Curious migration to Programmers.SE

Question

This question was just asked this morning on Workplace.SE, and was accepted fairly well. As you can see, it was subsequently migrated to Programmers.SE.

My question is, is this really a suitable question for that site? After reading this post from Robert Harvey, I'd think not. Sure, it could qualify under freelancing and business concerns, but so would a lot of other soft questions that were closed when P.SE started to move their site in a different direction.

And a friendly plea—if this question doesn't belong on P.SE, please don't swarm it with downvotes; OP originally asked it in good faith on Workplace.SE, where I would say it's definitely on topic. The subsequent migration was beyond her control.

Answer 1

This is a curious migration indeed!

I'll start by saying that the migration is now settled. The question was well received on Programmers and even if it's not 100% suitable for the site, there's absolutely no reason to play migration ping pong with it. Even if the Workplace crowd decides that you (we?) want the question back, it's not going to happen, mostly because it wouldn't be a very nice way to treat a new user (especially one that has asked a valid and interesting question).

That said, it's a question that kind of fits both sites and that creates a very tricky situation. On first read, it seems like a perfectly valid Workplace question, it's a dispute between two colleagues that can be successfully approached (and hopefully solved) as a "people problem". The two answers the question got before it was migrated and a couple that appeared after the migration focus on the social aspects, and that's perfectly fine (although it's a strong hint that the migration shouldn't have happened).

On second read though, I also saw a valid Programmers question in there, one that's about a horribly broken development process. The OP may be approaching this as a "people problem", but that doesn't necessarily mean her approach will lead to a satisfactory solution or that she's right about the root cause of the problem. I went ahead and posted an answer that focuses on the faults of the OP's development process instead of the social aspects, mostly to see if the Programmers community agrees with me that the problem is (also) a software development one (and of course because I'm a rep whore).

Seconds after posting the answer, I realized how much of a mess this really is. We now have a valid question where the two top answers offer approaches stemming from completely different fields of expertise. Although unavoidable for this question and perhaps even desirable, it's not something I like in general and it kinda takes me back to the good old days of Programmers. Nothing inherently wrong with answers that focus on social aspects, or a bit of a variety of approaches in answers, but Programmers is (now) supposed to be a site where you come to find peer reviewed answers on software development problems, and nothing more.

That's not really the case here, most answers are outside of what is commonly thought of as a software developer's expertise. Yes, programmers may have opinions on everything (we truly do), but Stack Exchange sites are not really a venue for opinion sharing. People come here to read answers that have been thoroughly vetted by subject matter experts and I don't see how that's possible for most of the answers in the question in question. I'm a prolific voter on Programmers and I have absolutely no idea how to vote on most of the answers. That's a problem, if I feel confident enough to post an answer, I should also feel confident enough to evaluate the other answers.

The better approach here, imho, would have been to split this into two questions, one on either site. Cross posting is generally a bad idea and I wouldn't suggest it for questions that aren't truly suitable for both sites, but this one is. A comment would have been enough to kick start the process, something like:

Hey Jesslyn and welcome to The Workplace! Your question is quite interesting and on topic for the site, however I think that some of the more technical aspects of it would be better addressed on our sister site Programmers Stack Exchange that's more focused on software development problems. We can automatically move the question there if you want, or you could even ask a new question there focused on the code review issues (but please try to tailor it to the site, don't just copy paste it).

Regardless of cross posting, the original question should have stayed here. jmort253 already quoted shog9, so I'm left with only one option, to quote myself:

Programmers and Stack Overflow overlap in expertise, it's not uncommon for questions to fit both sites. It's not always clear if a question is more conceptual (Programmers) than technical (Stack Overflow) and there are questions that sit right on the fence. When questions overlap significantly we tend to let them stay at the site they were originally asked, it's a simple enough solution.

I don't think we need to change the FAQ of either site, and since you're asking this in the interest of keeping Programmers as clean as possible I'd like to encourage you to examine whether a question is a good question before examining whether it fits our FAQ. Only after you decide it's a good question you should start wondering whether it's more suitable for us or Stack Overflow (or any other site). If you can't decide, chances are that it's one of those that fit either site, in which case it's in our interest to keep it here, Stack Overflow gets 5.8K questions per day, we get 35.

I have no idea of knowing if the close voters thought the question was at all suitable for The Workplace at the time they casted their close votes, but if they did then their first instinct should have been to keep it here. Even if the question was more suitable for Programmers than The Workplace, it still should have been left where it was originally asked. A migration vote is also an off topic vote, if the question isn't completely off topic for the site, there's absolutely no reason to migrate it. Instead talk to the OP, explain how they could update their question to be more suitable for The Workplace. Don't just send it away if there's a chance it could work here.

