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See, for example, the list of questions related to the List Category Posts Plugin: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/plugin-list-category-post

(It even has its own - detailed - tag wiki.)

Is this appropriate for WPSE, or should these questions be directed to the List Category Posts Plugin support forum at wordpress.org?

I think this plugin is a good starting point for this discussion. I note that it has a particularly low - even by normal WPSE standards - participation/activity rate and accepted-answer rate. It doesn't seem to be adding much to the overall WPSE knowledge base.

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    What about plugins not hosted at wp.org?
    – fuxia Mod
    Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 19:40
  • @toscho ultimately, that's not the responsibility of WPSE. Whether or not we have a viable place to direct Plugin user-support questions should not be the determining factor for whether we choose to allow such questions here. Rather, that decision should derive solely from our stated scope and purpose. Pointing users to the wordpress.org support forums is more a courtesy than anything else.
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 19:50
  • Plugins not hosted at wp.org are even trickier ... because the chances that the community-at-large has access to the plugins (or knowledge of the codebase) is even smaller.
    – EAMann Mod
    Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 20:33
  • I think WPSE is a good format for plugin authors to provide support as long as the questions are not too localized. Also this was discussed extensively while we were still in beta
    – Chris_O
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 10:26
  • @Chris_O and reading that discussion, it is clear that the consensus was not to use WPSE as the support channel for Plugins, although certain, limited scope questions do fit here.
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 12:41

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While there's no explicit rule against plugin support here, I'm against it.

Code Quality

Many plugins have just one developer who (most of the time) fails to adhere to any of the coding standards used by WP Core. Having a lot of plugin-specific code snippets lying around dilutes the quality code we have on the site. In other words, if someone is looking at WPSE as a definitive guide to WP development, and they see a lot of poorly written code here that's accepted as "good," they're more likely to write bad code as well.

Localized

A plugin question doesn't really apply to the entire community. If it's a question about hooks, development, or APIs it might make sense. But by and large, "I can't get plugin X to work with theme Y please help" is too narrow a scope for this site.

Not a Support Site

We aren't a support site. This is exactly the difference between WPSE and the official support forums on WP.org.

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    Your latter two arguments are the most compelling to me. I see general Plugin support questions as inherently too localized, and offering little benefit to the WPSE/WordPress community at-large. Also, general Plugin support is antithetical to the stated purpose of SE/WPSE. We are a knowledge base, not a support forum.
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 18:45
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There is no implied rule that plugin support must or should happen via official forums. Plenty developers explicitly don't want to provide support that way. So I definitely against directing to official forum as a generic move. Only if developer prefers it that way and is actually actively providing support there.

It might not be wonderful kind of questions to have, but I am far from convinced we need to get rid of them.

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    For wordpress.org-hosted Plugins, the official wordpress.org support forums are the appropriate place for community-provided, general Plugin support, regardless of any support offerings of the Plugin developer. Question: how are the linked questions not too localized; that is: what benefit do those questions provide to the WPSE/WordPress community at-large?
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 18:47
  • @Chip I can ask myriad of generic WP questions that would be absolutely too localized. I don't see how question being about plugin makes it inherently more localized than question about WP core.
    – Rarst Mod
    Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 19:03
  • I'm not merely addressing that such questions are Plugin specific, but rather that such questions also seem, overwhelmingly, to be of sub-par quality as compared to non Plugin-specific questions. Plugin-specific questions can certainly be acceptable, but what's developing with this particular Plugin is, IMHO, clearly outside the scope and intended purpose of WPSE. Those questions, taken collectively, are clearly a support-forum-by-proxy for the Plugin.
    – Chip Bennett
    Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 19:17

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