text:
Death to the "trivia" tag
I've removed the trivia tag. In my view it veered on the wrong side of meta-tagging to start with. I also always read it as a descriptor meaning something like "this is the kind of question that might be asked during pub quiz", and it was being applied to questions like How are the Lego instruction manuals made? which don't fit that at all. In a broader sense, everything on this site is trivia.
I replaced the ones that actually were trivia with records, all three were about the "biggest" something; otherwise I've just removed the tag.

records seems just as bad as trivia.

@Pubby8: People won't put records on things like "How are the Lego instruction manuals made?" so it's definitely not as bad. It does describe the question's content and not just the type. I don't have a better alternative yet.

Related: http://meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/31/trivia-or-fun-tag

I'm kinda "meh" on both of these... It kinda seems like you couldn't think up any other tags!
What is the largest single LEGO piece?
Only tag is records. That sucks. What about sizes, identification, history? You'd think there'd be something that describes this with a bit more specificity?
What's the largest LEGO construction ever?
Here again, only one tag. I'd think history would be a no-brainer.
What is the largest Lego kit commercially available?
The only one of the three with multiple tags, and yet even here it seems to be missing the most obvious tag: sets.
I guess my point is, you're fixated on the wrong problem: we don't really need a "pub quiz" tag, since just about any other tag will have some amount of trivia associated with it; what we need are specific tags that adequately describe the questions.

I'm not sure why you think history is an appropriate tag. The largest Lego construction could have been built yesterday. It's not a question about the history of Lego or the Lego Group; just that whatever the answer is must (by necessity) have happened in the past. As for sizes, why is that better than records?

identification is for identification of pieces or sets based on incomplete information, I don't see how it applies. The newer piece-information is better for that question; I've added that. I also don't see how records is a "pub quiz" tag; I never claimed to want one of those. Rather the opposite.

@Joe, sorry for the late response. I'm having trouble seeing how [records] is much of an improvement over [trivia] - it's a bit more specific I suppose, but you're still looking at sort of a grabbag tag. Combined with other tags, it's perhaps no big deal... But when the only tag on a question is [records], that question is effectively uncategorized. Surely there's some topic that could be extracted from a question on kits or constructions or pieces and used for a tag...?

I don't see why [tag:records] alone is bad. The question is about a record. What's grab-bag about it? Just because a tag would be a bad categorization on e.g. SO doesn't make it a bad tag here. What else would you say that question is about? Sometimes a question is simple and only needs one tag...

@Joe: what does "record" say about the question? How is "record" related to LEGO bricks, the LEGO community, or the LEGO company? FWIW, [record] is a perfectly appropriate tag on SO, because it has a fairly well-defined (albeit completely different) meaning in that context. So what does it mean here, and what is so special about these questions that no other tags can describe them?

I don't understand your point. The question is about a record. The record is a record involving Lego bricks. [tag:records] says that the question is going to be asking about a Lego-related record. Your rhetorical questions seem like they would apply to any tag on the site. What does "instructions" say about the question? Well, it says the question concerns instructions. There's nothing special about that question, it's just a straightforward one. But again, what other tags would be useful on it? [tag:james-may]? I don't understand why you think it needs more tags.

Maybe, if james-may is a notable builder who one might expect questions to be asked about. I really can't say - that's one reason why it makes me uneasy: [record] here has the same general meaning it would have anywhere else; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but if there are no terms that describe a question here that aren't at some level specific to the topic, then I start to wonder what the question's even doing here.

Well we're not allowed a [tag:lego] (and I don't want one), so I mean, what do you expect? The question is specific to the topic, adding more tags doesn't make it more on-topic. In a global tagging system, I'd give it [tag:lego] and [tag:records] because it's about Lego records. But this site already implies [tag:lego].

You make a good argument. I might be over-thinking this - seeing two out of three questions with no other tags set off alarm bells when I first looked in. But you've re-tagged two of the three. It still concerns me, but if you say there's no other possible tag for that question... I'll take you at your word.


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

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

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

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

This is not accurate anymore, as Pubby8's link explains.

It's exactly the same answer

You should read the comments. AFAIK Joubarc is right as of the most recent betas, but the requirements are intentionally undefined because the goal is get a good site, not get the beta badge.

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

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

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

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

I knew I answered too much

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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

I wrote them, and I'm not happy with them either. If you think they're bad, I think it's best to change them if you have time, and don't approve them if you don't.

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

Excerpt

Custom-made modifications done to original LEGO elements.

Full wiki

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

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

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

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


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piece-id, part-id, piece-name? No one's going to tag things right
Right now we have piece-id, part-id, and piece-name tags.
I don't think this is a good approach. No new user is ever going to tag these right, and it's not like a question for a piece name is practically different than a question asking for a piece's element ID. And beyond that, identifications of non-pieces like stickers or entire sets should really be sharing a tag - we use the same resources to answer the question.
If no one objects, I'd like to merge all three of those into the single identification tag.

I think @Dori asked a question along the same lines on the chat, but didn't get much answers. I agree on [tag:identification], whether people are after the name, element id or design id is basically irrelevant. The only issue I can see is if we also get a lot of set identification requests also, but I doun't we'll get much, and surely not enough to justify creating two tags.

I think merging set identification and part identification requests is a plus. Set identification always starts with part identification so they'll use the same resources and knowledge.

Agreed, not only is there probably no need to separate both, but there are indeed good reasons to keep them together.

Whatever the choice may be, some tag wikis would help.

@Dori's chat post was: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2261055#2261055 I also agree we should merge those. Leave [tag:piece-information] separate as that's more about the history/context of pieces than knowing what they are called/referred to.

Need to get @oezi in here as a user with rights to do this ;)

I recall some complaints from another SE about lack of tag merging/renaming - you can set up pre-hoc synonyms, but the only way to really merge is to retag questions by hand. So, I just did that.

As you say, we still need to get the synonyms in place so that they don't creep back.

We now have two separate tags for piece-information and indetification.
Piece Information

Questions asking for information about a known LEGO element/brick. Use
  identification for questions about unknown pieces or sets.

Synonym: parts
Indentification

Use this tag if you are trying to identify a LEGO element or set that
  you possess or have seen somewhere.

Synonym: piece-id

Users are encouraged to add an improve to existing tags, as they would with questions and answers.


