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There are some unanswered questions that are really just technical support questions that are probably only answered by the individual manufacturer's support staff that have access to user account info, or are interactions with drivers on that user's computer, etc.

Are these on-topic? If not, I assume these should be flagged as Too Localized, yes?

Are some questions about technical support okay if they are for more issues that are very common versus specific one-time issues?

A few examples:

Example of a tech support issue that is perhaps more common:

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    I would love nothing more than to blacklist tech support questions of the 'game crashes' or 'game doesn't start' variety. There are game bugs that we can help with workarounds for, but installation or executable issues just don't feel like a good fit here.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Dec 21, 2011 at 17:30
  • @LessPop_MoreFizz I understand I'm a nobody here but I completely agree with you. Could they be transferred to Super User where they might fit in and get answered instead of being closed?
    – MaskedPlant
    Dec 21, 2011 at 17:59
  • @MaskedPlant: If you agree with something on meta, you are supposed to upvote it. Downvote posts you don't agree with. See meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/faq#vote-differences
    – Mufasa
    Dec 21, 2011 at 18:01
  • @Mufasa I upvoted the comment, I left my comment only as a way to suggest the moving to Super User. I will try to be more to the point in the future. Thank you.
    – MaskedPlant
    Dec 21, 2011 at 18:03
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    SuperUser has a strict No Video Games policy. I have no desire to do to them what they used to (and still on rare occasion do) do to us with bad migrations.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Dec 21, 2011 at 18:07

1 Answer 1

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My stance on this is that we might as well allow them to be posted, and don't close them.

It's tough from a asker's perspective to determine what kind of tech support questions are likely to be answerable, and closing questions (especially questions by relatively new users) tends to discourage and/or irritate them, and has little tangible benefit in terms of the site. (If it's unanswerable due to technical difficulty or unanswerable because it's closed, what's the difference?)

I think any attempt to sort these questions would yield suboptimal results. To my mind, it's all or nothing - no tech support whatsoever, or allow all of it. Anything in between is just going to lead us to duke it out in the comments section of every question as we try to determine whether or not a particular question is answerable.

I do fully expect most of them to be ignored completely though, as there's usually no way to debug someone else's setup via the internet. Common issues, or issues that other people have solved can generally be answered, but that's about it.

I think there's a strong similarity between these questions and "identify this game" questions. At least with ITG questions, it's possible to close them for utter lack of detail. With tech support questions, they can provide every excruciating detail of a problem and we'll still be completely unable to answer it.

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    Generally I agree. But what do we do with the questions that are unlikely to be answered, and just sit there open forever then? I agree closing is harsh. But leaving open without any hope of an answer isn't really great either.
    – Mufasa
    Dec 21, 2011 at 19:22
  • I'd argue leaving it open infinitely with no answers and closing it are effectively the same thing, except that closing it restricts future potential answers. In the general case, if we can't answer a question, it sits until someone can. It'd be silly to close a question just because we don't think we can answer it. Sometimes people figure it out and then come back and answer their own question, which means the next person with the same issue can find it, for instance.
    – agent86
    Dec 21, 2011 at 19:39
  • True. But I personally don't like leaving questions in the Unanswered views knowing they'll likely never be answered, being the perfectionist I am.
    – Mufasa
    Dec 21, 2011 at 19:42
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    Sometimes I just go to some of these questions and go "contact tech support for this, here's a support link" and that's enough to get one upvote, and maybe direct them to the right place, which solves the "unanswered" problem. There's always going to be unanswered questions, though, sadly. Especially on a site whose breadth of subject matter is as wide as this site's is.
    – agent86
    Dec 21, 2011 at 19:47

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