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This was often discussed in the past: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/49367/why-not-one-single-stackoverflow-closed http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questi

This was often discussed in the past: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/49367/why-not-one-single-stackoverflow-closed http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/49367/why-not-one-si... It is terribly annoying and often has hit me myself. Some programming related question about Xorg? -> moved to superuser. Some filesystem question about iPhone on superuser? -> closed because mobile phones are offtopic. Some question about OpenID on superuser -> moved to serverfault (actually, it has pointed out in the end that it was programming related...). Question about JVM performance -> closed as too argumentative. Question about Bash on stackoverflow -> moved to serverfault (because I didn't put the word "programmatically" into my question). Question about ACL in the MacOSX filesystem on stackoverflow -> moved to superuser. Ok enough of this. The point was probably already clear in the original post. I really wonder what we can do about it. I like Quora for being universal. And I like Stackoverflow because of the somewhat better management (despite all the different sites) and many details. And the killer argument for Stackoverflow: Everything is open, all content becomes cc-by-sa and I can download the full database. Sort of like Wikipedia. And I often get much more and better answers on SO (probably just because more people are using it). So I mostly end up asking on SO (or related sites). I am not sure if they ever will fix/change this mess. I hope that they do at some point but I actually doubt it. Maybe another solution would be another, new and open solution which just works as SO but is just as general as possible (and some more simple way to filter for a bunch of tags). The database of SO could be imported there and some metasearch-engine could also be linked with it which automatically searches and links questions on other sites.

caf 16y ago
Moving a question is far too easy. It's impossible to vote against a move, so the tables are tilted firmly towards the over-eager question-movers. You can't even vote to un-move it once it's happened, unless you happen to have enough rep on the recipient site.
codinghorror 16y ago
I would say that Yahoo Answers, answers.com, allexperts.com, wikianswer, askville, answerbag, yedda, and the hundreds of other generic "answer" sites have proven that this is a bad idea.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Why? Those sites have done pretty well. I think it's a good idea. I really am annoyed by the variety of SO sites and the juggling you get when you encounter something that requires an overlapping of disciplines. It's pretty common for sysadmins to need to do a bit of programming and programmers to do a bit (or more) of sysadminning, and the questions aren't always immediately separated. It should all be consolidated into SO and SO should be given "super-tags" or "categories" for server admin, programming, etc., and then you don't need a bunch of different sites/designs with fewer users. In short, take the reddit approach; allow users to subscribe to categorized channels that interest them and compile the front page based on that.
  - codinghorror 16y ago
    yes, exactly like we're doing with the stackexchange.com homepage, perhaps? http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/customizing-stackexchange-com/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/customizing-stackexcha...
- albertzeyer 16y ago
  This is not a proof at all. There is still a difference and that difference might be the key. Also, if you take all SO sites together, you still have the very wide common topic "technical". If the topic becomes even wider, some clever tag-filtering/handling may be needed so a user could view the questions like they have been before. Also the reputation could be tagged base. In any case, just because not-so-well-made and not so technical-centered sites with not anywhere near the features of SO have failed is not a proof that a general answer site is a bad idea.
- blasdel 16y ago
  A bag of rocks would be better than Yahoo Answers, etc. — but it sucks primarily because of demographics and volume, not its organization. It's rather expository how you always willfully ignore the competitors that you can't use as a punching bag — like Ask Metafilter and now Quora.

caf 16y ago

Moving a question is far too easy. It's impossible to vote against a move, so the tables are tilted firmly towards the over-eager question-movers. You can't even vote to un-move it once it's happened, unless you happen to have enough rep on the recipient site.

codinghorror 16y ago

I would say that Yahoo Answers, answers.com, allexperts.com, wikianswer, askville, answerbag, yedda, and the hundreds of other generic "answer" sites have proven that this is a bad idea.

cookiecaper 16y ago
Why? Those sites have done pretty well. I think it's a good idea. I really am annoyed by the variety of SO sites and the juggling you get when you encounter something that requires an overlapping of disciplines. It's pretty common for sysadmins to need to do a bit of programming and programmers to do a bit (or more) of sysadminning, and the questions aren't always immediately separated. It should all be consolidated into SO and SO should be given "super-tags" or "categories" for server admin, programming, etc., and then you don't need a bunch of different sites/designs with fewer users. In short, take the reddit approach; allow users to subscribe to categorized channels that interest them and compile the front page based on that.
- codinghorror 16y ago
  yes, exactly like we're doing with the stackexchange.com homepage, perhaps? http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/customizing-stackexchange-com/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/customizing-stackexcha...
albertzeyer 16y ago
This is not a proof at all. There is still a difference and that difference might be the key. Also, if you take all SO sites together, you still have the very wide common topic "technical". If the topic becomes even wider, some clever tag-filtering/handling may be needed so a user could view the questions like they have been before. Also the reputation could be tagged base. In any case, just because not-so-well-made and not so technical-centered sites with not anywhere near the features of SO have failed is not a proof that a general answer site is a bad idea.
blasdel 16y ago
A bag of rocks would be better than Yahoo Answers, etc. — but it sucks primarily because of demographics and volume, not its organization. It's rather expository how you always willfully ignore the competitors that you can't use as a punching bag — like Ask Metafilter and now Quora.