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Lego mindstorm proposal going nowhere

Possible Duplicate:
Is Lego Mindstorms on-topic?

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

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

From Dori ♦ in Is Lego Mindstorms on-topic?:

If/when this site goes into public beta, the Mindstorms proposal will be closed. Everyone who followed/committed to it will then get an email inviting them to join this site and the existing Area 51 robotics proposals.

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

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

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

I think a wait-and-see approach is best. If a question really just involves programming, we can move to SO - if it involves a mixture of building and programming, let's try to answer those here unless they start drowning out non-programming questions. In robotics hardware and software can rarely be separated usefully, and we're definitely the site for Mindstorms hardware.

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

@jfyelle: It's a tough call. Many times in robotics a problem has a hardware or hardware/software solution that's much easier than a software-only solution. Even if the question is phrased as "pure programming", the right answer might be to build something.

@joe, makes sense to me.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also LEGO needs to be written always in capital letters and should never stand alone

This is a giant waste of time and energy. If the site gets at all popular, there's no way we can manage this. Your own post title doesn't get it "right".
If Lego (oh no!) insists on this kind of micromanagement of community sites, it's no wonder there's no modern ones.

It's mostly for static site content, they know they can't really hope to go further than that. User posts are out of scope.


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

Is there really any uncertainty over how to respond to them? Aside from the bridge question, I think our building questions have been well-written and tightly scoped.
Obviously people can have different opinions about styles, resulting in very different suggestions. That doesn't make the question subjective, any more than any e.g. programming question is subjective. Just because there are several good, conflicting answers doesn't mean there are not objective standards to separate good and bad answers, nor that the asker and community cannot use their own opinions to promote or demote answers. Rather, that's the point of crowdsourcing. Problems arise when there are dozens of answers and no way to decide between them. I expect there are probably at most five ways to build a sphere, and ten ways to build a micro-scale crypt, and the situations askers and voters find themselves in provide enough objective criteria to make a good decision between those.
This is also why there's two axes of rating answers on SE sites. The first is, what was the best answer for the asker? And the second is, what does the community deem the best answer? The former is decided by the answer tick and the second is decided by voting.

I think what we also need is encourage people to answer these even when there are already good answers - because they will have a different take on the question. I would love to see the Heroica graveyard/crypt one, for example, with dozens of answers.

I wouldn't. If there's dozens of answers, either the question was too broad, or most of the answers are terrible.

OK, maybe not dozens, but two is certainly not enough

I'm with @Joubarc on this - I'd love to see some more answers, which is why I've not yet accepted either. I agree that by opening it up to "Crypts" as well as "Graveyards", I may have made it too broad :(

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


text:
Site may not be described as "LEGO Answers" - call for alternative titles
UPDATE: After a further review in March 2017, TLG have confirmed that they would like us to change the site name. This post is kept for reference.

I've got this comment from Jan Beyer, Community Operations Manager for the LEGO Group:

Regarding the website - it should not be called LEGO Answers - this imply that the LEGO Group answers but perhaps "Answers regarding LEGO bricks".

Now I have to admit I can't really find the part of the site which says "LEGO Answers", as everywhere I look I see "LEGO® — Stack Exchange" which may be OK; but if it does exist, can it be changed somehow?

Edit to add:
The site still has <title>LEGO® - Stack Exchange</title>, and so appears as "LEGO® - Stack Exchange" in Google results, and the mobile site also still has the main page heading as "LEGO®"

Follow-up:
LEGO Legal Affairs reviewed LEGO Answers and did not cite any problems with the name. They made a few suggestions about improving the site description to bring it into compliance. So, unless we hear otherwise, the site name does not need to be changed.

The giant logo on the top left of the page reads "LEGO Answers"

Then that's probably what he was talking about. No idea why I still don't see it — I just see a blue "LEGO®" with a small red "beta" above.

It was changed last week, you may need to refresh in some fashion.

I'm still not sure why it's not "Brick Overflow" or "Brick Exchange"...

@Grace: I was seeing the old logo until sometime today (and on meta before the main site - very strange!) so I think there's some sort of staggered rollout, or a stale CDN cache.

@Grace actually, I see "LEGO Answers" with Safari, and just "LEGO" with firefox... any idea why? Which one is the current one?

@Joubarc: SE's caching behaviors continue to veer towards nonsensical in my experience - I just saw "LEGO" again now. But I'm pretty sure "LEGO Answers" is the current one.

@Joe thanks, I tried to hit refresh in IE and saw "LEGO Answers" replace "LEGO" so you're certainly correct.

Could someone re-title this question so its more obvious it is the "name this site" question?

I love the fact that we can't have "LEGO" anywhere in our title, yet some upstart pop-boy can release a single called "LEGO House", without the capitalisation or anything ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4BLVznuWnU

Jan referred me to someone from LEGO Legal Affairs who took a look at the site and did not cite a problem with the name of the site. He made a few suggestions about improving the site description to bring it into compliance. So, unless we hear otherwise, the site name does not need to be changed.

Good to hear! Out of curiosity, did they comment on the content of the site so far?

@Robert Am I correct in hearing that the Lego bricks community is discouraged from discussing/voting/choosing the site's name? I seem to remember other communities getting to pick their name. What's different with this site?

@antony.trupe: Sites have not picked custom names for a very long time. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/

@Robert Fair enough, however, lego<-answers>.stackexchange.com doesn't exist, so I'm seeing inconsistency in the SE team's position. According to the blog post, the site name should match its domain, which in this case is bricks, right?

It's not a duplicate per-say but it's close enough. TLG originally accepted our name, but now that we're a Registered Media Fan Site we've been asked to change.

Brick Overflow
This has been brought up time and time again. The main reason for not calling the site Brick Overflow is that it's an in joke, and people who don't know about Stack Overflow will be confused, and hence not participate on the site, or something.
I disagree, I think it has a clear meaning in context to the site ("I have so many brick-related toys that they're overflowing everywhere!"). If you do know about Stack Overflow, there's an added bonus. Serenity was a great film, and I have friends who enjoyed watching it who had no idea Firefly existed. It still made sense on its own.

It sounds perfect

Well, to this specific questions, Jan answered:

I would like to see anything without LEGO.

