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Ok, since Robert made it clear we need to get as much participation on here as possible, I've gone ahead and made changes to our support page to point people to this site (previously it mentioned the Area51 proposal).

I expect other developers will want to do something similar in the coming weeks, so we may as well start a discussion about the best way to frame it.

https://exp-resso.com/support

A few questions:

  • Is it easy to follow/understand?
  • Do you think we are hitting the right balance here between email support and SE?
  • Do you think we have clearly explained which questions belong on SE, and which should be sent directly to us?
  • Do you think we should have waited for public beta to do this, or is it ok pointing people here now?

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I think it's worth you adding a clear instruction to tag questions with expresso-store or similar - there was a question today from a user who didn't quite grok that this was a general EE q'n'a site - I imagine they just saw the big "ask a question" button and hit that without reading the rest, but you risk missing relevant questions and it creates noise for other users.

PS I've retagged that qn with expresso-store and submitted an edit to the title to make it clearer, but needs approval

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    Pre-tagging the questions that come in as direct referral from the support page would mitigate this a bit. Tags can automatically be added using a path like this when you link to the ask page http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/questions/ask?tags=expresso-store. @Adrian had this set up previously, but looks like it isn't on the support page as of this comment.
    – Alex Kendrick Mod
    Nov 28, 2012 at 18:17
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    Yeah, I was in mixed minds about this. Agree pre-tagging questions is helpful, I'm just aware that store isn't our only add-on and that support page covers all of them. I guess it's easier for me to un-tag things (which I'll get email notifications about) rather than relying on the community to add tags. Thanks!
    – Adrian Macneil
    Nov 28, 2012 at 21:45
  • Adrian, could you maybe add the add-on tag to that link like so?
    – UltraBob
    Dec 7, 2012 at 4:23
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I may be in the minority here but to me it seems as though this is a bit of a broad remit:

If you are having a problem which you can clearly describe, or a question about whether something is possible with our add-ons...

In my view, if the site is to take off, it needs to focus on advanced questions that are likely to keep expert users coming back. Personally I think that if there's a deluge of basic enquiries - the sorts of things that can easily be resolved by reading addon documentation - then that would be detrimental to the site as a whole.

I would be in favour of only directing users towards SE if they have a specific implementation query that's likely to benefit the wider community. For example:

  • If you have a query regarding best practices or you need a hand implementing certain features your question might be a good fit for the ExpressionEngine Stack Exchange.
  • Good Stack Exchange questions have value to the wider community - if your query is likely to be specific to your site please open a support ticket.
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  • I concur. Adrian already knows my thoughts on this though. :)
    – Derek Hogue
    Nov 22, 2012 at 13:11
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    Good point, though even easy questions will need to be asked once here (I'm talking EE in general, not just add-ons), and there is still a huge benefit to the community having a searchable database of answers to them (because they will appear as suggestions if people go to ask them again, or people google them). This is exactly the same as how Stack Overflow functions.
    – Adrian Macneil
    Nov 22, 2012 at 20:49
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    I'm keen on easy questions - I've been surprised how interesting some of the answers have been to those seemingly easy questions.
    – Richard Frank
    Nov 29, 2012 at 13:54
  • Agree with Richard Frank. Especially with a platform as versatile as EE, and such a broad community of devs with different backgrounds, what some folks think is an "easy question" may be something other folks have never thought to even ask.
    – adrienne
    Nov 30, 2012 at 22:30

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