text:
How should we describe the size of a piece?
In order to help with descriptions of pieces especially, should we define a standard for descriptive nomenclature?
eg Length x Width x Height of the basic shape followed by additional identifiers
this could give us examples such as a block 8 x 2 x 1, a 16 x 1 x 1 with 15 holes (technics), or a plate 8 x 2 x 1/3

Generally, elements are described by the number of studs, and then height is defined by them being a plate or brick.
It's then mostly the "specials" or over/under sized bricks that are given a height:

If you actually know the part, the best strategy is to use the exact same name as another site, possibly linking to it or even inserting a picture when practical.
No need to reinvent our own naming conventions when there are already so many in use. I prefer to align on LDraw names which can be found via Peeron.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How should I diagrammatically represent lego bricks in questions?
How should I represent:

2D plan view of bricks
Diagrams of brick interaction
3D views of models

Using markdown?

BrickML would be the way to go :)

Until we get BrickML enabled (is this going to happen?) we may just need to use images where it is a complex brick, or ASCII art for the simple ones

Short answer: However you like

Use which ever creative medium suites you and the audience:

You can usualy get your idea across with a rough sketch.
2D is best for two dimensional models such as brick walls, brick
profiles and building façades.
Photograph individual bricks or find an existing image on sites like Bricklink.
This question lists software for designing models in 3D using CAD (Computer Aided Design).

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


text:
What's the difference between Building and Design?
We have a couple of tags on the main site that are semantically similar, but are generally being used in different ways:

building
design

At the moment, questions tagged "Building" are all about building techniques, "how do I build..." type questions, while questions tagged "Design" are generally used on questions about set/element design which I think is correct.
However some questions that are more about building a particular model have been tagged "design" as in "How do I design a mechanism to do this".
Should we make design a synonym of building?
Should we keep them separate and update the wiki on design to be more explicit about the use of this, state that if your question is about a MOC it should be tagged building?

I originaly thought building was more to do with the process of building with LEGO but it seems to be more or less the same thing as design.
It could also be assumed that building refers to an individual structure such as a house or a bank as opposed to the process of building.
We should give each tag a wiki summary if we plan on keeping them separate.

That's kind of what happened with the Building and Technique tags (http://meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/q/118/56) hence the tag summary that explicitly talks about "building techniques" on building.


text:
Problems with set identification questions
We seem to be doing a great job with random set identification - even correctly identifying a much larger set from a tiny collection of bricks, or reverse engineering sets from MOCs, however I think we're going to hit the limits of our question title creativity fairly soon:

Ignoring the fact that the bricks in this question where from the same set as the matched question (they were from the same user who has clearly bought a bulk collection of random LEGO bags from somewhere), it's quite conceivable that we are going to have people asking "What set is this from" for some time and trying to come up with unique titles for them will be tricky.
While these are questions that we seem good at answering, I'm not sure how good a fit they are for long term storage - the questions aren't typically searchable, nor are they that helpful to anyone else, unless they also have the same set of elements - but they won't be able to find the question as they are typically all variants of "What set is this?" with a picture.
I've retagged "How can I identify kits from a box of parts" as Set Identification which might help, but I guess we need to think about pruning some of these questions...
Also we should encourage answerers of these questions to show their workings, which will people learn how to do it.

On Graphic Design, we have some rules for identification questions: font identification, style identification. I think some of the ideas can be carried over to set-identification questions.

I'm not a big fan of these questions for the reasons you've highlighted.
Usually I will re-word the title to be more descriptive and adjust the tags used on the question to match the accepted answer. (If a set has been identified as a Star Wars set, it will be tagged as such). It can be difficult to find descriptive titles for every question.

Also we should encourage answerers of these questions to show their
  workings, which will people learn how to do it.

I think this is a good idea but it might be difficult to enforce. Even, just one line to explain how someone identified the set would help.
I'm surprised we don't have a question about how to identify sets in general. If we do, I can't find it.
I've posted a question titled What are the best ways to identify any LEGO set? and added the methods I use to identify a set.
I'm sure there are more techniques people use, so I encourage people to add their answers. Hopefully this will de-mystify how people can identify sets.

I was going to post a question but felt it was already covered by the one linked in my question "how can I identify kits from a box of parts"

I have merged the question. I think I misread it the first time.

Unfortunately some people don't even see this question of yours and decide to post these set questions anyways.

I also don't love these questions in terms of long term storage and usefulness, but I think that we provide the most reliable way to get questions like these answered.
I think that these questions can also be a source of new users for us if they are handled well. These questions are often coming from folks who are emerging from a dark age (whether they know it or not ) and who may be engaging more deeply with the community in the future.
Would it make sense to:

Wiki and clean up our canonical how to identify a set question
Wiki and clean up our canonical how to identify parts question
Add links to these in our help section so that users can have a fighting chance of finding these tools before asking a simple question

One comment from me, a frequent answerer of these questions (because I simply love the challenge it poses :) ). You cannot teach someone how to correctly identify a set from pieces without teaching them the Bricklink parts taxonomy. That itself will take a long post to cover, as there are quite some anomalies in the taxonomy, and quirks in the BL interface.

+1 @PhilB., this might be a good topic for a blog post (or a series of blog posts)?

This. There are a lot of set identification questions coming in lately, and I am a big fan of closing them as duplicates of the canonical set identification question. Show people where the fish are; don't just hand them the fish. Problem is, people keep answering the questions because they're good for bragging rights and easy Internet points for AFOLs.

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


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Does anyone still have a clean shot of our old logo?
Since moving to the new site layouts, we've lost our old brick logo. I've finally found the time and inclination to update my own avatar image to a cleaner, crisper one, and I'd like to drop on the Bricks logo for SO/SE at least.
I'll recreate it if not, but wanted to save myself 5 minutes.
All in all, this will teach me to not save out my original sources.

I'm not sure I understand which logo you are looking for. Is it this one? https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/bricks/Img/apple-touch-icon@2.png

Cheers, yeah, that will do - I was after the blue on white like you can see on my profile pic, but I can work with that :)

I see. I don't have the white one anywhere.

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


text:
Six SE sites currently in the beta stage are due to be scrapped
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/04/when-a-site-grows-quiet/

Next week, we’re shutting down six sites that fall into this category:

Astronomy
Economics
Literature
Firearms
Healthcare IT
Theoretical Physics

LEGO.SE which is very similar to Firearms in terms of age and statistics has been spared. I'm concerned that LEGO.SE may be at threat from any future site cull and is there anything we can and should be doing about it?

I'm concerned that LEGO.SE may be at threat from any future site cull

Well, yes it is! In fact, as of last Friday morning, it was on my list to close. The activity has fallen off precipitously, to the point where the stats are worse than many of the sites that are being closed.
It's not closed right now because I wanted to try something, as sort of a precursor experiment to some changes we're planning for the site creation process. LEGO made a good candidate for this because it's a fairly accessible yet extremely niche topic, there's not much in the way of controversy here, and the community has shown themselves in the past to be fairly active in dealing with perceived issues - as evidenced by you posting this thread soon after the blog post went up (and long before I was ready with my planned post!)
So what's gonna happen?
Well, it'd be awesome if you somehow managed to bring in a bunch of new users and get this place hoppin'... But frankly, I don't really expect that given the trends. My current impression of the site is that we've simply tapped out the interest among the current SE audience.
So the experiment is simply: can you maintain what's already here? The one good stat on the Area 51 page right now is the 99% answered questions. I'm not seeing any spam, or obvious broken windows. If it stays that way - if there are a few of you willing to keep the lights on and the lawn mowed - then fine. We'll have a tiny little site for LEGOs tucked away.
If I come back in a month and the windows are smashed in and weeds are growing everywhere, then it gets closed, just like that.
Like I said, it's an experiment. It might go "boom".

I'm glad you've spared Lego for now. It's the sort of site that has a lot of potential, but just doesn't quite have the audience yet. I'll certainly do what I can to help keep the grass mowed.

(singing) There's a zombie on your lawn... I'm fairly confident we can keep the lawn clean for the foreseeable future, and if it begins to grow wild, maybe it'll be a sign that the activity has improved much.

Also, the blog post says But when a site struggles to maintain any semblance of steady progress, and I don't think we fall in that category yet. Our progress is slow, granted, but it IS there. Just look at the new users registrations, and you'll notice that, given time, we'll probably start faring better on the third criteria (# users), and then hopefully on the rest.

@Joubarc ...and that's Shog's main point. A valuable contribution to the Internet doesn't necessarily have to be one that's growing at breakneck speeds. Hypothetically, we could have a microscopically small site which only receives a question on the rarest of occasions. But if those questions get good answers, and the current content is well maintained, the site should be able to go on forever. I'm not ceding that LEGO SE will remain microscopically small, but even if that becomes the case, our thinking is these sites continue to provide a good contribution to the Internet; let 'em be.

