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My name is Vivek M. Chawla. I'm a Principal ISV Platform Expert at Salesforce and have been a member of the Salesforce StackExchange community since the beginning.

I have a novel idea (at least it's new to me) for using the tagging feature of StackExchange and I'd like some guidance on whether or not my idea is OK as far as our community standards & practices go.

Background:

  • On April 15th, 2021, the AppExchange Tech Enablement team and I are hosting a public "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) with the Packaging PM, Dileep Burki, and members of his engineering team to discuss second-generation managed packages (2GP).
  • I'd like to create a special tag, e.g. #2gp-ama, here in Salesforce Stack Exchange and ask the wider Salesforce Developer community to use it to highlight tricky 2GP questions that they want me, Dileep, and the engineering team to answer

I feel like this would be a win-win for the AppExchange Tech Enablement team and the Salesforce StackExchange community.

  • As the host of the AMA, I get to leverage StackExchange's ability to spot duplicate questions and drive users to upvote good questions.
  • The Salesforce StackExchange community benefits by having all questions that are tagged with #2gp-ama being guaranteed to get the best answer possible from the official Salesforce product and tech enablement teams after the AMA is concluded.

So, that's my crazy idea. Does this feel "icky" or problematic to anyone?

I may be a Salesforce employee now, but I've been part of this community longer than I've worked for Salesforce. I care deeply about how we operate and I don't want to do anything others feel would be inappropriate.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

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    I presume the AMA answers would be posted as Answers in StackExchange
    – cropredy
    Commented Apr 7, 2021 at 22:25
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    @cropredy - Yes, exactly that! That way we solidify the knowledge here in Salesforce StackExchange with the added benefit of having (safe harbor) authoritative answers.
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 7, 2021 at 22:32
  • I'm with Adrian on this - I'd encourage you to edit the question titles to correct spelling issues, clunky phrasing, or otherwise could be better-worded
    – cropredy
    Commented Apr 7, 2021 at 22:35
  • @cropredy - Your suggestion makes a lot of sense. I was planning on monitoring that tag closely to quickly step in and help with moderation. I want to help keep the quality high, especially if this were to draw new users to this StackExchange.
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 7, 2021 at 22:48
  • What happens to the 2gp-ama tag after the event? I'm not against it, but after a bit of time post April it won't be useful. Could the tag be removed later on to avoid confusing people?
    – Daniel Ballinger
    Commented Apr 11, 2021 at 21:30
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    My only other concern is that the questions posted still meet the question standards. Primarily so they will still be of value to the wider community over the years. That "Anything" part of AMA might not fit so well. E.g. What is Dileep's favorite keyprefix? might be amusing to ask, but not terribly useful.
    – Daniel Ballinger
    Commented Apr 11, 2021 at 21:45
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    @DanielBallinger - My preference would be to remove the 2gp-ama tag once the event is over. To be honest, I'm new to the moderation side of things and wasn't sure if it was possible to remove tags. My hope is that it is possible and that my reputation is high enough to allow me to do so.
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 11, 2021 at 22:25
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    @DanielBallinger - Regarding question quality, my intent is to actively monitor this tag prior to the AMA and edit or close incoming questions to ensure SFSE standards are kept. Questions about Dileep's favorite keyprefix (04t...OBVIOUSLY!) will have to be asked directly during the AMA. :-)
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 11, 2021 at 22:28
  • @VivekM.Chawla why not chat room? chat.stackexchange.com/…
    – Pranay Jaiswal
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 11:10
  • @PranayJaiswal - The AMA itself will happen live over Zoom and we will be taking questions that way as well. In addition to that, I want to give folks who can't make the live event the chance to ask or highlight the questions that are relevant to them.
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 16:11

1 Answer 1

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I think it's a great idea. I'm not making any blanket statements about whether AMA tags are okay, but in this specific scenario, I am on board with piloting it.

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  • Thank you for the feedback!
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 6, 2021 at 22:30
  • Adrian, as an admin can you you delete the 2gp-ama tag at some point in the future when it is no longer required?
    – Daniel Ballinger
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 0:03
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    Given the comments on the question itself, I have reservations about using SFSE this way; What it the question is answered by a community member rather than an SF employee? What if that answer is correct and valid but viewed as "sub-optimal" (or not "politically correct" from the SF perspective) by SF? I.e. who gets to choose the "right answer(s)"? How do general community users know what this tag is about? And why should the tag disappear again later?
    – Phil W
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 10:54
  • @PhilW - These are great questions. Since I'll be the one writing the answers, I can tell you that my focus is on technical accuracy rather than "politically correct" answers. I've seen a few questions already with answers that are good, but incomplete, in terms of technical accuracy. My goal is to share the most up-to-date information while respecting existing contributions. As for the tag disappearing, my thought is that it loses it's value outside of the context of this AMA since the standard 2gp tag is the right one under "normal" circumstances.
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 15:16
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    @VivekM.Chawla for me it's a slightly tricky situation; the point with SFSE is that the community contributes answers, but here you want to do self-answered questions (which is acceptable, but generally done by answering during the posting of the question itself). It feels better for you to collect the questions in a different way, specifically through (e.g.) the managed packages partner forum, sort out duplicates yourself then post self-answered Q&A entries on SFSE. If you don't take this approach you should expect other community contributed answers which may confuse the picture.
    – Phil W
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 15:40
  • @PhilW - I think there may be a misunderstanding. I don't want to do self-answered questions. Rather, I want to leverage the "community brain" here on StackExchange to find the questions that everyone else thinks are important. My commitment to the SFSE community (which I've been a member of for longer than I've been at Salesforce) is to add value where I can by providing answers where none exist. If answers do exist and I have information that might provide greater context or detail then I'll contribute via comments or supplemental answers. The 2gp-ama tag just helps organize everything.
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 16:01
  • @PhilW - One last thing (sorry, these comments are so long). There are some questions I've tagged with 2gp-ama that have AMAZING answers already (you wrote a few of them!). For those, my interest is not to change anything but rather to highlight them to see if others have wondered the same thing. That way I can set aside a few minutes during the AMA to highlight the question since the question and answer themselves are so important. If 5 minutes of discussion will help drive a critical point home with the AMA audience AND it's backed by a great community answer, that's a win-win. :-)
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 16:07
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    @VivekM.Chawla, not trying to be a pain; as I said, I do expect you to collect questions for sure, but my point was that it is you that wants to answer these questions, with the full, in-depth detail that reflects the reality rather than the documentation, and that's great, but how does the community know not to try to answer these questions themselves and await your input?
    – Phil W
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 16:11
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    @PhilW - First off, you're not being a pain. :-) This kind of discussion is exactly what I was hoping for when I posted here in meta. I'm 100% OK if the community answers these questions first. In fact, when a member of the community provides an answer that's similar to what I might have wanted to say, that's incredible validation for me. Things can get really theoretical living inside of Salesforce, so hearing the unvarnished "boots on the ground" perspective is something I treasure, especially when it challenges my understanding of how things are "supposed" to work.
    – Vivek M. Chawla
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 16:19
  • OK. I assume you will be sending out detail of this proposed approach to the attendees before the AMA event so they can adopt it?
    – Phil W
    Commented Apr 12, 2021 at 16:57

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