Should third party plugin support be allowed?

Question

I'm just throwing this out there, I'm seeing a few posts related to support for specific plugins.

Should these be handled on SE or by the third party developers website? Personally I think that plugin support should be handled off SE.

Answer 1

TL;DR

To deny Stack Exchange usage for general plugin support would be detrimental to the unified knowledge base of the Craft community. The point of Stack Exchange is for members of the community to help each other, instead of forcing every plugin user to contact the developer directly.

---

Since "support" covers a lot of ground, let's break it into smaller pieces...

Bug Reports & Feature Requests

Just as with Craft itself, plugin bug reports should not be posted on SE. Any bug reports that are posted should (and will) be closed. In fact, this is mentioned directly in the close message:

Bug reports in Craft CMS or in a plugin are off-topic as they are unlikely to help others and can't easily be found by those who can fix them. Instead, submit bug reports directly to the vendor of the product being used.

Much like bug reports, feature requests do not belong on SE. Again, the reasoning is noted in the close message:

Feature requests for Craft CMS or plugins are off-topic as the community can't be expected to provide answers... For plugin feature requests, please contact the vendor directly.

General questions on "How to use" the plugin

It has been debated, and the consensus is in fact yes, this should be allowed!

"If third-party plugins are an integral part of the Craft CMS landscape, then certainly they should be on topic here. As a matter of fact, the developers of these products and services tend to have communities of their own. You should actively embrace and encourage them become part of the ecosystem of this site." - Robert Cartaino, Stack Exchange employee

There are several good reasons why general plugin support should be allowed on SE...

• Some developers are slow to respond, or completely MIA. In these cases, why not let the community help each other?
• Many plugins don't have a solid support channel (aside from simply emailing the developer). Sending an email directly to the developer puts those communications in a narrow tunnel, which does nothing to benefit others with the same question. This leads to the developer answering the same questions repeatedly.
• Pixel & Tonic have said that it's not uncommon for them to receive support requests for people who believe they are contacting a plugin developer. In those cases, it would be great if P&T could simply redirect them to SE (or even better, an existing SE thread which addresses their problem).
• Stack Exchange results are easily found via Google! In fact, Stack Exchange is pretty much guaranteed to have better SEO results than any developer's website.

In conclusion, allowing plugin related questions on SE serves the greater good of the community. People have questions, SE has answers.