(Not a duplicate of What should be done (if anything) about the "How to run [Windows Program] in Wine?" questions?, as far as I can tell.)

So the help center here allows for questions on the installation and usage of third party programs, as long as they are being used on Ubuntu. This includes using WINE itself, since WINE is a third party program that runs on Ubuntu, but does it include running programs under WINE?

Since WINE isn't an emulation layer, it could be argued that running programs under WINE is really just running programs under Ubuntu itself, but I don't think that's the case. WINE does provide a compatibility layer, and that compatibility layer is what causes issues with the programs it tries to run.

I kind of see it as being similar to Crouton: questions about Crouton and problems caused by Crouton are off-topic, but just because someone uses Crouton doesn't make the question off topic, since Crouton isn't really something running on Ubuntu, and is more comparable to the BIOS loader on a normal setup (it's a program running under Chrome OS).

In a similar way, just because someone uses WINE doesn't make the question off-topic, but I feel as though questions about running programs under WINE are really questions about running third party programs under third part programs under Ubuntu. The connection is distant, and any questions on the subject are really more about WINE itself than using WINE on Ubuntu.

This is in response to the (seemingly) recent increase in questions about problems playing games and running other programs under WINE. We can't help with these questions really, and I think they should be reported instead as bugs, since that's kind of what they are.

So for the question/suggestion. I personally think that questions about using programs under WINE should be off-topic in most cases, since they're not really asking how to use WINE itself, but rather how to use a certain program on the WINE platform. What does the community think?