This was discussed in the definition phase of this site, and now again when we are defining the FAQ.
Since discussing it in the comments might be a bit limiting, I pose it as a separate question: Would allowing questions about WordPress.com be beneficial to this site and community, or not?
I think we should allow selected types of questions about WordPress.com. There are many questions that are applicable to both, and often the answer is "Switch to Self-hosting". I'd hate to keep the people that need to hear that message from hearing it by barring them from the door.
I would instead suggest we delineate what types of question are and are not appropriate and we maintain and add to that list over time.
On the flip site, if everyone disagrees with this we need to work hard on our name so that it will be obvious that this site is not for WordPress Answers but instead Self-hosted WordPress Answers.
JMTCW.
-Mike
I think we should accept all questions related to WordPress, self-hosted or not. If we don't, other sites (most likely Web Apps and Pro Webmasters) will accept these questions, but they won't necessarily make the distinction between .com or .org, and start treading on our domain.
If we want this site to grow (and survive the beta phase), we should have a clear scope so other sites know we exist and refer questions to us. If they start accepting and answering WordPress.com questions, the barrier to answering self-hosted WordPress questions will be lower. So for this reason, I think accepting WordPress.com questions will be beneficial to our site and community. We don't want to confuse users: if your question is about WordPress, come to us.
The current status on other sites is:
If you want to downvote this opinion, please leave a comment so we know why and can have a discussion.
As discussed here, I agree that WordPress.com questions are a bit off topic. Yes, they deal with WordPress, but in a completely unique environment than just about any that use the .org version of WordPress. There are things you can do on .com that you can't do with .org and vice-versa ... supporting both communities will just create a very confused user base.
I'd be more apt to direct WordPress.com questions either back to Automattic (since the hosting company should be responsible for support in the first place) or to Web Apps.
Wordpress.com questions should be gracefully redirected to better places.
Questions regarding wordpress.com can normally not be answered because users over there have very limit interaction with the software compared to standard wordpress users.
That's why the wordpress.com site attracts absolute noobs (like me) who host their blog there because they just don't want to deal with anything technical.
It would flood the Q&A site with end-user questions and degrade the user experience of both, the askers and those who answer questions.
The first place for wordpress.com users to propose questions - if they have some - is the support of wordpress.com. Additionally, those questions can just be asked on webapps.stackexchange.com. WebApps is more suited for it anyway.