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The Help Center page Can I support my product on this site? appears to have been written with Stack Overflow and other technology sites in mind. It does not make much sense in Help Centers of other sites (where it sits top-center among the topics):

Can I support my product on this site?

We get a lot of requests from product teams about how they can use Christianity Stack Exchange to support their communities. Christianity Stack Exchange works really well for technical support and we welcome this, within limits. If you follow a few simple guidelines then you, your users, and Christianity Stack Exchange can all benefit.

Christianity Stack Exchange is a community where users help users. Your customers are part of this mix. In fact, unless your product is brand new, we probably already have some questions about it, and possibly even a tag. In addition, search the site for your product name or other key words. Answer the existing questions, or if they already have good answers, vote those up. While you're here, look around for other questions you can help with (not just ones about your product). Participate in the site, learn the ropes, and build the reputation you'll need to gain important privileges like commenting, editing, and others.

Types of questions and where to ask:

  • How do I? -- ask on Skeptics Stack Exchange (tell them what tags to use -- your product tag at minimum)
  • I got this error, why? -- ask on Skeptics Stack Exchange
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Derp.

This was, as you guessed, originally written specifically with Stack Overflow in mind. Then it grew to Stack Overflow, Wordpress Answers, Ask Ubuntu and others - where people have been (basically) blindly sending people with no guidance to our sites with questions that usually don't go over so well.

Skeptics, Movies and others ... probably don't need that page, but we're a little constrained when it comes to options. I'm going to have a look at it, and see if there's a way (without changing code) to adjust this, or .. well, I'll get to that if it gets to that.

Note - this could be a potential problem any site would have to solve, so it makes sense just to have for the sake of having it on most sites, but I can see why it's little more than silly on some.

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  • Yeah, I can see this happening some on sites where you might not at first expect it -- e.g. some tool vendor sending people to Writers because questions about tools are on-topic, or some camera manufacturer sending people to Photography. But I laughed when I saw it on Mi Yodeya. Maybe you can do it by category -- exclude sites under the Culture grouping (if that info is available to whatever code handles help-center TOCs)? But: Motor Vehicle Repair... tricky.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Aug 15, 2014 at 16:46
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    It is wrong on WordPress Developers, because third-party code is off topic there.
    – fuxia
    Commented Aug 17, 2014 at 14:50
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    This is off on 'Code Review' as well, and it just looks plain stupid on 'Anime & Manga': Anime & Manga Stack Exchange works really well for technical support and we welcome this, within limits.
    – rolfl
    Commented Sep 3, 2014 at 16:49
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    It's almost 4 years later now. Any indication what happened in the meantime?
    – Mast
    Commented Jul 26, 2018 at 5:30
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Looks like the current state of affairs is that we don't really have a way to hide or remove Help Center articles on some subset of sites. Either we can put an article on one site, or we can put an article on all of them.

So... at the moment, this is gonna be . If at some point we decide it's time to revisit the Help Center's design, this kind of request might become viable again. Until then, I get that it's annoying, but it'd take some dev work to change it, and we're a bit strapped for time. Such is the way of things.

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  • One option may be to at least rephrase certain parts of this Help Center page to potentially make it relevant to non-technical sites (e.g. "$SiteName works really well for technical support [...]" could be changed to something like "$SiteName works really well for product support [...]"). That said, I'm sure some sites (e.g. Mythology.SE) probably would have no real use for such a page.
    – V2Blast
    Commented Nov 8, 2021 at 22:29
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    @V2Blast Yeah, probably some of the language could be made more generic. But right now it's pretty obvious when the page doesn't apply to the site. Would be worried more generic wording could make it more confusing... (that said, if you happen to think of a good change, shoot me a message & I'd be happy to review it)
    – Slate StaffMod
    Commented Nov 8, 2021 at 23:27
  • Shouldn't this be [status-deferred]? Tag excerpt: Indicates that the feature request or bug has merit to consider, but will not be implemented or fixed in the near term.
    – Marijn
    Commented Nov 9, 2021 at 6:52
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    @Marijn As far as I know [status-deferred] is for items we've actually put on our backlog with a due date of "who knows." This one isn't gonna go on the backlog, even if it's possible we'll revisit it once it becomes viable at a later date - at best I'd guess it'll be a rider on another larger change, but there isn't another larger change to ride on at the moment.
    – Slate StaffMod
    Commented Nov 9, 2021 at 15:11
  • I understand the reasoning in your comment, but the resulting tagging is a bit unclear. I always understood it as follows: status-planned = will be implemented soon, status-declined = will not be implemented ever because bad idea, status-deferred = may or may not be implemented at an undetermined later date (note the wording "has merit to consider", so the consideration could turn into "in the end we decided against it"). Putting "not on backlog at all" as status-declined leaves a big ambiguity whether you think it is a good idea or not, and if it has a chance of ever getting implemented.
    – Marijn
    Commented Nov 9, 2021 at 15:32
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    @Marijn FWIW I already do have a note in my work journal to revisit [status-declined]/[status-deferred]/[status-planned] and learn more about why they're set up this way. So, I personally agree it could be reworked a bit for clarity. But since it's a cross-team communication tool I'm gonna follow the extant standard of the time.
    – Slate StaffMod
    Commented Nov 9, 2021 at 15:42

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