To which I fully agree, but then again, why not apply the same reasoning to the other sites?

While it's good to see Shog9's answer and that we were spared, I'd like to point out something I noticed, which I believe will be beneficial to the site in the long run.
Indeed, there are some users which are known AFOLs, such as Philippe Hurbain who still connects regularly (I wish he would answer the difficult NXT questions though) or Larry Pieniazek.
Now, maybe calling this a trend is overrated (although there are new users created regularly, even if not AFOLs - let's not forget that), but these are the kind of expert answerers we want. But I don't think our problem is on the answering side - as said, we've got a very high answered ratio.
So if the problem lies in the lack of questions, what can we do? One thing I wonder is if we aren't sometimes too harsh on some newcomers - sure, some questions maybe borderline, but we risk scaring off new users; if they feel their questions aren't welcome, they won't feel welcome either.

I know I've usually erred on the side of welcoming rather than shunning some of our borderline questions - usually by answering and then thinking "hmm, is that a bit off-topic, can we tweak it a bit?" Sadly I completely missed the news about AFOLCON here in the UK next week - would have been a good place to be to drum up some more interest :(

I've been wanting to go to AFOLCON since they started that, but so far it hasn't been possible. If the site is still live next year, let's have a booth there together :-).

Definitely up for that :)

I've heard from several AFOLs in the past about why to use SE if the info is going away.  If the experiment is actually happening, then that could be a good message to send out.


text:
Recognised LEGO Fan Media Days 2017 - Sponsorship Proposal
Recognised LEGO Fan Media Days 2017
What?
The Recognised LEGO Fan Media Days 2017 is a three-day event hosted by The LEGO Group for Ambassadors of LEGO User Groups.

The LEGO Ambassador Network (LAN) is a community network to provide
  valuable dialogue and initiate activities of relevance for the mutual
  benefit of the Recognized LEGO User Groups (RLUG), the Recognized LEGO
  Fan Media (RLFM) and The LEGO Group (TLG).

(I have been asked by jncraton (our current Ambassador from LEGO Answers to The LEGO Group) to attend this event on his behalf as he is unable to do so.)
Over the three days TLG will be providing presentations, a LEGO House/LEGOLAND tour, interviews, discussions/feedback as well as a 'secret unveiling'.
Where?
Billund, Denmark
(various locations including within walking distance)
When?
31st May - 2nd June 2017
Why?
This event will be a big opportunity to promote the LEGO Stack Exchange website amongst other LEGO fan and media websites, and possibly get answers to some of our unanswered questions on the site.
I will be given the chance to give a presentation to TLG and other RLFM groups about our community. This will also be the first time that LEGO Answers has attended an official event hosted by The LEGO Group.
In addition to attending the event and providing a presentation I pledge to:

Produce a photo report of the event, which I will share with the
LEGO.SE community on Meta.
Share additional photographs from the event on my personal Flickr
account. (You can find photos from when I previously
attended Brick 2014)

Abbreviations

TLG - The LEGO Group
RLFM - Recognized LEGO Fan Media
SE - Stack Exchange


text:
Should we be linking to the official Lego site or other third-party sites?
I've seen people linking to the official Lego site for sets/parts. Should we be linking to the official Lego site or other third-party sites?

I prefer linking to Brickset for sets and to Peeron for parts.
Indeed, linking to LEGO itself is usually not reliable, as LEGO tends to be bad about keeping archive of past stuff in general.
The problem I have with peeron is that it's sometimes slow, but its parts inventory matches LDraw's so I prefer it to BrickLink. For sets howevre, I feel Brickset is unmatched.

I started linking directly to LEGO.com, but have recently come round to the option of linking elsewhere - sets are removed out of the LEGO Store pages as the sets are removed from production - meaning that our links will be broken and out of date.
One option to consider is to start using the (currently client-side) mechanism we've been putting together to link in images and sets from Code To Link Parts.
This will enable you to write something like [set:5590] or  [bs:5590] or [bl:5590] and have it link to that set on one of the various listings sites. Another advantage of doing it this way is that if one of them goes down, we can always switch the script over to one of the others.
If enough people show an interest in it, we can probably get it added server side.


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Quick link to BrickSet or similar set database
Don't we want or can implement quick links to any set database, e.g. BrickSet.com, to make linking set ids more handy?
P.S.
I've just published a small Firefox search plugin for the same purpose.

I've added this into my POC for parts: http://meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/62/code-to-insert-parts

@Zhaph: Thanks! Maybe post it as an answer to accept it?

Consider it done :)

I'm sure it's possible to implement (perhaps using the word filter), I'd certainly find it very helpful.
Something like this?
[bs:5590]

Links to set 5590 on Brickset and...
[bl:5590]

...links to the same set but on Bricklink. Linking to pieces would be helpful too.

I could help to implement that as being a programmer, with pleasure. I thing RegEx filter "only digits, 4 or 5 symbols long" will be enough, will it not?

The key thing is the brackets and identifier. See the work Kevin did on the part image links we've also proposed.

Perhaps I could be of assistance here?

@Ambo100 the code I'm looking to get added for part images already does linking to parts, I'll try and add this in - my concern here is that BrickSet for example adds additional identifiers on to the set number. See the work here http://meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/62/code-to-insert-parts

To clarify, would we be happy linking to the primary set with this? For example, the City Airport theme had a few "promotional" re-releases of some sets, that are listed as -2 of the same set number? http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=S&catString=67.518.325

Feel free to come and join the discussion in http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1741/bricks-se-parts-javascript-discussion to see what we've got so far and offer advice/assistance.

I've added this feature to the BrickJax code that can be seen here:

Code to insert parts

This is also available as a greasemonkey/user script linked from the same page.


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Are questions about programming the NXT on-topic?
Are questions about programming the NXT on-topic for this site? I am going to be working on a project that involves programming NXTs using the LabVIEW Mindstorms NXT Toolkit. While general questions about using LabVIEW would surely be more appropriate for Stack Overflow, I expect to run into questions which will be more oriented towards lego-specific things that would not see a wide audience on SO. For example, questions about how to get a motor to achieve a particular task, or how to use a particular NXT sensor, might be on the boundary of lego vs. programming question.
Will these questions be on topic? How can we distinguish between questions that are more about programming vs. those that are specific to lego and would benefit from the audience here?

We seem to have been a bit inconsistent in our application of this - back in the private beta, we closed the question Can I write programs for the LEGO RCX 2.0 in Java/C++ as off topic (based I think on the Meta question about Mindstorms), while the similar question asked this month was allowed to stand:

Can we program Nxt2 in C++ under Visual Studio 2010?

I'm loath to close it as off topic at the moment (although I could be persuaded to close it as a duplicate) as it's got a good answer, that is possibly only lacking the OP coming back and responding as to why that hasn't worked or accepting it as an answer - they've not been back to see their answer, and as they're not active on any other SE site so might not have seen that they have an answer yet.
While we're still in beta, and to be honest needing some more questions I'd rather increase the scope to be open to this sort of thing - as a "getting started with Mindstorms" we'd be a good place to start, then it's dependant on how programming specific or build specific your question is that determines whether it should be here or on SO...


text:
At what point should an answer edit become a seperate answer?
When someone improves your answer to the point of providing an additional 2/3 to it, should they, or should they not just offer up their own answer? I researched (what turned out to be an incomplete tally) my answer to the question and posted it only to later find a much more complete version had been edited in. Now I'm sheepishly getting upvotes when 2/3 of the credit belongs to someone else.

One of the recommendations is to work towards "a definitive answer", by editing an almost complete answer into a great answer - that's also why you can mark your answer as "Community Wiki" - where you're effectively saying "help me answer this".
If another user has added a substantial amount to your answer they probably felt that having one complete answer was better than two incomplete ones - after all you can only accept one answer.
If you're feeling guilty about earning the rep on the back of someone else's work, then certainly mark your answer as C/W, that way you'll stop earning rep for it.

Thanks.I wasn't sure how that process works, so I flagged it with an explanation.


text:
On Connecting Bricks.SE and LEGO User Groups
One of the reasons that I am involved with Bricks.SE is because I don't have (that I know of) any LEGO community near where I live (Southern Oregon).  However, I used to live in the SF Bay area, and was part of BayLUG, and that got me thinking:
How can we leverage the power of LUGs to grow Bricks.SE, and how can we leverage the power of Bricks.SE to build LUGs?
I don't have any particular thoughts on this issue, other than desired results:  I'd like to see Bricks.SE become a larger community, and see more LUGs around the country (especially in my area).

