Do we want questions that only employees can answer?

Question

Do we want to be asking questions on this site that can only be really answered well by insiders or employees of Smugmug such as:

Is any development going on with respect to non-pro features?

Will Smugmug continue supporting YUI2, even though they now have YUI3?

Answer 1

As an employee, my personal answer is: no.

SmugMug.SE should be a community Q&A site where the community is just as likely to be able to answer a question as employees will. There will be employees involved with the site, both as community members outside their job role, and as a normal part of their job. But IMHO, that's irrelevant to whether or not this community wants those questions. There have been some similar questions over on gaming.SE that have been closed as off topic because "only an employee of could answer that and there's no way they will." (I'm not suggesting this one should be, I think even community members should be able to answer this one by simply pointing out all the things that have been done that benefit the non-pro.)

Answer 2

The Stack Exchange network has a long and rich tradition of questions getting answered by company insiders. This is often the most valuable source of information. For example, over on Stack Overflow, C# Architect Eric Lippert has earned 146,000 reputation points mainly answering questions about C# that "only an employee can answer". (See this question for an excellent example of the value of this kind of interaction). Or look at all the questions about Trello on WebApps most of which were unanswerable by users but got great answers from employees. Stack Exchange is a really, really valuable way for employees to promulgate relatively obscure knowledge only they have. I'd hate to see that lost.

As long as there are employees of SmugMug participating on this Stack Exchange, it would be a shame if you banned a question simply because only they know the answer. I'm sure there are many intricate and highly obscure facets of SmugMug that the company's developers can answer, and promulgating that knowledge would be very valuable.

I would hate to see an attitude where obscure, inner-workings questions are banned or closed prematurely if the answers might have value to someone.

Answer 3

I think since the site was proposed by a co-founder of SmugMug per this blog post, it was part of the intent (that staff would likely be participating experts) all along.

Answer 4

I am going to be a bit contrarian: I think that the YUI question is perfectly valid, but the 'any more features' is not. The former is too open ended and non-specific, and is best be answered (in the case of Smugmug, likely not answered) by the company itself.

However, the YUI question is a good one for this forum, because it will impact many who comes to this site for deep answers to complex Customization questions. Since javascript is a critical component of Smugmug customization, I expect, and hope for, much detail Q&A around javascript specifically for Smugmug. API and other issues, like YUI seem like perfect subjects for discussion.

I would expect this question to lead to other answers regarding moving from YUI2 to YUI3 if the need arises.

Answer 5

I would be curious if other SE sites that are based on one company allow this or not, could anyone give examples?

I am thinking that this really isn't the place, it seems as Quora really excels in this space, and for Smugmug I would think DGrin is really covering this ground already.

If we have members of the Smugmug team that do want to contribute to this SE site, then they can handle these questions which would be excellent, but what if they don't want to give out that "secret" information?