So there. I'm in favour of "Brick (anything)". Even "overflow", while an in-joke, has a nice ring to it - who wouldn't be like to be overflown by bricks?

This isn't really a crowd-sourcing type of situation. We will talk to the folks over at LEGO® to see what, if anything, needs to be done to bring the site into compliance. But we're not really in search of a branded or customized name apart from LEGO® Bricks or LEGO® <something>… whatever will bring the trademark use into compliance.

I think contacts should indeed better be had at an admin level. Do you have any contact person already? If there are talks in progress, maybe this question ought to be closed.

Choosing a site name is not something the community does?

@Joubarc: My next task was to get in touch with you to get the contact you mentioned above. Would it be possible for you to forward an email to me to facilitate an introduction? community@stackexchange.com. Thanks.

Yeah I'm still not clear on why we can't just pick a site name. I started a question about this during closed beta and got shut down too. Is it because it's too early?

I imagine the community can't pick a site name because there could be legal ramifications if the owner of the Lego trademark doesn't like it.

Robert, while I think it might be great to have "LEGO" in the title, how would that impact us answering questions on non-LEGO brick toys on the site (minority though they may be)? Equally, if the community is happy without the "LEGO" doesn't that make this moot?

@user341: The community by and large seems to have a good clue what they're doing. As far as I know it was SE staff who changed the name to "LEGO® Answers", with no feedback to us on why. "Brick Overflow" has had community support since pre-beta. Robert is the one insisting the site have "LEGO®" in the name...

@JoeWreschnig That's the problem with jumping into a conversation late in the game. I assumed it was the other way around. Thanks for the info.

@Robert: I would appreciate some public update on this. I know SE is trying to consolidate branding more to reduce confusion, but "Brick Overflow" and "Brick Exchange" definitely fits within that framework, and naming the site "LEGO®" while the URL is "bricks.se" seems like a major step backwards from that goal as well.

Agreed - is there any news on this one way or another?

Still nothing to report?

LEGO's legal department didn't have a problem with the name of the site, but they made some suggestions to improve the wording around the various descriptions and such. With these minor changes, we are in compliance.

Cheers for the update :)

disappointed we don't get to talk about it :( might even say disenfranchised with the SE team.

Brick Stack
Sort of associates itself with the stack exchange network

Bricks
clean, simple, vague, open-ended.

Not to mention "bricks" is already in the URL and so it seems to make sense to include it in the site name.

Brick Answers
It is what it is.

Brick Q&A
Pretty clear its a Q&A site.

I'm pretty sure that as long as the word "lego" is not in the web address, it should be OK.

Brick Smarter
LEGO and other SAR toys
Trying to keep the tagline underneath from being really long like the following example:
Brick Smarter
Unofficial answers regarding LEGO bricks and other SAR toys
See how just trying to keep the tagline shorter helps the logo seem more coherent? I realize that the point is to "not be associated with LEGO", but then again I presume that other toys, such as DUPLO (another LEGO property) and K'Nex, fishertechnik, Mega bloks and similar toys are going to be asked here.
But yes, the LEGO brand is the most popular and is going to be the point of the most traffic for that reason.

I don't know what SAR stands for so that's not very helpful. K'nex and Fishertechnik are not on-topic here.

That's funny, they look just like (ok, not quite, but assume the eyes of an eight year old) Technik. So Technik is OK but K'Nex isn't? Interesting isn't it? And if K'Nex is permitted, then so should be fischertechnik. Anyways, that's not my quibble. My point was "this site won't just be for LEGO brand toys will it?"

PS: SAR = Some Assembly Required. The "Brick Smarter" and the LEGO reference should help people figure out this isn't just for random toys that have to be put together when you get them home. I mean, I could see where there are people that slow in the world, but .. the title as "Brick ________" should help them figure it out.

I think I'd prefer "Brick Smarts" to "Brick Smarter" - other SE names are all nouns - but otherwise I like it. Still not sold on the blurb.

Brick smarts is cute too.

@jcolebrand see this question here: http://meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/38/lego-brick-based-toys-only

Brick Pile
Sounds like a sales site's name.

Name alternatives:

Answers regarding LEGO bricks
Bricks
Brick Overflow
Brick Exchange
Brick Pile
Brick Answers
Brick Q&A
Brick Stack
Stack Brick
Stack OverBrick
MegaBlok Answers
Unofficial LEGO Answers (Unofficial answers regarding LEGO bricks)

The last one is unacceptable, it must be "Unofficial answers regarding LEGO bricks".

@JoeWreschnig can I ask why?

@jcolebrand: I have no idea, you should be asking the LEGO® Group.

I thought maybe you had a more firm reason why the last one was unacceptable in the shorter form. All LEGO wanted was that the name not imply that they were answering questions

@jcolebrand: What they actually said was "Also LEGO needs to be written always in capital letters and should never stand alone".

@JoeWreschnig It has Answers as a friend.

what does that mean? I'm confused. "should never stand alone" ... huh?

Again, you are asking me to explain the LEGO® Group's request. I can't do that. (You should edit your comment while there's still time, so you don't take their name in vain!)

@jcolebrand Referring to LEGO bricks as legos hurts their trademark. The term could become generic which would allow MegaBloks to refer to their product as legos.

@Pubby8 ooooooh, thanks. what about "LEGO products" do you think, since we would ostensibly have DUPLO and etc on here.

@JoeWreschnig I wasn't asking you any further to explain that. I only said "what does that mean, I'm confused".

@Pubby8: Sorry, but, it doesn't. Referring to MegaBloks as Legos dilutes their trademark. Selling something as "Lego" without their permission dilutes their trademark. Referring to Lego bricks as Legos is just... English.

@JoeWreschnig It's turning a proper noun into a regular noun. If the word enters the english language then trademark doesn't hold up. That's why we have Kleenex tissues and Band Aid bandages.

@Pubby8: Plenty of trademarks are plain English words. Trademark genericization occurs when the word stops referring to the branded object and refers to the broader class of things it belongs to. Apple doesn't sell iPhone phones. They sell iPhones. Lenovo doesn't make ThinkPad laptop computers. They make ThinkPads.

Incidentally, SE is covered in registered trademarks - Apple, Google, Android, Ubuntu, Linux, Facebook, nearly every question on Gaming. Yet the only ® I see anywhere is here.

