Where to vote on merging Ubuntu and Linux?

Question

Is there any way to organize a voting so that people decide if two sections of SE (Ubuntu and Linux) should be merged?

UPDATE

Please vote to reopen my question on AU

http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/5473/where-to-vote-about-merging-ubuntu-and-linux-again-2-years-passed

I guess their admins don't like people to even see the question.

UPDATE

Just to note fro those who can't count: 72+89 > 114+34

Answer 1

We did, back when the sites first went into beta. Ask Ubuntu was opposed, so we stayed separate:

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/images/wordpress/ubuntu-vs-unix-graph.png

You can read What is the relationship between Linux/Unix SE and Ubuntu SE to see how it works since we stayed separate. Also How should questions cross-posted on Ask Ubuntu be handled?, which mentions cross-posting and why we prefer you not do it. At this point it's entirely too late to merge the sites, plus Ask Ubuntu is a special case because they're officially endorsed by Canonical, and I'm sure Canonical wants their official help site to be Ubuntu-only.

Answer 2

Well as Michael explains it so well in his comments, we're separate now. This isn't just a partition between questions and reputation but community.

And that doesn't just mean different individuals — which, I'll add, we are to a very high degree (just look at the numbers of users on each site!) — each site has grown in its own way over the past two years. We have come to do certain things in our own way.

I could warble on about what Ask Ubuntu is and why it deserves to be separate (and perhaps moreso, why Unix.SE shouldn't have to deal with our nonsense!) but I can't see that you've given any reason why the two sites should merge in the first place. Why should there be a vote if nothing has changed?

Edit: It's hard to tell if you've just rolled in to troll two sites at once but I'm starting to get fed up. I'd like to concentrate my replies and pre-empt you in some other places:

• Your posts on AU were closed (not deleted). You can still comment on them so no censorship. If the community finds value in them, they will be reopened.

• Your posts were closed because they were all outside the rules. Cross-posting and duplicates. Merging the two sites will not help you follow the rules.

• As Michael said, you can't combine two votes into one and get a fair result. You have no idea how distinct those votes are and even if they were distinct, why would what the majority of Unix.SE want override what the majority of AU wanted?

• To get a referendum on anything serious like this, you need to put forward an argument for your idea and the community needs to like it. Neither of these things has happened.

• Your counter to that seems to be either the amount of time or the number of users, either way, so what? We don't have referendums on everything because that's a pig-inefficient way of doing things. Only well argued, well thought out ideas have the smallest chance of being considered by The Powers That Be (the mods can't action a vote, let alone a merge).

• Not only that but you keep regurgitating the same nonsense to different people even after those arguments get slapped down. This is not a viable or sustainable debating technique because you're not listening.

• And most of all, and this is something we've all been skirting around, AU and Unix.SE will never, ever merge. They are two websites that draw in more traffic and command more organic search engine power separately than they would combined. Stack Exchange, Inc. is a business and there is no commercial basis for merging.

^{Note: I'm an Ask Ubuntu mod, so when I say "we", "our", etc, I mean it from AU's perspective.}

Answer 3

According to the Stack Exchange sites page, U&L currently has 24,000 users and AU has 86,000.

On U&L there are 18,000 quesions, 90% of which have been answered. On AU, 76% of the 78,000 questions have been answered.

What this snapshot shows is that both sites have thriving communities, and have developed their own wikis over time.

There is no compelling argument to be made to merge the two sites now; and as we regularly see questions migrated between the two sites, the separation of the two interest areas obviously works well for both communities.

Answer 4

Voting is time consuming. It requires infrastructure to be set up (can't get votes from thousands of people by hand). It requires efforts to notify everyone that a vote is occurring (hardly fair if you don't). It requires efforts to actually get them to vote (what, you want a quorum?). It requires a lot of discussion. And of course, it takes time—for each and every voter—to read the arguments and actually vote.

Total it all up, and you're requesting other people to spend at at least a week of time.

On something that was already decided once before. With no actual arguments as to why the status quo should be changed. But with plenty of vitriol, it seems.

You don't particularly have any involvement in either community, with a total of one upvoted question and no answers in each community.

So, I think when you take that all into account, its pretty clear why there is no vote and shouldn't be one as a result of your request for one.

I sit on the board of my HOA. We have five directors. Even we require a second before we hold a vote. Out of a hundred thousand, you don't even have a second in your call for a vote.

Please stop trolling.

Answer 5

Ubuntu is about more than just "Linux",

I use AskUbuntu not only because I use Ubuntu (operating system), but also because of

focusing on people's allegiances and relations with each other

Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28philosophy%29

Although the site focuses on Ubuntu the operating system it is the only version of linux I currently use.

Would you also force a merge of AskDiffrent(the Mac site) only because it is Unix based?