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If some question is of some rare topic, and no Stack Exchange site has this topic, is there some special Stack Exchange site meant for such rare "Misc" questions, like misc.stackexchange.com or other.stackexchange.com?

If in the future new Stack Exchange site/community is created that covers this rare question's topic then somehow popular questions can be moved from Misc to that new site.

I just thought that it would be nice to have some Misc site to at least post your question somewhere for history to have a chance for it to be answered, instead of not having such site and losing your question.

It would also be nice for promoting the Stack Exchange platform and tools for those who prefers them, if such questions goes here instead of Quora/Reddit.

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  • @RobertColumbia Actually I wanted not to propose a new site, but first to discuss if such site is needed at all. There should be some reason for that there's still no such Misc site on StackExchange.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 12:28
  • @RobertColumbia I think this question on Area51 is similar to my that was asked before. So my question could be probably closed in favor of that question and discussion can be moved there, as Area51 is probably meant and more appropriate for discussion like mine.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 13:11

3 Answers 3

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Not every conceivable question has a home on the Stack Exchange network. The "everything goes" style is more suited for Quora or Yahoo! Answers or Reddit. There are also other Q&A sites like Codidact, various forums and Discord channels, etc.

In principle, sites can be proposed at Area 51, but there has to be existing demand for the site. However, the large number of existing sites is already overwhelming, and I think it's reasonable to speculate that no sites will be created within the next few years.

The idea of a "miscellaneous" site has been rejected in the past, e.g.:

Our goal is not to create "general sites" for technology or anything else. Instead we create very specific sites for each community's area of expertise.
Why isn't there a general stack exchange site?, Robert Cartaino

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  • My point is such that StackExchange site has very nice advanced tools/interface/infrastructure. And it would nice to use them instead of going to Reddit/Quora, just because StackExchange doesn't allow out-of-topics questions.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 12:27
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    Perhaps being selective with questions is how Stack Exchange maintains quality. I'm just imagining what could arise in a miscellaneous site: "When will [blah] be built?" "Is my sister pregnant?" "How do I say [blah] in [language]?" "How do I make a bomb?" "What's the recipe for concentrated dark matter?" "Am I above average? [graphic pic attached]" "Is my handwriting neat?" "What is a good coffee shop nearby my house?" "When will a Dyson Sphere be built?" "Is [some guy at my school] an idiot for saying [blah]?" "Why don't ants get coronavirus? (Because they can keep 6 feet apart.)"
    – Rebecca J. Stones
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 12:43
  • Definitely for that case such site would need good moderating system. So that inappropriate/abusing questions will be excluded. But still I think if someone asked even silly question then probably at least one thousand people in the world also interested in such question. I hope StackExchange infrastructure can handle and keep flow of millions of even silly questions, it is just hundreds bytes of texts to store on servers. Even if silly this is also human's knowledge and reflects state of current human's consciousness and curiosity hence probably needs to be kept for history if not for answer.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 12:53
  • BTW, you mentioned Area51, is there any way/tool how can I move my question to Area51? Because I think my question is more for discussion, if not have been discussed already.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 12:55
  • If already well discussed then my question just needs to be closed with link to the original discussed question.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 12:57
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    If you ask on Area51, it'll likely be closed as a duplicate of Why isn't there a general stack exchange site? (e.g. This proposal appears to be terrible or Is there a “catch-all” or “general” stackexchange?).
    – Rebecca J. Stones
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 13:05
  • As I'm quite new to StackExchange architecture - can you suggest me please, is there any tool to move questions from one SE site to another? Like how do I move this my question to Area51 and close it in favor of that question mentioned above by you?
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 13:08
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    It can only be migrated by a diamond moderator, but they won't do it in this case because it'd be immediately closed at Area51.
    – Rebecca J. Stones
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 13:18
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If there is no site for that topic, you can always use an alternative Q&A site such as Reddit or Quora. Or perhaps a search engine; you might need to try a few different phrasings of your question. The problem with a site like Miscellaneous Stack Exchange would be that it will be extremely difficult to attract the experts necessary to answer the questions. One can't be an expert in everything. Users will write answers based on Google searches, basically doing the research the askers need to do themselves.

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  • ...or propose a new site on area51 ;)
    – USERNAME GOES HERE
    Commented Dec 21, 2020 at 18:26
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The concept of Stack Exchange is to connect subject matter experts of various subjects with people who might have questions about the subjects they are expert in.

Nobody's going to hang about to answer questions on a site entitled Miscellaneous because it won't have a scope that really makes sense. We need to ensure that experts are concentrated in areas where there are questions for them to answer, otherwise nobody will get useful answers.

Additionally, if we get a question that's on topic elsewhere is it automatically off-topic on Miscellaneous? Or if we launch a new site that covers one of the topics that previously fell under Miscellaneous does that change the scope of Miscellaneous? We'll forever be arguing about whether questions should be migrated from Miscellaneous or not. Miscellaneous would likely end up as a dumping ground for poor quality questions that no other site would touch.

In fact in its early days Stack Exchange did create such a site. It was called non-programming and they said it was for everything that Stack Overflow was not. It failed. It never gained any critical mass of answerers who were prepared to use it. People asked their questions, got nowhere and never used the site again.

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  • If there's a better site in SE for some question it should be definitely moved from one site to another, there should be such easy tool for that. This is true not only for Misc site, but also for any SE site. Like right now I realized that there's a better SE site for my question as Area51, because it is meant for discussions and for new sites proposals. Decision on whether a question should be moved to another site probably should be done based on Voting system, same as Closing a question is decised based on voting.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 13:25
  • Regarding having one Trash-like site for Misc questions - I think it should actually exist, for simple reasons - 1) if someone is interested in silly question then there is thousand of people around Earth who are interested too. 2) such questions should be kept at least just for history of human knowledge evolution, SE servers should easily handle storing millions of silly questions on their servers easily as they are just hundreds of bytes 3) there are sites like Quora/Reddit for Misc questions, but SE infrastructure is very good so why not to use it too for those whole likes it.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 13:29
  • The only thing that should be done is some kind of moderating Misc site, to remove inappropriate and abusing questions.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 13:29
  • Also suppose at some point there is some advanced Artificial Intelligence, and already now there are very advanced natural language models like GPT-3. That AI should have very huge historical material of human's questions, long tail including very silly ones, material to be processed in order to understand what people are interested in and care about. Just to be able to train such AI such long material should be kept at least for scientific purposes.
    – Arty
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 13:34

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