10

I understand that

  • for Apple questions, I should use the Ask Different community
  • for Linux questions, I should use the Unix & Linux community

What about for questions about Microsoft services and products? Given the extent of Microsoft's market share, I'm a bit surprised that there's not an obvious community dedicated to it.

The specific question I want to ask is:

Microsoft Community, a.k.a. answers.microsoft.com, is (or was) a community support forum (similar to discussions.apple.com). It has been down for at least the last few days. I have a bunch of bookmarks to pages on answers.microsoft.com, and they're all giving a "We are sorry... The page you requested is not available at this time" error. Maybe Microsoft has replaced it with some newer forum... but if you go to https://support.microsoft.com/en-us , it still contains an "Ask the community" link, which goes to answers.microsoft.com, which gives the aforementioned error.

So my question is, has Microsoft replaced the Microsoft Community with something newer? Or is this just a very extended outage, which seems rather unprecedented for a critical resource belonging to one of the world's largest companies?

Which Stack Exchange site would be the appropriate place to pose this question?

Update: Because the question is not related to programming, I went ahead and asked it in the Super User community. Apparently that was the wrong community. The question was closed for being off-topic.

Improve this question
8
  • 5
    Worth reading: area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7688/… (TL;DR: there was once a proposal for a site dedicated to Microsoft, which was closed.)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Oct 16, 2020 at 16:26
  • Yes, Laurel, I do have a specific question. And it's not about Windows Phone, so I guess we're now down to three SE communities. If you could please list those three communities, I can probably take it from there and decide which one is best suited for my question.
    – user3358338
    Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 4:07
  • 3
    Well "questions about microsoft" is awfully broad. Narrow down your request in order to get meaningfull answers.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 16:49
  • 3
    "The technical question that I will ask, if I eventually find out which Community is appropriate for Microsoft questions, doesn't seem appropriate for the Meta Community." It wouldn't be, no, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking, "I have a specific question XYZ, which SE site would it be most suitable for?"
    – F1Krazy
    Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 17:03
  • 1
    @user3358338 If you have a question related to programming, you may ask it on Stack Overflow (C#, Visual Studio, among others, are products by Microsoft). If you have a question related to Windows or MS-Office, you may ask it on Super User. These are the two that I could think of off the top of my head. Of course, before posting on any child site, you should go through its Help Center and make sure that your (potential) question is on-topic.
    – 41686d6564
    Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 17:25
  • Does this answer your question? Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange sites do I post on?
    – gnat
    Commented Oct 19, 2020 at 7:59
  • 1
    I’m voting to close this question because the example question is no longer reproducible.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Nov 13, 2021 at 8:50
  • 3
    @Luuklag In my opinion, it's still a valid example showcase question and asking where it fits is still a fine question. The scenario could be hypothetical or it could later happen again in the future.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Nov 14, 2021 at 7:50

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

I don't believe there is a site in the network that allows for this question. It can only really be answered by Microsoft themselves. Any non-product-specific sister site handling computer-related questions (like the ones mentioned here) on which questions about Microsoft services and products would be allowed, will still not answer questions about developer intent, nor would they be able to provide explanations for outages.

As for Super User not accepting it: their on-topic page explicitly mentions questions about "websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress" are off-topic.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .