text:
2021 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Bricks is scheduled for an election next week, 2021-09-27. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.
Here’s how it’ll work:

Until the nomination phase, (so, until 2021-09-27 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into currently.

We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?
A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.

We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

We get a large number of "What is this element?" questions, which we are great at answering, and provides a good service to the askers, but doesn't really provide much "long term value to the internet". What is your approach to improving these questions to avoid a wall of identical questions?

This is something I have been meaning to bring up for a while as a discussion on the Meta site. I think it's definitely worth reviewing.

What would you do about complaints when a user submits many trivial edits?

How would you weigh the importance of factual knowledge versus interpersonal skills in moderators?

How would you handle situations with unwelcoming behaviour towards new users? Be it a blatantly unresearched question, a demonstrably false answer, or even a proper contribution.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
2021 Community Moderator Election
The 2021 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://bricks.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.

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


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

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

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

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

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


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Winter Bash Prize Discussion
I'd like to get some input on how we run Winter Bash this year. For the past several years, TLG has provided prizes for this via one of our activity support requests. We've offered prizes for most hats, random drawings with a hat threshold, and building contests. Last year, we had a random drawing with a 5 hat threshold and a building contest.
I'm personally considering not offering prizes this year. I received feedback from several folks last year that they didn't realize that there were prizes, or they didn't do anything out of the ordinary to qualify for them. Participation in building contests has generally been low. I'm not sure the prizes drove engagement in a meaningful way.
Using our activity support for prizes, especially around the holidays, ends up being a logistical headache. TLG is backed up at this time of year, so the team that generally processes activity support requests is performing other duties. In the past, it's been March, April, or even May before these prizes have all arrived. In addition to creating a long wait for winners, this delay often causes other issues, such as products going out of stock between when a winner selected them and when they ultimately get shipped out.
I'm interested in all sorts of feedback about Winter Bash, but I'm most interested in the following:

Are Winter Bash prizes worthwhile versus using our activity support to drive engagement on the site in other ways?
If we're going to offer prizes, what should the prizes be awarded for?

Based on some of the previous issues we've had with hat goals promoting a large number of very old posts to the homepage through edits, etc. I'm fairly happy with not driving too much hat-based prize giving ;).
I guess things we might want to consider going forward are things like most improved rep/questions/votes given over the year - albeit some of those do tend to favour the long tail of old questions/answers - things that are harder to game in the last 2 weeks really.

If I understand it correctly, Winterbash is going to happen regardless, so people will be chasing hats, correct? That on its own will drive behavior that will bring up old topics with small edits and any of the other downsides of winter bash you mentioned.
But perhaps instead of offering prizes for either meaningless activity (like the beforementioned edits) or something that not a lot of people participate in, perhaps you could consider handing out prizes for the most upvoted answer and the most viewed question? The latter might be hard if it is a fly-by user who creates the question, but you could always go down the list if the person doesnt respond within a given timeframe.
P.S.: My Q2 support posts will be coming in the next few weeks. I am finally able to spend quality time on LEGO building again after the passing of my wife at the end of Sep. Stay tuned!

I'm glad that your personal life is settling down to the point that you're able to get some quality LEGO time back in. Winterbash will happen with or without prizes. My concern with providing prizes for quantitative metrics like most views or votes is that this encourages botting and sockpuppetry, which has unfortunately been a problem with Winterbash in the past.

My condolences Phil B, I hope you have any support and care you need. As jncraton mentioned there was a bit of "fun" previously with some voting behaviour - hence my suggestion at looking at performance up to the announcement of the competition or similar.

Also, we could opt out of hats ;)

I basically won my last two Christmas sets through this site, so I won't complain about the possiblity of winning real LEGO prizes through Winter Bash. ;-)
However, I do understand that awarding them for random hats can be a bit problematic, since on the one hand hats don't always come for the most meaningful tasks. And on the other hand it also can have the effect of people not even realizing they won something. While a prize out of the blue can be a nice surprize, it's probably better to undergo this effort only if people really want the prizes.
I did like the idea from last year to make it a build contest, because on the one hand you hand out prizes for actual direct achievements and you also make sure people only take part who really want the prizes. However, I understand that when there's only 2 people contributing to the build contest it's not really worthwhile and I don't really want to win just because I was about the only one showing up in the first place. I would have liked to see more engagement in the build competition last year, too.
It's a bit of a problem with low meta engagement on such a rather small site, since a build competition, however advertized on the main site, still only captures a rather small core userbase. Although, I would have thought the lookout of a neat prize (and $100 definitely is neat!) could help with that, there's probably still only so much you can do to advertize it.
So I can definitely live with there being no prizes this year if it takes a lot of effort and the engagement is rather low. Also, if that means there's more room for other, maybe more directed engagement initiatives, that's great, too.


text:
Winterbash 2021
Our community is once again participating in Winter Bash with the rest of the Stack Exchange network this year. If you're new to Winter Bash, here's an explanation from the official FAQ:

What is going on? Why do I see hats?
From December 15th through January 5th, you'll be able to earn hats
all over the sites! Ask, answer, vote, edit, and chat, and you'll
uncover hats hidden in all kinds of places.

In the past, we have offered prizes for various activities during Winter Bash, but we have decided to try skipping prizes this year. Everyone will be earning hats for their own sake, so we'll hopefully avoid some of the shenanigans we've seen in the past.
We hope that you all enjoy this activity as we work to keep our community welcoming and inviting as many new folks discover us over the holidays. Happy hat collecting!


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2021: a year in moderation

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

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

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

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Users suspended²
1
5

Users destroyed³
8
0

Users deleted
1
0

Users contacted
1
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
7
100

Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
0
16

Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
3
106

Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
2
62

Tasks reviewed⁴: First questions queue
0
62

Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
12
235

Tasks reviewed⁴: First answers queue
0
28

Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
1
85

Tags merged
5
0

Tag synonyms proposed
7
0

Tag synonyms created
3
0

Revisions redacted
3
0

Questions reopened
2
1

Questions protected
4
12

Questions flagged⁵
4
42

Questions closed
35
12

Question flags handled⁵
26
21

Posts undeleted
0
3

Posts locked
0
13

Posts deleted⁶
97
81

Posts bumped
0
23

Comments undeleted
2
0

Comments flagged
2
28

Comments deleted⁷
42
91

Comment flags handled
23
7

Answers flagged
0
280

Answer flags handled
179
101

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Bricks without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

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

You can also check out this report on other sites

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

Wishing everyone a happy 2022! ^_^


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

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

Such edit has several reasons to be rejected:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


text:
Where am I allowed to post a link to a website selling Lego compatible bricks?
I am curious if I am allowed to post a website (Lego compatible store) link here.

