This "question" concerns the relationship between SO and TeX.SE, in particular what the existence of the latter means for questions about TeX on SO.
First, my assumptions (yes, I'm a mathematician ...):
SO is for programming questions, at a level appropriate to someone employed as a programmer (note that I do not say that one has to be employed as a programmer to ask a question on SO).
TeX.SX is for TeX-related questions, at pretty much any level since (to be honest) the barrier for asking a reasonable question is actually lower than the barrier for knowing what TeX is.
The existence of TeX.SX is a Good Thing and Officially Sanctioned by The Management. I've read a few comments on SO that go against this, but my assumption is that the people at the top are in favour of the SO daughter sites. I would add that I (as a non-programmer) find asking a TeX question on TeX.SX a much, much more pleasant experience than on SO (but this isn't the place to explain that further).
There are TeX-related questions on SO and the vast majority of them are not explicitly about programming.
I include the word "explicitly" there because there is a level at which any question about TeX is about programming, since TeX is a programming language. But if SO spreads its net that wide then the majority of the new SE sites would be under its aegis and not have a reason to exist.
Prior to the existence of TeX.SX, TeX-related questions seem to have been allowed on SO, but under sufferance. Which leads me to the first part of my question:
Does a generic TeX-related question have a place on SO?
Let me explain that "generic" a bit. My opinion is that for a TeX-related question to have a place on SO then it has to be a programming question that happens to involve TeX. Note the order there. A TeX question that happens to involve programming does not (in my opinion) belong on SO. So my question above is really asking if I have that right or not. If not, the rest of this probably won't make any sense, but I'll carry on regardless.
Assuming that I'm at least in the right ballpark on this, there is the further question as to what to do with TeX-related questions on SO that ought to really be on TeX.SX. My understanding is that questions can be migrated, if enough people vote to do so and if a "pathway" has been opened between the sites (sounds like something out of Dr Who ...). This is all well and good, and my question could be just "Can we have such a pathway?" except for my next assumption:
- The best people to decide whether or not a TeX-related question belongs on TeX.SX or on SO are the TeX.SX people.
Quite apart from the knowledge issue (how many SO people with enough rep to vote to close actually a) know what TeX is, and b) monitor the TeX-related tags?), there's also the matter of incentives. There is no incentive for SO people to migrate TeX-related questions. They might be a little irritating to have on SO, but there's not enough to really be worth bothering about (unlike, say, homework questions). On the other hand, we over at TeX.SX have all the incentives to go and grab questions from SO! So, the main part of my question:
How can I, as a high-ranking TeX.SX user but a nonentity on SO, best encourage questions that ought to be migrated to be migrated?
Note that I say "encourage". I don't want to have a system whereby I just say "Migrate this one" and it happens. There should be checks and balances. But I would like something a bit stronger than just leaving a comment along the lines of "Come and ask this on TeX.SX" since, again, there's no real incentive for the questioner to migrate it themselves. What would be nice would be that I could flag a question for moderator attention saying, "I recommend that this be migrated to TeX.SX" whereupon the moderator could see my TeX.SX reputation and use that as evidence for approving the migration.
(Severely edited to try to make this more focussed to make it clearer (many thanks to Grace Note for helping me clarify my own thinking).)