It seems there's an emerging consensus that questions about Ripple should be on topic here. However, we're seeing people voting to close Ripple questions as off-topic. They may disagree with the consensus, but more likely they're just not aware of it.

So, what should we do about it?

The FAQ says "a cryptocurrency or technology derived directly from Bitcoin such as Namecoin". This is ambiguous and would seem to exclude Ripple questions. So if the consensus holds, we need to change that. At a minimum, we should change "derived directly from" to "similar to". We could add "or Ripple" at the end.

Note: I'm one of the core Ripple developers and an employee of OpenCoin.