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We're getting the occasional programming question. Programming questions are off-topic, and we flag to have them migrated to Stack Overflow.

In the past 90 days, we've had 26 migrations from U&L to SO, none of them rejected.

It is possible to set up a migration path from U&L to SO, which would add an option “migrate to Stack Overflow” in the close dialog, usable by all users with the “vote to close” privilege. Should we do that?

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  • 5
    Yes, we should...
    – jasonwryan
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 0:43
  • That sounds like a good idea.
    – Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 10:36
  • Can there be a migration path from all stackexchange sites? Often SO questions will need to be migrated to U&L or SU or somewhere else. Seems like a nice universal change, positive for all SE sites.
    – csi
    Commented Feb 14, 2013 at 14:55
  • @ChristopherIckes That's not going to happen. If you see an off-topic question that you know would be welcome on another site, flag a moderator to request the migration.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Feb 14, 2013 at 15:37
  • 1
    @ChristopherIckes The odds of a question from, say, Cooking needing to be migrated to SO are fairly small. :)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Feb 15, 2013 at 16:28
  • @ChristopherIckes ...and each closing user would need to understand the scope of the 100+ list of sites to get anything done. That's not a reasonable expectation for most users.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Feb 15, 2013 at 16:37

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Sounds reasonable.

We set up a default migration path from U&L to Stack Overflow. Use it wisely. :)

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I think that is a good idea. I'm presuming those questions are beginner questions by someone trying to learn a language in a *nix context, for which there are better places, and we should encourage people to go seek those out. Not that SO is necessarily that place, but at least they can then A) learn about it, and B) get introduced to "this question is a duplicate of" somewhere where the duplicate probably lives.

I'd make a distinction though, between questions that are about general programming methodology and ones that are in fact explicitly *nix oriented. Eg, if someone wants to know "If anyone knows of a good Erlang API for linux proc/sys stuff", that is totally appropriate, etc.

The other exception that might be important are shell programming questions, which are programming questions but seem very suitable here.

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  • It's usually C programming questions, like this one. Since the beginning of the site, we decided to leave programming to SO and concentrate on users and administrators. Understanding the output of strace: on-topic. Compiling an existing C program: on-topic. Writing C code: off-topic.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 17:39
  • I guess by my theory that is an edge case, lol? It's probably better off on SO, anyway.
    – goldilocks
    Commented Feb 13, 2013 at 17:47

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