@Joe it's probably the first time we have a zealot zealous enough to telltale to the copyright owner

Note, the problem with "LEGO Answers" seems to be that "Answers" can be taken as a verb, so "Unofficial LEGO Answers" may actually be OK. I've sent some of the suggestions to Jan to have a definite answer. Anything without "LEGO®" in it is bound to be OK, but I think it would be a bit sad.

"Brick Exchange" sounds like a market for bricks.

This shouldn't be a CW answer, we should have each option as a separate answer to vote on.

Mega Bloks
And other building block systems

Heh. Is that the sound of sharpening pitchforks I can hear? ;)

Hang on, I think I can hear it too!


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Are LEGO Robotics Clubs/Competitions on-topic?
I'm wondering if questions about LEGO Robotics clubs/organizations such as First LEGO League and associated teams/competitions are on-topic. Questions could conceivably include topics such as teaching/training resources, best practices for organizing teams/competitions, etc.

You mean the "FIRST® LEGO® Bricks League".

They're definitely on-topic, but your two example questions make me nervous. "What resources are available for X?" and "Best practices for X?" are some of the most useless flavors of SE question in my experience. Google answers the first one better, and the second is not really answerable.

Fair enough, will keep that in mind. I definitely won't submit any questions in this area unless there's something specific that can be added.

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


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Incorrect "lego" in site welcome message
The site welcome message you get when not logged in says:

Welcome to Q&A for lego and building block enthusiasts

It should say

Welcome to Q&A for LEGO® building blocks enthusiasts

Wanted to post about this, and the title auto-suggestion led me here. Has this still not been fixed yet? ಠ_ಠ

Well, first attempt at this ended up making the about page look dumb. Stupid symbols.
Crosses fingers and tries again
If this doesn't work, it's gonna be LEGO(R) – all-ASCII like God intended!

® carries legal weight. (R) does not. If you are in an ASCII-only environment, you are supposed to use the legally approved variation "Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off." in the United States instead. So if technical limitations prevent us from using ®, we should use nothing, not some useless garbage.

@Joe: It works now (at least for browsers that handle Unicode properly - which should be most desktop browsers at any rate). Just a bit frustrated yesterday ;-)

You might want to check http://meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/135 then...

sigh... That's a different (but related) problem. Will dig into...


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Should video embedding be enabled?
On the gaming SE site YouTube videos are automatically embedded into answers. Could we get something like that too?
It would be very useful for showing mechanical parts/creations in action, especially LEGO robotics.

The best way to make a case for this is to demonstrate a need for video on this site. If video would improve your answer, start linking to videos in your posts!
Assuming they're actually useful, this provides some concrete data for judging how and where they're appropriate, lets you create guidelines for their use, and lets us see that adding support for embedding them directly would be beneficial to the site.

That makes sense - so far the only questions where I feel this would help would be [tag:technique] questions where someone would want to illustrate a step-by-step build process, but even then I think showing one image for each step would be appropriate in most cases.

70 days into beta we have 19 answers and 6 questions that include at least one link to Youtube. The most popular tags associated with these posts tend to be mindstorms, building and power-functions.*
Questions based on robotics and mechanics tend to include videos, which can help explain a complex mechanism. A video alone isn't usually enough to answer a question so users should be encouraged to expand on important points.
* The search term used was url:"*.youtube.*" combined with is:question or is:answer


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

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

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

I can't yet vote for any re-openings, but I think that if we should be willing to answer questions about programming, electricity, events, or identification, or LEGO clones, it's only fair that we also include [sociology]. I have added this as a tag in an edit to the question, er, in question, and I hope that whoever peer-reviews it is willing to seriously consider this idea.
We are a community that is dedicated to the finding of answers to questions the detached and inattentive internet will not resolve. I personally believe that we need to accept questions ike this for two reasons:

It is a question that only we may know the answer to.
It is a question that people here want to get the answer to.

This is my personal belief on this, that sociology is a worthy topic.

A note to the people considering this topic:
There are not as many of us as there used to be; we need to recruit more people. At this point, every question, including ones that may not feel directly related to our topic, if related at all, should be taken into serious consideration! We are a family, not just a chat room, and it should be our ultimate duty to respect and consider every question we see. You may not agree with me, I am okay with that. The fact that you do not do as the trite, racist population of the general internet does and flame me over my view, proves how good we are. And the fact that we are doing as I suggest right here makes me really happy. We are actually considering the problem, and trying to find the ultimate solution.


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Finding ways around paying the full price
Many questions are around this subjects: "How can I get pay less for Lego", "How can I get around custom fees", and so on.
Lego and distributors are in business and we have our Lego bricks because of them.  Going around paying the normal price is only going to hurt this market.
Q: Should we support questions that are about trying to find ways around paying for the Lego product?
Here are two examples:
How can I minimize the number of merchants for given set of requested bricks?
What are some 3rd party mini-figure gun makers that distribute in Canada?

It depends. Asking if there's some way to optimize Bricklink purchases seems fine to me - that's a tool that could conceivably exist, and Bricklink is definitely not friendly to comparison shopping as-is.
Asking how you get around customs fees - that's off-topic, often too localized, can change on a whim, and may be illegal.

Optimizing shopping, I have nothing against that. The question is more toward people trying to avoid paying the full price for the product.

But the example you cited of the "minimize the number of merchants" was about how to find those merchants that sold all, or most of the parts - that's not trying to circumvent the system, but common sense, like asking Amazon to group your order into as few packages as possible, or buying multiple lots from a seller on ebay and asking for combined postage.

Lego and distributors are in business and we have our Lego bricks because of them. Going around paying the normal price is only going to hurt this market.

If you're trying to do so illegally, yes.
If you're just trying to find alternate buying routes, why not? Keep in mind you won't find a LEGO set for cheap unless someone is willing to sell it for cheap. And if they are willing, why would it hurt them? Most of them time it helps them getting rid of stock they wouldn't be able to sell anyway.
Ultimately, adult fans aren't such a huge part fo the LEGO market anyway (5 to 10% tops), so even if LEGO ended up selling parts to them at a loss (which they don't), it wouldn't be so bad. On the other hand, considering the quantities some fans buy, it's only faire that they would pay less when there is a chance.

