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So far, I've been asking only about StarTrek and I've been pushing all of them to Science-Fiction & Fantasy, which sounded quite naturally to me. But, right know I can see, that people are asking the very same questions on Movies.

There is no flag / suggestion to migrate this particular question to Science-Fiction & Fantasy and when browsing Science-Fiction & Fantasy site, I have never seen any flag / suggestion to migrate this kind of question to Movies.

Having two SE sites serving the same kind of questions sounds like a little bit of mess / chaos.

Is there any common established, where people should ask questions about science-fiction or fantasy movies?

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This is absolutely no different than Stack Overflow and the myriad of other CS-related sites.

There are some sites that have a lot of overlap with other sites, but the scopes of the sites are different.

On SciFi.SE, questions about Science Fiction & Fantasy in any media would be on-topic1.

On Movies & TV.SE, questions about movies and TV are on-topic1.

So the only area of overlap is Science Fiction Movies and TV. But how would you handle it?

  • Do you allow overlapping questions to be asked on either site?
  • Or do you decide that because SciFi.SE was first, than Science Fiction is their private domain and no one can ask a question on any other SE site that might be related?

You may also want to read Respect the community – your own, and others’ .

Ultimately, restricting the scope of one site because it is on-topic on another is not an effective way to grow a community, so there is nothing to do here. The question is on-topic on both and so you should not try to migrate them just because SciFi was "first".

This also means if you have a related question, you can ask it on which ever site you prefer. However, the choice of where to ask could also be helped by deciding what kind of answer you want.

  • On Movies.SE, the community is built around Movie/TV enthusiasts, so you are going to get an answer from that perspective - people who love movies and/or television.
  • On SciFi.SE, the community is built around enthusiasts of Science Fiction. Answers you get may go into more details into the lore behind a franchise, pulling in from other sources (such as books, comics, and related materials).

This premise is shared by other sites with some overlapping scopes. You are going to get a different community when you ask on another site. The expertise of that community is usually going to be different so they are going to provide a slightly different answer. It doesn't make it a better answer or worse, but just from another perspective.

1 - This assumes it meets the question quality guidelines

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  • Well... Assuming, that certain part of community may not even see certain part of these questions (because is not part of / is not using Movies.SE for example) then I'd be careful in forming conclusions, that spreading the same question types among two or more sites is good for community grow. Asking questions here has a main goal of being answered. Having two sites serving the same kind of questions, forces me to think each time, where will I find bigger community and better chances to get answer? This is my only point. This has nothing to do with the fact, which site was "first".
    – trejder
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 10:27
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    @trejder I expanded the "which site to ask" section a bit. But in regards to community growth, I see it differently. When you place limits on the topics of the site simply because those topics are on-topic elsewhere, you limit the new community and it may make it more difficult to grow because new users will be confused as to why they can't ask SciFi questions on Movies.SE. Now if Movies.SE decided themselves not to allow SciFi questions, that is different (but that's a topic for their meta)
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 11:24
  • @psubsee2003 is it okay to cross post, to get both views on it?
    – Tim
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 15:11
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    @Tim depends on what you mean by cross-post. I see cross-posting as rapid fire Copy and pasting the same question on multiple sites. That is definitely not welcome by most of the SE communities. But if you are talking about asking the same question on 2 different sites, I personally don't see an issue with it as long as you take the time to write the question to fit the culture and the community of each site, although the acceptance is probably going to vary from community to community.
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 15:15
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    @Tim just to add... normally when you have overlapping topics, a question can't be copy-and-pasted and fit into 2 different sites and still be acceptable to each community because of the differing scopes. So if you want an answer from the perspective of both communities, write an individual question on each site geared towards the type of answer you want. If you follow those guidelines, you usually will be ok.
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 15:16
  • @psubsee2003 Cool thanks :)
    – Tim
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 15:44
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    @Tim that is still just my personal opinion. I may be in the minority, but that is how I think it should work. I'd you really want to be safe, then don't ask both questions at the same time. Get the input from community A, and if you need more, then ask on community B
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 16:28
  • @Tim As a mod on Sci-fi & Fantasy, we usually close one of the cross posted questions. We mods coordinate which one is closed with the other site's mods.
    – user158781
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 21:49
  • @Keen what is your definition of "cross posting"?
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 21:51
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    @psubsee2003 One user posting the exact (or almost exact) same question on multiple sites.
    – user158781
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 21:52
  • Okay, so tailoring it would be fine @Keen?
    – Tim
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 22:01
  • @psubsee2003, So... are you suggesting that we can get better answers if we ask on movies.SE of scifi.SE?
    – Pacerier
    Commented Jun 28, 2015 at 17:43
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    @Pacerier I'm not suggesting anything like that. All I am saying is you may get a different perspective depending on which site you ask on.
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Jun 28, 2015 at 17:49

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