We just got a about something called OCTGN. I did a quick Google search, and I came up with. From what I can tell, this isn't a game, so much as it's a PC card game platform. For the most part, no big deal. Maybe it should belong on Board and Card Games; we'll deal with that in a bit.

1. Octgn For Mac Windows 10

Scrolling down, though, I ran into this: My question is: Did we make an arrangement to provide tech support for this? If not, why are we being relied on to provide support for something that we may not know anything about? Perhaps a bigger question is, if this isn't an arrangement with the powers-that-be, does this even belong here? Boardgames.SE may be a better fit, with the reasoning that since it involves card games, they may have a better understanding of the software than us. @kelton52 Two of your examples are Duel of the Planeswalkers, if you look closely.

In particular, DotP has opponent AI. Your third is MTG Online, which does play like the card game, but notice there are only two questions here—a clear indication that it's a marginal-to-poor fit for the site, and Wizards of the Coast isn't sending us their users and forcing the issue of whether it belongs here. (It probably doesn't, but it's not an issue yet.) Your platform doesn't have AI, does it? And you are sending people here, so you triggered the election yourself, so to speak – Sep 13 '12 at 0:40.

Did we make an arrangement to provide tech support for this? If not, why are we being relied on to provide support for something that we may not know anything about? There is no official arrangement between Stack Exchange and OCTGN at this point. However, it's not uncommon for companies and projects to monitor our sites for support issues., because a lot of support questions simply don't fit into our Q&A model (reporting bugs, defects, feature requests, etc). But if they want to monitor a tag and the questions are not off-topic or otherwise inappropriate, there's no harm in that in principle. Now, whether or not these questions about OCTGN are on-topic in the first place. That's something for you guys to decide here.

Don't be afraid to moderate them as you would any other question. Just make sure you evaluate them appropriately, e.g. Don't hammer them down just because they happen to be about this platform whose developers are monitoring its tag. If this becomes a problem where you feel the site is frequently and/or deliberately misused, give us a shout, but let's start with the usual moderation approaches - close and explain closures of off-topic questions, possibly suggest other sites, and so on.

I see that process already started in this discussion, so let's see how it plays out. First of all, to my knowledge, there is no agreement with OCTGN. Nevertheless I don't find anything inherently wrong with some game recommending our site for their support. So the question is really not whether it's okay they recommend us, it's just whether we consider OCTGN-related questions on-topic.

OCTGN belongs to a family of card/board game multiplayer platforms, which also includes, and possibly more. I've found some VASSAL-relation questions on boardgames.se, such as and, and found, and couldn't really find meaningful mentions anywhere else on the stackexchange network. So, do we allow questions regarding these platforms? We do allow questions regarding other platforms, such as Steam. It's true Steam is a platform for 'pure' video games, not emulated card or board games, but.

On the other hand, beyond the links to the questions I've found in boardgames.se above, they also seem to. So, are they on-topic or not? I believe that in the driest technical sense they're okay here, but I think the vast majority of users of these platforms are board- or card-game players at heart, so in my personal opinion these questions are a better fit over boardgames.se, simply because of the nature of the community; and for the sake or preventing fracturing, I think we should actively disallow these questions here, and migrate them there instead - provided boardgames.se agree. And if others agree with me, and if boardgames.se approve, I think it's a good idea to contact OCTGN and recommend that they shift their link to boardgames.se. TL;DR - I think these questions should be off-topic here and migrated to boardgames.se, provided the community there agrees. @RilgonArcsinh whether companies direct their userbase here is not something we can generally detect or prevent. We should focus on whether an individual question is on- or off-topic, and that's it.

If we get a lot of bad questions for some product such as this, and we close those questions, then it's likely the company will redirect their support channel elsewhere anyway. Of course, all this is assuming nothing catastrophic (e.g. If Ubisoft redirects to us as official support, we'll probably need to take action!). – Sep 11 '12 at 5:48. @kelton52: That's fine, but the problem that I have (and presumably fbueckert as well) is that the community wasn't notified.

Now I don't know whose fault that was, and I don't want to place blame, so I'll just leave it at that. As is pointed out in the meta.SO question linked by Anna, it's the community that needs to adopt the service first. You mention Steam in your answer, but the difference is that since many Arqade members use Steam, we've adopted it into our community.

If Valve were to list us as a secondary support site, I think many of us would be fine with that from the get go. – Sep 11 '12 at 16:49. No, Boardgames.SE is not a technical support site. These type of questions are a better fit for Superuser.SE The relevant information was provided by the head support lead for the software, keldon52 The purpose of this software isn't for a specific card game, or board game, it supports many games. The problem is, we aren't forwarding people here for questions on how to play rummy, we're forwarding people here for problems with the software, or port forwarding, or how to log into the client. Other ones would be 'How do I make a game, how do I scroll around the board, how do I tap a card, shuffle a deck, invite 4 players and setup some complicated match'. These technical questions are likely not a good fit for the Boardgames.SE.

Octgn For Mac Windows 10

The few questions we do have about Vassal and other online implementations of boardgames are very limited. @kelton52 It makes no sense to send people here, when we don't know OCTGN and can't answer those questions.

Since we don't have an established base of OCTGN players/experts the only people who can answer the questions is you and your team, who are also coming here only for OCTGN questions. Result: the only people using the OCTGN tag are you and your users—people who did not come here because they want to Q&A about videogames—so at best you're just piggybacking on our system. Can you see how that's a problem?

– Sep 12 '12 at 23:08. @kelton52 Hey, you know what I just realised?

You should go cool off and ignore this page for a while. You're heavily invested and I'm getting strong emotes that you're frustrated, and that's not helping your cause. Also, your one voice isn't going to count for much in the sea of users who make up this community. This is really an issue our community needs to decide. Maybe let us do that?

You've made your case, and repeating yourself is going to get you ignored rather than listened to more. – Sep 13 '12 at 0:23.