The illegal ones are the problem.  I was bothered by the "not paying customs" answer.  Everything else is ok with me.

It is early in the life of this site so now is the time where we cast a wide net and set up boundaries, so this is a good conversation to have.
I asked my question about buying 3rd-party parts because I was worried about paying a $25+ customs fee for bringing hollow plastic across the border. What I decided to do was ask a question about buying these parts IN Canada to avoid these fees. What i did NOT ask for was methods for smuggling Lego across the border.
I see the points of other answers made in that this type of question might be too localized, but what I do not agree with is that these questions are searching for answers that are illegal in nature. My question was not about "circumventing the system", but about sellers of Lego parts within Canada, like if you bought from Amazon.ca instead of Amazon.com.
Neither my question or the answer I accepted are illegal in nature, but it indeed might be too localized and subject to change to be useful. If there is a push against this type of question, I will be happy to delete it


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Is it generally acceptable to answer a question that has an accepted answer?
Some questions continue to percolate even though they have an accepted answer. Is it generally O.K. to enter an on topic response afterwards?

Thanks. I'm enjoying the site. Nice job.

Usually I don't accept answers until I feel the topic is closed. But things tend to change over time and a better/more precise or more up to date answer can hopefully emerge. So yes it is OK to answer questions with accepted answers.

Yes!
Assuming, of course, that you've something useful to add. "Accepted" just means the person who asked the question found the answer helpful - it doesn't mean that answer is necessarily the last word on the topic. If you think you can provide a better answer, or even just answer from a different perspective, then by all means - post it!

I think this differs from my perspective.  Seeing a "check" next to the answer is usually an indicator that the asker has said "okay, thanks for answering me, I'm good!"  Otherwise, by definition, there is always a "best" answer from the list (that is, a question with just one answer has that as the best question) and the tag becomes meaningless (IMHO)

Sure - but just because one user (albeit the one who asked the question) is satisfied with it doesn't mean every future reader will be. The whole point of SE is that questions tend to be had by multiple people - a future reader with the same problem may well find your answer more useful. That doesn't mean every question needs loads of answers... But if you see an opportunity to expand on the knowledge provided, you're more than welcome to do so.

If you can edit your information into an existing answer (i.e. it's supplementary rather than contradictory) that's better than a new answer.
Otherwise, new answers to already-answered questions are a normal part of SE - though in my experience on other sites, they are usually not great quality (most often restatements of an existing answer, and usually not as insightful) so I find I tend to downvote them anyway.

As Shog9 and Joe state (and demonstrate): Yes, there's nothing wrong with adding a useful answer to a question that already has an accepted answer - indeed I remember there being a discussion about how we could tactfully suggest that new users don't accept answers straight away on SO, because seeing that a question already had an accepted answer was perceived as discouraging others from answering.
It's also useful when technology or techniques have moved on - especially on programming sites where questions might be about Beta software, but even here, if the LEGO Group were to release a new brick that makes a particular form of SNOT building easier, then by all means post more answers about it.
Generally though, usually it's just people saying "Thanks that helped me too" because they can post an answer with no rep, but can't add a comment.


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Building vs. technique - How or which to choose?
Right now we have building, which says If your question is about building techniques, this is the tag for you.
But we also have technique, which says Tricks and methods used to build models.
So right now, they're exactly the same thing - building techniques vs. techniques for building.
Which of these tags do we want to be the "right" one?
Or if we keep both, what's the difference between them? What's an example of a question that's about building but not technique, and one that's about technique but not building?

Building
"Technique" is a really vague, almost meta word. Technique for what? Techniques for applying stickers? Techniques for sorting? Techniques for cleaning? What question isn't a technique question?
Well, no, we mean exclusively techniques for building. So let's just use that.
I would even push for a more limited definition of building to mean mostly structural elements, perhaps opposed to decoration with color or lighting, or the software aspects of mindstorms programming.

All those questions that were tagged [tag:trivia] aren't [tag:technique] questions ;) but yes, that's why I've proposed we make [tag:technique] a synonym of [tag:building]

I actually proposed that we move technique to a synonym of building on the 8/11 - but the whole issue around voting for synonyms makes it very hard to get these accepted at the moment:
Please vote on synonyms (up if you think they are right, down if not), and you're able to:

Visit the proposed Synonyms page
Click through to the "Master" tag synonym page
Attempt to vote on the synonym.

The most likely result is:

Error: You do not have the required score on this tag to vote for this tag synonym - you need to have at least a score of 5 upvotes in the master tag to vote on that synonym.

The least likely result is:

Success: your vote is counted, and 3 other people also need to vote on it.

I don't think tag synonyms are necessary at this point in the site (I also don't think they're bad, so keep on suggesting them and people should vote on what they can - it's just not much yet). There's only nine questions with the [tag:technique] tag, if we want it gone, let's just make it gone.


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

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

Click "link" under the question to get a permalink that identifies you as the referer. This URL embeds your user ID.

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


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Combine Mindstorms and NXT/RCX tags
What should we do?
 - Keep: [tag:nxt] and [tag:rcx];    Unusable/'Reserved': [tag:mindstorms]

                                      OR

 - Keep: [tag:mindstorms];           Tag synonyms:        [tag:nxt] and [tag:rcx]

In other words, should we 'combine' nxt and rcx into mindstorms?

@Ambo100 Tags names do not contain any magiscules. :)

I think RCX and NXT are two sufficiently apart technologies that they will each require its specific tag, so I really don't like having nxt and rcx being synonyms for mindstorms.
However, there might be questions which aren't so much about a specific Mindstorms kit but rather about robotic design in a more general sense. If these questions happen, taging them with rcx or nxt will be ill-suited, while mindstorms might be better — although there maybe robotics would be best (let's not forget Spybotics :-).
My own suggestion is to keep all three tags for the moment, but specify in the mindstorms wiki that if the question is specific to the NXT or RCX, then the appropriate tags should be used.
But really, I think we don't have a sufficient vision of what questions will arise to make that kind of decision now. Then again, I'm tagnostic, so my advise isn't worth squat here.

Or [tag:WeDo] which also fits into Robotics.

I've removed my votes on the NXT/RCX synonyms and adjusted the Wiki body to include a note about using the technology specific tags.