One possible solution is to expand our outreach to the LUGs.  I assume that many members here are already part of a local LUG, and perhaps we could get them some SE swag to hand out at the LUG meetings.
And though (at the risk of sounding like a dating site) a "Meet people in your area" thread isn't suitable for the format of SE, we could seed some questions about locating LUGs, and meeting other LEGO fans in your area (for example, referring to forums that have those kind of threads).
Any other ideas to help establish a strong partnership here?

I fully endorse asking a Community-Wiki question about the current LUGs - it would need to be a Wiki though so that people are happy to contribute and maintain "one definitive answer" rather than have lots of individual ones. We'd need to work to ensure that it wasn't just a direct repeat of LUGNET's US and Global lists though.

On Mi Yodeya (Judaism.SE), there is a meta topic for finding places where lots of people live, so that an IRL get-together might be possible. http://meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/1635/where-do-you-live

One other possible solution is to recognize Bricks.se as a valid LEGO community - a decentralized LUG, if you will. Some other online communities (I'm thinking eurobricks) have done it that way.
With the revamping of the LEGO ambassador program as the LEGO Ambassador Network, maybe it would be interesting to try to push one key member of bricks.se as ambassador.

I'm not knocking Bricks.SE as a valid community.  After all, this is my goto community for LEGO-related matters now.  The issue, on my mind, is that LUGs provide some benefits that a decentralized community can never provide.  At the very least, you have LUGBulk, but since LEGO is inherently a physical medium, it's nice to have other people in close proximity that you can turn to.  That allows you to organize displays, work with after-school programs, and generally spread LEGO into the local community.  Which is just something that isn't very easy to coordinate from Bricks.SE.


text:
Number of answered & accepted questions
I've noticed that this site has a large number of questions that have been answered and have had the answer accepted as "best" within a very short period (sometimes only an hour) and sometimes when the question only has one answer.
Does anyone else find this cuts down on discussion?  Once an answer has been "accepted as best" then, why try to improve it?  Why contribute to the discussion?  This process seems to lead to very shallow answers in the forum with a lack of potential creativity from the members.  Maybe questions like "How can I build a LEGO heart?" would attract 10 or 15 contributions that highlight very different approaches.
Is there a reason the questions all get "best answer" chosen so quickly?  Does anyone other than myself feel this process reduces creativity and contributions on the site?
Thanks for any and all feedback/thoughts!

If it helps, I usually suggest users wait at least 36 hours before accepting an answer, just to allow for most potential answers to make it. Some people may compose an answer in their minds but wait until later to write it down -- they may be on a mobile device, or in a situation where they cannot provide an answer immediately. Not all of us can have an intern hold our lunch tray and laptop while we respond to questions, as Jon Skeet has done! :P

It's certainly a concern to some extent: if you take a look at the stats that are tracked on Area 51 the number of answers per question is one of the key one's and we are only "OK" at them moment:

2.1 Answer Ratio: Okay – 2.5 answers per question is good, only 1 answer per question needs some work. In a healthy site, questions receive multiple answers and the best answer is voted to the top.

The How to build a Heart question you mentioned did get 3 answers with about 4 different options, but it was also a rather time-based question - it was asked for Valentines Day, so PeterDC needed an answer that day.
Also, you must remember that the point of an "Accepted Answer" is "The answer that helped the asker solve their problem" - in general this will be the best answer, but it's not always - see the comments to is it acceptable to answer a question that has an accepted answer.
While there is a minimum time you have to wait to accept an answer there's a difference between SO or other more "theoretical" sites and ourselves where not everyone has access to their bricks all the time or even MLCad or similar.


text:
#WhatWillYouBuild
TLG is putting together an initiative to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the LEGO brick! Many communities, blogs, and review sites will be participating by building creative models and posting to social media using the #WhatWillYouBuild hashtag.
From the Ambassador Network:

We would like to celebrate the 60th Anniversary with you and the AFOL
  Community!
You can build anything – show us your creativity! Build with friends
  or family, include your kids, build with 60 bricks, green bricks or
  whatever comes to your mind – we just want you to be part of the
  celebration!
Take pictures – take many pictures and share on Social Media using the
  #WhatWillYouBuild hashtag.

You can use any parts that you like, but the focus is around the following Classic sets:

10401 Rainbow Fun
10402 Fun Future
10403 World Fun
10404 Ocean’s Bottom
10405 Mission to Mars
40290 60 Years of the LEGO® Brick

TLG has generously offered to provide us with some of those sets, and I plan to put together some alternate models and post them on Rebrickable and elsewhere on social media to build support for both the 60th anniversary and our community. I feel bad that there isn't a good way to "share the wealth" with this opportunity in ways that are easy for traditional LUGs, but hopefully there will be more opportunity for that in the future.
Feel free to share your own designs here and on other social media!

I plan to do this with 10404 in the near future (it's the only set I have from this series). I'm also thinking of writing a review, though I'm not sure where I'll publish it, or if it'll just end up on my blog.

We got our bricks yesterday, and I put a quick model together using the parts from 10405:

I was trying to keep things imaginative and childlike while honoring the history of Lego as these sets do.
Does anyone here have access to post directly to our Twitter account, or is it just a question reposting bot?

It is just a Q posting bot. Contact the team in the TL, I know they changed how the BSE bot worded our questions, so maybe they can do something for you all here.

I wrote a review for 10404 Ocean's Bottom last week, which you can find on my site.
After building the six featured models in the set, there were a large number of pieces left over. I built two custom models: a nudibranch fitted with an engine so it can go faster:

And a sand dollar:

Very cool! Nice work!

I was going to make a conventional set using 10405, but of course my little brother stepped in...

"Who says ducks can't take over the world? Ducks can do anything!"
 - Conspiracy Theorist

This is my first post, please tell me if anything needs to be fixed. Kindly, not like this one.


text:
Why aren't other brands of brick products accepted?
There are many alternative brands for LEGO, however, they do not seem to get much attention. On some Web sites, I have observed much hostility cast on these alternative products. Even this Web site uses "LEGO" in the title. I have tried some other brands, and they seem fairly good.

Why is it that these products are not so popular?
Why might people reject an otherwise decent and compatible product?

I may have moved this in haste, when I'm in the office I'll see if I can undo the migration, or just migrate it back, however it is inviting discussion which might make it rather subjective

Try posting about microsoft computers on an apple forum, and you'll find we actually are very tolerant of non-LEGO building bricks.

We do accept other brands of brick toys here on LEGO answers, but we haven't seen many specific questions(mainly because most of the building techniques should be similar).
As Ryan points out, there are certainly compatibility and quality issues with some competitor's products.

The name LEGO carries a sense of quality along with it.
People are reluctant to use other brands, as 99% of the time, they lack the quality and ingenuity that LEGO has.

While it's true for pure "cloning" brands that go so far as to copy LEGO models, including box and instructions (and have atrocious quality), some other brands have reached a level in their own right which is truly noteworthy. Megabloks for example don't copy LEGO models and while I can't speak for their quality (I have none), it's certainly not that bad. The new Kre-O brand from Hasbro will probably fall into that category too. So IMHO 99% may be overrated now.

@Joubarc I actually have owned some Megabloks, I can confirm that the quality is crap compared to LEGO. The blocks just feel cheap in your hand, and the blocks don't lock together nearly as well as LEGO. I have not had any experience with Kre-O, however, I can say that they do not look nearly as cheap-o as Megabloks.


text:
Should we seed some questions about the LEGO movie?
I don't mean questions about the movie itself, but how to build items from the film, or parts used, etc.  The sort of things that drive traffic.
Yes? No? Maybe? Crickets?

By all means. I guess you'd want to be careful you didn't ask about items that are included in the official sets though


text:
The Element Quality Team wants our feedback
The following was posted on the LEGO Ambassador Network yesterday:

The Element Quality Team reached out to us [the Community team]
  because they realize that AFOLs use LEGO elements in new and creative
  ways and if there is a concern it is likely that a member of your
  community could find it.
Please continue to report set specific errors to LEGO Consumer
  Services but if your community finds an element concern or element
  limitation post your concern here and we will make sure it is passed
  on to the Element Quality Team!
We will consistently share your community member’s feedback with the
  team which could create follow up steps like the request for pictures
  or videos and we will share any feedback the Element Quality Team
  provides.

This represents a welcome change giving us a more direct channel to report quality issues with elements. I'll report any specific issues that come up organically in questions here, but if you have noticed anything specific that you believe would be helpful to share with the team now, feel free to let me know.


text:
How can I be moderator?
I want to help in moderation of this page. How can I be moderator ? I have experience in this.
Thanks,

As Ambo100 states, the best way to help is to use the site - as we say in the FAQ:

At the high end of this reputation spectrum there is little difference between users with high reputation and ♦ moderators. That is very much intentional. We don’t run LEGO® Answers - Stack Exchange. The community does.

