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Now that the beta is public, should all those questions made in Google+, that are suitable for SE, be actively redirected here?

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    Could we wait untill we have the moderators elected? There will be an influx of low quality / off topic questions I feel.
    – user3
    Jul 14, 2015 at 12:04
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    In addition to Quassy's answer below, I think it's worth noting that our website no longer links to Reddit or Google+ from the support page. Hopefully we'll see an organic reduction in the number of support posts there.
    – Daniel Foré
    Jul 18, 2015 at 17:10

2 Answers 2

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If the question has been sufficiently answered here, definitely yes.

If not link the person to StackExchange, recommending it as the best place to get questions answered, or to Launchpad, as the best place to report bugs and feature requests.

As not everyone is happy to register for yet another site I'd still offer assistance there, I would consider anything else to be rude. In case the person asking for support does not do it himself, port the question and answer to SE (if it adheres to our rules).

(I believe this applies not only to Google+, but also Reddit and IRC.)

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    Seeing as you can easily login using your Google credentials, I almost don't see it as registering for another site. The thing is, if we don't start re-directing questions here from G+ we'll: a- keep needlessly duplicating efforts and b- make it that much hard to acquire a reasonable number of users here. Also G+ is a terrible way to answer questions simply because it is not designed to do that: questions are rapidly pushed down into oblivion and thus asked over and over again, the formatting is extremely limited, poor answers are hard to detect and flag, etc.
    – Gabriel
    Jul 17, 2015 at 19:40
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    Well using my suggestion there is no duplicated effort. Every question that has an adequate answer here should just get a litte response "Your question has been answered on SE, it's the best place for questions, here is the link." If there is a new question and the person does not want to register here, it should land here eventually. There is almost no duplicate effort involved except repeating "Please check SE, it's nicer." like a madman to every new question (please only 1 comment per post).
    – quassy
    Jul 17, 2015 at 19:44
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I'd certainly advise this.

It is much easier to track questions (and answers) and it gives a central place to point users when they run into issues. Take Ask Ubuntu for example. Search for almost any common (and uncommon issue) on Google and it's probably been posted there already, and if not answered, at least you know there is somewhere to find an answer without the dead back-and-forthness of a forum.

Google+ is a great place for users to show off their desktop and interact with other members of the community, but a terrible place for real support with technical issues. To make matters worse, you now have to log in to view public posts on Google+ (an announced change, recently implemented on the network).

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    "you now have to log in to view public posts on Google" Sorry for off-topic, but what the hell were they thinking? #facepalm
    – quassy
    Jul 20, 2015 at 16:28
  • @quassy been wondering the same!
    – RolandiXor
    Jul 20, 2015 at 17:37
  • @quassy I can access public Google+ posts with no issues while logged out. Are you still seeing this?
    – Gabriel
    Jul 22, 2015 at 16:33
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    @Gabriel it was reported to me, but I'd have to test and see if it's still happening.
    – RolandiXor
    Jul 22, 2015 at 16:40

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