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Community: What is a "duplicate"?

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    Sorry if this has been addressed before. The question

    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/47036/lambda-calculus-help-closed

    has a comment "this is a duplicate: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/11426/lambda-calculus-help"

    So the guy has asked at both MO and math.stackexchange. Is this actively to be discouraged? If someone does both, are we always at MO in a position to vote to close reasonably? Are we ever in this position?

    If I have a question which to me feels borderline between the two sites (e.g. one might need modern research methods but there might be a low-level solution using nothing other than UG maths and cleverness), am I definitely discouraged from posting to both sites?
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    My opinion, which is worth roughly what you are paying for it, is that posting the same question simultaneously to both sites is akin to sending a paper simultaneously to two journals. Well, it's not nearly as serious as that, but it's wrong for similar reasons. It's a bit less wrong if you include in each post a note that you're also posting the other. It's fine if you post in one, are not satisfied with the responses, then (after suitable passage of time) post to the other (with a link to the earlier post).
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    My motivation for pointing out the duplication was two-fold. Firstly, I reasoned exactly as Gerry. So many people use both sites that posting a question on both of them is, to me, not much better than posting it twice on the same site: it takes up twice as much of peoples' attention as it should. Secondly, on stackexchange the OP essentially said that he has not a single thought regarding the question and that his problem wasn't really with the question itself but rather with the course material. So that was another very good reason to close. I first even thought of repeating this quote, in case people were hesitating whether to vote to close.

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    My opinion, which is worth roughly what you are paying for it

    Hey, you charged me 10 dollars for your opinion!

    • CommentAuthorWillieWong
    • CommentTimeNov 23rd 2010
     

    Just to add to the discussion: from past habits in USENET, I generally feel that indiscriminate cross-postings should be discouraged, especially for two forums with, like Alex Bartel says, significant overlap of readers.

    On the other hand, I think that interesting questions on math.SE, should they not receive an answer in days/weeks, should be encouraged to be transferred over to MO. There are plenty of questions where amateurs can knock head for days and cannot figure out, but the answer becomes immediate after a trick well-known to the expert is given. I think having asked the questions on Math.SE and received no useful answers can be counted toward due diligence for researching the problem, especially because there are people who only read MO and not the other forum.

    Also, there is currently some on-going discussion on the wording of the FAQ over at Meta.MSE. An enterprising somebody may want to add a word or two about cross-posting policy on the FAQ here and there.

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    Gerry hit it on the nose. After a suitable delay, it's of course acceptable. (This stretches the journal analogy a bit: it's not as if getting impatient with a journal makes it okay to submit elsewhere without withdrawing the paper. In some case ....)

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    Well, Harry, I guess it's up to you to decide whether it was worth the 10 dollars.
    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeNov 23rd 2010 edited
     

    Cheapest financial advice I ever paid for! Investing in Exalcomm (not to be confused with Qualcomm) was such a good idea.

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