Should Windows have a Stack Exchange site?

Question

It seems that almost every other question on Super User is about Windows 8, some of them quite crucial, like whether it has solitaire or not. So the question is: Should Windows have a dedicated site on Stack Exchange?

There is already apple.stackexchange.com, unix.stackexchange.com there is Ask Ubuntu, but nothing for Windows. There is a dedicated site for Windows Phone but for Windows in general or Windows 8 in particular there is nothing.

(I'm asking it here and not on Area 51 because most of the interested people seem to be present here and also because any questions about it on Area 51 are closed without discussion.)

Answer 1

Version-specific sites are a bad idea because the software will be deprecated eventually, so the community would die. Assuming you didn't mean a version-specific site...

One reason there is no Windows site is because if all the Windows questions and answers left, this site would lose much of its audience.

https://superuser.com/tags shows that Windows is the top 2 tags.

Windows (or version) tagged questions make up around 32% of questions on the site.

Answer 2

I suspect a good chunk of the Windows 8 questions, good or bad is cause of the launch of windows 8 and the windows 8 challenge.

We've got a load of newer users, some of whom are apparently learning about the community culture of the site, and what sort of questions are and arn't welcome here.

Things should get back to normal soon. Meanwhile feel free to flag, downvote or vote to close whatever questions don't seem up to scratch. Also feel free to ask and answer questions to do with, well, anything else in the meanwhile.

Answer 3

Windows 8 is new and, naturally, there are quite a few problems with and questions about it.

But that will only last a few weeks or months! We didn't have a dedicated Windows 7 SE site, and we don't need one for Windows 8.

Answer 4

The main reason it seems like every other question is about Windows 8 is because of the newly announced Windows 8 Challenge - win8challenge.com. You see there that in order to win prizes, you have to ask questions about windows 8. Prizes range from a T Shirt to a Microsoft Surface, so I'm personally not surprised at the number of participants. The contest ends on November 9th, so I would expect the myriad number of questions about Windows 8 to end right about then, too.

Answer 5

The only issue on the table is whether there is a Windows community out there that is somehow not being well-served by the Super User site. That's the only reasonable case for creating a new community; not because some other group got their own site.

Most of the questions on any site are going to be about the newest stuff, because that's what people are talking about, and that's where most of the problems reside. That doesn't make the site less useful or less accepting of legacy questions.

Or does it? I haven't seen it but that is, in part, what Area 51 and these meta discussions are here to decide.

Answer 6

As other posters have noted, creating a separate site for Windows questions would draw away many users from SU. For those who have experience in Windows and other non-Windows platforms, this would require two user accounts on two sites with two reputation pools to fill in order to demonstrate their reliability and knowledge to the community.

Having a single site for "user level" questions, regardless of platform, better represents the fact that many who participate on SU are skilled across platforms and should be listened to based on the sum of their skill (as represented by their reputation) rather than their abilities in only a single operating system.

Answer 7

I know this questions is very old, but as it was recently bumped from an edit, I thought I should just tell you (in case you don't know), there is a Microsoft Area51 proposal over here.

If you think there should be one, go and follow it!

Answer 8

A lot of the debugging concepts connected to seemingly Windows connected questions can be applied to anywhere else. The value of an Apple site is it encompasses more than just Mac OS X. So perhaps there should be a Microsoft site on Stack Exchange? I vote no.

I don’t deal with many Windows machine in my real world life, but have happened to help a lot of users here because a lot of their seemingly “Windows” questions are really tech specific: Networking, hardware, debugging, etc… The problem is the reality distortion field of Windows makes you feel ALL problems stem from the Windows OS… Which is partially true… A lot of it stems from the obscurification the Windows interface provides between what the system does & what the control panels claim they do.