13

How open should SuperUser be to questions that are very specific to a particular piece of software?

Example: Lately I've become somewhat of a 'power user' of Paint.NET. It's a fantastic piece of software that does a real service to the community. I'd like to see/ask questions like

  • How do I do a wood grain texture in paint.net?
  • How do I do drop shadows in paint.net?
  • How can I emulate layer masks in paint.net?

etc. etc. etc.

I'm sure that other folks can fill in their favorite app du jour for 'paint.net', but I'm curious to see whether folks think that questions like this add or subtract from SuperUser. Is this cruft or pie, as it were?

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
15

As a reader of SuperUser I might not be interested in Paint.net today.

But tomorrow I might be using it and scratching my head because of a question you answered here as "superuser" for Paint.net.

I'd say: go ahead.

9

The examples you've thrown up sound like good questions to have at SU.

There're are a few questions like that already on there and they're taken to warmly. Even solved in some cases.

Questions about Paint.NET are no more specific than questions about Photoshop or a Mac mini.

4

Lately I've become somewhat of a 'power user' of Paint.NET.

I think "power user" is the right frame of mind here -- is it an interesting question for other "super users"?

2

I was thinking of using SU to post similar style questions about Photoshop, Illustrator, GIMP and Inkscape. SU is for computer related Q&A that are not 1) programming or 2) sysadmin and as such is seems perfectly appropriate to post specific software questions there. Besides, the community will certainly let you know if it finds your question inappropriate!

1

This seems no different to me than asking about iphone-sdk or sql-server-2007 on Stack Overflow. These are specific, useful questions to some user subsets. And the rest can just ignore them via tags.

You must log in to answer this question.