4

I've noticed a few times, users poaching for other stacks and suggesting an already answered, and up-voted question should be somewhere else.

What (if anything) should we do about this?

Example: Coworker demands immediate assistance when having computer trouble

Although I am not saying this is not the right place to ask this question, I think it might be better suited for Interpersonal Skills SE. From this stack perspective, it seems like you did everything by the book - talked to her directly, explained the problem to managers and offered all the necessary training. — Raf M. yesterday

I've seen other examples of this as of late as well.

I believe this is disrupting this stack.

Furthermore, I think it's trying to create an end-run around this:

Add Interpersonal Skills SE as a migration target

  • 3
    If I may ask, in what way you think it's disruptive? I recall seeing similar examples mentioning SoftwareEngineering.SE, PersonalProductivity.SE, IPS, and even sometimes posts comming from IPS (ever since I joined the site). Was it disruptive back then also? – DarkCygnus♦ Jun 21 '18 at 16:20
  • @DarkCygnus when someone, in a comment, puts a link to another site, especially a beta, this could confuse users, ESPECIALLY the ones that haven't been here long. And we don't want migrations to Beta. – Old_Lamplighter Jun 21 '18 at 16:21
  • 4
    "Be a bit jealous of your site – don’t blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else..." – gnat Jun 21 '18 at 18:35
  • 3
    flipside is for workplace issues posted on IPS the same people who post these comments will usually suggest to take it to here. whether the site is in beta or not is not really worth considering for that. – mag Jun 22 '18 at 8:25
  • 1
    @Magisch Sure it is. Why should we send anything to a site that hasn't gotten it's act together yet? – Old_Lamplighter Jun 22 '18 at 12:34
  • @DonThermidor_LobsterMobster Definitions of that are going to vary. Beta or non beta is increasingly just a label. I don't disagree that most of the suggested migrations to IPS are bogus (quality and asking standards there rarely allow for these) but the beta tag itself isn't a justification. There are sites well out of beta with more problems. – mag Jun 22 '18 at 12:37
14

There's nothing to be "poached" since this site doesn't own the questions posted here anyway. People are free to suggest posting the questions on other sites.

If the suggested site does potentially provide more (or better) answers, we could argue (with some rules lawyering) that the comment "improved" the post.

If the suggested site is blatantly irrelevant, flag the comment as "no longer needed".

In any case, any migration request must to go through this site's moderators, so questions that are useful here won't be moved elsewhere.

3

What (if anything) should we do about this?

Personally, I don't see this as a Giant Red Flag, mostly because doing such migrations is not possible, so the comment has no risk of causing a migration, and is thus... "just" a comment...

However, I think we all are aware of the real power of comments, and how disruptive they can turn out (catalyzing negative comments, downvotes without much thinking, and just plain making noise to valuable or regular posts).

In that case, I suppose one is free to flag such poaching comments, either as not constructive/chatty if it were, or well for Mod attention, so they can make a call on what to do with the comment in question.

2

We've had this same issue on RPG.SE. Obviously most workplace and RPG activity involves interpersonal skills, so they "could be" asked there as well.

We allow it to a degree, but have started to push back on serial commenters of that sort and delete those comments, especially when they say people "should" post there or will get better answers there. We strongly believe that people will get better answers on more specific stacks, like Workplace for job related interactions, than a more generic site.

You can see our meta on this same topic if it helps: https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8062/how-are-users-supposed-to-suggest-questions-might-get-better-answers-on-a-differ

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .