[META] iTween & 3rd party support threads?

I often see posts on UA asking for help with iTween. Should those be approved? What about posts for help with other third-party apps and extensions - should those be approved?

Is it appropriate for third party application extension publishers to tell folks ‘please post your questions @ UA’?

I think any question that is Unity-related and of interest to at least one other person should be approved (like the FAQ says). After being approved, one or more of the following might happen:

  • The question is closed for being a duplicate (with a link to the other question), too argumentative, etc.
  • The poster is sent to the Forums to ask his question there (discussion).
  • The question is or isn’t answered.

I personally think closing them as duplicates of a question that has a sufficiently in-depth answer is the best course of action. If the asker is developing a game alone, (s)he should be able to solve relatively simple programming problems without any hand-holding. In case the asker is part of a team, there should be a programmer in the team who can solve programming problems without hand-holding. Should it be the case that the problem isn’t relatively simple (write-my-code, something obvious in the documentation, etc…), then UA is the place to ask.

I feel it isn’t ethically correct for 3rd party extension publishers to redirect questions regarding their product to this site. However, I do understand the fact, that a single developer just doesn’t have time to answer hundreds of help requests.