This is covered in the FAQ on promotion aka "How to not be a spammer". But basically : no, unless it's directly relevant to (a part of) an answer of yours.

I’m voting to close this question because it is soliciting to promote an alternative website

As others have mentioned, unless it's directly relevant to a question, and you disclose your relationship with the site, you can't promote other sites in answers.
You can however add a link to the site in your profile, either in the "About Me" section or in the "Links" section. Both of which will allow you to promote your site:

If it's in answer to someone's question, and you disclose that it's your own site, then yes. Otherwise, I think, no.


text:
Should we have a rendering tag?
We seem to have a variety of questions that are related to creating 3d-renders of LEGO models and parts.  There is a lighting that we have on 11 questions so far, but a render tag would be more generalized and might encompass more questions.  What do you think?

There seems to be some confusion between the usage of the lighting tag for  rendering virtual models and lighting for electronics.
I have removed that tag for the former and have replaced it with a new rendering tag, I have also added the new tag to a few other questions that match the criteria but feel free to tag any other questions that match.

That's awesome. Thanks Ambo100!

Its a topic that comes up also in lots of other lego-related boards so I'd say yes


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


text:
2022 Q3 Activity Support Proposals
I'm opening another opportunity to request support for asking and answering questions on our site. We've done this before, and we've had some great results.
I will be accepting proposals here until Friday, September 23rd. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a user's proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
I have some ideas I've been mulling over, but I'm very happy to spread this support around to support the community as much as possible.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2022 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
The requested set(s) need to be prominently featured in at least one question. Your question(s) should be part of the proposal to receive your set(s). The question will likely be self-answered by you and should be tagged as activity-support. Alternatively, I'm open to other non-Q&A creative uses of these sets as well (social media campaigns, etc) as long as they serve the core purpose of our community.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work before the end of the year.

For this support request, we are restricted to the following:

667 EUR
10 items total, up to 5 copies of the same set
Maximum of 5 addresses on the request

Update: It looks like we don't have any proposals this round, so I'm going to move forward with some of my own ideas. Feel free to share any ideas you have regarding use of activity support in the future.


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

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

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


text:
How do I locate chat?
I'd like to participate in chat. I have only found the question and answer part. Is there a chat room for general conversation about LEGO? If so I can't seem to locate it and would like some help

Is there a chat room for general conversation about LEGO?
Click the top right icon on the menu bar then click the "chat" link:

It will take you a list of list of rooms about Bricks:

Click on the Bricks SE link.

Thank you. I look forward to conversing with fellow LEGO fans


text:
Are there other chat rooms?
Are there other chat rooms besides Bricks.se? If so how do I find them as I would like have options. Can someone help me figure out how to get to them if they exist?

The Chat Rooms are a little transient, there is the main Chat Room (we should probably unfreeze the original and close the new one, although it's never had much traffic), and members with enough privileges can create new ones, or we can move extended comments into specific Chat Rooms.
I think historically we've not tried to replicate the discussion communities available elsewhere on the web that are well established, and the Stack Exchange sites haven't always been great at surfacing the chat features, as we've been about providing great answers to specific questions :)


text:
2022: a year in moderation

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

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

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Bricks over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Answer flags handled
188
51

Answers flagged
1
238

Comment flags handled
11
10

Comments deleted⁷
26
50

Comments flagged
3
18

Posts bumped
0
8

Posts deleted⁶
72
67

Posts locked
0
7

Posts undeleted
1
1

Question flags handled⁵
23
44

Questions closed
14
51

Questions flagged⁵
0
69

Questions migrated
0
2

Questions protected
0
3

Questions reopened
2
2

Questions unprotected
3
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue
1
175

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue
1
64

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue
1
136

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue
0
75

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue
0
109

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue
0
23

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue
20
505

Users contacted
1
0

Users destroyed³
2
0

Users suspended²
0
19

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

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2021: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

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

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^


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

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

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

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

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

@zovits - exactly

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

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

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

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


text:
Should we use the brands properly in tags?
Should we use more generic tags?
Our tag technic assumes that all technic bricks are LEGO Technic.
Our tag clone-brands assumes that all but LEGO bricks are clones and does not allow to distinguish between the manufacturers.
How about a tag for each manufacturer and a neutral tag technical for the brick family?
Instead of the brand LEGO Technic in technic: A more advanced form of LEGO®, allowing for the creation of more realistic working parts.
we can use
technical: Bricks in form of gears, axles and mechanical parts.
And trains would allow to tag trains from any manufacturer.
Our users may combine them as in technical + cobi

Technic is also less about bricks these days, and more "beams with holes" ;)

Also TLG appear to have a trade mark on "Technic"  so that's actually the brand, similar to Duplo, etc., as opposed to "technical" which would be a generic term for the system.

@Zhaph-BenDuguid very good point. I will include this in my post.

There aren't so many "technical" questions for clone brands, so it would be fine without technical tag. While technic and building-techniques suit Technic and brick building related questions of relatively complex LEGO matter.


text:
2023 Q2 Activity Support
I'm opening another opportunity to request support for asking and answering questions on our site.
I will be accepting proposals here until Friday, June 23rd. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a user's proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
I have some ideas I've been mulling over, but I'd love to spread this support around to support the community as much as possible.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2023 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work before the end of the year.

For this support request, we are restricted to the following:

667 EUR
10 items total, up to 5 copies of the same set
Maximum of 5 addresses on the request

Here are some possible ideas that I think would be valuable:

Answer an unanswered question. If there's a question that a set doesn't directly help you answer, that's alright. An unrelated set can still be provided as a "thank you" for your contribution. Here are some examples where a set could be helpful:

How much tension can I expect to get out of a LEGO chains before it starts to give away?
How To Ensure Only One Brick is Fed Into a Lego Sorting Machine at a Time?

Motorize the new Land Rover Defender
Motorize the new Hogwarts Express

Would love to try this one day but I struggle to think of a set that matches the question I’d like to answer.

@Ambo100 "An unrelated set can still be provided as a "thank you" for your contribution."

