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There is a number of interesting questions about education in Computer Science that were asked in CS Stack Exchange, and didn't receive much attention, or got poor answers. My question is, should they be migrated here, or should they be re-asked?

In either case, having spotted one such occurrence, how should we proceed?

EDIT: I am asking the question for future reference. What worries me the most is that sites like this may lose traction if questions that could be asked here keep being asked there.

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    $\begingroup$ Do you have an example or two to share just to help clarify your question as these examples may also help us build up our stock of relevant questions? $\endgroup$
    – Peter
    Commented May 24, 2017 at 21:01
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    $\begingroup$ Two examples, out of many: cs.stackexchange.com/q/68085, and cs.stackexchange.com/q/75859. $\endgroup$
    – André Souza Lemos
    Commented May 24, 2017 at 22:21
  • $\begingroup$ At this point migration is not an option anyway. However, if a question is not getting the traction is needs on CS.SE and the OP has a good Q that fits well here, you could offer the OP a chance to ask a similar one here. Not the same one, that's cross-posting. While we are in private beta you'll also have to provide a link to the OP. $\endgroup$
    – Gypsy Spellweaver
    Commented May 30, 2017 at 7:38

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Teaching computer science is on-topic on Computer Science Stack Exchange. (Teaching programming is another matter.) So questions about teaching computer science wouldn't be migrated away from CS.SE.

If you see a question that hasn't gotten good answers, then by all means please answer it if you can!

As for reposting the question here, why would you do that? What's the point of duplicating effort? Multiposting is only useful if different communities can offer different perspectives, and this isn't the case here: CS.SE and CSE.SE have overlapping audiences.

A lot of computer science professors hang out on CS.SE. I don't think CS.SE suffers from a lack of expertise on university-level teaching. Secondary-level teaching is another matter, but that's a chicken and egg problem — there are extremely few questions on the topic.

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  • $\begingroup$ It's definitely not a matter of lack of expertise, precisely the opposite. This overlap could be problematic for the legitimacy of this community. Existing examples of this kind of predation are the Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence communities. $\endgroup$
    – André Souza Lemos
    Commented May 24, 2017 at 22:16
  • $\begingroup$ @AndréSouzaLemos If CSE.SE is not needed because CS.SE has all the necessary expertise... problem solved? I don't understand your comment. $\endgroup$
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented May 24, 2017 at 22:22
  • $\begingroup$ This choice is political, it is not a "problem". I am assuming that those that are here now believe in the existence of CSE.SE. $\endgroup$
    – André Souza Lemos
    Commented May 24, 2017 at 22:26
  • $\begingroup$ I don't understand why questions about teaching computer programming would be off-topic in CS.SE. Computer programming is part of CS. $\endgroup$
    – Ellen Spertus
    Commented Jun 3, 2017 at 16:54
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    $\begingroup$ @EllenSpertus No, programming is an engineering activity. Computer science is the science behind programming, but programming isn't science. I think this is the closest thing we have to an official thread on meta.CS. “Why does my program crash?” is no more CS than “why does my car not start?” is physics. Unfortunately, language hasn't caught up with concepts, so the science is called “computer science” and many people stop reading at the first word, but computer science is a science, not a craft. $\endgroup$
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jun 3, 2017 at 20:01
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the link, although it doesn't address whether the teaching of programming concepts is of-topic. $\endgroup$
    – Ellen Spertus
    Commented Jun 3, 2017 at 20:57
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    $\begingroup$ @EllenSpertus Teaching programming is more of a gray area because teaching the craft is very closely mixed with teaching the concepts. For example, teaching a programming language (how to write a loop, how to define a function, how to build a datatype, etc.) is off-topic but concepts such as loops, recursion, data structures, etc. are on-topic. Computer Science is pretty strict on “no programming questions” because we don't want to be a dumping ground for the questions that Stack Overflow has rejected (with 1e4 questions/day on SO, even a small fraction of that is non-negligible). $\endgroup$
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jun 3, 2017 at 21:09
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Well, there won't be any migrations yet :) For one thing, we're not even in public beta yet, let alone a fully accepted SE. If we make it that far, that would (presumably) become a question for the respective moderators of the SEs.

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If a question is asked on CS, and the CS community doesn't like the question (scope, level, whatever) then I would hope they consider migrating it here rather than closing it (unless its a very low quality question).

Over time, people will ask questions mainly where they are a good fit. I expect that longer term, this will take the majority of the non-degree level questions away from CS, but overall the existence of CSE will hopefully result in more questions overall being asked.

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  • $\begingroup$ Sure, we would migrate a question if it's off-topic for CS.SE and good for CSE.SE. I can't remember the last time this happened, if ever. (A question about teaching programming, as opposed to teaching algorithms or semantics, would fit this bill, assuming that CSE continues to develop into “Computer science and programming educators”.) $\endgroup$
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented May 25, 2017 at 22:04

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