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As far as I remember, asking questions whose answers are unlikely to help anyone but the person asking the question is discouraged, and mind you, I learned that the hard way when I got kicked out ouf stackoverflow a few years back. Yet here on Arqade, I see lots of questions such as "[Minecraft] How do I do [this specific thing] with commands/command blocks?".

Good examples are This and This.

Are these questions allowed or should they be flagged? I mean, this seems more appropriate in a forum rather than a Q&A site, as allowing this type of questions can potentially result in one question for every possible thing you can program using Minecraft's commands, not to mention the trouble with marking for duplicates and trying to find questions/answers on your own before posting them. So, should these questions be flagged, and if yes then as what?

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No, these should not be flagged, unless they do not fit the Arqade format or are duplicates.

Asking about commands in Minecraft is on-topic. It even has it's own tag - , which had 210 407 questions at the time of writing.

Asking about which commands to use in a particular circumstance, how to use commands, the debugging of commands etc. on-topic.

However, we need to watch for questions where the OP asks for a usable line of code without trying to understand it. We don't want a Minecraft version of StackOverflow's plzsendtehcodez. An example is:

How to make a massive new boss with command blocks?

I really want to make a new boss. I think this is possible with commands. Can anybody tell me a command which makes a new massive boss?

That question would be flagged for several reasons.

  • It is too broad for Arqade's format. There are too many possible answers, and making a boss like this would require a really long answer. This could be flagged as 'Too broad'.
  • It doesn't put any research effort in, nor did they try to solve it themselves. It wants the community to write the command for them. It should be downvoted.
  • It is unclear. The OP doesn't show specifically what it wants the boss to do. Nor does it show what version of Minecraft is being used and any limits that are in place (e.g. command blocks disabled). It should be flagged as 'Unclear what you're asking'.

If such a question did meet the above criteria (was clear, provided a specific set of instructions and attempted to do the majority of the work themselves) it would be appropriate.

TL;DR: Questions about commands are on-topic. However we still need to watch for those questions that don't fit the Arqade format.

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  • What about questions such "Why is this command not working?"? I think I recall something similar, but can't find any examples, so lets talk hypothetically. It seems way too specific to be of any help to anyone besides the person asking the question as the answer can be as simple as "you misspelled something right there" or "thats not the right syntax; try this".
    – user1337
    Jun 10, 2015 at 10:42
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    It is still on-topic. It is classified under the debugging of commands.
    – angussidney
    Jun 10, 2015 at 10:49
  • Much appreciated.
    – user1337
    Jun 10, 2015 at 10:50
  • Please don't edit your answer just to update a number, it unnecessarily bumps the question to the top of the front page and active questions page.
    – MBraedley
    Oct 3, 2015 at 2:29
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    Has anything about this changed in the last two years? A big portion of questions in the minecraft-commands tag is "my command doesn't work" and it's usually just about a typo or wrong syntax or whatever, in a case where it's really only useful to that one person. How likely is it that another person makes the exact same typo in a 1000 character long command? A "few" examples (question IDs): 320336, 320324, 319285, 318981, 318947, 318725 (but that's a high quality example), 318724, 318607, 317874, 317567, 317386, 317371, 317292, 317027, 316997 (but that's a high quality example), 316981, ...
    – Fabian Röling
    Oct 26, 2017 at 11:53

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