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'As someone who often uses Board Game Geek (BGG) for asking (and answering) game related questions, I'm very much drawn to the SE format. SE creates an excellent architecture for asking and answering questions, and for keeping both the questions and the answers on track, focused, useful, accurate, and easy to find. BGG, though it has many other unique benefits (notably its huge database of game images and general game data) is a very inefficient and frustrating place to seek (or answer) questions: the signal-to-noise ratio is extremely low there, and there is an enormous about of false or inaccurate information, and finding things is a chore.

This site, however, lacks the critical mass of content it needs to reach its potential as the primary place for game related questions. One approach to remedying this is of course is to try to directly recruit users, but it's hard to imagine that users will show up without the content to draw them here.

Can we copy (suitably edited) questions from BGG, along with the best, accurate answers (as CW, if that's the right approach) as a way of populating the site? Can users undertake this as a large scale, explicit project, of dozens or even hundreds of questions? I'd much rather use SE as a reference for rules questions, than BGG, and I'd much rather "store" existing, already answered questions on BGG here.

I should add, that the goal is not to draw away from BGG, but to get BGG users to contribute questions and answers here so that they can take advantage of this site's better quality control and organization. Done right, this should actually increase BGG traffic, as the posts here should have links back to BGG, especially where they paraphrase, summarize, or expand on posts there.

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    Is there someone at BGG who can answer this question authoritatively? It would be nice to have an official answer from them if it's possible to get one. (It might also serve as an example itself!)
    – Dave DuPlantis
    Nov 30, 2011 at 17:19
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    I think this is a great question, and I agree that this idea has the potential to be a great boon for the community of boardgamers online. But I see that this question was posted quite some time ago and not much seems to have developed in the intervening years. @Alderon (or anyone else) do you still have interest in pursuing this idea?
    – T1M0THY
    Feb 22, 2018 at 16:56

2 Answers 2

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Dicey.

Board Game Geek Terms of service:

5. Geekdo Use: Permissions and Restrictions

Geekdo hereby grants you permission to access and make personal use of the Website as set forth in these Terms of Service, but not to download or modify the Website or any portion of the Website except with express written consent, provided that:

…snip…

D. You shall not use the Website for any commercial purposes without the prior written authorization of Geekdo. Prohibited commercial uses include without limitation any of the following actions taken without Geekdo's express written approval: (i) sale of access to the Website or its related services, such as any website extensions; (ii) use of the Website or its related services, such as any website extensions, for the primary purpose of gaining advertising or subscription revenue; (iii) the sale of advertising, on the Geekdo website or any third-party website, targeted to the content of specific User Submissions or Geekdo content; and (iv) any use of the Website that Geekdo finds, in its sole discretion, to use Geekdo's resources or User Submissions with the effect of competing with or displacing the market for Geekdo, Geekdo content, or its User Submissions. Prohibited commercial uses do not include the sale of products such as board games, role-playing games, and video games, through the Marketplace or GeekList functionality, so long as you pay a three percent commission to Geekdo on the gross amount of each such sale generated via the Website. Geekdo reserves the right to terminate any such sales if they are deemed to be "spam" or fraudulent in Geekdo's sole discretion.

E. You shall not engage in the use, copying, or distribution of any of the User Submissions other than expressly permitted herein, including any use, copying, or distribution of User Submissions of third parties obtained through the Website for any commercial purposes. You shall not circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with security-related features of Geekdo or features that prevent or restrict use or copying of any User Submissions or enforce limitations on use of Geekdo or the User Submissions therein.

I would have no problem with asking a same/similar question to one on BoardGameGeek (in your own words, of course) and then seeing what our users come up with.

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  • Yes, the ToS create quite a gray area. After all a question asked here and a question asked there are likely to be roughly the same, as is the (correct) answer. But, done carefully, it might actually drive traffic to BGG. Asking, as you say, the same or similar question here, and then fishing the correct answer out the BGG threads, summarising or paraphrasing it here, and then linking to the answer on BGG, could be the best of both worlds. Also, as "User Submissions" remain the property of those submitting them, one could ought to be able to repost one's own BGG contributions here.
    – Aldaron
    Nov 23, 2011 at 0:05
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The best solution for the gamers community, in my opinion, is BGG adding a Q&A forum that linked to S.E Questions with the name of the game as caption. BGG for every game this list of forums, my suggestion is to add to that list Q&A - linked to S.E.