I could give the "LEGO chain tension measurement" question a shot (using a similar approach as I did with the train magnets), but I'd need some chain elements for that. As far as I can see, the set with the most chain link pieces currently in LEGO's offer would be 10303: Loop Coaster, which at 400€ would be at the higher end of the allowed price range. Other alternatives with their chainlinks/€ ratio would be:

10303: Loop Coaster 222 for 400€: 0.55
10273: Haunted House 148 for 300€: 0.49
75331: The Razor Crest - UCS 158 for 600€: 0.26
10323: PAC-MAN Arcade 66 for 270€: 0.24

Seeing that the question is about a 16 and a 24-tooth gear, I estimate the required length of the chain at 40-50 links. As the question proposes, breakage of the chain pieces is not impossible either, so the total number anticipating the eventual destruction of some of them should be about 60-70 depending on the number of tests to be conducted. There are other sets which contain chain pieces, but not in the required amount, so in these cases multiple sets would be needed:

42155: The Batman - Batcycle 45 for 55€: 0.81
42107: Ducati Panigale V4 R 35 for 70€: 0.5
42139: All-Terrain Vehicle 21 for 90€: 0.23

Sounds good to me. We can figure out which set(s) make the most sense once we know if others are interested in participating.

Set 42148, Snow Groomer, contains 56 m5 threads. At an MSRP of 9.99€ that gives it a chainlink/€ ratio of 5.6 and should give you plenty available parts. If I'm not mistaken they're identical to chain pieces in terms of linkage, they just have a plate added on top.

Do you have a personal preference between these sets? 1x of each of the Ducati and Batcycle seems like it would give you want you need, but if you're more excited about one of the larger sets we can probably make that work as well.

@jncraton Thanks for the offer - while of course I'd prefer one of the larger sets (the roller coaster looks pretty intriguing from a technical standpoint), I certainly don't want to impose, so let's settle for the Ducati and the Batcycle. The links with the plate as mentioned by MMM seem indeed to have the same interface, but as the question is about the plain version, I'd think to test with those, since different moulds might have different weaknesses.

Sounds good. When you have a chance, please send me you shipping info including a contact phone number. You can email this to my username at gmail.

@jncraton Sent an email, thank you for your hard work!

Posted my answer: https://bricks.stackexchange.com/a/18267/3631 Thank you and TLG for making it possible!

I would like to give this a try too. A couple of questions that appeal to me are the ones on cleaning minifigs and changing yoshi's pose.
The first would just need a set with a bunch of minifigures, potentially 60134 Fun in the Park People Pack.
The second would obviously need a set with the default Yoshi pose, either 71367 Mario's House, or 71406 Yoshi's House.

I'm happy to move forward with either of both of these. The sets we request need to be listed as available on LEGO.com, or they will be dropped from our request when it is processed. Only 71406 is currently available. Would you like to move forward with that set, or do you have other ideas?

71418 and 71387 might also be helpful if you want additional Yoshi colors to experiment with.

I’m happy with 71406, and 71418 would be useful with blue being more common. I don’t own a lot of Bright Pink so that could be a challenge. I could make a digital model if I don’t have the parts.

I’ll drop the minifig cleaning question in favour of the more interesting one.

Sounds good. 71406 and 71418 make sense to me. When you have a chance, please email me (my username here at gmail) your shipping address along with contact phone number.


text:
Useless tag - [brick]
I noticed there's a brick tag... It seems redundant, given that this literally is the Bricks stackexchange. Do we really need it?

There doesn't seem to be any use for this tag so I have removed them from the two questions they have been used on.


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

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

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

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

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

Is there a new policy?

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

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

I agree with this.


text:
Are questions asking for 3rd party tools or resources on-topic here?
On Bricks SE, are questions whose goal is to find a 3rd party software or resource that fulfils a given task related to Lego bricks on-topic?
I am asking because:

Various other SE sites, in particular StackOverflow and related software development-related sites, strongly discourage this kind of questions, pointing instead to Software Recommendations SE.
I could not find any explicit mention in the Help Center for Bricks SE, nor on this Meta site.
And finally, such a question would undoubtedly be on-topic on the aforementioned Software Recommendations SE.

The issue with the last point I'm seeing is that I'd expect a suitable answer to be considerably more likely when posting such a question on Bricks SE (where many users actively use and know software related to Lego) than on Software Recommendations SE (where it takes a huge deal of luck for anyone with a deeper interest in Lego to come across the question at all).
I see several questions like what I'm thinking about on Bricks SE, e.g.:

Is there any software for designing and testing Technic mechanisms?
Identification tool for LEGO parts

but given the above factors, I'm looking for a definitive answer.
Also note that this is a different question than what was discussed in Are questions on 3rd party software on-topic?, which refers to questions about a particular (known) piece of software, for which users could be redirected to the software's own forum or support channels.

I think we're generally a little more accepting of "recommendations" type questions here on Bricks, and there are, as you've seen, already questions asking for recommendations for software for creating instructions, track layouts, and various robotics control systems.
That said, many of those don't necessarily have a definitive answer, but will often have a couple of recommendations with some fairly good description of the benefits and trade-offs of each.


text:
2023: a year in moderation

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

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

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

Action
Moderators
Community User¹
Community²

All comments on a post moved to chat
0
0
0

Answer flags handled
169
30
0

Answers flagged
0
43
156

Bounties canceled
0
0
0

Comment flags handled
8
4
0

Comments deleted⁸
13
1
34

Comments flagged
0
0
11

Comments undeleted
0
0
0

Escalations to the Community Manager team
0
0
0

Posts bumped
0
17
0

Posts deleted⁷
72
50
19

Posts locked
0
11
0

Posts undeleted
0
0
1

Posts unlocked
0
0
0

Question flags handled⁶
19
39
1

Questions closed
8
52
0

Questions flagged⁶
1
0
51

Questions merged
0
0
0

Questions migrated
2
0
0

Questions protected
2
3
0

Questions reopened
2
0
0

Questions unprotected
0
0
0

Revisions redacted
0
0
0

Tag highlight language set
0
0
0

Tag synonyms created
0
0
0

Tag synonyms proposed
0
0
0

Tags merged
0
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue
0
0
196

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue
0
0
63

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue
0
0
160

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue
0
0
63

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

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue
0
0
16

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue
5
50
314

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue
0
0
0

User banned from review
0
0
0

User review-bans lifted early
0
0
0

User suspensions lifted early
0
0
0

Users contacted
0
0
0

Users deleted
0
0
0

Users destroyed⁴
0
0
0

Users suspended³
0
8
0

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

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

You can also check out this report on other sites

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

Wishing everyone a happy 2024! ^_^


text:
2024 Q1 Activity Support
I'm opening another opportunity to request support for asking and answering questions on our site.
I will be accepting proposals here until Friday, February 23rd. I'm very open to input from anyone on this process. However, because I have to report back to TLG how these sets were used, final decisions over what is approved will be at my discretion. Important factors for me will be community feedback for a user's proposal (via comments and votes here), as well as the quality of content that a user generally creates.
I have some ideas I've been mulling over, but I'd love to spread this support around to support the community as much as possible.
Users submitting proposals must meet the following requirements:

