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I would like to see a forum plugin [phpbb, etc] that would allow forums to move posts to Stackoverflow. It gets rather annoying seeing repetitive questions in forums that are posted on SO or in the forum in another place.

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  • 2
    You mean like a bulk move operation that posts all questions on a forum to Stack Overflow? Feb 17, 2011 at 2:57
  • Oh no, I mean... someone posts a post on a forum, there would be a vote system on the plugin, then the post's content on the forum then says "this has been moved to stackoverflow" ... the concern is that there is a lot of dups in forums or unique questions that aren't coming here. Also specialized questions that can be found on those sites that you can't find here.
    – monksy
    Feb 17, 2011 at 2:59
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    Kinda similar: meta.stackexchange.com/q/79244/131713
    – Pops
    Feb 17, 2011 at 4:45
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    I think we'd have a flood of poor quality posts with no clear owner which would be closed almost immediately.
    – user229044
    Feb 17, 2011 at 5:30

3 Answers 3

3

The Stack Overflow API currently has no writing function. The bot discrimination system in use prevents the use of most bots. If you want to migrate posts, your best bet is to do it by hand.

Eventually the API will include posting functions, and the thing you'll need to be careful about then is that the questions posted are good, otherwise the user account (and eventually IP and other methods of tracking it) will be blocked due to consistently poor posts.

But as long as the questions add value to stack overflow, it won't be a problem.

There is no timetable for the post access on the API.

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  • @TheRenamedException Uh-huh, of course you're not. Why don't you have a seat right over there mmmkay?
    – Pollyanna
    Feb 17, 2011 at 14:25
  • You read edit comments? Wow, I am impressed! :-) Feb 17, 2011 at 14:30
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    @The There are quite a few gems hidden in edit comments, primarily because there's no moderation, and most people ignore them. It's like a secret garden in there!
    – Pollyanna
    Feb 17, 2011 at 14:36
  • I've started putting rather unusual things in there myself. As you saw :-) Feb 17, 2011 at 14:46
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I'm opposed.

A question needs a person to ask it, adjust it to the audience, tag it, submit it, look at other questions and the way they are written, browse the site for duplicates, browse around in the relevant tags... All these things a forum plugin can't do.

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  • My idea is that a forum post on a specific software could be easily submitted to so kinda like twitter apps submit to twitter.
    – monksy
    Feb 17, 2011 at 2:19
  • @steven the point still stands IMO, the asker needs context that they don't have when posting from a forum. And copy&pasting is so easy
    – Pekka
    Feb 17, 2011 at 2:21
  • Thats true... my thought is that the forum could pass tags related to what the forum/subforum is about.
    – monksy
    Feb 17, 2011 at 2:34
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IMO this is a bad idea since it has the potential to reduce question quality and just have all sorts of crap posts pushed to SO for the sake of it (if someone just needs to click a button to add a post to SO from an original forum post they probably will just in case they get a response.)

If all questions on forums were carefully worded, good, on topic questions then I'd be for it. But I suspect all this would bring to SO is more bad questions. If someone really wants to get input from stack overflow as well as a forum and really feels the question is suitable for both, they'll post it in both places.

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  • Stackoverflow is really good at filtering this out. Also its good at filtering out duplicates.
    – monksy
    Feb 17, 2011 at 2:14
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    @steven People at StackOverflow are really good at filtering things out. I'm not seeing a huge benefit from your suggestion, but I do see an increased burden on volunteers.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 17, 2011 at 3:25

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