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Since we have our discussion about networking going on I want to add similar question which seems to badly overlap between SF and SO.

There are a lot of VCS questions that are asked or get bumped over from SO to SF. But they seem to more appropriately belong on SO.

From the SO FAQ

  • a specific programming problem
  • a software algorithm
  • software tools commonly used by programmers
  • matters that are unique to the programming profession

As we Just because the word 'server' is used in the posted VCS question doesn't make these really appropriate for serverfault. I believe they are even less appropriate for superuser.

For an example look at this recent question 165691. If you look at all the users that actually provided an answer every single one of them is more active (more rep) on stackoverflow then serverfault or super user.

It sure seems to me like a large number of the VCS questions that are asked on SF have next to nothing to do with the actual servering of a VCS system and more to do with the day-to-day usage which in my opinion fits the commonly used by programmers portion of the SO FAQ.

Please don't take me to be saying that all VCS questions belong over there. I asked a moderately popular question myself about using VCS, but I was asking how to use a tool I believe is mostly for software dev to manage my server configuration better.

So where do you think VCS questions belong, or what qualities of a VCS question make it belong to one site or the other?

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Yea, setting up a VCS on a single machine for yourself is not SF materiel. If it was setting up a VCS to be used by a department full of programmers probably. Although really us admins should know more about VCS than we do since IMHO we should all be putting our scripts in there too!

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  • I use VCS and administrate VCS. It could be a SF topic too but that question in particular is not.
    – Warner
    Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 22:42
  • Single programmers on single machines should 1. not be asking on ServerFault 2. be using a DVCS anyway.
    – Andrew
    Commented Aug 1, 2010 at 2:41
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I agree with all your points. I believe that those topics more often than not belong on SO and voted to relocate the question there.

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    I feel it would be a better fit for there as well but feel I shouldn't use my moderator power (Want community to decide). Although I am tempted because I don't actually know what happens when you put a question back where it came from :-)
    – Kyle Brandt
    Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 21:32
  • @Kyle 2 more votes and we find out ...
    – Zypher
    Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 21:40
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    @Kyle - it messes up completely, the situation is not handled by the engine. We had this situation on Super User. It's not linking back to the previous question, it's creating a new one on SO. The message is messed up on the SF question, to the previous "migrated from", and not to "migrated to". I flagged the question on SO for moderator's review, they ill probably merge the two of them.
    – Gnoupi
    Commented Aug 1, 2010 at 9:20
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This is one of those areas where Kara's idea of a question-purgatory would be a good idea. Clearly SO and SF have different ideas about where these kinds of questions belong, and having a queue of sorts where high-rep/mod users can vet incoming moves would help everyone iron things out.

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