You must have earned at least 200 rep in 2024 or 1k rep total.
You may not resell these sets. This is a TLG requirement.
You must be committed to completing your proposed work before the end of May.

For this support request, we are restricted to the following:

667 EUR
10 items total, up to 5 copies of the same set
Maximum of 5 addresses on the request

Here are some possible ideas that I think would be valuable:

Answer an unanswered question. If there's a question that a set doesn't directly help you answer, that's alright. An unrelated set can still be provided as a "thank you" for your contribution.
We have 21 questions related to the D11. Many are unanswered and are likely at least partial duplicates. If someone wants to clean these up in some fashion, that would be great. I don't have the set, and we can't get it via a support request as it is out of production, but an alternative "thank you" set could be provided.
Motorize the Orient Express train set
Explore the sound brick in the Sorting Hat
Analyze the physical accuracy of Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit

I'd gladly tackle the Earth and check just how accurate the model is compared to reality (sizes of the three bodies, distances, orbital parameters, rotation speeds, etc.) and which features got simplified away.

I'm happy to move forward with this. I'll work out the details with you via email.

@jncraton Just to be clear: in order to keep qualifying for the activity support program in the future, I should avoid using knock-off parts in my answer, right?

That's probably best. Would 3rd party elements enhance your answer in some way?

Since my only official, brand-new servo motor is broken, it would be a lot easier than to implement a return-to-center with a non-servo motor, but it's definitely doable. https://bricks.stackexchange.com/q/18609/3631


text:
Are questions about non-LEGO brick toys on-topic?
Are questions related to megabloks and similar products on-topic?
I ask because the site is bricks.stackexchange.com, but the logo is LEGO ®

I would say:
Yes
It would be ridiculous if there existed another se site for brick building toys other than Lego, so welcome one and all.
In related news, we should change the title of the site to Brick Overflow, instead of LEGO®. This would match our domain better too.

Maybe "Lego and other bricks"?

@PaŭloEbermann Way too long

@Dori Who would we be explaining it to? I think it has a clear enough meaning "I have so many bricks they're overflowing everywhere!" even if people don't get the SO reference.

@Dori Come see this cool new site, Lego Stack Exchange! Lego Stack Exchange? That's an odd name, what does it mean? Well it's a site that's part of the Stack Exchange Q&A network that's exclusively for Lego etc. enthusiasts. Oh. So why is it called Stack Exchange? Well there was this site Stack Overflow...

I've asked one, so let's find out! I've got another one coming up too.
(I think yes, any brick-building toys should be allowed, regardless of compatibility with a LEGO product line.)

I have no problem with it, as long as Jin (the designer for the SE sites) fixes the logo so we don't confuse peoples. :)

Yeah, I was a bit surprised to see the big "LEGO®" given the bricks.se URL.

See? If a user is confused, a random person who found us through the google-tubes is going to be super confused.

A third option would be to include only lego-compatible brick systems.
(I'm not sure how useful this would be.)

I'm generally against this - there's a huge amount of overlap in audience, and compatibility is not a boolean. I could be convinced if there was interest in another generic building toys site, including non-compatible LEGO, K'nex, Meccano, Construx, etc., none of which I think are big enough to sustain their own site.

To clarify, I don't think K'nex is appropriate for this site no matter what. I just think Lego-incompatible brick toys are OK, because even if they're not compatible many of the building techniques are similar. K'nex and Meccano share no such relation.

With glue, everything is compatible!

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


text:
Nomenclature of [Purchasing] tag
What is a good tag for purchasing/acquiring/procuring pieces? I have thrown out procurement since it is not likely to be the most intuitive, but none of the other two above seem to be as accurate or intuitive.
What should we use, as least to begin with?

+1, this is a very important discussion we need to have.

My 2¢:
Take a step back and ask yourself, "What is this question actually about?"

If the question is about solely about buying, purchasing, acquiring, or procuring (or some other similar synonyms), then it's a shopping question and should probably be closed.
If the question is only tangentially about buying things, then purchasing is a meta tag—and those aren't useful.

Once you eliminate these, what kind of questions are left? That should help you figure out what tag (if any) would be useful.

Yeah, I had gotten distracted to work (since the Lego.se prop distracted me from working) and forgotten to ask that question. I think you're absolutely right. Basically, purchasing, in this framework anyway, is too general to be of any practicable use here.

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


text:
Is Lego Mindstorms on-topic?
Lego Mindstorms allows one to write embedded-programing to design robots using Legos. How much of this technology is on-topic?

Yes.
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.

My take on it: this place is for Mindstorms questions related to building.

So this question should be considered off topic then, as it's about programming Mindstorms in non-LegOS languages: http://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/190/can-i-write-programs-for-the-lego-rcx-2-0-in-java-c

And this one too: http://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/168/can-i-check-and-charge-the-nxt-2-0-battery-charge-level-programmatically

I suspect that Mindstorms by itself is not large enough a community, and Lego itself might not be large enough.
I would vote for allowing it.

+1, I would also like to allow Mindstorms. While it may have it's own A51 Proposal I would think it best be merged into this one.


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

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

Using markdown?

BrickML would be the way to go :)

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

There's a feature request to support LDraw parts at http://meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/62/code-to-insert-parts. For now, I'd strongly recommend images over ASCII art.

