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The on-topic areas for computer game (for games with a board game version) related questions needs to be updated to account for computer support related questions. Questions dealing with hardware, software or general user interface support would be better served on a site that is designed to help with computer games in general. Questions that deal with use of features that are solely in the real of the digital world are hard to relate back to the physical realm and can be harder to ensure that we have expert advice on a site dedicated to the physical game.

Here are some examples of questions that should be off topic on this site.

Examples borrowed from this meta post

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    As a policy discussion, this tends to be better raised as a question (e.g. "are computer game support questions off topic?") with your stance expressed as a single answer. Otherwise, we are forced into a dilemma if we find the discussion helpful but not that particular stance.
    – doppelgreener
    Apr 10, 2016 at 8:28
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    @doppelgreener Since this is tagged feature-request and describes some things that "should be off topic", I assume that it is a request that this topic be made off-topic, not a discussion about whether it already is. It is perfectly reasonable to write such a question.
    – murgatroid99 Mod
    Apr 10, 2016 at 18:46
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    I've suggested this before, and it was not well received.
    – Rainbolt
    Apr 11, 2016 at 19:12
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    It's not a duplicate. Suggesting that a rule should change is not a duplicate of asking what the rule is.
    – murgatroid99 Mod
    Apr 12, 2016 at 20:26
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    Generally feature request is supposed to mean changed to the site's functionality, things that would require action from the dev team. Discussion works fine here; it's a proposal/discussion about a policy change.
    – Cascabel
    Apr 15, 2016 at 12:23
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    I'm retagging this with Discussion, because it's not a feature request, and I agree Discussion is quite appropriate.
    – doppelgreener
    Apr 16, 2016 at 4:48

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I don't see anything to gain from this change or any new motivation to reconsider our policy, so I think things are fine as-is.

Your concerns here don't seem to be borne out by much evidence. We don't get many of these questions, but they tend to get answered as well as any other questions. The people who play computer versions of board games tend to be people who play board games in general, so our site is a good place to look for an answer. Sure, there's some overlap with Arqade, but that's normal: there's never a clean dividing line between sites. We can help with these questions and it's fair to put board games and computer versions of them under the same umbrella, so it'd take extraordinary evidence that they'd perform better elsewhere to motivate this change.

And helping people with these questions doesn't stop us from helping people with questions about physical board games. It's fine if some questions don't interest everyone. I know pretty much nothing about bridge, but I don't mind if bridge players discuss all kinds of detailed, esoteric bridge questions. It's still good for the site to have those questions and those users. I'm all for the goals of more questions, more users, and more board games, but I don't think a slight reduction in scope is a step in that direction.

If we'd seen problems with these questions going unanswered, or if they were overwhelming the site, then maybe we'd have something bigger to discuss. But this policy seems to still make sense, it seems to be working fine, we've seen support on meta when we've checked in previously, and the small amount of voting on this question doesn't indicate a community desire for change. So I'd say it's still a good policy.

As a side note, I also find the "computer game support " label unnecessarily derogatory. We're not at risk of becoming a tech support hotline dealing with endless "have you tried turning it off and on again?" issues. I have the same gut reaction as you to that sort of thing, and would be first in line to fix that problem if it came up, but I don't think it's a fair characterization of these categories of questions.

If these are computer game support questions, then a ton of our other questions are board game support questions. This is just about whether we take questions about computer versions of board games in the same way as board games in general. We take meta-gameplay and meta-game questions about physical games too, and don't dismiss them as support questions or see them as less useful. We should treat computer versions of board games the same, especially since there's not actually a terribly clear dividing line between "real" and "support" anyway.

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