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I was just writing a tag wiki for the outdoor-activities tag. This led me thinking about the question:

How should we distribute questions between Travel.SE and The Great Outdoors (beta)?

Not all Outdoor-questions are Travel-related (e.g. questions on equipment are not), but most of our questions tagged outdoor-activities would fit very well on The Great Outdoors. There are currently twelve such questions, of which half were asked before The Great Outdoors was launched 24 January 2012.

Should we remain accepting such questions and have an overlap with Outdoors.SE, or should we narrow down what is on-topic and specifically point outdoor-questions to The Great Outdoors? If the latter, is there still a life for outdoor-activities, and what would its content be? And what should we do with the questions already here, such as:

I'm not sure what the Stack Exchange point of view is of questions being on-topic on multiple sites (e.g. Unix&Linux, SuperUser and AskUbuntu), but my personal opinion is that it's better if questions are on-topic in one place, because this creates a more tight community and makes it easier to find questions.

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I'm reluctant to cut out stuff from our site if they're still only in beta - neither site might exist, hypothetically, a year from now. I get your concern though. Perhaps we could approach them if we both make it out of beta and discuss a migration policy then?

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  • Do you mean reluctant to move old questions, or to redirect for new questions? I see those as two different issues.
    – gerrit
    Nov 2, 2012 at 11:46
  • Both, I think. If we move old OR new questions to them, and then they get canned, we lose those questions.
    – Mark Mayo
    Nov 2, 2012 at 11:48
  • Can't we move them back if they do?
    – gerrit
    Nov 2, 2012 at 11:49
  • Not that I know of - I don't believe such a functionality exists - at least if it does, I've never heard of it. SE Staff probably could, but not mods.
    – Mark Mayo
    Nov 2, 2012 at 11:52
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    Old questions that are already here and are on-topic should not be migrated just because they are a better fit on another site -- this has been a long-standing SE policy.
    – mindcorrosive
    Nov 2, 2012 at 11:57
  • I raised the issue of moving-back at meta.stackexchange.com/q/153398/172266
    – gerrit
    Nov 2, 2012 at 11:59
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I think a major factor in deciding the fate of a particular question is whether it is a "where" question, or a "how" question.

Travellers are much more likely to answer the former, while outdoorspeople are likely to help with the latter.

Another issue entirely is whether old questions should be migrated. It's been somewhat of a SE policy not to migrate a question when it's on-topic on the current site. See this answer as well as the general advice on closing/migrating.

A more specific reason as to "why not?"

  • I wouldn't like to have my question bounced over to another site on which I might not have an account and might not be interested in generally (I'm in this position -- it was me who asked about frozen lakes in Sweden, and I wouldn't like seeing it migrated as I don't have an account on Outdoors-SE). I'd much rather prefer it to stay on the site where I have already invested some time and effort, as long as it is on-topic of course.

  • Second, deciding over boundary questions is going to be difficult and may result in unnecessary bouncing back and forth between sites, which is of no benefit to anyone.

  • Finally, new users with little or no investment in SE sites might be confused and frustrated seeing their question moved to another site. Seeing a discussion over closing and migrating might spur them to think they did something wrong, and generally turn them away from the site ("I just wanted to ask about X, and these guys just bicker where it should go instead of answering it").

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