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Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?

The question I basically intend to ask here is that even though there is a great probability of a question getting an answer if it can be viewed by users from multiple Stack Exchange sites, why is there no facility as such?

For example, if I post a question on StackOverflow related to some CSS/HTML issue I'm facing then the question is restricted only to the users using Stack Overflow though there's a probability that someone at Webmasters StackExchange might also know the answer.

Why isn't there any facility that a question that has tags mutual to two or more StackExchange networks be implicitly shared on all those networks?

Just a humble suggestion on my behalf. Thanks for your insight in advance.

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    "Crossover questions", perhaps. I really like this idea. Commented Dec 24, 2011 at 11:14
  • @NineShogsShogging Can I get the link to the question that I have posted an exact duplicate to? Commented Dec 24, 2011 at 17:18
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    See the link at top - answers consist of guidelines regarding cross-posted questions on SE. I would not expect to see any further support for them implemented that does not comply with those guidelines: we're all about helping folks find questions that interest them, but not wild about providing askers with means to shove their questions in the faces of folks who don't want them. Consider: perhaps folks who read questions on Webmasters and not SO do so because they don't want to answer CSS questions? Commented Dec 24, 2011 at 17:37

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I don't think this would work very well at all. Let's take, for example, the tag. On Stack Overflow it refers to a scripting engine, but that doesn't mean that it should also show up on Cooking Stack Exchange where it means something completely different and delicious.

In addition to that, Stack Overflow receives a lot of questions per day. We wouldn't want to swarm smaller sites with questions that may or may not be relevant to them to avoid having questions posted to those sites in the first place get overlooked.

Currently there are a few ways that questions can be shared across the network:

  1. Popular questions show up in the StackExchange™ MultiCollider SuperDropdown™ - the dropdown thingie in the top left with the "Hot questions" tab.
  2. Users can set up tag sets and control which tags they want to monitor from which sites.
  3. Chat room owners can set up chat feeds that will post a message (or show an overlay) when a question with certain tags is posted on another site.

I think leaving cross-site tag monitoring in the hands of individual users and small self-organizing groups is the best way to go here.

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  • I don't mean to mandate the sharing of posts on all sites with mutual tags. I mean to suggest the author of the question to share the question on other StackExchange networks so that he can choose where to share the question so that he can get a relevant answer. In this way we can ensure that the post has greater visibility to the intended audience and also that the post doesn't show up at the wrong network unintentionally. The "Hot questions" panel allows for only the high ranking questions whereas they're not the only ones that need to gain visibility. Commented Dec 24, 2011 at 15:22
  • @ikartik90 Cross-posting questions verbatim is discouraged across the network. Each site has a specific focus and directly posting the same question wouldn't work well. For example, a C#-tagged question on SO can't be the same as a C#-tagged question on Programmers. Questions that are posted to the wrong site are already migrated to better places as well. Commented Dec 24, 2011 at 15:28
  • but doesn't that hide your problem out from the problem solver to an extent? Maybe someone out there knows the solution to your problem, but he might not even have seen your question. Commented Dec 24, 2011 at 17:16
  • @ikartik90 And maybe someone knows the solution and doesn't use any SE sites at all. There are no guarantees here. The answerers should be able to choose which sites and tags to follow. Commented Dec 24, 2011 at 23:01
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There is a rather weak utility in the form of ads, but I agree that it should be improved.

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