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Core question at hand: which SE site(s) are phpMyAdmin usage questions considered to be most topical?

From phpMyAdmin's Getting support page:

Effective September 1st, 2013, support for questions directly related to phpMyAdmin has moved to stackoverflow. All prior support mechanisms have been phased out.

Questions about server issues (web server configuration, "404 - Not Found" error, etc), should be asked on serverfault.com.

The way of reporting (security) bugs and adding feature requests will be unaffected.

According to Is it okay to use Stack Overflow as the support forum for a product or project?, I can't tell if this is abuse or if this is acceptable use, especially since this is a community-driven project.

Questions related to setting up or configuring phpMyAdmin in a business/professional environment are considered on-topic at SF. What sites should the other classes of questions be asked on?

SO is supposed to be for dev/programming only, and phpMyAdmin is often used outside of this context, making it an inappropriate forum in which to ask usage questions in many cases.

For phpMyAdmin usage, https://dba.stackexchange.com/ seems like the logical choice, though it's often used by non-DBA role persons, such as SysAdmin generalists and webmasters, where DBA is a task rather than a role, which drags SF and Webmasters into consideration.

Some data on search results for "phpmyadmin" by site:

  • SO: 37,636 results
  • SF: 1,647 results
  • DBA: 629 results
  • Webmasters: 237 results
  • SU: 551 results (just for completeness, though some questions may "belong" here)

Points in favor of posting to DBA:

https://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic:

Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore

Is DBA the best place for questions related to SQL/DBA tools?:

Tools are officially on-topic here but of course it's a borderline area where there is overlap with SF, SO and even SU

Points in favor of posting to Webmasters:

https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

Questions here are commonly about[ ... ]web hosting

Points against posting to Webmasters:

There aren't any results for phpMyAdmin in the meta.

https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

There are some types of questions about running websites that don't belong on this site:

[...]

System and network administration -- Server Fault participants are much more likely to know the technical details on topics such as DNS and Apache configuration than people who answer questions here.

SQL administration isn't mentioned here, but website backing databases aren't the only thing that phpMyAdmin users use phpMyAdmin for, and so would be off topic in at least those cases.

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Please don't migrate such questions to Stack Overflow, they would be off topic there. Quite simply questions about phpMyAdmin are not programming questions nor are they questions about a common tool used by programmers during software development. They may well have asked in the past, but with the advent of sites better suited to handling them they have (or at least should have become) less common on Stack Overflow.

If they want to go anywhere I'd say Webmasters (but a Webmasters regular would be a better person to ask), but remember the first rule of migration:

Don't migrate crap.

If it's a bad question just close in place.

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  • IMHO they should link to the appropriate tag on SF too. Possibly the tag wiki on SO needs some work too to guide people in the right direction. – Patrick Hofman Aug 13 '15 at 14:29
  • Just edited to include DBA.stackexchange.com as a possible destination. I had forgotten about DBA.stackexchange.com. – austinian Aug 13 '15 at 14:34
  • Also, my intent was not to ask about bad questions, it was just a tangential note I added to my post. Removed for clarity. – austinian Aug 13 '15 at 14:54
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    @austinian. My first sentence stands. Questions about phpMyAdmin would be off topic on Stack Overflow as they are not programming questions. – ChrisF♦ Aug 13 '15 at 14:56
  • Should I post this in the DBA meta to see if they want to do receiving there? Where should discussion be held on which site is appropriate for phpMyAdmin usage questions? Should I send a message to the phpMyAdmin dev mailing list to change their support page to something more nuanced like in this answer? – austinian Aug 13 '15 at 17:00
  • @austinian - yes, yes and yes if you want to. – ChrisF♦ Aug 13 '15 at 17:06

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