The way you did it is exactly what I had in mind

Or Cybermaster and Scout. :)


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Promote the site on LEGO related sites
I'm not sure who takes responsibility for promoting Stack Exchange, but it would help a lot if they could organise shout-outs on well known LEGO fansites.
A well worded e-mail sent to the site's administrators could be just the thing we need to find potential target users.

Promoting of the site is a community responsibility - each user should do it as much as he can to the persons he knows.
That said, I'm personnaly holding off a little on publicity, for the following reasons:

I would like the "LEGO Answers" trademark issue settled first, so that we give a coherent image to other well known LEGO communities
I wouldn't mind building a bit more momentum before reaching out to high-profile communities.

I tried once to communicate something to Huw Millington (Brickset) about a way to scan minifig barcodes for Android (before you could find dozens of apps to do it), and while he did respond to a few mails, I had the clear impression I wasn't really reaching to him - presumably because he's got way too much junk to sort out. I'm not saying I won't try to push bricks.se to him too, but I still feel now is not the time.
However, if you happen to stumble upon a discussion on a topic which has been asked here... it's worth sharing a link. (I've seen someone on Facebook who had just noticed the stud in minifig heads had changed, for example)
Don't forget your local LUG and/or ambassadors, too. I'll probably post something to FreeLUG someday, and through Didier Enjary that should go further to RailBricks. But as you say, it needs to be well-worded, so I'm not rushing myself there either.

Talking about promotion: I use the Share option under the question from time to time and this question (http://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/1754/how-much-usage-can-a-lego-piece-take-before-it-loses-its-clutch-power) which I Shared over a month ago has exploded in traffic today.


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Could we change the name on the @StackBrix Twitter account profile?
Currently the full name of our twitter account is:

Brix Stack Exchange

Whilst saving two characters in the account name is possibly valuable understandable when someone else already has the preferred account, there's no need for the "x" to propagate into the full name - please can it be be changed to:

Bricks SE

And then include the site name in the account Bio?

I support this suggestion.

I'd support this if I had any idea what our site's actual name was or will be.

@JoeWreschnig Heh, I did think about waiting, but the Brix thing just makes me sad.

Why not Bricks.SE?

No real reason, other than Stack Exchange is more obvious than SE - I'm really only after the profile name being tweaked, although I saw music.se seems to have changed the account name too. To be honest so long as we lose the x from the profile I'll be happy ;)

FWIW: the account is StackBrix not to save two characters, but because stackbricks was already taken

@shog9 fair enough, as I said this was about the profile full name.

Sorry, this won't work. ):
Twitter enforces a 20 character length limit on the description field.  "LEGO® Answers Stack Exchange" is 28.
The Name field has been changed to "Bricks SE"
The Bio field has been changed to "LEGO® Answers - Stack Exchange is a Q&A site for LEGO® and building block enthusiasts."

Hmm, well either "LEGO® Answers SE" or please just lose the x from the name (which was the original request) so it's "Bricks Stack Exchange"?

Apparently I still couldn't count :S Many thanks Rebecca.

FWIW: the account is StackBrix not to save two characters, but because
  stackbricks was already taken – Shog9

StackBrix sounds cheap and unoriginal.
Could we not use a word divider (delimiter) to divide the words Stack and Bricks?

Stack-Bricks
Stack.Bricks
Stack:Bricks

It appears Twitter usernames are letters, numbers, and underscores only so the only other option would be:

Stack_Bricks

Actually, since that account is inactive and obscure, it should be possible to contact Twitter to claim that username.


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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?

If you're not sure, my suggestion is to ask here. We need the questions, the site focus will (eventually) help get more and better answers, and it's probably easier to get mod attention to migrate from here to SO than SO to 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...


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Problem with the (R) encoding on the Privileges page
On the privileges page, the reg glyph isn't appearing correctly, it's double escaped or similar:

&#174;

It also still calls the site "LEGO" rather than "LEGO Answers" or "Brick Overflow."

@JoeWreschnig I know, but last time I mentioned something like that I was reminded that we've not yet finalised the name ;) I thought I'd just ask for the (R) symbols to be fixed first.

@shog9 Cheers :)

Also appears on the mobile version of the site

@Ambo100 I'd not noticed that, even with all my mobile browsing - might need to add it as a new issue however?

@Zhaph-BenDuguid: It appears to have been fixed

Related: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113026/lego-is-broken-in-the-se-site-directory

Now fixed; thanks for the report!

Cheers good to have an accepted answer to go with the status completed tag :)


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

I changed the Gif's background to black in Photoshop

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


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Update Page Titles and Mobile Site to reflect the Site Name
In light of the update from Robert about The LEGO Group not having an issue with the site being called "LEGO Answers", we should update the following items to reflect this:

The home page <title> tag currently reads: "LEGO® - Stack Exchange" this should be updated to "LEGO® Answers - Stack Exchange"
The Mobile site header just reads: "LEGO®" this should be updated to "LEGO® Answers".

I assume that these changes will also update the FAQ pages to reflect the site name as well?

And I guess "Lego® Meta - Stack Exchange" needs to become "Lego® Answers Meta - Stack Exchange", too?

Yep, I guess so ;)

Someone appears to have fixed this, but I'm not sure who or how ;)

I updated the FAQ page myself.

Thank Rebecca Chernoff for putting in waaay too much effort and putting up with my nagging until this finally worked.

Will do: Thanks Rebecca :)

This was all Rebecca Chernoff's work, but someone needs to post an answer to herald this as being complete, neh? ♪

I suppose so, although I was happy to mark it as status complete :)


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

@BoltClock Why thank you ;)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

@Zhaph: ~85% from my pov

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

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


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Should we merge the Sorting and Organizing tags?
At the moment we've got 3 questions that are tagged sorting, 2 of which are also tagged organization, the remaining one could be equally happy under organization I think?

The tags more or less represent the same questions. The question is which one of the two tags should be the preferred tag.
I've added sorting as a suggested synonym for organisation which can be voted on here.

Seeing as my vote's not an insta-approve, I've voted on that. Wasn't sure if suggesting it as a mod would have just created it. Clearly not.