Short answer: However you like

Use which ever creative medium suites you and the audience:

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


text:
Please, answer like an expert! Upvotes *and* downvotes are critical during this time
I'm already seeing a flood of low-quality and outright wrong answers to my questions get posted within seconds, and worse they are getting voted up. It's worse than the rep rush I'm used to from StackOverflow!
At this point, we should be focused on good questions and the best answers. These are the answers that are going to serve as the standard for the public beta questions. Don't just throw out one line and a Google link or "well, I think X"! You're LEGO experts; give expert-quality answers.
Please do not be afraid to downvote; wrong answers and bad policies now will plague the site forever.

And, askers, please accept answers to your questions too, especially if they have single, high-scoring de facto answers.

Also a problem: accepting an answer that doesn't address the essential question.

Accepting a "bad" answer is not a huge problem, because de facto answers can still be voted up. If the question is good, an answer is good, and people are voting, I'm convinced the better answer will prevail. We just need to make sure at least one of the answers is good, and that people are voting!

Although up-votes are self-explanatory, please add a comment to explain your down-vote.

Keep in mind, all, that other sites very frequently use their meta for statements, and not always for direct questions!


text:
What-brick-is-this type of question
We already have one of the what-brick-is-it kind of question and I suspect, from other LEGO communities, that we are going to get many, many more. The problem I see is that the title is useless. What do you think if we establish that the brick should be described in the question? Would that help? would that be useless?

I agree, and am curious myself the different methods to identify a brick. I've create a potential "canonical" question to help facilitate this idea.

We should also decide on a common tag - so far I've seen [part-id] [piece-id] [piece-name] [piece-information] all in use.

Where the submitter does not know what set it is from, perhaps we should encourage something along the lines of:
what brick is this - summary description (eg 4x2x8 with holes and a window)
That would at least help us get an overview from the title. We'd need to have a standard nomenclature described in the FAQ though (question on this here).

Agreed. It is practically imperative that if we plan to field these, that they have clear and distinguishable titles. The current "what brick is this" title is horrendous and the last thing the site needs, among other things, is a collection of identically titled questions all talking about different bricks. One could be descriptive on its functionality versus detailed about its stud count and dimensions, as long as whichever is done, it's identifiable.

I submitted an edit for that question but it's not available yet - I think identification via the set and approximate function (e.g. "ARC-170 Starfighter cockpit") is going to be the way to go.
Another alternative would be to make one very good "Here is how you search LEGO's documentation/site for the piece you want" and close all such questions as duplicates of that.  I am not sure this is a good plan because it can be hard to find some sets on their site; you may be looking at a fan creation with no instructions; I suspect there are even a few pieces that are not officially numbered.

I like your second idea a lot.


text:
Do we use Lego, or Legos?
On this site, which term do we use (or prefer to use) in questions and in tags? I'm inclined to the former, but then I'm British so that's the only way it could possibly be said.

Hmm, we could ask on English Stack Exchange about this ... actually, it was already asked.

I personally hate it when people call LEGO "legos". Ugh.

Well I personally hate it when people get upset about native speakers following normal language rules.

neither, the correct term is something of the form lego-brick. LEGO is the name of the company, and they're explicit about not referring to the toys as just lego, but instead as lego bricks.

...in an effort to enforce their trademark claims. Its silly, yes, but its the way it works, and if we want to exist, we need to make an effort to play by the rules.

This was discussed to some extent during the definition phase of the site:

It's going to come up eventually, so can we all agree…Lego bricks not Legos?

The general feeling seemed to be:
Where possible (tags, FAQ, etc.) we should use the approved form, but elsewhere, not sweat it too much.
Edit to add:
I believe the relevant section of the guidelines is:

The LEGO Trademarks may be used under certain Limited Circumstances on an Unofficial Web Site
The LEGO trademarks (but not the logo) may be used in a non-commercial manner to refer to LEGO products or elements which are shown or discussed on a web site, as long as the trademark is not unduly emphasized or used in a way that can lead an observer to mistakenly believe that the site is sponsored or authorized by the LEGO Group.
Proper Use of the LEGO Trademark on a Web Site
If the LEGO trademark is used at all, it should always be used as an adjective, not as a noun. For example, say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGO BRICKS". Never say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGOs".Also, the trademark should appear in the same typeface as the surrounding text and should not be isolated or set apart from the surrounding text. In other words, the trademarks should not be emphasized or highlighted. Finally, the LEGO trademark should always appear with a ® symbol each time it is used.

I'm not a lawyer, so can't really summarise it, however in the previous discussion, it was pointed out that we can't really police the community in terms of "using the LEGO trademark as an adjective rather than a noun", however where it is used on core parts of the site (FAQ, tags, etc.) then it should be as an adjective, and include the ® symbol.

I've got nothing to add to this :-)

Can you include the approved form in your answer, instead of linking to a huge wall of text?

On the other hand, TLG's demands go far beyond what's actually required by law. We're not making a competing product. We're open about not being an official resource. We don't have "lego" in our name. If I have to read "LEGOR" in every tag and title I'm going to cry.

I fully agree it's not going to look (or read) great with LEGO® everywhere - however even they don't seem to want that enforced really - look at their quotes, no ® in there, and while we might not have LEGO in our URL, the logo at the top just reads "LEGO®", and the title tag is <title>LEGO® - Stack Exchange</title> so we don't really have anything but LEGO in our name at the moment ;)

The "off-topic" close reason states "Questions on LEGO® - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to LEGOs". I'm trying to get used to seeing "LEGOs", and do I now have to put up with the company trademark with its ® symbol, and "LEGOs", in the same sentence?!

We shouldn't be using LEGOs at all - it should be "Questions on LEGO® - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to LEGO Bricks"

@BoltClock I've raised this as a bug: http://meta.bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/53/close-as-off-topic-statement-is-incorrect

The thing which LEGO considers the most important is the usage of all capitals. In the book 50 Years of the LEGO Brick, they use it that way consistently, most of the time without the trademark ®. Also, quite a few times "LEGO" is actually used as a noun, but it's always as a shorctut for "The LEGO Company", so I suppose that's acceptable. "LEGO" as a shortcut for "LEGO bricks" is not.

Which is a bit of a pain with our all lower case tags :(

I'm trying to use "LEGO" but as an American English speaker who spent ages 3-20ish calling them "legos", I'm sure I will slip up. I don't think it's a big problem.
I think the only place it really matters is in tags, where the exact name is critical to the usefulness. Otherwise, a search for "lego" will match "legos" just as well.

I believe LEGO is the plural form of LEGO.

