There seems to be more than a few computer science/programming Stack Exchange networks (is that the correct term?). Stack Overflow, being the first, has by far the most users, questions, and answers.  What is the reasoning for creating the others, and are there clear guidelines for which kinds of questions should be posted? I can see a large amount of potential overflow, many cases of people not getting a good answer to their question, because the person who has the answer isn't browsing that particular network at the moment.  I understand that they were probably created for organizational purposes, but wouldn't it almost make more sense to just have them as categories under Stack Overflow, keep them separated but still connected, instead of making people have to create multiple 'account's, one for each network?  I am sure there was a very good reason to break them up, but as someone that is new to SE, it can be somewhat intimidating to decide which one to post in to ensure you get a good answer. For example, if I am a computer science student, my first instinct might to be to post in the computer science network, until I see that it literally has 1% of the users as the Stack Overflow network, which still seems to be for programming/computer science related questions.  So my second instinct would then to be to post it into the Stack&nbsp;Overflow site on the basis that I have a significantly higher chance of my question being seen and getting a good answer. Then I notice that there is also a 'programmers' network, and I don't even begin to know where that fits in. I, and I am assuming most people, will probably just post on Stack&nbsp;Overflow to be safe.  My question is, other than the short little description blurb of each one, is there a clear cut set of guidelines which what each network is intended for, what kinds of questions should go to each one, and is anything being done to encourage people to post in these newer, smaller (more specialized?) networks as opposed to just posting in big daddy Stack Overflow?  Now again, this is for computer science/programming/"why isn't this code doing what I want?" related questions, I am not saying that if I had a question about Linux or WordPress or something I would have the same confusion.
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What is the right site on the Stack Exchange network for computer science questions?  None of the answers I can think of are remotely satisfying:   : Even if CS questions are acceptable (, which I think shows they're not getting the right audience), where is the expertise to answer them? It would be . Also a site about computer science would need LaTeX markup, which SO lacks. : Same problems as SO, only worse (and the bulk of CS questions would be  there anyway). : That's for  questions only, so what about the other 99%? : That's , but not the other 95%: e.g.  are ok in the abstract but not more implementation-oriented questions (e.g., not data structures). : the proposal was closed as a duplicate (of what? My impression is that the closers mainly had TCS.SE in mind, but that would be based on a mistaken perception of what TCS.SE is about, as seen above). Many different SE sites for subfields of CS: , , , , , … But why not follow the SO and Math.SE model of one big site?    , but that was before SE2.0 which has completely changed the scope.     On a closely related note, I've searched for a number of keywords where I would expect some activity on a computer science Q&amp;A site. (Note: there is definitely a bias in the keywords related to my background — suggestions for an objective keyword list would be welcome — but I wrote the keyword list before I did any searching.) These are topics that are typically taught in undergraduate or graduate courses (so basic questions about them are out of scope for ). I'm only considering hits in questions, since here I'm looking at the kinds of questions people ask, not what people might mention in passing in answers.   strongly normalizing (0) lambda calculus (43) theorem provers (): coq: (13), agda/agda2: (5), twelf (0), isabelle (0) linear logic () abstract interpretation (16 hits total, few in questions, though most are good CS questions) model checking:  (3, not particularly science-y; some questions without the tag are more science-y) bisimulation (0; 3 answers) basic block (71 hits, ranging all over the board; I haven't counted the questions)   What this tells me is that a lot of subjects that I learnt about in CS courses don't receive any questions. There seems to be a gap between the first two undergraduate years or so (mainly introduction to programming and algorithms), which get reasonable coverage at SO, and graduate students' first research projects, which is where TCS.SE starts.    Computer science has more applied topics that don't fit well on Stack Overflow either. For example,  don't seem to fare well.
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Recently, I've seen many questions with this structure:   a wall of code a request for the community to debug it by inspection   You can find a nice selection .  I offer, as a thesis, that these questions are not consistent with the stated goals of SO. They do not, usually, create a resource of use to other people.   As a community, we could politely but firmly tell these askers to do enough of their own work to come up with a concrete, specific, programming question, other than 'can someone tell me what's wrong with this?'  Don't get me wrong. I'm sympathetic to people with problems. I have not been downvoting or voting to close these, because the community seems to be inclined in general to be helpful. I'm asking, are we really doing the right thing by encouraging the site to populate with these?  If the consensus is 'yes' then I'll just slink back to my cave. I'm not interested in starting a campaign here.
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I have just asked a question on   I read from this meta answer  that suggested     From a desktop support perspective there are certainly cases where a   large(r) number of machines will be affected by something, in which   case it's appropriate for SF. There are then others that are isolated   to a single computer, these tend to be the ones I vote to move to SU.   Since my question is clearly not about a single computer and is external to a single computer, I turned to ServerFault. I thought the question is about how to replicate a network admin strategy on my own (home) network. My question is, however, marked as off-topic, and I did see that homenetwork questions are off-topic. But this is not a single computer issue either.  My question is:  Where should such home/small network questions be asked?  What's the real difference between "professional" networks and the smaller networks that I build for my home or lab with a handful computers?  -- UPDATE --  The question asked here is different from the said duplicate question  as that question is about the difference among computer science and programming SE sites. It has nothing to do with network administration, whether it's large or small networks. None of the two SE sites in question (Server Fault and Super User) is even mentioned in the question or in the 2 cited answers.  -- UPDATE2 --  This question is not a duplicate of , which was cited in the OP and was the cause of this question. That question does not cover the overlapping area of small networks, which could both be for work and for home network.
