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I saw this question today and it was rightfully put on hold because it was cross-posted to stackoverflow (where it already had an answer anyway).

However, one poster told the OP that "Besides, this is a programming question", i.e. shouldn't be here, should be on stackoverflow.

Now, yesterday dba.stackexchange had 52 questions in total (Tue, 24/09/2019), and 27 the day before (Mon, 23/09). Randomly took the 19th of Sep (Thu) and got ~ 55.

I then looked on stackoverflow and there appears to be at least 700 questions TODAY (and it's not even over...) in the 8 most popular tags with SQL in the tag (SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL &c).

So that's not even all the questions relevant to databases (though probably most of them). StackExchange works on UTC, so there's 4 hours of it left, so I'm guessing in the region of 1000 questions a day relevant to databases.

I think that we should try and change things so that even basic SQL questions - in fact anything remotely relevant to databases should come here instead of stackoverflow which has a ridiculous amount of traffic anyway.

Any takers?

On a personal and anecdotal level, I have the "feeling" that questions (are becoming | have become) sparse and we should try to change this.

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  • WTF - a downvote? And without a reason to boot! That's really poor!
    – Vérace
    Sep 25, 2019 at 21:20
  • 6
    Well if you ask a meta question, you're going to get feedback. Meta votes tend to mean agreement or disagreement. Not everyone wants to get into a discussion over it, and you can't force them to comment or answer when voting. Have some patience. You will likely get answers in due course.
    – Paul White Mod
    Sep 25, 2019 at 21:43
  • Fair enough - thanks for your input!
    – Vérace
    Sep 25, 2019 at 21:45
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    In the meantime, you could think about how you'd enforce what you're suggesting. If you feel like some real voting action, you could even ask about it on meta.SO
    – Paul White Mod
    Sep 25, 2019 at 22:06
  • I really wouldn't want (nor am I in a position) to "enforce" anything. I think it might be beneficial to both communities to encourage SQL (and other database-related) questions to come here rather than go onto stackoverflow. We here on dba.stackexchange would have a more active site and stackoverflow might benefit from a slightly reduced traffic (~ 20K in the last 24 hours. p.s. there's lots of nice graphs for so - what about dba.se?
    – Vérace
    Sep 25, 2019 at 23:30
  • Well think about how you'd "achieve" that then. Re: graphs, dba.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/site-analytics. Also, be careful what you wish for.
    – Paul White Mod
    Sep 25, 2019 at 23:36
  • It'll be a while before I have 25K points :-( As for achieving that - well, can't the questions that are on- or off-topic be decided by the communit(y/ies)? Would the so community have a real issue if we said that we'd be happy to take the SQL/db-related stuff off their hands? I don't know - would this be a turf-war kinda thing?
    – Vérace
    Sep 25, 2019 at 23:46
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    So you're proposing migrating questions from Stack Overflow then? Wouldn't that require changing what's on-topic for SO? Also who would do that migration work and why? Will users want to create an account on dba just to get an answer for the question they deliberately asked on SO?
    – Paul White Mod
    Sep 25, 2019 at 23:51
  • Oh Gawd...I dunno. Have an automatic account creation process for the first 6 months? When people see that their questions are being migrated, they'll eventually start asking here by default anyway. Moderators could be given a "move to DBA.SE" button... As for "deliberately" asking on SO, I'm sure they won't mind as long as they get an answer? Yes, it would require a (small) change - "SQL/db-related questions that used to be on-topic here are now considered more suitable for DBA.SE". I don't run the show - it's just an idea - I've always thought that SO has a ludicrous number of questions!
    – Vérace
    Sep 25, 2019 at 23:57
  • @PaulWhite Also, if they put tags such as SQL, MySQL &c. in a post to SO, they could be politely reminded that what is on-topic on SO has changed slightly and suggesting they come to DBA.SE? I don't think the technical ins and outs are the issue here - it's more a question of whether both communities (us - i.e. DBA.SE, and then SO) would be in favour of such a (minor) change?
    – Vérace
    Sep 26, 2019 at 0:26
  • 1
    Au contraire. Such a major change to the scope of both sites would need a great deal of detail and persuasion. You should put your proposals in the question body.
    – Paul White Mod
    Sep 26, 2019 at 0:27

2 Answers 2

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Questions and Traffic

I have the "feeling" that questions (are becoming | have become) sparse and we should try to change this.

As people with the Access to site analytics privilege can see, the number of questions we get is around 290 per week, and has been for the past two years:

Questions

We also get around 800k visits per week, and a million page views:

Views 31-Aug-2017 to 31-Aug-2019

We are 7th across the network for traffic on technology sites, and tenth overall.

Site Scope

I think that we should try and change things so that even basic SQL questions - in fact anything remotely relevant to databases should come here instead of stackoverflow

No. That's not going to fly. This site only exists because it is different from Stack Overflow.

Even if it were possible, uplifting SQL questions from SO to DBA would achieve nothing good. Going from ~40 questions per day to 1,000 would simply overwhelm our ability to manage quality and maintain focus. All the scale problems experienced by SO would repeat here, and probably break our community.

Do we want more questions? Maybe. Better questions though, not simply more of them. Certainly not by a factor of 25, with most of them the sort of question best directed at a developer rather than a DBA. In my view, our community is best served by keeping a high signal-to-noise ratio: A relatively clean site, with good quality answers, and few poor-quality and off-topic questions.

Database Administrators is in generally good shape, as far as I can tell, though we can always do more to achieve higher average quality. I think purely aiming at question volume would be entirely the wrong strategy for us.

I do think it is a shame we ask and answer so many useful questions in chat, rather than making them accessible via the main site.

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If you want more questions, ask them. A quick look at your profile shows you have about 700 answers, and less then 10 questions.

People find a site through many paths, presence of similar questions to what someone wants to ask is going to have a big influence on them asking their questions here.

Self asked and answered questions are encouraged and well received. Example Where did new database 'BackupLocDb_###" come from?

If you have a question that you already know the answer to, and you would like to document that knowledge in public so that others (including yourself) can find it later, it's perfectly okay to ask and answer your own question on a Stack Exchange site. Source

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