I think LEGO is the brand and LEGO bricks are the bricks? Although many people call the bricks legos; I don't think that's a force that can be stopped.

Indeed. As a Brit I would support "Lego"...which means this bites a bit.

As a kid who played with them from the time I was three, through the end of my life, and who will always be eight years old on my knees when confronted with a pile of bricks, they are called only "legos". Notice that I represent no entity other than myself when I say that.

Years ago if you accidentally visited "legos.com" you'd be presented with this image:

And now you just get redirected. It doesn't matter how important your brand is - fight standard grammar and you're going to lose.


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

I think if the question is primarily about the LEGO nature of the game, then it should be here. For example "What set contains the Joker figure #3 seen in LEGO Batman?" But if it's primarily about the game nature of the game, it should stay on Gaming.
I proposed a similar distinction for the LEGO boardgames on Area 51 - a question like "How can I build a Heroica-scale lava pit?" belongs here, but "How do I rebalance Heroica to make the barbarian's ability less useless?" goes to Board & Card Game SE.
My rationale is what the communities are interested in and know about - questions about LEGO come here, questions about gaming go there.

Still totally agreeing with you since Area51.

This is similar to how SFF.SE allows questions about the lore of both tabletop and video games with SFF elements, but reserve game mechanics questions to either RPG.SE or Arqade. For example, SFF would allow a question on how gods in Dungeons and Dragons decide whether to answer a mortal's prayer, but disallow a question on which dice to roll to determine the outcome.

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


text:
Problem with "r" mark encoding
This was seen on creating a new brick.se account, although this may be present in other areas of the site.
FF7, Windows 7, 32-Bit. ~21:00GMT.

Affected iOS5 as well, glad to see someone got this before me. :)

Thanks for letting us know.  Taken care of!


text:
Should we have a LEGO tag?
I see lego is no longer allowed. Since this site seems to be not exclusively about LEGO, is this a good idea?

Note that there's a really, really practical reason not to have the tag, even if it would be occasionally useful: since the vast majority of questions will need it, it'll either be omitted (making it useless) or used in lieu of more specific tags (making tagging useless) on a fair number of them. Anything you can do to encourage one good tag by default should usually be done.

If there is a LEGO tag does it need to be in all caps?

I think we should keep the LEGO tag - if we rename the site to make it obvious that we welcome k-nex, etc. then it makes sense to be able to say "I'm interested/not interested in lego"
Otherwise there's no way to filter them out later.

Edit to add - mostly responding to Dori's comments to her answer:
I've got no experience with knex, which (I feel) we should welcome on this site, but I'm not going to be able to answer any of the questions about that, so would like to be able to filter them out using the "Ignored Tags" feature.
The opposite is probably equally likely: There may well be people who are experts in knex, but with limited interest in LEGO - shouldn't they also be allowed to "Ignore" LEGO specific questions?
Finally, thinking far into a possible future - look at Facebook.stackoverflow.com if this site gets big enough that we become an "official" support channel for one of these toys, then providing this sort of separation is much harder if a specific toy isn't tagged correctly (we should aim high after all ;))

Also, if we keep the lego tag, we can deal with things related to the LEGO company itself

Hmm, @jrg interesting point - if we want to ask a question about LEGO the company is that off topic, or should it be tagged with something like "LEGO-corporate"?

No idea, that'd also be another question worth asking.

For the company I'd just recommend their name: the-lego-group.

@Dori True... Didn't think about that.

@Dori But I don't think that applies in this case - unlike the Apple site, we're not exclusively about LEGO, but open to other brick based construction toys - so having a "LEGO" tag is more use.

Still, if the tag is on 90% of the questions, it's not very useful to have at all.

@JoeWreschnig That was my initial thought too, but after thinking about it, I felt it had value.

The only thing it enables that I can see would be the ability to ignore 90% of the site - I'm not sure that's actually valuable.

But if the site were renamed to be slightly less "LEGO-centric", would that encourage more people later to join in and ask more questions about other toys? Then the balance might be more even? Isn't it just that the initial interest is from LEGO users, the proposal was LEGO specific, but was open to other toys, so to start with it's going to be biased?

In my opinion the site is open to the whole range of brick toys. This does not include K'nex. Within the world of brick toys, LEGO dominates both commercially (99% of brick toys are Lego-based) and technologically (the remaining 1% are largely defined by if and how compatible they are with Lego).

@JoeWreschnig In which case we need a greater body of people to consider http://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/93/what-is-oodammo off topic, as I'm sure you've done, and update the FAQ to be more explicit about what we're not talking about?

@Zhaph: Indeed, I am one of the two off-topic close votes on that question. (Although more telling, I think, is the low views and no upvotes - the only question to receive no upvotes so far.) I am not sure the FAQ needs updating - "LEGO® - Stack Exchange is for LEGO® and building block enthusiasts."

@JoeWreschnig My concern is that the most upvoted and accepted answer during the commitment phase to "Should we expand the LEGO proposal to also include other brick families, like K'Nex and Erector?" (http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/1613/should-we-expand-the-lego-proposal-to-also-include-other-brick-families-like-k) seemed to be "yes".

That question confused me to no end because k'nex and erector are not brick families! As the accepted answer says "The definition would either need to list the types of material explicitly, or give a definition that sets out what is covered." I don't think an explicit list is tenable, simply because of product variety. And I think bricks is a very good definition of what should be covered. No k'nex, no construx, no capsela.

@JoeWreschnig There was a motion at one point for it to be called Construction Toys, which to me would seem to be the best idea. The difference between brick and non-brick based toys is hazy, and the definition between Lego and non-Lego is a bit restrictive. Construction Toys is very clear cut.

@fredly: I was not aware that the intention was for this proposal to become Construction Toys. I also still don't think it's useful. Meccano could likely support a SE by itself; I doubt there is much overlap though. Compared to, say, the overlap between Lego, Duplo, Mega Blok, Diablock.


text:
Trivia or Fun tag?
Should trivia be made a tag synonym of fun?

Please, no fun tag. Fun is simply the start of a long clean up process.

LEGO is fun, anyway, so [fun] would be a redundant tag.