While we are still in beta, the reputation requirements to access the tools is significantly lower than on a fully fledged site.
That said, we are only "Pro-Tempore" moderators - a few users were invited to be mods while the site was in beta to help nurture and grow the site, when we graduate we will hold full elections, at which point members of the community will be able to volunteer, hustings will be held, votes counted, and so on.
Note that often the criteria for standing in the elections include those traits listed in A Theory of Moderation.
You might also want to check out the following post on Meta.SO as well:

What is community moderation, and what can I do to help?

I also had a similar response when we moved from private to public beta ;)

Becoming a diamond moderator is rather hard. Once this site graduates, there will be periodic elections and you can take part in those. Of course, you need to have good standing with the community to have any chance of winning :)
However, if your aim is just to help moderate the site, then that's pretty easy. There are many, many ways to help out (and the more reputation you get, the more you can help since you get additional tools)
I wrote this guide as a one-stop tutorial about the various aspects of community moderation on Physics.SE. Yep, it's long, but not all of it applies to you. There are a few site-specific things there, though, like the bit about the homework policy. The rest pretty much applies just as well to bricks.SE
This FAQ entry, on the other hand, also teaches these aspects, and is site-agnostic. You may find that more helpful :)

Users gain certain privileges with an increase in reputation. At your current reputation, you have the ability to flag posts, flagged posts are handled by users with access to moderation tools, ♦ Community Moderators and Stack Exchange Employees.
With the amount of flags we get per day, the flag queue is very manageable.
The most powerful way for regular users and moderators alike to make a difference, is to: comment, vote, ask, answer, edit and improve posts.


text:
Why is my profile picture not displayed correctly?
I have had the same profile picture network-wide since 2008.

Until recently, the same profile picture was used for all SE sites including bricks.SE. Today when I visited bricks.SE, I noticed that my custom profile picture has been replaced with a generic one.

My profile picture appears correctly in all the other SE sites I've visited today. Did someone break something here, or has my profile picture been deemed unsuitable--for this site only--because it depicts a LEGO™ minifig?

It looks like this change happened back in February 2020 - is it possible that the change is longer-standing than you think but you didn't notice? It look like the change coincided with the email used for the account changing.

I don't understand why it's only for this SE site and not others. I use the same login cookie for all.


text:
Why does the featured tab say that there is one bounty question even though there are none?
Title says it all. Here is a screenshot:

Hmm, curious - looks like the bounty wasn't awarded until 10:13GMT on 13 October, yet you saw this around 18:23 on 12 October (although the site's still posting that as "Yesterday":

One for the SE team really - although possibly a bit too localised (in that the featured tab is no longer appearing as there are no active bounties any more).

Seems like grace period questions count toward the number, but don't actually show up in the list. I'm not sure if this is by design or a bug.


text:
How does rep gain when "a suggested edit is accepted" work?
I'm a total newbie to this site and still learning the ins-and-outs... I was skimming through the explanations of how reputation works and saw that you can gain reputation when "a suggested edit is accepted."
I asked my first question yesterday and someone came along and edited it (specifically, added a tag).  I honestly hadn't put much thought at all into tags and had only come up with the one tag needed to meet the minimum requirement.  I agreed with and appreciated the edit, as I felt it was both an improvement to my question and a learning experience for me as a brand new member.  When I later saw that accepted edits provided a reputation gain, I looked for a way that I could "accept" the edit to reward the person for being helpful.
Granted, the user who edited my question has over 3,000 rep and I really doubt another +2 would actually matter to them... but I was raised with "good manners" drilled into me, so from my point of view it's more about a way to say "thanks" to the person than the little "pat on the butt" amount of reputation they'd get.
Anyway, I'm wondering whether I overlooked a way to "accept" the edit or if something about the site's mechanics make it so that I'm not supposed to have that option in this particular case.

In addition to Joubarc's answer, and to help with the other point of your question:
If a user actually suggests an edit (rather than as in this case where they have just made an edit) then it goes into what is known as the "Review Queue", where other members of the community can:

Vote to accept the edit.
Vote to reject the edit.
Make further improvements to the edit.

Also, as the owner of the post, you will be notified that there is a suggested edit on your post, and (I think) you can accept it yourself - thus allowing you to thank the editor before the community does.
Alternatively, you could add a comment to your question starting with @Kramii to thank them and that user will get a notification that you've made a comment to them.

Some privileges are awarded to users based on their reputation. In this case, starting from 1000 rep, users get the Edit questions and answers" privilege, which means that their edits don't need to be approved any longer.
Also, they don't get the +2 reputation bonus for an accepted suggested edit - note the "(up to +1000 total per user)" in the bonus for editing. Their edit isn't considered to be suggested anyway, since it's accepted automatically.
So yes, you're correct to say it usually doesn't matter that much for users past a certain reputation point, and that's what's built in the system. You can find more information on this on the main meta stack exchange site. In short, reputation is supposed to cover good answers and questions; editing isn't the focus.
One point to keep in mind is that it prevents reputation farming through editing: since your edits are auto-accepted, you could get reputation with just "editing" posts even if your edits aren't interesting.


text:
Is uploading the image of an instruction sheet a copyright violation to be avoided?
In this answer the requested instruction sheet was found in a posting on a site not dedicated to the permanent hosting of content (Ebay). This means the link provided will eventually rot and the linked content is going to be lost. There are two perspectives here, one is to avoid violating the copyright of the instruction sheet and the other is to keep providing information for future visitors.
What is the official way to solve this conundrum, or what is the opinion of the community?

My concern was not actually for Ritvik's copyright, but for the eBay user. I didn't have a problem with linking to the auction listing (and its images) but could reasonably see someone being unhappy that I copied their image and used it for some other purpose.

I am no expert in copyright law and this can tend to be a fairly complicated subject with terms that varies between countries, so I will do my best to give my interpretation.
For photographs of instruction sheets, set boxes, promotional materials and so on, I believe the copyright belongs to the company that designed the products (LEGO for example) and not the photographer, in this case the eBay user.
I noticed that in this particular case the brand is Ritvik and not LEGO so this is an exception. So in this case it's a bit difficult for me to describe a clear answer as it's a photo of another companies intellectual property.
LEGO generally do not seem to have a problem with people sharing these sorts of things as long as it is done so as fair use and not someone attempting to scam, mislead or harm. If someone was attempting to pass of these instructions as their own, perhaps selling them as their own design, that would be in bad faith. If this was ever an issue I believe it would have been raised at some point as part of us becoming a recognised LEGO group.
The Stack Exchange official guidance is very relevant in this case, as it is mostly about plagiarism of written work.

Perhaps I could suggest some general rules for avoiding copyright violations:

Wherever possible use your own original material.
Clarify the copyright status, some images are available under an open licence which enables free distribution with or without modification and attribution. Google Image search for examples allows you to search for unlicensed material.
Attempt to contact the creator for permission (perhaps more likely to work with individuals as opposed to large companies).
Attribute the creator, perhaps including a link to the original source along with their name.
As a last resort, avoid using copyrighted material all together. Consider if fair use of the copyrighted material is valid and adds value to the answer.

Most jurisdictions have some form of fair use/fair dealing in relation to copyright. Fair use in the US allows use of copyrighted works in certain cases:

the fair use of a copyrighted work ... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Based on those factors, most of our use of copyrighted works should fall under fair use because:

We are using them for non-profit educational purposes.
We expect that our impact on the copyright holder (e.g. TLG) is not negative
We are typically using only a portion of a work (instruction step, photo of a set box or build, etc).

I believe it may be reasonable to consider even complete instructions as only a small portion of the overall work, as the set itself is the complete work. I don't personally see an issue with this content on our site, but I am not a lawyer. Several sites have existed for ages that host LEGO set instructions, and it is clear that TLG doesn't have a problem with those existing.
I'm not aware of any DMCA take down notices against our site during my time as a moderator, so I don't personally see a reason to take a more conservative stance on copyright at this time.
Wikipedia's policy on non-free content may also be informative if you've not seen it.


text:
Do we know when the first election is due?
In the post Congratulations, you're no longer in Beta! Catija wrote on 2019-08-01:

full-site elections will be delayed but will be scheduled eventually

Do we know anything about the planned timeframe of this eventuality?
To avoid misunderstandings, I'm more than happy with the current moderator team, but from other SE sites I gathered the election is a yearly occurrence.

I honestly do not know. The 'graduation' seems to be a mostly cosmetic change with the most noticeable change being the removal of 'Beta' in our sites title. I have contacted Catija♦ in the moderators chat, so hopefully we can get an official response from the SE team.

