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I remember speaking to a moderator in chat once where they told me that a question about a future release which is currently in-development is actually on-topic here as long as what is posted is not a bug report. Though I have seen many people ignore this and actually the close reason description, and give this:

Bug reports and problems specific to development version of Ubuntu should be reported on Launchpad so that developers can see, track and fix these issues.

Even if it is not an issue which should be reported on LaunchPad as it is not a bug report.

However when I went and posted this question How to install the new GNOME Software app on 16.04 for testing purposes? I immediately got 3 close votes, though it is not a bug report which should be reported on LaunchPad, nor something which cannot be answered, and as this answer does not fully cover this instance and I can't find the place in chat where the moderator told me this, I thought I would post this question just to get this clarified, is it on-topic to ask questions about future releases when you question is not a bug report, and can be answered, and maybe is even answered as a self-answered Q&A?

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The tolerance for questions about development releases increases when things are known to be true for the final release, and therefore aren't likely to change. Like:

How do I do X with the new version of Y?

... Assuming we know that version of Y will be in the final release. This is usually around feature freeze but there is flexibility here.

Essentially we don't want to be in a situation where —come April— our new 16.04 users are finding answers that are [potentially dangerously] out of date straight after their upgrade.

In this case, it's going to be obsolete well before release.

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  • Ok, and it can be closed for the appropriate reason then, but I don't see a reason why it is off-topic now.
    – user364819
    Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 11:40