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Meta ref: Is it appropriate to ask about experiences with specific extensions and help customizing? Question ref: https://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/9945/what-is-your-experiences-with-using-and-or-modifying-multi-warehouse-by-innoexts

This user has gone out of his way to ensure he's asking his question as true as possible to acceptable "just the facts" limits. The most recent edit poses several criteria which are more likely to result in clear "yes/no" answers than the previous wording. I am seeking advice from my fellow moderators on this - while this question is pushing the boundaries of potentially receiving "opinion-based" answers, it seems to be just inside the limit in my mind. I'd like to reopen & let it stand, but I want to check that feeling with others.

Edit - Related meta discussion here: Commercial Extension Recommendation

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My response is generic, but I am gonna voice out my concern anyway.

Should be allowed

IMO not everyone is going to build custom extensions from scratch. Lets say, I am trying to tie up my store with Braintree and their extension on MagentoCommerce is crap. So I want to pick that up and fix things that are not working rather than building from scratch. I might need some help on that road. And what about if I don't have magento mojo? May be I am just a general PHP developer? I am gonna need some help. Don't see any point why that should be discouraged.

Commerical extensions

Why treat them differently? I know a customer has paid for their support (or may be their support expired), or may be they are not getting helpful responses. Why should the customer (Magento user, lover?) be deprived of seeking help here?

If you are pissed at premium extension builders because they sorta offload their work here, you are not obliged to help every single of them. Lets not forget what brings us together as a community here.

And Stack Exchange network already has means to control quality. What's good enough will be upvoted eventually and something that's terrible will be downvoted, so lets just keep it to that.

TLDR: If the question is asked in a way how it should be, regardless of whether its about asking about opinion or code level help for free / premium extension, it should be allowed, IMO.

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  • Thanks for the well thought out answer. It brought out some points I hadn't thought. Really what is the difference if I paid for an extensions or not? I am the one who paid the price, so my customer got a lot of functionality for a whole lot less money than custom even after the customizing I need done.
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 3, 2013 at 16:40
  • Mostly it was the Magento mojo comment.
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 3, 2013 at 16:44
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I'm voting for allowed. There is no other forum to really help someone choose an extension that would fit the needs or ask questions. For me it should be disallowed to put links/pricing/any obvious spam. But discussing issues with an extension - how that is an advertisement?

Maybe adding something in the post like "WE DO NOT ENDORSE ANY SPECIFIC EXTENSION" would help?

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I think extension existence/recommendations are ok, but I don't see any value to the community for commercial extension bug questions because there are a lot of commercial extensions with bugs and this will just create clutter for the 99.9% of users who don't even have access to the code for those exensions. Self-promotion could be a problem and I think answers with links to commercial extensions by the creators without an accompanying detailed explanation should not be acceptable.

I see this as only slightly different than the EE issue since EE has enough overlap with CE that most questions will apply equally. EE questions that can't be effectively asked due to licensing terms should just not be asked at all, IMO.

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  • What seems to be happening thus far with extension bug questions is that OP is asked whether they have engaged vendor support, and I believe that some/many end up being closed as "Too Localized"
    – benmarks Mod
    Commented Oct 30, 2013 at 18:24
  • It really depends on who you think stack exchange is for - specialised questions like this don't have much value to power users looking for points, but they're more useful to the general public who are trying to get things done and are searching for answers.
    – xyphoid
    Commented Oct 31, 2013 at 7:35
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You know my opinion Ben. Call me paranoid but this particular question is spam.

I have nothing against questions like "does such an extension exists" as long as no links to commercial extensions are listed in neither question, nor answers.

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  • I don't see a link to an extension?
    – benmarks Mod
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 11:55
  • Innoexts.com in the title?
    – Tim Bezhashvyly Mod
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 13:55
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    So to your way of thinking would the post be allowable if OP had said "InnoExts Multi-Warehouse extension"? I noticed that OP seemed to deliberately leave out a direct link to the extension page?
    – benmarks Mod
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 18:01
  • I know that I'm playing a "bad" inspector here but someone have to do this. I'm guarding this website to be used in a proper way and of course some times I'm going a bit far. However I believe it's better to be over then under cautious here. If you think I'm harming a website acting like this please let me know and I will retire. No offence.
    – Tim Bezhashvyly Mod
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 19:28
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    "If you think I'm harming a website" - not at all, Tim. I think that the mods and the community all have equal right to establish an identity and culture for this community. We will naturally have different interpretations of content and related boundaries. My main interest is that when there are differences, we discuss them in public so that the community can be informed. Let's both post to social media to get some more input? I see & understand your point, and I want to get some consensus.
    – benmarks Mod
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 21:32
  • I think that unless you are willing to do some research, you should not call something spam. I'm the OP in question and I did research in the meta before I asked. At what point does someone get known enough to post there own extensions like fooman just did? I am nowhere near the level of fooman and perhaps never will be but I still have valid questions. I don't even sell extensions.
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 3, 2013 at 16:25
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I think this kind of question (are there extensions that do X Y Z and that are compatible with extension W) is totally fine, but editing out all the first half as irrelevant would be fine.

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  • "editing out all the first half as irrelevant" <-- ?
    – benmarks Mod
    Commented Oct 30, 2013 at 18:25
  • In this case, nothing in the background section is really relevant to the actual question, and all of the things that (I suspect) are setting off Tim's shill-radar are in that part of the question.
    – xyphoid
    Commented Oct 31, 2013 at 1:58
  • Relevant because I wanted to make clear what I didn't want as well as what I did want. How would you ask the question?
    – Dan
    Commented Nov 3, 2013 at 16:34

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