UPDATE:
I appreciate your patience! The election is scheduled to start September 20th. For more information, see this post.
Great question!
Elections aren't annual, actually. We have some literature that says they're "regular" but that doesn't mean they're on a schedule. We actually run elections when they're needed, in most cases - and we decide they're needed based on when mods step down or when they disappear, which happens from time to time. On some sites like Stack Overflow, that means we may have elections one or two times per year and on smaller sites, we may go five years between elections.
All of that said, this doesn't really apply to y'all since what you're asking about is the first full-site election - what we used to refer to as a site's "Graduation election". These were part of our plan when we rolled out the announcement about the sites leaving beta and it has really been hard that we haven't been able to follow through on that.
The last year has been really complicated for a number of reasons that have caused various delays and greater need for elections across the network. I can go into more detail but the end result is this:

Elections take a good amount of manual work by CMs, so we try to only have a few elections running at a time.
A delay in running elections through January and February added to an already large backlog.
The new moderator agreement is leaving some sites with fewer mods than they need due to mods being absent, taking this time to step down, or declining the agreement.

So, three of the CMs (myself, Cesar and JNat) are working through a list of sites that I have triaged on a presentation board:

The red circle is y'all - those teal sticky notes are sites that I'm going to check in with starting in January. There are a couple of caveats that will decide when y'all actually see an election here:

how many of the yellow sticky notes become orange. The yellow stickies generally represent sites with fewer than three mods. We generally want sites to have at least three, even if there's not a lot of activity on the site because it leaves room for people to be on vacation or take a break without stepping down completely.
when the new CM tooling for elections is complete. Right now, we can only run a few elections at the same time because of the amount of work each takes. Once the project to update our tools is complete (it's in progress now), we'll be able to double or triple the number of elections running at a time.

Since y'all have three mods who are generally active, even though you're absolutely owed an election, we made the decision to hold off on it until we've got some of our other things in a good state.
Let me know if you have any other questions!

Goodness. I didn't realise the amount of planning required to coordinate and hold elections network-wide.


text:
Community stance on solliciting for reputation
I have recently commented a few times on users explicitly asking for upvotes and accepted answer reputation points. I understand the drive that the reputation points system gives, but it is starting to become a bit too much.
What is our stance towards asking for these reputation increases? What are the pros and cons of enforcing a policy where these requests are not allowed?
Ultimately the reputation points are a part of this site, used to show which users contribute the most meaningful content, as judged independently by the users. IMHO allowing vote canvassing skews this aspect towards the most aggressive repvote collectors.
Your opinions please...

"I have recently commented a few times on users asking for answer acceptance..."  Not sure,  I've looked here and it seems that you've asked only once. Did you delete some of these comments or something?

@mindstormsboi That could have been me. I purged more than one comment thread primarily between you and a newer user where you were explaining how to use various aspects of the site (posting images, accepting answers, etc). If Phil responded in one of those threads, his comments would have been cleaned up as well.

Indeed - I would suggest flagging those comments as "No longer needed" or "Something else", and we can remove them from the site. If they are in the body of the post, they should be edited out.
I don't mind the occasional comment on an answer along the lines of "If this helped, please consider marking it as an answer and upvoting" especially if the question was from a new user who'd commented "Thanks, that's it!".
You're right that the gameification of these sites can promote a feeling of "needing the points", but we would like to be meaningful within the context of our small corner of the internet. Clearly I'm saying this from a position of privilege as a long term user with a large number of contributions.
It can seem arbitrary when some identification questions (for example) get a number of up-votes and others don't before they are answered, but I do try and upvote even slightly older ident questions when the question is of merit (i.e. reasonable photo, good description of the element, etc.) as well as the answer locating it.

Thanks Zhaph for validating my concerns. I do the same as you - posts get an upvote if they are well written and researched. I was not part of the first wave of users, but have gained a good number of rep points over the past 4 years - with lots of what I deemed good responses left with low votes and no accepted answer checkmarks. You win some you lose some.

@mindstormsboi I applaud your enthusiasm for this site and the LEGO hobby. Please do not stop contributing to this site, your submissions have been helpful. However, please listen to the feedback here and in other posts and adjust your approach a bit. Thanks.


text:
Can we stop users from repeat posting similar questions?
A recent user has been posting a lot of questions recently, none of which add much value to our site. They are all part identification questions, and the user has not shown any initiative on their part to do any research. It feels like we are his free employees to figure out what LEGO sets he has acquired.
Besides downvoting his questions, what other options do we have to either force this user to do more effort (and hence post less) or prevent them from posting similar question barrages in the future?

I think it is fine, if a user needs help to identify one bag. But it seems here are users who are not using the information about the set once identified and open a question for each bag without visible own effort. see https://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/17201/i-have-not-had-any-luck-with-this-part-bag-white-dish-white-plates-technic

I don't see what could realistically be done. Ideally upon selecting set-identification as a tag, a tutorial would pop up to educate the asker about piece identification and Bricklink's search functionality, but this would be a no-go for many reasons. The closest we could get would be to write a canonical post detailing the identification process and linking it in the tag description - but if anybody is too lazy to read the answers to their own previous questions, they won't read a tag description either.

How about a warning after 3 posts, another warning after 5, and a ban after 7?

@PhilB. You mean a policy to be enforced by the mod team?

@zovits - exactly

Shall we hold back on answering questions until effort is shown? I sense that answering effortless identification questions encourages users to ask them more often. Whereas linking to a canonical post would make it easier for users to find, and sets a better precedent

@MatthewJensen That's what I've done and would suggest others do as well. If we stop feeding the help vampires they'll either leave or make an attempt to improve.

The user was apparently "Last seen this week", but I can't see any contributions since June 26. Should we just let it go (until more such activity is observed of course) or does someone want to actively pursue contact regarding the past actions?

Apparently a warning is due after the latest no-effort question.


text:
Are reqesting shemes for objects on-topic here?
Can I ask here to show good schemes for constructing some object?

Definitely, we already have some questions requesting help for building ideas or techniques. Keep in mind though that it may take a bit longer to get an answer.


text:
(How) Should we customize the "Ask Question" page?
As seen on Meta.SE, The new ask page is now live on the network!
There are many options for each SE site to customize this page:

What's per-site customizable, and what's the procedure to get it live?
As you can see, any existing custom guidance on "How to ask," "How to
  tag," or any custom error or warning messages your site may already
  have in place will still be there, and will still be customizable with
  the same restraints (basic HTML, using paragraphs, lists, links) as
  before:

The "welcome modal" for new askers (seen with the default text in screenshot 1), everything between the title and "Before you
  post..." (this is only custom on 4 sites at the moment, [such as
  EL&U][14]).
The full contents of the "Draft your question" sidebar (seen with the default text in screenshot 2, and with custom text in
  screenshot 3).
The text in the tag popover, between "Tags help the right people..." and the bullet points (seen with custom text in screenshot
  2, and with the default text on screenshot 3).
The above three have no character limits, aside from "within reason."
The placeholder text in the title field (text only; seen with the default text in screenshot 2, and with custom text on screenshot
  3).
The warning text shown in the "Review your question" sidebar, regex-based (seen with the default text in screenshot 4, and with
  custom text on screenshot 5).
Tag-related error messages and warnings, regex-based (seen with custom error text in screenshot 4, with the default text on screenshot
  5,  and with a tag warning
  here).
The warning and error messages described in the two bullet points above have a limit of 1000 characters.

These can only be edited by staff, so the process to get them live is
  as described [here][15]:

Create a Meta post on the appropriate Meta site, and discuss it with your community.
Once a consensus is reached, a mod should escalate it to the CM team. Generally speaking, the "contact us" form is the best way to go,
  though a ping in chat can sometimes work too (the most that could
  happen is we ask you to use the form).
Unless there are any outstanding issues, the CMs should be able to get to it Soon™.

Do we have any change requests to the existing setup, and if so, what are they?


text:
2021: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

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

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2021, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Bricks over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Users suspended²
1
5

Users destroyed³
8
0

Users deleted
1
0

Users contacted
1
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
7
100

Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
0
16

Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
3
106

Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
2
62

Tasks reviewed⁴: First questions queue
0
62

Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
12
235

Tasks reviewed⁴: First answers queue
0
28

Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
1
85

Tags merged
5
0

Tag synonyms proposed
7
0

Tag synonyms created
3
0

Revisions redacted
3
0

Questions reopened
2
1

Questions protected
4
12

Questions flagged⁵
4
42

Questions closed
35
12

Question flags handled⁵
26
21

Posts undeleted
0
3

Posts locked
0
13

Posts deleted⁶
97
81

Posts bumped
0
23

Comments undeleted
2
0

Comments flagged
2
28

Comments deleted⁷
42
91

Comment flags handled
23
7

Answers flagged
0
280

Answer flags handled
179
101

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 A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2020: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2022! ^_^


text:
Community Promotion Ads — 2020
You lost your “beta” label in 2019, so welcome to your very first edition of Community Promotion Ads, for the year of 2020!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

interesting blogs
helpful resources on the subject matter
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

Cheers for this - what is the preferred clean/nice way to remove an ad if it's well above the threshold? For example once an event has happened and is no longer relevant?