What strikes me as very odd is that at least one of the close voters, Chad, went out of his way to find a better home for the question (asking in both chat rooms), but never really engaged the OP in comments, except for posting a comment that isn't particularly useful:

This question is really off topic for the Workplace. It really belongs on programmers

Some good information in there if you're a veteran, but not really if you are a brand new user. The comment doesn't explain why this is off topic, why it belongs on Programmers and what is Programmers (the OP didn't have a Programmers account at the time). So, while I certainly don't want this to be misunderstood as scolding (Chad did more than most would), I'd strongly advise against such comments. If you don't have the time or the energy to post a comment that's actually helpful to the OP, then just don't post a comment at all. Explaining your close votes is great, but you kinda have to actually explain them. Bare and dry statements don't really explain much, especially to someone that's brand new. And of course if you happen upon a comment that doesn't really explain much, feel free to post your own comment and elaborate. Yes, it adds a bit of noise, but who cares, all comments will go away eventually (right? right!).

The end.

Answer 2

I'm not sure I would have migrated this question, unless it actually received all 5 close votes.

While Jim, and others, bring up a great point that we have a site for Programmers, we shouldn't be so quick to kick out great content that fits our site, just because it happens to also fit another site's topic. A healthy Stack Exchange site sometimes has topic borders that are a bit blurry; some overlap is to be expected.

In the blog post, Respect the community – your own, and others’, Shog9 makes a great point about treating a Stack Exchange site as it's own standalone entity when judging whether or not a question is on topic. Before we determine if a question is on-topic on another site, we should first determine if it's off-topic on ours:

As members of a community, your first loyalty should be to that community. When evaluating a question, you shouldn’t be looking to push it off on some other site; instead, ask if it could be appropriate and on-topic for you, the experts who the author decided to ask. Be a bit jealous of your site – don’t blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else. Don’t hit them over the head with your scope, help them tailor their question to fit into it – and if that means your site’s scope overlaps a bit with another site’s, so be it.

Imagine the asker of that question is a magazine editor instead, and let's say her problem is that a colleague occasionally makes changes to copy she already edited. We know that with grammar, like programming, there's more than one "correct" way to do something. So let's assume the colleague isn't really correcting any mistakes but is just changing something to promote his own personal style.

I'm not 100% sure we'd try to migrate this question as quickly. It wouldn't be on topic on English Language and Usage because it's about solving a workplace problem, and it wouldn't be on-topic on Programmers since it has a grammar component to it. Yet, ironically, it would likely fit really well on our site and generate good content for future visitors.

In short, I encourage our community to be jealous of our awesome site. Let's not migrate something away just because it has a programming aspect to it. Don't vote to close something just because it also happens to be on-topic on another site. If the question is about workplace issues, let's make the Programmers SE folks beg for these great questions! :)

Answer 3

This site is about dealing with the workplace and situations in the workplace. That question could have easily been generalized and made applicable to the general workplace. However being a programmer I recognized the same issue that Yannis did, that the problem was not so much the people, as the process. There are tools and methodologies that exist for programmers that would not translate well to everyone else.

So to me the choice was change the question entirely to, what I believe, would be a really great generalized question for the workplace, that addresses what the OP asked: "How do I deal with a coworker how is interfering with my work?" Or have the question migrated to a community that can address the real problem that the OP was having in her profession, on a site filled with people who also quickly saw what the problem was.

Summary: It was not so much the question did not belong here, so much as the OP was able to get answers that were more likely to help her than would have come from here, because it was a programmers problem more than a people problem.

NOTE: I did not suggest changes because it was a good question as it was, just asked in the wrong place. I still think the generalized question would be a great fit here and I may consider asking it if no one else does.

Answer 4

I migrated it. It had two off-topic close votes and a flag to migrate to Programmers.

Yes, it had upvotes and two answers here. Yes, it would be an appropriate question here. But considering it was about something specifically related to programmers, I felt that the community at Programmers would be better to answer it.

It turns out the accepted (and most upvoted) answer is one that was migrated with it. The second most upvoted answer is one that was posted on Programmers.

While it may have been appropriate here, it was attracting close votes and migration flags. It seems to have found a home on Programmers (votes, accept, not closed), so I'm fine leaving it where it is. If the mirgation gets rejected, I'll happily reopen it here.