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Earlier today I asked the question Can you use DTR and UCP with Docker EE basic? I can see why it'd be a grey area on this site. But without an on topic or don't ask page, I can't see what this site is and is not about.

It was closed earlier today with the close reason:

This question does not appear to be about DevOps, within the scope defined in the help center.

Unfortunately there's no information in the help center. Which has been mentioned before.

The closer and I then had a little discussion:

I'm closing this question because that's a question for a Docker's sales representative and not for a community site. – Tensibai ♦

@Tensibai I'm unsure how this is not for a community site - any user that's used EE basic can answer the above question. – Peilonrayz

There's no value in long term, Docker sales methods and choices may change at any time and this Q/A will be outdated, giving false information. That's not a good fit for a stack exchange site. Moreover, even a basic license user answer could be wrong and the only trustable answer would be from a sales representative. – Tensibai ♦

@Tensibai And it may not change for a couple of years, or ever, which is long-term IMO. I don't see how trustability comes into play on making something on or off topic. I can answer any question without any knowledge. It's an inherent part of SE. That why we have the ability to vote. Also answers go out of date all the time across multiple SE sites, is there a meta you've had here to make any question that may do the same here off-topic? – Peilonrayz

Feel free to raise the point on DevOps Meta , a debate between just two of us on this question comments won't bring something useful I think. – Tensibai♦

I don't agree with Tensibai's reasons:

  • Users can answer my question as well as a Docker sales representative.
  • Questions become out of date all over SE. Is this a policy you want here?
  • Since answers can be wrong, we have the voting system. This means the 'most right' answer raises to the top, and the incorrect ones drop to the negatives.

Should my question be off-topic? If so why?

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  • For the record the close reason is the vanilla one to choose to give the reason in comment, don't focus the off-topic text but more on the first comment. I stand by the point commercial support questions should be asked to the company commercial support, whatever the product is.
    – Tensibai
    Mar 13, 2018 at 15:42
  • Sorry it sounds different, that's what I mean by 'should be directed to sales representative' which I think is the service able to answer it more clearly than the docs
    – Tensibai
    Mar 13, 2018 at 16:16

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Reset to default
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So first to address your 3 points:

  1. Someone not from Docker's can answer if with a basic subscription they can license UCP and DTR or not, or maybe it works but it is not legal. The answer won't be authoritative and can be misleading for future users.

  2. Fair point, the staleness of the answer is not a primary reason.

  3. Correctness is sometimes subjective, without authoritative data or official links to back it up it's not enough to avoid spreading a wrong idea.

My first comment if probably too terse to convey the whole idea I've behind this so I'll extend it here:

Questions about commercial feature or commercially supported products should be directed to the company's support. This for two reasons, first it is their jobs and as such are usually better informed and secondly community support shouldn't spend free time doing a work the company has hired peoples for. That's lacking respect for everyone here, the company's employees not trusted to answer properly and the community doing a free work for a paid product.

When the question is about licensing features and the documentation/website is not clear then the sales department is the only authoritative source to gather information from.

This is for the close itself and the reasoning behind.

You raise a good point about our on-topic page (we can't modify the don't ask page), which in turn should be summarized on bullet points in the tour page. There's probably something to do here (probably in the form of another question) but I don't feel a large enough momentum to have it discussed right now.

Previous attempt on this path Devops.se elevator pitch has been viewed less than 200 times and got few votes. I don't find it enough to take that as a community consensus.

I'm probably a bit biased on this topic (debating scope of the site) after one year of beta, so if someone wish to start the on-topicness/scope debate on a fresh ground I'm all for it, I'll tag after one or two weeks something like that to help brings more eyeballs on it doesn't move enough by itself.

I'm usually available in chat if someone wan't to discuss it before writing something.

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  • @Peilonrayz Well, either they can't be answered by lack of resource to back them up, or the resources exists and then the answer is nothing more than a link to an external resource. But this answer is my opinion, let's see what others have to say about it :)
    – Tensibai
    Mar 14, 2018 at 10:29

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