Deleting the answer should fix that, I believe, @Zhaph-BenDuguid


text:
2023: a year in moderation

It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

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

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.
So as we say goodbye to 2023 (and January 2024… ahem) and move into 2024, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Bricks over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community User¹
Community²

All comments on a post moved to chat
0
0
0

Answer flags handled
169
30
0

Answers flagged
0
43
156

Bounties canceled
0
0
0

Comment flags handled
8
4
0

Comments deleted⁸
13
1
34

Comments flagged
0
0
11

Comments undeleted
0
0
0

Escalations to the Community Manager team
0
0
0

Posts bumped
0
17
0

Posts deleted⁷
72
50
19

Posts locked
0
11
0

Posts undeleted
0
0
1

Posts unlocked
0
0
0

Question flags handled⁶
19
39
1

Questions closed
8
52
0

Questions flagged⁶
1
0
51

Questions merged
0
0
0

Questions migrated
2
0
0

Questions protected
2
3
0

Questions reopened
2
0
0

Questions unprotected
0
0
0

Revisions redacted
0
0
0

Tag highlight language set
0
0
0

Tag synonyms created
0
0
0

Tag synonyms proposed
0
0
0

Tags merged
0
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue
0
0
196

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue
0
0
63

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue
0
0
160

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue
0
0
63

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts" queue
1
0
60

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue
0
0
16

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue
5
50
314

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue
0
0
0

User banned from review
0
0
0

User review-bans lifted early
0
0
0

User suspensions lifted early
0
0
0

Users contacted
0
0
0

Users deleted
0
0
0

Users destroyed⁴
0
0
0

Users suspended³
0
8
0

Footnotes
¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² This refers to the membership of Bricks without diamonds next to their names.
³ 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.
⁴ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁵ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2022: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2024! ^_^


text:
Do we have any staff on Bricks.SE?
So, there's a Winter/Summer bash hat for looking at a Staff's profile page, but my clicking through our user pages has not revealed any staff on Bricks.SE.  I'm sure I just didn't click through enough pages.  Do we have any SE staff participants?

FYI, all of the CMs have profiles on every Stack Exchange site. (It's part of our onboarding.) So you can always find our profile on another SE network site (e.g. Meta Stack Exchange), then find our profile on any other site in the network from there.

There is an API query to find staff but it appears the list of staff members is out of date. One user who I can think of is Catija.
A full list of the Community Management Team can be found here.


text:
Have we gotten out of the business of doing set identification?
Recently this set-identification question was closed as a duplicate of a generic how-to-do-this-yourself sort of question and answer.  Was there a special reason for this to be marked as a duplicate?  Is there a new policy?  If not, it doesn't feel like it fits within the spirit of the site to close questions like this as duplicates.  I, for one, have enjoyed the stream of identification challenges and I hope that we won't close these sort of questions as duplicates unless someone reposts the same pictures or something nearly that obvious.

Related: https://bricks.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/405/problems-with-set-identification-questions

I've reopened that question. We can certainly have a conversation about whether these sorts of questions are on-topic for the site, but I don't think that closing one as a dupe without that conversation is a good approach.
To address your other questions:

Was there a special reason for this to be marked as a duplicate?

There was not special a reason that I can see, but I wasn't directly involved in closing this. I'm happy to hear about any special circumstances that I may have missed here.

Is there a new policy?

There haven't been any relevant policy changes that I am aware of.

It doesn't feel like it fits within the spirit of the site to close questions like this as duplicates. I, for one, have enjoyed the stream of identification challenges and I hope that we won't close these sort of questions as duplicates unless someone reposts the same pictures or something nearly that obvious

I agree with this.


text:
Should the clone-brands tag apply to non-LEGO non-clone toy systems?
When I first saw
A technology building set that is not LEGO Technic, K'NEX, or Meccano. Can you help me with the name?
I thought that it should get the clone-brands tag but I refrained because this really doesn't seem to be cloning LEGO in any fashion.  It is a distinct building system, and just because it is also made out of plastic does not make it a clone of LEGO.  This leads me to two possibilities:

We create a new tag for non-LEGO non-clone things.  I have no idea what this should be called. Bike-shed away!  This question alone doesn't warrant a new tag, but we could get more of these.
We extend the meaning of clone-brands to include non-clone non-LEGO things like this.  The 3rd-party tag seems to overlap this same space, but that seems to be for LEGO-compatible 3rd parties, not distinct toy systems like Fischertechnik or Meccano.

What are your thoughts on this?

No. Fishertechic clearly isn't a Clone Brand, and has limited if any connectivity with LEGO elements.
With regards to non-LEGO, non-Clone things, they aren't really on-topic for the site - from our tour page:

Bricks is a question and answer site for LEGO and building block enthusiasts. […] we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about LEGO bricks and compatible building systems

In my mind, and I think generally:

Clone Brand: Brands or products that uses elements predominantly based on LEGO elements, with some original parts, and often with original set designs.
3rd Party: Products that unofficially fill a gap in the LEGO catalogue in some way. Either purely unique/bespoke parts, or (more often) additional technic or mindstorms based components.

I asked the question and I had difficulty trying to find a suitable tag. I guess now that 3rd-party would have been a reasonable choice.
Why did I ask on your SE?
Because the drop-down list (top right corner of main screen) says quote:

Text version: Bricks - For LEGO® and building block enthusiasts

If the phrase had been, "For LEGO® building block enthusiasts", I would have looked elsewhere but the inclusion of the word "and" seemed to allow my participation.

My opinion?

I was very impressed by the friendliness and helpfulness of the response from everyone who contributed. Not remembering the name of the system, it was proving difficult to find the information elsewhere.

I can certainly understand that the site would change character if absolutely every type of construction set were to be included. Whether this would be for better or worse is not for me to judge.

Participating on this site has actually kindled my interest in LEGO and, as someone who has retired, I'm now considering venturing into MINDSTORMS® and Technic as a fun way of learning informally about robotics.

If you decide to limit questions strictly to LEGO and compatibles may I humbly suggest you change the site description to something like:

Bricks
For LEGO® and compatible building block enthusiasts

In any event, thanks to all on a very friendly SE.


text:
Where should generic toy identification questions go?
Based on this question from the close queue and prior discussion on meta, I'm wondering: is there an appropriate place within StackExchange to discuss generic toy identification questions?
I've found quite a few random bits in bins of supposed LEGO that would be good to identify.  I'm not suggesting that Bricks.SE is the right venue for this, but it would be nice to know where to send folks, if there is such a place.

I don't think there's such a site.
A few days ago, user @Rand'alThor compiled a list of Stack Exchange sites accepting identification questions: Which SE sites accept "identification" questions? but there is simply no Stack Exchange website for toys in general.


text:
Should similar parts identification questions be considered duplicates?
Should questions like this one be considered duplicates in the official StackExchange-sense of a duplicate?
I'm concerned this doesn't make sense for part-identification questions.
Marking a question like this as a duplicate seems like a bad way to welcome a new user to our site.  Do we expect this new user to have checked every part-identification question already asked to see if they notice a picture that is similar to theirs?  Most of these questions don't have enough words describing the part to be useful in a keyword search.  So as of today you'd need to review 404 existing questions to make sure you are not creating a duplicate.  Assuming that our new user is a LEGO superfan and willing to consider doing that, this superfan would also know that there are 60093 possible parts, so the chance of finding your question are 0.67%.  Wouldn't most people just post their question and hope they're in the 99.33%?  And this problem gets harder every day that somebody adds a new one.
So should we have a site-specific policy for these questions?
Meta-meta
I looked for dupes of this question, but I didn't find any on this meta.

Just to add to jncraton's answer (which I agree with) the piece (and set) identification tag is likely always going to suffer a bit more on this site than others, especially if people don't describe the part in any detail - and even if they do describe it will they pick the same features?
So we can't rely on the question prompts to find a meaningful duplicate question in the same way that works with other questions.

