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I do not know if this is feasible, as I do not know the current design of meta sites. This also might have been implemented already, for all I know.

I think that without linking to SO as the ultimate source of meta information, questions with certain tags should be displayed indiscriminately across all meta sites, and belong to none in particular. These questions would be the questions which apply to the entire SE site network, but not a particular site in general. Questions such as general etiquette, feature requests, anything tagged with 'stackexchange' or 'stack-exchange', etc. should be spread across all meta sites. One way to do this is to keep the question on the meta site it was originally posted in but include it in searches across any meta site. The main reason to do this would be to try and reduce how often redundant questions are asked. To that effect, the questions could be indexed only in the 'similar questions' section when you ask a new question. However, I think that it wouldn't be very hard at that point to include it in searches as well. The only alternative method I can think of would be to create a new site-wide meta questions site, which would be infinitely more cumbersome to the developers and the moderators who must migrate the questions.

Overall, I don't like posting duplicate questions, even if they are duplicates of meta questions from other sites. I think it would be nice if all these questions with certain qualified tags were either made site-wide and inspecific to any site or at least indexed in all searches and included in the "similar questions" category (when asking a question). Wouldn't it be ironic if somebody found a duplicate of this question from another meta site? :)

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  • A cross-site meta... the meta to end all metas.
    – doppelgreener
    Sep 27, 2013 at 7:23
  • You mean something like meta.[main]?
    – Johannes Kuhn
    Sep 27, 2013 at 8:20

1 Answer 1

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Something like this is planned, it's just going to be difficult to implement at first. The ideal scenario is:

  • Stack Overflow gets its own meta site, for Stack Overflow specific issues, just like every other child meta in the network.

  • Stack Exchange opens a central meta site, which propagates questions with certain tags or velocity through something similar to the community bulletin to all child meta sites.

This lets folks see their site specific topics and be alerted to posts that deal with the network at large, if they care about seeing them. Tying searches together to the central collection of posts may or may not be feasible, we're looking at it.

Splitting these things is the tricky part. We do have most of a plan in place which we'll share as we get closer to doing this, but I don't know when that's going to be. Right now, Internationalization is our current primary focus, so probably after that, which puts us at early next year.

That could change, though, it could be sooner. Still, it's something we're definitely planning.

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  • That's fantastic! I shrugged it off as being too difficult of a challenge at this point, which is why I recommendeded the questions be indexed instead. I never said it in the post, but I was secretly rooting for a central meta site. As it stands, there is a disproportionately larger number of questions of meta SO than on other meta sites; one reason why I felt like it might be nice to link the questions.
    – person27
    Sep 27, 2013 at 6:01
  • @Stopforgettingmyaccounts... We used to have one in the SE 1.0 days, the timing was just all off. We grew past the trilogy really quickly, and Meta SO was the meta for the trilogy initially, so we just got locked into it. We do have a plan that we think everyone will like, just need some time to iron out the details and commit to getting it done.
    – Tim Post
    Sep 27, 2013 at 6:04
  • I suggest that you "rename" the old meta.SO to meta.SE, and add a normal meta to SO. Link/Move/Migrate all questions tagged stackoverflow. Allow more than 5 tags on the new meta (after all, we need more meta-tags - 1 for each site.)
    – Johannes Kuhn
    Sep 27, 2013 at 8:23
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    @JohannesKuhn the implementation ideas were thrown around in The future of meta.stackoverflow and meta.stackexchange
    – psubsee2003
    Sep 27, 2013 at 8:49
  • @JohannesKuhn That's not far off from what we're considering, minus the extra tags. Site specific questions should go on the per-site meta, the idea is to eliminate the need for site level tags on the new Meta SE - questions there should relate to the network (or conceivably every / any site)
    – Tim Post
    Sep 27, 2013 at 11:02
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    *poke* Split done.
    – michaelb958--GoFundMonica
    Apr 21, 2014 at 11:50
  • @michaelb958 The split is done, but the part about pushing certain meta questions down to other sites isn't.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Apr 21, 2014 at 15:12
  • A year has past since the day Tim Post answered. Any prospective?
    – Ooker
    Oct 29, 2014 at 10:37
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    TimPost, methinks the tag above should now be status-completed instead of status-planned. The community bulletins now include meta.se posts.
    – msh210
    Dec 4, 2014 at 7:00
  • A few hours ago this was asked on mSO requesting a clear indication that content exists on MSE, which was related to this post asking for a better path on mSO to reach MSE content. It was semi-jokingly referred to this question on MSE as duplicate, and that question was marked as duplicate of this one leading me to your answer of status-planned. Except without the actual tag.
    – Travis J
    Jul 6, 2015 at 19:44
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    Is this planned? Can we look forward to getting content to somehow show up in link or otherwise on mSO (or child metas in general)?
    – Travis J
    Jul 6, 2015 at 19:44

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