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This was an idea in response to my answer on Meta hasn't changed at all.

As we migrate questions from Meta.SO (or any other meta) to Meta.SE, those questions will be removed from the original site. So commonly asked questions will get asked again, migrated, closed as duplicate again, and asked again...

Searching before posting would not work, because the question would have been migrated to SE, and not searchable in Meta.SO. Hence the suggestion: all other meta sites (like Meta.SO) should include searches and "Questions that may already have your answer" from Meta.SE. (or any other meta sites)

This could indicate clearly that a question is from Meta.SE, or not and just have the results merged in. (There are pros and cons for each, from ease of development to interfacing issues.) Hopefully this would cut down on duplicate questions that are already in Meta.SE from appearing elsewhere.

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  • I rather prefer the local 'government' of MSO to provide a filter in the form of human beings telling folks about how the guys over at the central federal government have already worked out that specific idea (in a rural drawl), and translating that idea to the local community. A lot of the time translation == copying, but I want to find where the ideas will diverge. Sending people over to MSE will stifle diversion.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Apr 21, 2014 at 7:01
  • @MartijnPieters Similar sentiments. However this more for existing entranced answered meta questions. New unique questions should not face an issue. However, if there is a very site specific reason to repost it.... let it be duplicated!
    – PicoCreator
    Commented Apr 21, 2014 at 7:32
  • I mean that for those supposedly entrenched Meta posts, we want to give the SO constituency the chance to find their own answers. Yes, that means that in the early MSO days there'll be a bit of a wild-west land grab on those hot-button issues, but that's fine!
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Apr 21, 2014 at 7:34
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    I think this makes a ton of sense - I'll bring it up in the team call today. We're in the midst of upgrading elastic to 1.10 before our data center move so it may be delayed a bit until that's complete (library updates, pull requests and such in play) but hopefully we can do something good here.
    – Nick Craver
    Commented Apr 21, 2014 at 10:15
  • @NickCraver Thats good to hear, honestly though its value would not be seen till Meta.SE starts to mature. And that would take some time =P
    – PicoCreator
    Commented Apr 21, 2014 at 10:29
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    I wouldn't expose all of MSE to all per-site metas, a lot of stuff there is simply not relevant. My own suggestion was to make a set of FAQ posts about site mechanics available on all metas. This would limit it to posts known to be relevant to all sites, and would also avoid sending users to a different meta they might not even know about.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Apr 21, 2014 at 10:30
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    Hmmm, I don't agree about the duplicate, but now there's a nice proposal on MSO: Meta.SE content should be discoverable on Meta.SO.
    – Arjan
    Commented Apr 27, 2014 at 6:57
  • @NickCraver Did anything ever happen about this idea? I just spent a lot of time writing up a MSO post (carefully reviewing the suggested duplicates), before realizing it was a better fit on MSE. As soon as I copied over the title to MSE, a perfect duplicate showed up.
    – AmeliaBR
    Commented Aug 30, 2014 at 15:29
  • P.S. This is a valid question about how to effectively use Meta.StackExchange. It is however marked as a duplicate of a question with a suggested answer that introduces the concept of Meta.StackExchange as a solution. Not terribly useful. The MSO question @Arjan posted appears to be the only open, if somewhat abandonned, discussion on this issue.
    – AmeliaBR
    Commented Aug 30, 2014 at 15:31

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My first reaction to your request was Oh dear no for the sake of all that is holy no NO NO NO.

MSE has a hell of a lot of cruft. Unending rehashing of the same topics all over again. Long-obsolete answers that nobody's bothered to upgrade. Threads about Stack Overflow that are irrelevant to other sites. Shoving this at the face of people who're looking for answers relevant to their site would be a profound disservice.

Even as an experienced, cross-site user, I definitely do not want results from MSE to be mixed into my searches on child metas.

What would make sense would be a modification of your suggestion. Do not merge MSE and child meta results, but when searching on meta, provide a link to the same search on the main meta. No mixing of content, but do let the user know that the answer they're looking for may be in another castle.

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