I think that these should be closed as duplicates, because they are fundamentally exact duplicate questions. They include different part images, but they will yield exactly the same set of correct answers. Closing them creates more hope that a Google search will lead back to a single correct answer and makes the site easier to maintain.
It's hard for me to put myself in the shoes of a new user, but I don't think that having your first question closed has to be a totally negative experience. If we leave a comment welcoming them to the site, explain why we're closing their question, and they get their answer via the dupe that we link, it seems like they could see the value in our community. Honestly, if this happened to me, I'd be impressed. Not only was the community able to quickly answer this question, but we remembered that we'd answered it before, and kindly pointed them to the preexisting correct answer.


text:
Do we want a parts-database or parts-library tag?
I noticed that there a lot of questions that mention a "part library", but we don't have a tag like "part-database" or "parts-library" to include those.
We have a set-database tag, but that doesn't seem to fit since parts are not sets.  Am I missing something or is there an opportunity for a useful tag here?
I got started on this while trying to find better tags for jncraton's question.  I don't think we have enough on 3D rendering for a tag that specific yet, but the "parts-database" aspect of it seems worthy of a tag to me.
I prefer "part-database" for consistency with "set-database", but "parts-library" is how people seem to use it and should at least be an alias if not the primary tag.

I added the part-database tag and created parts-library as a synonym.

That makes sense to me. I like part-database with parts-library as an alias.


text:
Is it valid to ask about whether a given minifig is an official one?
My wife received, via a piece of gift purchasing software, a minifig of Batman with some odd touches such as coming with two large guns rather than any sort of Batarang or grapnel device. Looking through the tour for the site, it looks like the emphasis is on bricks and sets. Is it valid for me to post photos of the minifig and to ask about its provenance?

We already have a few questions about mini-figure authenticity (and other elements), along with a few tips about recognising them:
How can I tell if minifigures are custom-made or LEGO Originals?
If those don't help, then by all means post a question with some pictures :)


text:
How can one ask for LDD File recommendations without the fear of being off-topic?
A bit of context
So I am busy working a diorama of the Pacific Rim Shatterdome in Lego Digital Designer, and am struggling to build the scenery normally associated with the Jaeger docks/hangars, as opposed to building the Jaegers themselves.
This question
Given my current predicament, can one ask for LDD file recommendations on the Bricks Stack Exchange, (of course the recipient taking all the risks when downloading said files)? If so, how can one go about doing so without the thread be closed for whatever reason, primarily off topic? Would a new tag be needed to ask such a question?

I'd recommend trying to focus your question on techniques for building that you're struggling with rather than "can someone build this for me" type questions - try to describe the problem you're having, examples of what you're trying to achieve, that sort of thing and you'll probably get a good answer, that helps everyone.
So for example:

I'm trying to build a Jaeger dock from Pacific Rim, but I'm struggling with getting the pipework to look good - what parts do I need?

or

How can I efficiently create greebles on my industrial hanger?

With examples of what you've tried, the sort of scale you're looking for etc.
Peter Reid's Scenery album on Flickr might be a good place to start for some further inspiration on what's possible ;)


text:
Where can I find an updated & maintained list of CAD software?
Every so often, I want to view a set of MOC instructions that exist in a CAD/digital format. But then, I conclude (perhaps incorrectly) that I can’t view it on my iPhone. However, maybe I could on my Mac, but only if I download some now-obsolete software, such as Lego Digital Designer (LDD).
When this happens, my feelings of excitement turn into feeling stuck and uninspired.
Bleh
Truth is, I have considered dabbling with CAD software as a way to play with LEGOs, but I feel uninformed and overwhelmed by the technical aspects. (I’m comfortable with computers & programming, but CAD seems like another animal.)
I’ve also noticed that CAD options can vary quite a bit and the choices can come & go from year-to-year. So, I worry that I could start down a dead end.
Examples:

TLG’s Design byMe service ended in 2012.
I read online the Lego Digital Designer, while still in use by many, is no longer supported by the company.
I’ve read discussions about how certain elements/parts might be available in software X, but not in software Y.
There are relatively new options, such as stud.io, with — presumably — new competitors getting ready to rear their head.

I know I’m just scratching the surface here.
This has left me wondering: Is there a good, single resource, such as a updated & maintained web page, that meets all (or most) of the following criteria?

It is a list of current & obsolete LEGO CAD software options (or authoritative recommendations), along with benefits, trade-offs, compatibility considerations, proprietary vs. open-source considerations, long-term viability, etc.
It is written for a more general audience, and not just for folks that already know a lot about MOCs and CAD software.
It includes software options for simply viewing a set of instructions without the software that created it.
It addresses different operating system or online/browser options, such as noting which ones are cross-platform or which are ideal for a smartphone, e.g., an iPhone.

So, is there such a resource? Or is it just a pie-in-the-sky idea?

I considered posting my question to the main Bricks site, but I thought it could be off-topic. If you think it belongs there — or somewhere else — please let me know.

It's certainly on-topic here - we have the following question with some answers - and hopefully we'll keep the accepted answer up to date (I updated it when Stud.io came out of beta for example):

LEGO Digital Designer Alternatives

However I don't know if it goes into enough detail for you - in which case you could either:

Offer a bounty on the question to get more indepth answers
Create a new question that references the existing one and stating that you'd specifically like the details you're after.

That said, you might still run into a bit of a pipe dream:

"It includes software options for simply viewing a set of instructions without the software that created it."

Unless someone has exported the instructions as a PDF or similar, you will probably need to have the software that created the model, or a similar one that can understand the file format.
The advantage that most of these tools have over traditional 3D tools is that they work from a parts list, and the files can therefore store just a reference to the part, it's translation and colour (see for example the LFXML format), so you'll need something installed that has the parts catalogue and can understand the file you're trying to view - thankfully many of the tools use the same base parts database, so this isn't too hard.


text:
What does “user was removed” mean?
I saw a notice in my Achievements suggesting that I was removed as a user from the Bricks group. As far as I can tell this isn’t true, but I’m still wondering what to make of the notification. Can anyone shed light on why i received the notification or what it means? See screenshot.

This is one of the most demotivational features of StackExchange for me.  I see the need for it, but it doesn't work out too nicely sometimes.  On a few sites I don't have any knowledge to make answers, but I've made tons of edits.  So SE comes along and removes 10-50 rep because of a user deletion.  That's 5-25 edits that I wrote and got approved by somebody too.  The reviewers don't lose credit, but the writer of the edit doesn't.  Oh well.

It means that another user that voted on one of your questions or answers was removed from the site. When this happens, the system reverts all the reputation changes that happened when that user upvotes or downvotes on posts.
There are a number of reasons that an account might be removed ranging from the user requesting it themselves, through to the account being linked to spamming or sock puppets.
For more details, please see this help topic: Why do I have a reputation change on my reputation page that says 'User was removed'?


text:
A clarification request regarding rejected edit suggestion
I suggested this edit removing commentary and relevant information from the given link. However this suggestion was rejected.
The text "best" followed by user's name is just a noise and can be removed according to this meta.
Second edit was to add relevant part of the link. It is always advised to add a relevant information information from that link in case it becomes invalid in future. There is even a delete reason in the popup that appears when you hit delete button in LQP review queue.
The reason for rejection was as follows.

This edit was intended to address the author of the post and makes no sense as an edit. It should have been written as a comment or an answer.

This reason is kinda ambiguous and doesn't really work in this case.
Though, I don't have any issue regarding this matter, but I would like to get a proper explanation for rejected edit suggestion so it can be helpful in future.

I am very sorry for the inconvenience, this was my mistake.
I misunderstood the intention of the edit. I would have approved the removal of the 'Best, X' part but it appeared as though someone had added their answer to the post. After looking at the link again I understand the context.
If you would like to make the same edit suggestion again, I will make sure it gets approved immediately.

No problem. :) Thanks for the clarification.


text:
2021 Community Moderator Election Results
Moderator election #1 on Bricks has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are... the same team you've already had!

Please thank them for volunteering and congratulate them for being re-elected as moderators!
For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here or view a summary report online.

Thank you to everyone who voted, and thank you Zovits for putting yourself forward as well. I certainly appreciate the vote of confidence that you think we're doing a good job for you all, and I hope we can continue to do so :)

Thank you for continuing the amazing job you have been doing all this time! I kind of knew my application was pointless as soon as the three of you have submitted yours :)

@zovits - it's never pointless to run, I've stood in other elections to ensure that the "expected" candidate did have to run a proper campaign and wasn't a shoe-in (although those also had a "re-open nominations" option on the ballot).


text:
Congratulations, you're no longer in Beta!
This site started private beta before July 2012, so it is no longer "beta", it is a full site by our definition. We've removed the word "beta" from your site banner because we believe that you aren't really a beta site any more, even if you don't get ten questions per day.

