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The Conlang stack has just hit the private beta and to celebrate that I wanted to bring up the discussion if we should migrate our conlang content to that arguably more suited stack and have a quick spring-cleanup on here?

As far as I am aware we have two tags for content that would likely be better suited on that new site, they are:

  • For questions about the written or spoken language of a world.

  • This tag is meant for questions about constructed languages and the construction of new languages for fictional worlds.

While we could argue about the former, questions tagged with the latter one definitely fall into the mentioned category.

So what do we do? Do we acknowledge that new stack and help it grow, or do we just ignore it for the time being?

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    $\begingroup$ By the way, if anybody involved with ConLang wants to make an ad (or use the generic Area 51 one), go for it! Our community has been pretty receptive to related proposals/betas thus far. $\endgroup$ – Monica Cellio Feb 6 '18 at 23:18
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    $\begingroup$ I tweaked the question slightly, mainly to point out that Conlang SE is still in private beta, not public beta. By all means feel free to edit further. $\endgroup$ – user Feb 7 '18 at 10:47
  • $\begingroup$ @MichaelKjörling didn't realise there was a difference to be honest - thanks!! $\endgroup$ – dot_Sp0T Feb 7 '18 at 11:22
  • $\begingroup$ Definitely not as long as it is in private beta. $\endgroup$ – user3106 Feb 16 '18 at 15:27
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I'm going to say no for three reasons:

  • Questions that are on-topic here shouldn't be migrated away without the asker's consent. People chose to ask them here and they're within our scope; why should we send our users away? Go ahead and suggest that they also look at the other site, but leave the decision in the hands of the asker. If the asker of an unanswered question would prefer to try another site that's different; I'm talking here about community or moderator migrations.

  • Young beta sites, and especially brand-new ones, should develop their initial body of questions organically, not by having other sites send them questions. The early days of a beta are formative, and it's important that their communities do that formation.

  • Migrations can be really confusing for the affected users, especially if they're new and/or don't have accounts on the other site. There's some discussion of this in this Meta.SE question and its answers.

The blog post Respect the community -- your own, and others' explains my first two points really well. I highly recommend reading this to get some insight into challenges of migration.

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  • $\begingroup$ What about in 6 month's time, when the conlang site is established and has its own strong community? Many sites allow overlapping scopes, but many also prefer to migrate to the more targeted site. $\endgroup$ – curiousdannii Feb 7 '18 at 2:55
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    $\begingroup$ @curiousdannii the guidance I usually see (and thus repeat) is: leave it up to the person asking the question. It's totally fine to let somebody know about another site where he might want to ask the same or a related question. If a question doesn't have answers yet and the OP asks for a migration, mods will generally oblige. Sometimes I see people ask related questions across sites, or maybe ask the "entry" question on one site and then go to another for deeper details that call for more specialization. SE has many communities and we should all try to work together. $\endgroup$ – Monica Cellio Feb 7 '18 at 3:42
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    $\begingroup$ There's also the old recommendation to not migrate to beta sites. I'm not sure how current that is, given the changes in how beta sites are treated across the network, but it's probably worth at least keeping in mind. $\endgroup$ – user Feb 7 '18 at 10:47
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    $\begingroup$ I do not see the point of migrating as long as it is on topic here. While there is overlap, I think it might be better to have some duplication between the two sites, ie. when somebody asks a question that has been answered in conlang use the conlang answer as a linked reference and write a worldbuilding answer based on that. I expect conlang to get more technical than is needed here and we probably are in better position to address world building specific aspects. But it is really up to the conlang people to decide how much of the world building aspects they want to handle. So wait and see? $\endgroup$ – Ville Niemi Feb 8 '18 at 6:22
  • $\begingroup$ If you migrate a question to a different site, then not only will those on its current site not be able to find it, but even those who do and are qualified to answer might not have the rep necessary to interact with the question (up/downvote, comment, ect). Not as much a problem for established users, but even newbies have good ideas sometimes. $\endgroup$ – chif-ii Feb 15 '18 at 21:05

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