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There have been a few questions about the tags for and , and whether such things are even on topic, similar to the same issue last time with Windows 8. I have noticed a new problem though...

The Insider Program isn't ending on July 29, '15.

Instead Insiders will continue to get bleeding edge builds for the foreseeable future, as clarified by this Windows Blog Post. A significant number of users will continue to use the "free but buggy" version of Windows for as long as they can.

So should there be a ban on Insider specific questions? Or a separate tag for them?

Seems to me that the tag could be changed to , , or something similar. Though I'm not sure we would consider those questions as on-topic. On one hand, it's essentially beta software with bugs popping up and dying constantly, but I have a feeling the user base is going to be fairly substantial.

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    If the question can be answered then it should remain. if a question is unanswerable we deal with it then. If questions about Windows 10 Insider Preview are on topic, then questions about it tomorrow are on topic, the fact there is a Insider Preview tomorrow isn't relevant. Questions asking us to predict when/if/how something will happen have always been bad questions anyways.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 18:50

2 Answers 2

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Historically, the policy has been allow, but discourage with regards to Windows pre-releases. That's because people googling issues about the production version of Windows may stumble upon questions about problems that have long been fixed, and get misled when they miss the "-preview" in the tag.

However, we can't really have a double standard between proprietary software and open source. People are free to ask "how do I do X with Y open source software? I am using git master version." which is like saying "how do I do X with build 33701 of Windows?".

In a world of continuous integration where version numbers carry less and less meaning, and as the software development process of popular software is exposed more and more to the public, it probably makes sense to permit these questions to be asked, as long as they are tagged properly.

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  • That's certainly a reasonable stance.
    – zeel
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 1:46
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On Judaism.SE, posts related to Purim Torah, such as the question "Perl Programming in the Torah", get a big attached disclaimer included within the question's actual text:

This question is Purim Torah and is not intended to be taken completely seriously. See the Purim Torah policy.

Similarly, we questions about bleeding-edge Windows builds should be welcome here. But we should edit a big disclaimer into the question's text, such as:

This question is about a prerelease build of Windows, and may be about a problem which has been fixed long ago. See our policy regarding such questions.

Judaism.SE also closes Purim Torah questions as soon as Purim ends; but we might want to leave questions open for a long time.

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    Not sure why the downvotes here. To me, the ability to attach a "pre-release" warning seems like a good idea (and not just for use with Microsoft software).
    – Bob Sammers
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 10:44
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    Off the top of my head, the questions regarding Purim Torah are few (186) and concise - compare this to the amount of Windows questions this site gets and will get, constantly, and we can see a problem. It involves more work, both in moderation (adding the disclaimer) and in creating a policy (that should cover all pre-releases) that most new users won't be familiar with (because at start few people actually read the tour, or the help pages, and expect this to be a forum).
    – Doktoro Reichard
    Commented Aug 5, 2015 at 16:27
  • Doesn't this lead to the thought they maybe it would be better to sky light leading info - preview, beta, sp2, 7, 8.1u1,... Instead of hiding that info in am easily passed over tag? More of a general rule?
    – WernerCD
    Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 10:53

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