enter image description here

BGG was here first, this is the reason for having bigger comunity, while S.E format is much better for finding the right answer to a question

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  • BGG and this site are owned by different organizations and serve different purposes so merging them is not feasible or desirable.
    – Joe W
    Oct 28, 2018 at 19:58
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    Serve different purposes? Can you further explain? because I think they serve the same purposes
    – Cohensius
    Oct 28, 2018 at 20:29
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    BGG serves several purposes. One is that it allows a lot fo chit-chat about whatever in a very much old-school internet kind of way: very very low information content, low signal/noise ration — but, many members of the BGG community value that. That purpose would be poorly served by the features of an SE. It is also a games database, something also not supported by SE. But BGG also tries to be a place to get questions answered. It does that very badly: the noise tends to overwhelm things, answer quality is poor, and contributes are poorly rewarded. SE is perfect for the last function.
    – Aldaron
    Oct 28, 2018 at 22:36
  • @Cohensius BGG is a repository for information about games in general. It includes links to rules, where to purchase (both new and used), pictures of games and other things. Sections to discuss making home brew expansions for the game. Sections for general discussions about games. Rankings for games for many different categories. In general there are a lot of things that BGG does that will not fit into the Stack Exchange model
    – Joe W
    Oct 29, 2018 at 0:24
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    @JoeW, BGG is also the main place to find answers to game's questions at the moment, dissipate S.E has a better system of Q&A, BGG has bigger community. (Except maybe Magic the gathering and some card games)
    – Cohensius
    Oct 29, 2018 at 8:41
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    That doesn't mean that they should merge and the best you can hope for is to convince BGG to send users over here for questions.
    – Joe W
    Oct 29, 2018 at 12:33
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    Your recent edit of including forums is a good reason to not merge. Reviews, Sessions, News, Crowdfunding and Play By Forum are all things that would be very off topic on this site but are important for BGG.
    – Joe W
    Oct 29, 2018 at 21:30
  • Now that I had a chance to better read your recent edits I have to say that this is absolutely the wrong place to post this as it appears you are suggesting a change to the BGG site which has no affiliation with this one. Also I would point out since they have a lot of restrictions on what unregistered users can do on the site I find it highly unlikely that they will do anything to redirect traffic away from BGG
    – Joe W
    Oct 29, 2018 at 22:22
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    @JoeW: I don't think you're listening to the spirit of Cohensius's suggestion: that some way might be found for BGG to take advantage of the SE model and perhaps even infrastructure to replace its antiquated rules and information forums. That part of BGG is simply not fit for purpose, and basically needs all of the features that SE has implemented here. BGG, mostly as it is, but with the informational forums replaced by a Games SE would be far superior to BGG as it is.
    – Aldaron
    Oct 30, 2018 at 0:24
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    @Aldaron This is something that would require a partnership between SE and BGG and a plan on how to best utilize the strengths of both platforms to help each other. What I see here is just a suggestion to provide a link from BGG to SE with nothing about how it could benefit both sites other then it might attract more users here. A partnership between the two sites could be beneficial but that would be best purposed under a new question rather then a 7 year old question about copying questions from BGG to this site.
    – Joe W
    Oct 30, 2018 at 1:13
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    @JoeW If you’re issue with this is simply that it’s more of a new suggestion than an answer, then why not simply say so? I’d agree with that.
    – Aldaron
    Oct 30, 2018 at 1:44
  • @Aldaron The original answer to this old question was to merge the sites and the answer has been edited to change that since it was posted and I first commented. The fact remains that the purpose both sites serve is different and what was suggested is not a good answer to a 7 year old question.
    – Joe W
    Oct 30, 2018 at 2:24
  • @JoeW You should make up your mind: are you satisfied saying that this is not a good answer, or do you want to argue about whether it is a good idea.
    – Aldaron
    Oct 30, 2018 at 2:28
  • @Aldaron It is a bad answer because it started out about merging the two sites and morphed into BGG becoming a portal to SE. However that being said it might be a good idea to propose some suggestions for BGG and SE to work together on both sites to improve the quality but that doesn't change the quality of this answer. If you want to discuss this further head to chat and we can discuss it there.
    – Joe W
    Oct 30, 2018 at 2:39
  • I think the three of us agree that a cooperation between S.E and BGG will benefit both sites and the board gamers community.
    – Cohensius
    Oct 30, 2018 at 15:28

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