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I'm here since several years now. I pointed out several times how useless is to be so restrictives about 'offtopic' plugins questions. Wordpress plugin questions are not off topic here, they really can help a lot wordpress developers. By doing all this negative behaviour, you're forcing users to make wordpress-related questions in stackoverflow instead of here. You're also depriving wordpress developers of a lot of vital informations.

I just saw this post is closed because off topic. It contained a lot of code I shared for people dealing with polylang and wpallimport, and it's a quite important code.

https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/270833/how-to-link-multilanguage-products-with-wp-all-import-polylang/277722#277722

I'm quite sad of all this being so rigid. Here In Italy we have a word about this kind of behaviour, and it has been learned through history.

I think I'm going to stop writing here, and just only use stackoverflow instead. And be sure, this is not a good thing for you, nor the wordpress community.

I know this question will be immediately closed. But I really don't mind.

You, the moderators here, are really crazy. You're not doing well for the community, you're only doing well for your own rules.

Bye.

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  • The q&a you linked was closed by the community, not primarily by one moderator. Additionally, the question was automatically deleted, see here for info, and in turn, your answer was deleted with it.
    – Christine Cooper Mod
    Commented May 13, 2019 at 12:52
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    The process is wrong in this case. I'm still collaborating with polylang and wp all import guys to create a good plugin for doing that. That means it still doesn't exist, there's a beta version, but it's not public. So people dealing with that use case, still need that thread. And when I wrote it, I spent so much time to figure that code out I would be far more happy if I read such a thread. I would have paid someone to give me that code. So I really do not see the point in being so much repressive.
    – Luca Reghellin
    Commented May 13, 2019 at 12:58
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    And I'm not writing only for that post in particular. It's a generalized, old behaviour that this group has always had. This group is totally diffent from stackoverflow in this particular subject, and as I can see, I'm not the only one saying this.
    – Luca Reghellin
    Commented May 13, 2019 at 12:58
  • Do we need a separate slightly different WP SE? wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4619/…
    – Matthew Brown aka Lord Matt
    Commented Aug 28, 2019 at 22:09

1 Answer 1

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Moderation is done by the users of a stack exchange, it's a set of privileges you earn as you gain certain levels of reputation, it works the same way on stack overflow.

The people who closed that question as off topic weren't moderators, and elected moderators mainly deal with harassment, spam, and edge cases. Moderators have the diamond next to their names, and have to be nominated and win votes from the sites users in an election, they aren't appointed.

I'm quite sad of all this being so rigid. Here In Italy we have a word about this kind of behaviour, and it has been learned through history.

We have a scope, and we stick to it, as do the other stacks. Changing it has been proposed a few times, but fundamentally there are several problems that haven't been solved:

  • developers who would punt their users here to save money on support (this already happens, and violates the TOS of Stack Exchange)
  • questions about premium plugins that need people to pay to even see what the problem might be that stay unanswered
  • users trying to get free dev support for premium themes and plugins without paying

In every case, contacting the original authors gives far better results. When a 3rd party plugin refuses to offer support, be it paid or unpaid, Stack Exchange rarely has the people with the experience the authors had to answer a question.

Case in point, WooCommerce questions rarely get answered here.

But lets take the question used as an example:

I'm using WP All Import and Polylang to import more than 500 products. However I cannot link products uploaded from my csv/xlsx file. The structure of file looks like this:

This site is for WordPress development, but this question immediatley states that it's a WP All Import + PolyLang question. Not only is specialist knowledge of WP All Import needed, but specialist knowledge of both PolyLang, and the combination of the two.

The chances of those kinds of questions being thoroughly answered is rare and unusual. The site simply isn't the appropriate place for it to be asked. That doesn't mean it's not a good question, just that this isn't the place for it.

As for the other rules, they were mostly derived from stack overflows rules. E.g. plugin recommendations are off-topic because they're "shopping" questions, and the same is true on stack overflow and the majority of stacks ( the software recommendations stack being the notable exception )

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  • I can understand, but the thing that often contacting the plugin author is better, is not true. Very often people kdon't get answers, or not complete answers, or take days and days to get to the point. That's where a community of developers should come in help. And without thinking of money in / money out. About the polylang/wpallimport question (and I wrote the answer, not the question), this place was probably the only one in the world where a person could find that answer.
    – Luca Reghellin
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 7:33
  • I asked the polylang/wpallimport devs, they didn't give me a real answer. They're trying to build a plugin, and I'm helping as an external user, but after 2 years (from my first email), they still have a beta version..
    – Luca Reghellin
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 7:33
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    Sometimes a plugin has awful support or nonexistent support, and that sucks, but SE isn't here as a safety net for those users. If there's an existing community elsewhere for that plugin that can offer help that's great, and devs with plugins on .org are supposed to offer support as the price for hosting (they could even be booted off if they refuse), but Stack Exchange isn't the place for offering developer support channels for plugins. Perhaps if the plugin was a 1st party community project such as Gutenberg/WPCLI yes. My advice is to migrate to a better supported plugin.
    – Tom J Nowell Mod
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 13:34
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    I would note though, plugins such as Jetpack, Akismet, WooCommerce, etc are all 3rd party plugins of Automattic, and are offtopic. On topic plugins would be the WP Importer, WP CLI, Gutenberg, and those being considered for merge into core as feature plugins, e.g. MP6, the 2FA plugin, etc
    – Tom J Nowell Mod
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 13:36

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