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I think that now that we have multiple communities, there are questions that will be of interest to multiple communities.    For example consider the question  asked on  .  I think that this question would be better answered on the   (that is where the experts are).  But since questions is of interest to both communities I think that it is useful to cross post it, where answers are also shared between the different sites.  I think that the best way to handle cases like this is by allowing cross posting.  I think users with 500+ reputation should be allowed to cross post questions.  This would allow users from both sites to answer them.  I think that this could also be a good way of marketing different sites to different users.    Similar questions have been asked about the SO, SU and SF triad but I think that this has become a larger issue (and will become a bigger issue as more area51 sites evolve).
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Beginning to ask a question on Stack&nbsp;Overflow actually helps me debug my problem myself, especially while trying to formulate a coherent and detailed enough question body in order to get decent answers.  Is this common?
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I would like to ask for help finding resources regarding a particular programming language. I realize that Stack Exchange is designed to be more of a hunter and less of a gatherer; it is meant to be very specific. If I ask a question that is not intended to objectively elicit &quot;the right answer&quot; then what forum should I post that question to? Is there one at all? In my case I am looking for information to help get started with  and feel that I am having a hard time finding resources. I believe that the SE community could point me in the right direction, but I want to be sure that I ask in the appropriate place.  suggests that I use  to ask for &quot;opinions&quot;, but the  states the following:  &quot;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&quot;  Now, I feel that my question will be practical and indeed answerable; it's even based on actual problems that I am facing... But my question will not be specific enough to elicit a single &quot;AHA! This is the answer!&quot; - it won't be meant to do that. When I'm done asking, I hope that my question will have several answers from several different people and that it will be useful as a resource for someone else in the same position as me. Is Programmer's SE the place to do that? Or should I be looking elsewhere? Should I entirely leave the SE family of sites and find forums related to the topic somewhere else?
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While programming I often have naming questions, such as "how do I name [thing]  in a descriptive but succinct way? Is there already an accepted terms for this/an alternative to [name]?" (Thing could be a programming concept, a function, a class, a variable)  Is Stack Overflow the right place to ask these naming/semantics questions?  I would like to be able to get meaningful answers, not just "Name it [name] and call it a day."
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I have a coding question with two compilable options. I want to ask which is better and why. Code review, programmers, stack exchange...im not really sure? Where is this question appropriate.   It may be an opinion based question and it may not. I don't really know until I know the answer. Like I said, both ways produce the same results, but I don't know which is the better practice.   What site does this belong on?
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I just saw a  from a user asking about a C# stack trace.  It was a valid programming question for someone with little experience, yet it was marked down twice.  I've always believed that there are no stupid questions. Am I wrong?
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Since the  would it make sense to create a Stack Exchange site dedicated to homework help? It wouldn't have to be limited strictly to homework either, possibly including discussions of puzzles and brain teasers and possible approaches to solving them.  I have a programming background so I would be interested in helping with CS or math related homework, discussions of programming contest problems, etc. Topics don't necessarily have to be related to programming either. That's just where my interests are.  What are your thoughts?
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I see that Stack&nbsp;Overflow is very Linux specific. Doesn't Unix &amp; Linux and Ask&nbsp;Ubuntu cover much of the same ground? I see that Unix &amp; Linux and Server&nbsp;Fault also cater to many Linux server questions. Similarly, Ask&nbsp;Ubuntu and Super&nbsp;User seems to contain most like questions.
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A question about Linux could belong on these sites on the StackExchange network:   unix.stackexchange.com superuser.com, if it is about using software rather than programming AskUbuntu.com, if it is about Ubuntu serverfault.com, if it is about professional infrastructure maintenance stackoverflow.com, if it is about   a tool mainly used for programming OR shell scripting    So technically, a question about simple shell scripting to create a firewall on Ubuntu could belong on any of those 5 sites.  This is likely to lead to many questions being asked on multiple sites, and scattering of questions amongst these sites, making it harder to find questions that already exist when searching one of those sites.  What can/should we do about this?  In particular, should we comment on questions that seem to be unlikely to be answered, to suggest that they should be deleted by the asker and reposted on what we think is "the most appropriate site"? Should we flag them for migration? Should we allow questions to appear on multiple sites (a perennial proposal)?
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I have a question that I am quite sure does not belong to SO: it is a general, broad question about programming language implementation.  Also, I do not feel it belongs to CS, because it is not strictly computer science (it is more of an engineering question). To be honest, after reading  I was leaning towards CS, but then in the CS FAQ I read "(avoid questions where) there is no actual problem to be solved"  In general, I wonder where to go for questions that:   are not about theory (for those, I would go to cs.stackexchange) are not really practical programming problems (for those, I would go to SO) are not design questions (programmers)   The question I am referring to are something like "Are function calls always implemented using a stack?" "Under which conditions can I transform a function call into CPS, and how would I do that?" (general, not related to a particular piece of code).  Where do questions about programming "curiosities", where there is no actual problem to be solved belong? Or maybe they do not belong to stackexchange at all?