What this means for you:

the "Beta" is removed from your banner
the site is moved to the "Launched" sites list on Area 51 - which will also remove the A51 info box from the right sidebar
retain beta reputation levels
full-site elections will be delayed but will be scheduled eventually

This is the start of a process that we are already discussing internally and will be bringing to the network for public discussion once the plan is finalized. My hope is that this will mean the end of the monolith we currently refer to as "Graduation" in favor of a well-defined set of small targets to achieve the various elements that made up "Graduation".
I'm sure you have many questions, please feel free to ask and I'll answer what I can. It helps me out a lot if you can limit answers to focus on a single question/subject rather than asking a dozen questions in one answer.
Please feel free to follow the MSE discussion for more background on this decision. You can ask questions either here or there; I'll try to keep up with all of them. Your mods also have some info, so they may be answering in my stead.
Thanks so much for your patience and stay tuned!

Amazing! This incredible community really deserves it! :D


text:
Part Identification vs Set Identification
While going through old question I came to this edit where set-identification tag is changed into part-identification. To me it look previous tag was more fitting but before intervening I wanted to know when to use set-identification vs part-identification.

It's a good question - in general "set identification" is more useful when there's clearly only one set a collection of parts would come from (i.e. a picture of a sealed bag, or half built models) - if you only have one element, unless it's very custom, it's likely to have been in more than one set in which case we can't say which set it's from definitively.
In the case of that question, the parts were in about 5 sets in different quantities, and at least 2 sets had both of them in the quantity shown - in which case changing it to Part Identification was probably correct, because we typically link to BrickSet or BrickLink, from where you can easily get to the sets that contained a particular element, and compare with other elements in your collection to narrow it down.


text:
How to stop undesired edit from being suggested on and on?
There is a question on main site where one user is suggesting undesirable edit (for the 3rd time now):

I has been approved (why?) first time and then rolled back by myself
Rejected second time
Is back in "Suggested edits" queue

Such edit has several reasons to be rejected:

No improvement
Multiple pictures instead of one that is already easy to understand
Original picture has video name, if anyone needs to find the source
Edit could/should be posted as answer instead, since it contains details needed for an answer (part numbers)

How can we stop this kind of edits to be suggested on and on?

For this particular case, the edits don't seem to make any significant improvements on the question.
It is strange that the new images added in the revision actually include part numbers for most of the parts, so this seems more like an attempt to answer the question.
The edit can be rejected as 'No improvement', '
Clearly conflicts with author's intent' and possibly 'Attempt to reply' but I will reject the edit.
Either way I have rejected the edit and blocked the user from suggesting edits for 24 hours. The user may be contacted and blocked for a longer duration if necessary.

How can we stop this kind of edits to be suggested on and on?

This doesn't seem to be a common issue so on a case-by-case basis I would suggest:

Reject unwarranted edits. (Using the last reject reason allows you to leave a comment)
For repeated edits, flag the post as being 'in need of moderator intervention' and leave a descriptive comment.

Also I noticed the [technic] tag has been replaced with [clone-brands] ?

[clone-brands] has been added by myself since BuWizz is present on a picture and has been asked to identify. There were multiple edits and one of them might have dropped the [technic] tag.


text:
Should there be a Lego Masters tag?
So, the second season of the Australian reality TV show Lego Masters has started, and apparently it's based off of similar shows that ran on British and American television under the same name. There doesn't currently seem to be a tag for these Lego Masters television shows; should we add one, so that people can ask questions about them? I could see questions like "How do I do this thing I saw someone do on Episode X of Season Y of the Australian Lego Masters show" or "Is it possible to get parts lists to make copies of the builds for Lego Masters" being on topic for this stack.

Generally tags are only added when there is a demand for them. If someone asks a question about LEGO Masters and they have the privilege to do create a new tag at 150 reputation, they may do so. If they do not have the required rep, they can make a comment, or flag their post to have a tag added.
Please note that new 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.
I don't believe there is a way to create a tag without having it included in a question.


text:
Ads test beginning December 3, 2024
We’ve been exploring the concept of using open auction to manage advertising on some Stack Exchange sites. Under this model, advertisers (who have been organized into categories based on their products) “bid” for an advertising spot. There is a floor price - a minimum price for the spot, and all bids must exceed that floor price.  This community will be testing the open auction experiment, beginning on December 3, 2024.  For more information or to provide feedback on the experiment, please refer to the post on Meta Stack Exchange.

Cheers for the heads up Philippe, we'll keep our eyes out I'm sure ;)


text:
How many Photographs on the same post?
How many pictures can be posted on the same posting?

If it's for set identification, we only need a couple provided they are detailed enough so we can identify key elements...

There's no real "technical" limitation, however you should be considerate of users bandwidth and time.
If you're trying to identify a set, a picture of each bag, or enough pictures to show the key "unique" parts is sufficient, an individual element probably only needs a single image unless there's major features on different angles.
If you can crop the images to show the relevant parts, that would be ideal.


text:
Downvoted questions
My feeling is that more questions are downvoted here on https://bricks.stackexchange.com/ than on the other stackexchange sites I use. Of course, I might be wrong in that feeling, but for the rest of the question I assume it to be correct.
A number of similar questions pop up again and again, such as identifying a bag with no pictures or real information. These are often downvoted before being closed. I can understand this.
But then there are questions like this: Can I buy replacement bags through Lego?
I cannot see why this is downvoted. Is it because something thinks he should have done more investigation on his own? Is it because it is deemed as off topic? Or just because people here do not like knock off products of Lego?
I think it is completely fair to have something against these knock offs, but is that a reason to downvote? If there is something wrong with the question then why not recommend changes in a comment?
The point of my question:
Should this subsite be more welcoming to new members? Or is it too difficult to actually understand what is on/off topic here?

Thanks for bringing this up. It is important to be reminded of how we are interacting with new folks in our community. Your question is similar to my first post on Meta where others reflected on voting and similar behaviors.

Should this subsite be more welcoming to new members?

Yes.
There is always room to be more welcoming. As a community built around the shared joy of block-based building toys, we should be continuing to create a fun and inviting space by removing any sharp edges that make it difficult for newer folks to feel at home here.

I think it is completely fair to have something against these knock offs, but is that a reason to downvote?

Questions about LEGO-compatible systems are welcome here. I've asked at least one. My guess is that the negative sentiment is related to the question asking for support for a set that falls outside of what would be legal to produce and sell in many jurisdictions. It sounds like the set violates both TLG's and Lucasfilm's intellectual property, and I can imagine folks not wanting support that sort of product.
Comments and extended discussion about whether that sort of content is appropriate in our community would probably be a better way to address this than downvoting a new user's question.


text:
Large header feature not working
I don't know if I should post this on MSE or here, but I choose to post here first because even the smallest mistake on MSE gets you excessively bombarded with downvotes.

So I tried using the large header markdown feature but it didn't change anything about the tiny column of equal signs, which makes me confused. I'm certain that I copied and pasted the equal signs directly from the markdown advisor and I even spammed a few myself but the equal signs still stayed the same. In the image you can see that the smaller subheader works as intended but I've also discovered that when you put the two together on two different lines without the blank line between them, then the smaller header doesn't appear and the column of equal signs doesn't really change in any way other than becoming bold, which is stranger.
Why does the odd behavior occur, and is it even working as intended?

I think that you might be mixing up headers (
,
, etc in HTML) and horizontal rules (
 in HTML). You can make an
 in Markdown like this:
------------

This will render as a horizontal rule or line:

You can make level 1 and level 2 headers in Markdown using the following:
Heading Level 1
===============

Heading Level 2
---------------

Note that both the text of the header and the --- or === text underneath are required for the heading to be rendered. The above will render as:
Heading Level 1
Heading Level 2

that could've been specified before so that i wouldn't have to ask this

That is probably true. I think that it's meant to provide a quick overview. There is quite a bit more detail linked from the  "More" link in your image above that explains needing underlines text to create a header: https://bricks.stackexchange.com/editing-help#headers


text:
How can I bump a question with low rep?
I posted a question as a Guest, but then I signed up and wasn't the asker anymore. Unfortunately I didn't get the answer I wanted, so how do I get attention to it?
Where are these minifigures from?

In terms of raising awareness - once you have more reputation you can offer a bounty on the question to raise awareness of it, and before then you can share the question on social networks - if you use the "Share" link under the question you'll get a shorter link to it that includes your user id so that you are credited with the referrals.

With regards to your two accounts, you can ask the SO team to merge the accounts:

I accidentally created two accounts; how do I merge them?
If you have two accounts that you would like to join together, please sign into either account, visit the contact form and select ‘I need to merge user profiles’. After you contact us, the Stack Exchange Team will reach out to verify that you own both accounts. If we can confirm your ownership, we will initiate a merge.

I assume you're referring to the following accounts:

Guest - 6815 - Unregistered
Guest - 6822 - Registered

And we'd be merging 6815 into 6822?