I would have kinda expected it that way too, but you can actually force it anywy on the general synonyms page where there's an "approve" link (well, was, since I just did it). That said, I kinda liked [tag:sorting]... oh well

@Joubarc Yes, I knew about the insta-approve, but was deliberately not using it as I wasn't sure about how the rest of us felt...

Ah, "oops", then.


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Is question share popup on question upvote by design?
On each question upvote (but not answer) I'm getting a link share window popped up. Is it by design?

Yes, and it's happening across the network.
The idea is that you think the question is great (you've up voted it) and now you might like to share it with your followers/friends so the site gains more users, and you get the chance to gain a couple of badges.
I guess the issue is we're at a low question count at the moment so any question becomes "hot" as soon as it's voted up.


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

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

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

Off-Topic:

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

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


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Pluralize [tag:minifigure]
I think, and on SO it's a common though, that a tag should be in plural form if it can and that doesn't change sense.
So let's pluralize minifigure by analogy with video-games.

Thanks for pointing this out.

minifigure is now synonymous with minifigures which is now the primary tag.
It looks like nearly every other tag that can be considered quantitative has already been written in plural form, it seems sensible that minifigures should be treated the same.


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Do we need a "Set-Information" tag as well as "Sets"?
Questions about specific sets seem to make sense with with the sets, while questions asking about the details that would justify a set-information tag (e.g. weight/number of bricks/etc.) seem almost off topic for this site† - there are other sites (BrickLink/BrickSet) that do a better job of that, and (as proved by the answers provided to this question).
I'm not sure that the rebuilding question should be tagged set-information either.
† I came to this conclusion after thinking about it after I'd answered it. I'd flag it as off topic myself, but my vote is binding, so will wait to see what others think.

sets and set-information are now synonymous with one another. Questions like "How much does the Luke's Landspeeder (8092) weigh?" ask a very specific question but the answer given applies to any given set. A question asking how much X set weighs would be closed as a duplicate of that question.
"Why are there extra pieces in my set?" is a good example of a question referring to sets in general. It doesn't address a particular set in the title. There are however questions that need to be specific like this one.


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How are we covered in relation to using pictures from BrickSet and other sites?
In my recent answer to a question I've used rather a lot of images from BrickLink. Is there a need to get in touch with BrickLink and the other main LEGO sites for permission to use their images.
I know that submissions to this site is made under a Creative Commons license but I don't know how that affects stuff from other domains, and I expect the sites can take the bandwidth hit, but shoudln't we ask out of common courtesy? Also a lot of them get re-uploaded to imgur through the SE uploader.

Caveat: I am not a lawyer, everything here is my uneducated opinion.
It depends on the site in question really - for example LUGNet explicitly state that you can re-use their images, bit yes, you should really use the "link to image from web" in the image upload to move the images to imgur instead of pulling them directly from there.
Where I've pulled images from a forum post or similar, I've provided a link back to the original post and attribution.
For your answer I'd ensure that all the set numbers are linked, and then it's fairly obvious where the images came from.


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Shouldn't the Ask Question page mention the LEGO in all caps preference?
I see there are edits to questions where the word "lego" are being changed to all caps: "LEGO".
Shouldn't there be a quick little note on the "Ask Question" page to capitalize the word LEGO?
Or do it automatically on every save?
Otherwise, I have a feeling every post is going to end up being edited unless the poster is a frequent visitor to the site.  My two cents.
At the very least, correct the case in the question title window:

@Zhaph-BenDuguid All of the Exchange sites have that as lower case.  Must be the cool thing to do.

Nope, I'm submitting a meta request to change it in light of both our desire to have the word "LEGO" in caps on official text as well as encouraging good question titles ;)

Let's see if we can get it actioned: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/118059/33051

And yes, apologies for the ironic use of lower case in the question title.

This is lower case across the network.

I've made a few edits where I've replaced Lego with LEGO whilst trying to improve on the post by fixing other spelling/grammar edits or adding tags. I generally don't think capitalising LEGO in an edit is worth doing so unless there are other ways the post can be improved.

The other moderator "Zhaph - Ben Duguid" does edit posts for just the capitalization.  I don't have a problem with that, but there should probably be some helpful tip for posters to follow accepted best practices.  That's all.

Yes, I'll admit one of the edits I made this afternoon were just capitalisations, in the other I changed "Lego" to "The LEGO Group", and in the last one I also added a tag. In general I'd also shy away from just capitalising them, but I was a little bored, it was nearly home time, and I was doing a little tidying ;)

I've been doing a few LEGO-only edits, for mostly the same reasons; but if I can improve the post as well when doing so, I have to agree it's better.


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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 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.

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.


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

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

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

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

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


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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.


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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.


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Good example questions for our FAQ
Well, we've been going over 100 days now, so congratulations everyone - however we've still got a bit of work ahead of us before we can fully launch.
We've seen a steady increase in users, many of whom are new to the Stack Exchange experience which is great, but we've also seen a few "low quality" or "off topic" questions, and the users are being referred to the FAQ which is still a little bare.
Please can you suggest some questions that you think are great, on-topic questions for this site, and we'll add details of them to our FAQ.
As an example of what other sites have done, take a look at:

Role Playing Games
Seasoned Advice
Gardening and Landscaping
Economics
Theoretical Physics

Some of these also demonstrate ways we could handle examples of questions where the best audience is a little ambiguous for example some programming or software support questions.
We can edit the first section of the FAQ ("What kind of questions can I ask here?"), everything else is boilerplate.

I think we first need to change our global description 'LEGO® Answers - Stack Exchange is for LEGO® and building block enthusiasts.' to be less about general construction toys.

Well, if we give some good on-topic questions, and perhaps a little more description based on these questions we can leave that as it is...

\o/ Yay! 100 days! :D

Things we should include in our FAQ:

"What is this part?" and its variants:

"What set did this part come from?"
"Is this a LEGO element?"


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Can I suggest a more LEGO-y skin?
I thinks skins are a really important feature of stackexchange. Every site has it's own identity, given by the styling it uses.
The current skin we use here is lovely, I really like the sketchyness, but the problem is, it doesn't shout "LEGO" at me.
I think we ought to try and implement the brick into it a bit more. (And yes, we can do this under copyright resrictions, just look at some other LUG websites.)
Perhaps the "questions tags users badges" buttons could be bricks? Or the side of a quote could be a rotated brick.
I'm not calling for a totaly LEGO-ified style, just something that will say "LEGO" at me a bit more.

