.
Will these questions clutter the site? No. identification questions make up only a small portion of possible questions. If we can perfect general reference questions we can help reduce new questions.

Thank for mentioning these questions. I had forgot about some of them and their usefulness in searching parts. I guess I had better learn how to better use the databases. :)


text:
How will we handle Building/Technique questions?
I have posted a technique question, but i see there is some uncertainty as to how we respond to them.
What will our policy be concerning these potentially open ended questions? I know of another SE site that seems to be able to handle them.
EDIT:
There seems to be a move for the  building tag to supersede the technique tag for these types of questions, but my concerns still apply. How will we handle these types of questions to make it clear to newcomers what our policy is?

It's a good question, and one that we'd started discussing a bit in chat too - a bit similar to the more general question raised on "open ended questions".
The technique tag is almost a "meta" tag, and as such has debatable use - if we keep the questions using it tightly focused, it could be quite useful.
That said, while Oezi's answer is the most correct (with a direct link to the building instructions), I'd like to see a little more detail in there (I'm building some examples in LDD to add to the answer).


text:
Do LEGO video game questions belong here or on Gaming?
There's a handful of questions about LEGO video games on Gaming SE right now. If I have a question about a video game, do I continue asking there since video games are quite different from the physical building sets themselves, or will they be on topic here as well?

Yes, I think they should be asked on the Gamming SE as this one is about building stuff, not playing a video game. I enjoy the LEGO video-games but I think they are totally different things.


text:
2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
To that end, here is how the moderation done here on Bricks breaks down by activity over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  0          5
Users destroyed                                   3          0
Tasks reviewed³: Suggested Edit queue            83        174
Tasks reviewed³: Reopen Vote queue                2          4
Tasks reviewed³: Low Quality Posts queue         65         29
Tasks reviewed³: Late Answer queue               72         14
Tasks reviewed³: First Post queue               214        138
Tasks reviewed³: Close Votes queue               13         46
Tag synonyms proposed                             2          0
Tag synonyms created                              2          0
Questions reopened                                2          0
Questions protected                               4          4
Questions merged                                  1          0
Questions flagged⁴                                1        150
Questions closed                                 34          5
Question flags handled⁴                          16        135
Posts undeleted                                   0          6
Posts locked                                      1         25
Posts deleted⁵                                  108         82
Posts bumped                                      0         32
Comments flagged                                  1        181
Comments deleted⁶                               148        223
Comment flags handled                            71        111
Answers flagged                                   1        181
Answer flags handled                            157         25

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Bricks without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 3 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 3, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁴ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁵ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁶ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Wishing you all a happy new year...

Cheers Shog9, Happy New Year to you too ;)


text:
Winter Bash 2016
Just a quick heads up that we'll be participating in Winter Bash again this year - for more details on the upcoming festivities, please see below:

The year is rapidly coming to a close, which means even though we typically hate it, it’s time to have some fun...with hats!  That’s right - it’s time for Winter Bash 2016!!
Overview
Most of you remember previous years’ events, but here is a quick little reminder. Winter Bash is an annual event that can run on any Stack Exchange site that chooses to participate. Users have fun by earning “hats” for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (very similar to badges). We track everyone’s progress using hats in a leaderboard that looks similar to this:

As always, we’re coming up with new hat designs for this year’s fun!
The Details
The event will run from 19 December 2016 up to and including 08 January 2017. Users will be able to see all the hats they’ve earned on http://winterbash2016.stackexchange.com. That site will also have a landing page, explaining the rules and other details of the event.
Individual users who don’t want to participate, don’t want to see hats, and/or are generally anti-hat will have an “I hate hats” option available. And just like last time, at the end of the event, all hats will go back into storage.
The only visual change to the Stack Exchange sites themselves will be the presence of the hats and the “I hate hats” button in the footer.

If you really don't like hats (or possibly fun) then you can opt out (if I recall correctly at the site or network level), and you won't see any hats as you use the site.

It's started! Let's get some hats.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because WinterBash 2016 has started.