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Suppose I have question, which appropriate to ask on two (or more) different SE sites. Since the audience is different on different sites, I would like to attract all people, who can answer.

How should I ask such a question?

If I duplicate the text it is inconvenient for me and moderators, since one needs to synchronize editing of each question. It will become messy.

If I simply give a link it is inconvenient for those who answer.

There is a related question: What to do with cross-site duplicates? but it is for moderators, not for users who ask.

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I think a Question should only be asked on one full Stack Exchange site at a time.

If your first choice of site appears not to be producing suitable Answers, then you can ask (via flagging a moderator) for it to be migrated to your second choice. The grounds for migration would be along the lines of "I thought this would be the best site, but now with X days and no Answers, I am thinking this other site may be better".

The only exception in my mind arises when a site is in Beta. If a Question is on-topic for a full site, but more on-topic for a Beta site, then to encourage the Beta site's graduation while making sure a valuable Q&A does not get deleted if that Beta fails, I think a cross-post can be OK.

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  • I'm not so sure a moderator will migrate it to the other site for you if you're just trying to get more visibility. I agree with "a question should only be asked on one Stack Exchange site" though.
    – Dennis Meng
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 7:36
  • @DennisMeng I think the grounds would be "I thought this would be the best site, but now with X days and no Answers, I am thinking this one may be instead"
    – PolyGeo
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 7:39
  • I'm still not sure that'd fly though, is there precedent for that?
    – Dennis Meng
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 7:40
  • I just looked at meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/…, and I quote: "Don't migrate for the sake of migration. We only migrate questions because they are off-topic on this site. It is perfectly possible for a question to be on-topic on multiple sites, but that is not a reason to migrate it elsewhere. The OP asked their question here, so if it's on-topic here, then it should stay here."
    – Dennis Meng
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 7:43
  • @DennisMeng I've not seen a precedent but if I were moderating, I think it would be OK. W.r.t. the Meta you just cited my recollection is that it is more about moderators making the decision independent of the Question asker rather than it being at the instigation of the asker. This would not be "for the sake of migration" but "to get an Answer". Actually I just remembered a precedent money.stackexchange.com/questions/31072/… - I think this situation will become more common with more SE sites.
    – PolyGeo
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 7:49
  • In the example you gave though, it was closed as off-topic in the original site before it got migrated.
    – Dennis Meng
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 7:52
  • @DennisMeng I am not certain, but I know I was tossing up between two sites, and took a stab at one first. As soon as it was suggested that the other might be better, I am pretty sure that it was me who requested my Question be migrated, and there it was answered quickly.
    – PolyGeo
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 7:55
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    Interesting. I just saw the top answer to meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/… suggest migrating as a possibility. I guess the least I can do is admit that it's at the very least not a "clear no" like I thought.
    – Dennis Meng
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 7:59
  • @DennisMeng I had seen and upvoted (but forgotten) that Q&A a while ago - maybe that was why I was happy enough with my Answer to "defend" it :-)
    – PolyGeo
    Commented Jun 24, 2014 at 8:06
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    @DennisMeng I've seen precedence for that on Server Fault. Very occasionally, we'll get a high quality question asked that doesn't receive an answer (or a proper answer), but has overlap with another site where the asker may be able to get an answer. In the two instances I remember at the moment where the asker of such a question requested it be migrated to one of those sites, the questions did end up getting migrated.
    – HopelessN00b
    Commented Jun 25, 2014 at 15:48

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