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Because the perl section is looking like that right now. I believe that Stack Overflow is going out of it's charter in becoming a newbie FAQ when as far as the original reasoning it was meant to be something along the lines of an expert site.   is a good example of what I mean in Perl. It probably could be closed because it's a duplicate, or some other reason.   I would also like to indicate that I don't hold back answering newbie questions. It's just when I think of an obscure "stack overflow" error that's beating you some 3 am close to deadline, that's not "Howcum Perl print ..." and follows with something that causes a vast majority of Perl programmers to say oops, because they know exactly what's going on.   So the proposal is   A new site. "Move to Newbieville" A new "section" A new status somewhat similar to Closed ("Newbied") but still can be updated all the same as an open question.   I'm not against giving some newbies an assist, but I feel a FAQ for rank newbieism is not something that SO started out to be, based on the original concept of a Expert Site.   Including comment to Gnoupi:   I said nothing about making newbies unwelcome. Like I said. I answer them--heck, I think I've even answer homework questions. I've answered on the vague impressions that I can glean from posts that have 4 close votes. It can even lead to avoiding downvoting or yelling at newbies by more established curmudgeons if there is a special action you can do to gently inform newbies that this is a real newbie question.  However, you have to know that to some people newbies are already unwelcome. There is a site ethic, but the individual is also going to decide how much they welcome newbies. And people do post RTFM answers already.   Anyway, I'm one vote away from a peer pressure badge it seems. (Nope, nailed it.)    EDIT  For somebody jumping to the conclusion that I'm hostile to newbies:  just earlier
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Subtitle:  Should beginner's questions be off-topic strictly because they are beginner's questions? The sorts of questions that newbie programmers ask has come up before many times in side discussions, and comes up constantly on the main site.  Here are two examples from today:   Both of the above questions are well-formed, specific, answerable definitively, not open to opinions and are otherwise directly on-topic for StackOverflow. However both questions were downvoted and closed by users who said they were off-topic because they were too basic in nature.  To quote one particularly pointed comment:  This question appears to be off-topic because it is trivially answerable by reading a beginners' language tutorial.  That pretty much sums it up. Here's another case posted yesterday:  This is another beginner's question.  The topic is fairly elementary.  The answer can likely be found in Strustrup's book, or any number of other books that we recommend.  Considering only that it is a beginner's question of a fundamental nature, should the question be considered off-topic? Lots of questions are posted from lazy people who are just looking to be spoon-fed answers.  Those questions should all be closed because they never meet the quality guidelines.  That's not what I'm asking about here.  What I'm asking about is just the elementray nature of the question.  If the question is elementary, but otherwise meets our quality and topical requirements, is it off-topic? I have always thought that .  But enthusiasts come in all shapes and sizes, from the bright-green newbie writing their first program to the grizzled veterans who have seen and done it all a million times before.  I have always felt that SO's stated audience does not, or should not, discriminate based on the expertise of the asker. Some  that newbie questions are off-topic because they aren't interesting enough for the answerers.  But this seems highly subjective to me.  After all, every question is a &quot;no-duh softball&quot; to someone.  Just today I provided what I thought was a  to a problem, only to learn a few minutes later that KonradRudolph and Yakk had come up with the  over a year before.  No-duh. It seems to me that this has been coming up much more recently.  Sometimes I'll chime in with a comment to the downvoters and close-voters suggesting that the level of expertise is not a parameter in deciding if a question is topical.  The downvoters will often agree.  But we don't have a difinitive resource to point to that says this is so -- it doesn't say it in the FAQs, and I've not found anything difinitive in meta. So what says meta?  Can a question about basics be on-topic for Stack Overflow?  If it can be off-topic, how do we know where to draw the line?
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Is there any site in the network where career development questions about the programming profession can be asked ? I thought Programmer's was the site for it, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
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I just found  , and I must say I found it very useful; however, it was closed as "Off topic". Now, it hasn't generated all that many page views, but I would have loved it if it was open, in case something new came up in the past year it was closed.   The "Off topic" specification doesn't exactly explain what the problem is with the question; I see the point for Stack Overflow, given there is no actual coding problem discussed - but a user in that post points out:     (That aside, prepare for your question to be closed, it's a bit too close to "please provide me a list of", which isn't muchly appreciated)   Now, the thing is, a lot of times I actually would appreciate greatly a "provide me a list of" question, like in this case - however, I can see the point in this posting in particular not being on-topic for Stack Overflow.   My question then is - is there a place where such "listing" questions about computer software in general can be asked? I don't think it would fit in programmers.SE, and one may think superuser.com would be appropriate - but then again, its purpose could be understood as specific questions about how to do more advanced stuff with existing software, thereby excluding again listing questions.   If that is so, then where do such question belong? If Super User on the other hand is appropriate, wouldn't the referred post be better off moved to Super User, and opened for contributions there - instead of sitting on Stack Overflow closed?