@BoltClock Now that was fun -ny. :)

Users of a Stack Exchange Q&A site generally do not need or even want a 'fun' tag.
On a technical level, tags are supposed to indicate what the question is about. A question tagged 'fun' isn't likely to be about "fun", so that type of meta-tagging (indicating why the question was asked rather than what the question is about) is widely discouraged.
The Death of Meta Tagging
Stack Exchange sites are set up to solve specific problems in a field of expertise. While there's nothing inherently wrong with entertaining and social discussions, those types of conversation starters are not really what we are looking for here. It's even debatable whether we even need a 'trivia' tag, but it seems well suited to questions about the product, and the culture/language surrounding it.


text:
Rename tag minifigures -> minifigs
While minifigures may be the 'correct' term, I've never come across anyone who uses that term, instead, everyone uses minifigs, and as such the tag should be renamed. Thoughts?

"Minifig" is simply a short form. It started off as "minifigure".

The official product line is LEGO Minifigures and it's not an obtrusively long tag or question title, so I have to disagree - minifigures rather than minifigs. It also works better for search. A search for minifig will match minifigure but not the other way around.

I agree, I prefer "Minifigure" as they, after all, are miniture figure, rather than just small figs...which would be just odd.

Are we talking about the collectables product line Minifigures, or the more general "Mini Figures" that are found in the Pick-a-brick selector?

Do we care about that distinction?

the keyword must be minifigure as spaces are not allowed. minifig and mini figure should be considered synonims.

@jfyelle I know, that's what hyphens are for ;) It's just that Joe was using as justification "the official product line is minifigures" but that is the collectable packets, rather than the generic term for the figures. That said, as we're hoping to catch google searches for "minifig", we won't do that if there's a hyphen ;)


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

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

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

My system, which my small community of friends uses, is potentially straightforward. (Maybe.)
Regular blocks are simply an X by X.
Plates are an X by X plate.
Studless plates are an X by X flat plate.
Bionicle pieces are Bionicle (set name) (piece use)
Minifigure pieces are (figure) head/torso/leg/waist/arm/hand/hair/hat
Gears are (tooth count) (special features)
1/2 gears are flat (tooth count)
Technic pieces are called by function, e.g. Worm, or by set, e.g Power Miners Claw
Technic axles are exactly as printed in the set instructions
Technic bars are X hole bars
Curved bars include the angle as well, e.g. cross, 6 holes, 45, 45, 2 holes, cross
Accesories for minis are called by their apparent look
Rubber pieces describe their holes, e.g. two crosses
Studs are called studs
Sloped pieces are X by X by X (slope/multislope) (with/without studs)
Circular plates are X by X circular (flat?) plates
Printed pieces are called by their obvious type, e.g. Milk carton, Dragon-printed door plate
NXT set pieces are called by the names given in the set
Racheting pieces are X by X with X ratchets
Claw-and-bar pieces are X by X claw/bar (plate?) s
Wheels are cross-axle/tpin/pin wheels, radius X in studs
Turntables are X by X turntables
Hinges are (plate?) hinges, multiple types inapplicable
Curved pieces are (studs) (plate?) curves
Sloped plates are (studs) angle plates
Motors are (windup?) (spec) motors
Remotes are called by their set specs
Tyres are described by what they fit, or as treads
Technic pins (called tpins for wheel purposes,) are (friction) X-length pins (with cross adapter?)
Technic bars with studs are X-stud bars
Strange miscellaneous pieces are described as thoroughly as possible, including source set
Launchers describe what they shoot, e.g. rubber-head missile launcher
Chains are described by length in studs
Vertical rotators are called that, X by X top
Animals and microfigures are called by their obvious identity
Capes are short, regular, or mini-specific, e.g Ringwraith cape
Feel free to add extra thoughts in the comments, or reference people here from non-meta


text:
Should we accept questions on all construction toys, or just LEGO compatible systems?
I guess we need to bottom this out once and for all - during the commitment phase a discussion was started, but didn't really resolve:
Is this site only about LEGO products and other brick based toys, or is it open to all construction toys including K-Nex and Meccano (for example)?

I think we should aim to cover three basic things:
LEGO Bricks. Fundamentally, this toy dominates the building space. If we don't have this, we don't really have a site.
LEGO Not-Bricks. Mindstorms, DUPLO, games, LEGOLand, Bionicle, Modulex, tables, carrying cases, alarm clocks, minifigure collections, company history, BrickMaster and MBA, Znap. The overlap is enormous between people interested in these and the bricks themselves and it's hard to separate them - is a question about a model at LEGOLand a question about bricks, or a question about LEGOLand?
It's also important to cover this so the site can serve as a resource for parents (and whether we want it to or not, it probably will this Christmas).
Other Bricks. Diablock, Mega Blok, Nanoblock, and undoubtedly a new system every few years. Compatible or not, all brick toys share similar building techniques. In some cases, like Diablock, they are "not compatible" as stock pieces but people have built adapters.
That means we don't cover K'nex (perhaps shared interest but no shared building techniques), Meccano (in my experience, very little shared interest), and other progressively more marginal building systems. Otherwise I fear we'll see a gradual descent until we cover things that are barely even building toys like Domino Rally, and eventually just be a generic toy site.
You might say "I'm as uninterested in alarm clocks and Znap as I am in K'nex!" The good news is, the rest of the world agrees with you - the potential number of questions about these things is very small and can never come to dominate the site. That is not true of K'nex.
Why is it bad to offer more? Focus. If the site is 90% Lego, we're not going to attract K'nex or Meccano experts. If the site is 30% Lego, we're not going to attract Lego experts. We need experts to survive. Otherwise people will just go back to the existing Lego forums and wikis, because their questions can be answered just as poorly there.

(As an aside I would be okay, but not happy, with a site that only accepts LEGO and LEGO Group questions and ignores other brick systems. I would probably not participate in a site that tried to focus on "building toys" generally.)

Cheers @JoeWreschnig very eloquently put.

K'Nex does produces brick-shaped parts too, now. So for me it has a foot in the "non-LEGO bricks" area.

That's true, and I'd say questions involving K'nex bricks are on-topic. But I don't think that's what most people are considering.

i think K'Nex should be covered here. As Joubarc said, it also has bricks, even if K'Nex relys on sticks/bars much more (wich are very similar to LEGO-technics axles). in addition, it's very similar to ZNAP wich definitely is covered because it's a LEGO product.

But we'll never have more than like ten questions about Znap, and most of the people using Znap are also probably Lego experts.

I think K'Nex is the area with the biggest ambiguity and something we do need to bottom out.

