Give boardgames.stackexchange.com a look while BGG is down?

[rrenaud]

Honestly, in practice, it doesn't have much over BGG except for uptime ;)

http://boardgames.stackexchange.com

[PzVIE]

This is a cheap BGG substitute. Even cheaper than this site here :)
I'll go and get me a coffee and I expect BGG to be up and running afterwards! :meeple:
(not even the emoticons work properly here!)

[Gamethyme]

In all honesty, if it ever gains BGG's number of active users, I suspect its uptime will suffer.  I'm stunned that BGG's uptime is as good as it is.

Eric

[walkie]

stackexchange.com has way more users than BGG, so I'm pretty sure it could absorb an influx of game geeks without it's uptime suffering.  The boardgames subdomain is just one little (less active) branch of it.  Many of the subdomains related to programming are very active.

I'm not an active user, but they emphasize cleaning up questions and answers for posterity.  This makes its archives extremely useful.  It's one of my go-to places for LaTeX answers, for example.

It would be neat if there were a similarly structured system and culture for answering rules questions.

[Bruce Murphy]

Well, anyone is free to take a game that has a few rules questions and turn it into a rules fAQ wiki page linked from the game's description. I've done a couple of them, and if you add a link from the geeklist I started on that, I'll even pay you a little geekgold for doing it.

B>

[aramis]

They also have preemptive closures by the moderators, and a couple
moderators who are excessively narrow-minded... and a wide range of
"not a good fit for our Q&A format."

Yes, I'm on there. No, I'm not a fan of the moderator staff.

On Jul 9, 10:15 pm, walkie <situationalle...@gmail.com> wrote:
> stackexchange.com has way more users than BGG, so I'm pretty sure it could
> absorb an influx of game geeks without it's uptime suffering.  The
> boardgames subdomain is just one little (less active) branch of it.  Many
> of the subdomains related to programming are very active.
>
> I'm not an active user, but they emphasize cleaning up questions and
> answers for posterity.  This makes its archives extremely useful.  It's one

> of my go-to places for LaTeX <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX> answers,

[walkie]

Yes, the rules FAQ wikis that have been done in this way are extremely useful.  The problem is that this is a lot of work, the wiki must be maintained going forward, and it is not as visible as posting new forum threads.  The StackExchange model blends the wiki and forum metaphors (plus voting) into something that just works better for the Q&A format, I think.

Of course, StackExchange doesn't have the BGG's community or database, and those are more valuable than the Q&A technology.  Since we have to make do with BGG's model, I very much appreciate the people that devote effort to maintaining FAQ wikis for each game.  Sphere's campaign to get people to usefully name their rule questions threads is also very helpful on this front.