I would have used round 1x1 studs for badges.

Badges get tailored too :)

While this site is still in Beta, we're using the "sketchy" skin and we're actually very lucky to have our custom icon. Most of the other beta Stack Exchange sites only have their initials as their icon (SmugMug and Poker being a couple of exceptions).
Once we've "graduated" out of beta, Jin the Stack Exchange designer will get involved and come up with some designs for us that we can then have a bit of a say on, but it's certainly good for us to talk about it now.

Edit to add:
Apparently we're about to lose the the sketchy skin for a more polished, plain skin:

The New Stack Exchange Beta Theme

Ah, I see, all Beta sites have the sketchy skin. That makes sense. Thanks.

@ambo100 yeah, what is that SmugMug thing, it's not even a sketchy icon ;)


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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.


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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.


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Question about a question about LEGO games for grown-ups
There is a (non-meta) question I'd like to ask, but I think it could be seen as too subjective. So I prefer to ask here whether it would be acceptable: at the very least, this question would be useful in view of similar, future questions.
   The question (I am not asking it here!) is:

LEGO Games for Grown-ups
  Are all LEGO Boardgames more or less for children, or are some of them suitable for grown-up, more expert players? (Everybody likes relaxing with a simple game, but are any of the games a bit more challenging?)

Yes, I think that question should be fine - and I can think of at least two non-subjective answers to it ;)

Very well! Thanks for settling my doubts.

I don't have any problem with this question either, expect for the fact it may also be a good fit for boardgames.se. Whether it would be a better fit, I don't know - are non-LEGO people really playing these?

Not all LEGO Games are boardgames - Shave A Sheep and the new Chicken game (Kokoriko) aren't boardgames so much as dice games - and they don't seem to mention those sorts of games as explicitly "on topic" as far as I can see, even if they could be.

I sort of assumed any non-computer games would be on-topic, including dice games; after all card games are also represented. I guess we should take the time to chat a bit with the admins there and see what they think about it.

Yeah, looking deeper, I think they probably would be although it's hard to find any other examples (not really knowing the names of any beyond Yahtzee), however equally I think in the same way that while questions about Apple stuff could be "on-topic" for Super User they are directed to Apple.SE - similarly for LEGO questions - although I guess it depends on the core focus of the question

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


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Proposed update to our FAQ Page
As one of the 7 essential questions we should be asking here on meta is:

What should be on our FAQ

I would like to bite the bullet and propose the following as the text for the first section.
Note that we can't change the section title, and the line "Please look around to see..." is also fixed.

What kind of questions can I ask here?
LEGO® Answers - Stack Exchange is for LEGO and building block enthusiasts. If you use LEGO or one of a number of compatible systems that share similar building techniques, and need answers to your questions (or would like to answer questions about these systems), this is place for you.
The best questions are those that have specific answers; LEGO Answers is not a general discussion forum. In general, if you have a question which covers:

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

Then you're in the right place.
This is not the right site for questions about:

Computer games - for game play tips and other questions, see Gaming - Stack Exchange
General support for LEGO related software (i.e. LDraw/LEGO Digital Designer/NXT alternatives), try either their dedicated support channels or Super User

Before you ask your question, though, consider the following:

We want the questions on our site to be valuable sources of information for the whole Internet, not just our community members, so we try to keep subjective opinions out of our questions and answers when we can. Share your personal play experiences and viewpoints, but avoid argument.
Community members can and will edit your questions and answers to be clear, grammatically correct and in doing so may also edit them to conform with the LEGO Group's Fair Play requirement.
Community members will vote up clearly asked, cogent, reasoned questions and answers and vote down off topic, incoherent, or inflammatory questions and answers.
We don't want the information on our site to become obsolete, and so we try not to ask questions whose answers may change with time. This means we don't re-ask the same question once it's been answered - nor do we encourage speculative answers for which we have no definitive answer.
If you want more information on a question that already exists on the site, you can edit the question, add more answers, add comments, or even ask a related question. If you ask a question identical to an existing one, your question will be closed as a duplicate, with a link directing everyone to the existing question.

If you think your question might be appropriate but aren't sure, you can also drop into our Chat rooms or ask on our Meta site.

I think we've done a reasonably good job so far on questions 1, 3 and 6 (for now, I hope you think we're doing a good job), we've started 5, but I didn't get much response to my last attempt at this.
You can also join us over in chat to discuss this and other aspects of our FAQs.

Tagged as f-r as technically it's a "Change to existing functionality", but I'm keen to see what people think first.

This is well organized and clearly written, I think. On the FAQ question about reputation, I was a bit confused because I did not come to this group from the "main site" but from links through other LEGO fans. The references to the "main site" don't seem to be relevant to the use of this group.

@62Bricks cheers :) Do you mean the section on the FAQ here? If so when that talks about "main site" it means the "blue" LEGO Answers site, rather than this meta site - the real LEGO Answers FAQ where this will go probably makes more sense - does that help?

Let us continue this discussion in chat

I've put this live on our Main FAQ, feel free to propose changes :)

I think we should accept questions for LDD, which as much as a product of LEGO as NXT-G is.

Yes, I clearly need to reword that section a bit: we should probably accept question on how to use things like LDD, but we didn't do well answering general support questions like "it's not working, why?" see my comments in main chat

@Ambo100 - I've added a bullet point for CAD/LDD supported questions - is that better?


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New Beta Theme Launched
Your site looks a bit different today. Yes, we are getting rid of the 'Sketchy' look and replacing it with a more-polished and finished design for sites in beta.
You can read more about the redesign of our Beta theme on our blog entry.
Please note: This will not affect your "graduation" status in any way. When your site is due for graduation, it will get its final(real) site design and branding.
If you're still seeing the old favicon, please do a hard browser refresh. (Although sometimes it may take Chrome a while to load the new image).
If you see any CSS or styling issues, please report it in this post I created on Meta Stack Overflow. It will be easier for me to track all the bug reports there.

Cheers Jin, very smart, I've been looking forward to this :)

Loving the new favicon too - I was worried we'd lose our brick ;)

It's a clean look, but have to admit that I kind of like the Sketchy motif better - guess I was just used to it. Glad we kept the brick though. :)