Every now and again a Bukkit question pops up.
In my opinion, these are off topic on this site.
This is supposed to be Game Development and not Bukkit plugin development for Minecraft, or is it?
How should questions like this be treated?
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1\$\begingroup\$ Can you provide arguments as to why they are off-topic? I'd be especially interested in how you'd contrast Bukkit questions to modding questions. \$\endgroup\$ – Josh Jan 29 '16 at 21:26
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\$\begingroup\$ @JoshPetrie, well, actually, I didn't/don't think that game modding in general is on topic, since significantly less thought and effort has to be put into making a plugin or mod (talking from Minecraft experience only). These questions are also asking to learn about a specific game that already exists and not for game development in general. \$\endgroup\$ – Lolums Jan 30 '16 at 8:20
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2\$\begingroup\$ We've already established that modding is on-topic, however, which means the onus is on you to provide compelling enough arguments to convince the rest of the community that we should change the policy (if that is what you're going for). \$\endgroup\$ – Josh Jan 30 '16 at 16:02
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Minecraft is a game.
Modding a game is developing new experiences for the users of the game.
Modding is thus game development.
Game development is the core of GameDev.se.
We can conclude that Minecraft/Bukkit modding, and game modding in general, has its place here.
A thing to keep in mind: even if there is not a lot of users that are able to answer questions about game mods (or any very specific domain question), it does not mean that the questions must be considered off topic.
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\$\begingroup\$ If I'm not able to help them, I tend to direct them towards the Forge (or Bukkit) forums, as they are more likely to get an answer there than here (and often they didn't know the resource existed). \$\endgroup\$ – Draco18s Feb 11 '16 at 18:13
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\$\begingroup\$ Telling them that these resources exist in the comments is fine, but we don't want to prevent them from asking here :) \$\endgroup\$ – Vaillancourt♦ Feb 11 '16 at 18:16
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1\$\begingroup\$ That's what I mean. The last time I made the comment (likely over on SO and over a month ago) my comment on the question was along the lines of, "You may also want to try the Forge forums, there are more people there that will be better able to answer your question." I happen to frequent said forum and knew that the question being asked absolutely would get answered (as I could think of two users who would know the answer), but I lacked the requisite knowledge myself. \$\endgroup\$ – Draco18s Feb 11 '16 at 18:18
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As far as I'm aware, Bukkit plugin development is functionally equivalent to developing mods for Minecraft.
We've had two threads already (originally here, and a re-hash here) that led us to the conclusion that mods are on-topic for Game Development.
Consequently, I think Bukkit questions are (generally) on-topic here.
