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I have a question about my Blender Stack Exchange post: How to do a simple smoke in 2.8 eevee

Anyway what can be asked and what cannot is almost to the point of semantics. I understand the reasoning. I would assume a “no 2.8 or Blender dev 2.7 “ would be a very easy to see notification somewhere on the blender exchange front page Or “for official release only”. Since I cant find reference “no 2.8 questions “, I am just concerned another question I ask with official build will get removed because of some common knowledge of masters but not of noobs. What you should ask and not should be on the front page link instead linked and menued down in the help section.

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    $\begingroup$ Nope this won't be deleted, in fact this is exactly what the meta if for. Glad you stuck around and are now trying to learn more about the site. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Sep 9, 2018 at 18:36
  • $\begingroup$ I understand Wally, and so many other users, as the only hint given when asking question are:1) the title placeholder "What's your blender question? Be specific." and 2) only on desktop, in a side panel, is "Is your question about blender?". Yes, site's help and faq can help but only if you take the time to read them. Even a simple change to the question asking form could spare many discussions and closing votes needed. Who knows, next 2.9 could trigger the same misunderstanding, soon... $\endgroup$
    – m.ardito
    Commented Sep 11, 2018 at 10:14

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Not all 2.8 questions are offtopic. For example this one:

Where is the Layers panel in Blender 2.8?

is legit, because it is known the layer system will change and the question will stay relevant after the official 2.8 release. And in meantime it will clarify what's going on with layers in developer versions.

There are many questions with "Something does not work in 2.8" format. They are getting closed, because it's normal behaviour until official release comes out and also they get obsolete as that "Something" gets re-implemented back into 2.8.

I should've known not to ask about blender 2.8.

You can ask about 2.8, the reason is not the 2.8 version, but the nature of the question being too narrow. You are right this is not mentioned in the Tour section, there is only:

Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers.

And that you get the real disclaimers what is off-topic through digging in the help section, which is much harder to get to and not many newcomers will read right away.

There is a balance between simplicity and information abundance. I don't personally mind how little the Tour page covers as there seems enough moderating capacity of this site to filter occasional off-topics in minutes. Closing mechanic is quite normal and nothing to feel bad about. I can imagine there being a link to the off-topic list from the Tour/Front page though.

You might want to see some hilarious fictional examples of what gets moderated here (some are less fictional than you would think:)

Funny Questions #1

Funny Questions #2

Funny Questions #3

2.8 questions are not that bad in general, some might be even good and legit. As they are not the biggest offender, imho they don't require special treatment on front page.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks..I have been hesitant to check my mail. I have a phobia of it, I think. I catastrophize what I think how people will respond. Silly. $\endgroup$
    – Wally
    Commented Oct 23, 2018 at 19:27
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When the first release candidate drops would be a good time for us to slowly start officially adopting it. Expect a featured meta post when this happens.

Thing is we don't want version tags as eventually 2.8+ will be the de facto standard and Blender has excellent backwards compatibility so the majority of our content will still apply sans some shortcut and interface changes/enhancements.

It's also still undergoing heavy changes for any answers to be useful to anyone a year from now for example. We want a curated archive of helpful posts and we've had several 2.8 related answers become obsolete already within the space of a week.

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  • $\begingroup$ Why Beta release is "official"? The was a 2 official alpha releases yet. So if Alpha is not "official", maybe Beta also is not "official"? $\endgroup$
    – Crantisz
    Commented Sep 17, 2018 at 8:14
  • $\begingroup$ According to what I was following on irc and code.blender the first release candidate would have dropped around that time. code.blender.org/2018/06/beyond-the-code-quest, not alpha, not beta (last month) but close enough to production ready. That means less large breaking changes. $\endgroup$
    – iKlsR
    Commented Sep 17, 2018 at 23:42
  • $\begingroup$ The information that you are provided is not up-to-date. Since blender alpha 2 was released instead beta, release plan delayed and RC is expected in 2019Q1 code.blender.org/2018/08/blender-2-8-planning-update $\endgroup$
    – Crantisz
    Commented Sep 18, 2018 at 6:46
  • $\begingroup$ I'd like to point out that "excellent backwards compatibility" is completely untrue for the python API. $\endgroup$
    – Leonardo Herrera
    Commented May 15, 2020 at 20:03

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