I feel like that its best that this remain only LEGO considering the size of the LEGO community and the diversity of their products. There are also no "modern" LEGO community websites, that I have found, and I can see this SE becoming a canoical LEGO site.

in my oppinion, this site should cover model construction toys in general, wich means:

LEGO and all of it's subsets (DUPLO, Technik, Mindstorms, ZNAP, ...)
other brick-based toys (similar to DUPLO, Minifigures, LEGO-System) (KRE-O, Nanoblocks, ...)
other beam/bar-based toys (similar to ZNAP, LEGO-Technik) (K'Nex, Meccano, fischertechnik)

Why? What's the benefit of having a large range of topics? I can at least see an argument for K'nex because it's a snap-together toy as Lego so topics about coloring and moulding may be relevant, and with K'nex bricks there's a path for shared constructions, but Meccano has nothing in common. If we're adding Meccano, I have a hard time seeing why not e.g. general woodworking.

I'm more inclined to allow K'Nex than Meccano that's for sure. However I wouldn't see why general wood working would have to be included - If we did allow Meccano we would have a hard time excluding sets like "Wood WorX" which come with pre-cut wooden shapes and instructions on how to build a fire engine or similar (although they do use glue, so could be excluded on that basis)


text:
What are good reference sites and tools for Lego enthusiasts?
What web sites, resources, and tools do enthusiasts use?  It would be helpful to have a list of these available to reference in the future.

I'm curious, why is this on meta? It's not about our site, is it?

@BoltClock: It's quite literally a meta-question - "Where do we find answers to questions?" It's not a question about Lego, but a question to help people better answer questions about Lego.

http://bricks.stackexchange.com

LOL and +1 for the world's most obvious answer. :D

Peeron/PICSL is one of the oldest and most comprehensive databases of parts and sets.
Bricklink is an online marketplace that also maintains a massive parts database.
Brickipedia is less comprehensive than Peeron but has details on more non-toy aspects of Lego, and after years of dealing with MediaWiki and knockoffs, I find it easier to use than Peeron.

Eurobricks news and forums
Lugnet if only for the archive
Classic Castle news and forums
History Bricks my favorite blog, all the mocs I need!
Brickshelf everybody's mocs
MOCpages nicer moc posting environment

Brickset: LEGO set guide
LEGO: the homepage of a company started by a Danish carpenter, has some interesting info
rec.toys.lego roll call: some rec.toys.lego archives
LDraw: one of the most comprehensive parts database and foundation fo numerous CAO tools. Peeron uses it too.

Here are some notable BIONICLE and Hero Factory resources:

http://bzpower.com

A BIONICLE fansite and forum (note there IS a LEGO Discussion forum, and a Hero Factory forum)

http://biosector01.com

A BIONICLE storyline wiki (we do have brief set information on pages that have set forms)

http://hf.biosector01.com

A Hero Factory (operated by the above BIONICLE wiki as well) (set information as well)


text:
"Close as Off topic" statement is incorrect
The current "Close as off-topic" description reads:

Questions on LEGO® - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to LEGOs, within the scope defined in the faq.

As per the official LEGO Group fair play guidelines:

Proper Use of the LEGO Trademark on a Web Site
  If the LEGO trademark is used at all, it should always be used as an adjective, not as a noun. For example, say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGO BRICKS". Never say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGOs".

Can we change the Close as Off topic statement to:

Questions on LEGO® - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to LEGO Bricks, within the scope defined in the faq.

Alternatively, we could make it more general:

Questions on LEGO® - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to brick building toys, within the scope defined in the faq.

Note also that the guidelines state:

[I]mproper use of the LEGO trademark cannot be made proper by including a disclaimer.

Regardless of whether it reads better or not, LEGO group want it written as an adjective rather than a noun, so on core site furniture we should respect that. I'm not calling for editors to go around changing everyone's questions and answers to the correct form, although someone else might.

Ooh, this is covered in the trademark usage guidelines. Good to know.

I have no objection to this change, but we should be doing these things if/because it reads better, not because of Lego's extreme trademark paranoia.

@JoeWreschnig But if their extreme paranoia results in us getting shut down because we didn't follow their guidelines, that would be a shame :(

Then let me amend that to, I have no objection to this change, but we should be doing these things if/because it reads better, not because of Lego and Zhaph's extreme trademark paranoia.

@JoeWreschnig Heh. If we ever meet up, I'd love to buy you a beer or three (or your preferred beverage of choice). :D

This has been changed to read "LEGO Bricks", thanks!


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

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

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

You can see more details here:

Blog on User Cards
Meta post on User Cards

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

First, I don't think it's a good idea to compare your question to "How does one get a job as a LEGO designer?" or "What is a good ratio to buy bricks in?" These questions cover a totally different topic, and so demand different standards (or different applications of the same standards).
The problem I see is one of scope. A Mindstorms charging station and the pivot-arm suspension (given the wheel sizes as specified in the question) are concrete goals with specific restrictions. "A bridge with basic bricks" is a vast universe of possible designs. How long? How much weight must it support? Beam or cantilever or arch? Even your question varies in whether you allow plates or not.
Good questions about how to build bridges can be written. I just don't think yours, as written, was one of them.

" I just don't think yours, as written, was one of them" Fair enough, but I think "Zhaph - Ben Duguid"'s approach of suggesting how to make it a better question, rather than simply closing it, is a more profesional way to go, and a better way to grow the community.  My 2 cents.

Questions can be re-opened by the same voting process if they are edited to be fixed; in addition, you yourself can improve the question based on the closure feedback and post a new one. Don't take downvotes and closures personally, especially during closed beta.

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

There are a lot of kinds of discussion questions. "What is your favorite set?" is the mindless social fun kind, and is probably one of the worst kinds. But questions that are too vague also encourage endless discussion of possibilities and alternatives, and in the long term that is just as damaging to a Stack Exchange site. We don't need to keep the site as "Just the facts", but we do need each question on the site to have some limited, answerable scope.


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

We might have to ask LDraw to use their part images, but I'd definitely appreciate this. If SE keeps a canonical parts image collection, that would also hopefully cut down on the number of times someone uploads a basic 2x4 red brick image.

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

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

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

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

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

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

@mattdm not sure this covers prerendered pictures though

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BrickJax: Brick Image Replacement for bricks.stackexchange.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's continue in chat

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

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

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

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

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

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

The more we ask for (and the more expensive it is on the server) the less chance we'll get it.

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