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I've noticed a couple of questions where the poster originally posted on Stackoverflow and then was sent here. However, its not a proper code review question because the code doesn't actually work.

Here are the examples:

The problem is that they get wrongly redirected from stackoverflow and then closed here. It really sucks for the asker because they get bounced from site to site without getting any answers. It would seem some people on stackoverflow have the wrong notion about what this site does. Is there something that can be done to prevent it?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm currently researching the Hamming question. There are no comments on the question, so I'm not certain how the OP found his way over here. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael K
    May 9, 2011 at 15:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Michael, it looks to me like he's reasked the question on stackoverflow after I told him he was in the wrong place. Perhaps he deleted the original question? \$\endgroup\$
    – Winston Ewert
    May 9, 2011 at 15:17
  • \$\begingroup\$ It does look like that. That user has only asked that question. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael K
    May 9, 2011 at 15:25
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    \$\begingroup\$ Maybe we need to raise awareness at meta.SO, not sure how well that has worked for programmers.SE though. \$\endgroup\$
    – Brian Reichle
    May 9, 2011 at 22:17
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Brian See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90799/…. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael K
    May 11, 2011 at 14:46
  • \$\begingroup\$ "Stack Overflow", not "StackOverflow". See e.g. "Proper Use of the Stack Exchange Name" \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter Mortensen
    May 24, 2022 at 12:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ "redirected from stack overflow and then closed here" - don't agree with the image of this community being a dustbin of stack overflow, and hope the admins do something about it, instead of deleting any direct ´call for action´. For now everything is said. \$\endgroup\$
    – Sam Ginrich
    Jun 6, 2022 at 11:42

3 Answers 3

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It's a process of education.

The defining characteristic of a codereview question is that it is working code -- if there are errors or other problems, it's not a fit here.

If we only get people to understand one thing about codereview.se, it is that, so repeat it anywhere and everywhere you think it will help.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ +1 I guess this was implicit for me but I never thought about it. Thanks for making it obvious. :) \$\endgroup\$
    – user541686
    Jul 11, 2011 at 5:38
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I have started a topic on meta.SO about this.

Honestly, I don't know how much we will be able to do about it. If a question is migrated, we mods can contact the SO mods and have the migration history cleared; however, these were posted as separate posts. In the case of the Hamming question (since deleted by author), the original question on SO was deleted when he posted here so we couldn't even migrate and ask for a merge. I hope that raising the topic on M.SO will raise awareness so that higher rep users will speak against cross-posting.

On the brighter side...many of us are active on both CR and SO. If we spot comments in that direction we can post against it ourselves. Also, we can flag them on both CR and SO when cross-posts occur, so that they can be looked at for possible migration and merging.

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Agreed. However, that said, there is a LOT of stuff on here "my code is broken" that belongs on SE. I agree that there needs to be more information for users so they can know where their programming question belongs.

I have two ideas:

Use something (that's probably really difficult) that detects certain words like: review, critique, etc and has a little pop-up on SO that's like "Hey, is your question something about code review blah blah blah? If so, perhaps it would fit best on CodeReview" and then another one that's similar over here that detects words/phrases like: broken, I want to pull out my hair, and 'how do I..."

The other idea is to have a system based on how questions are tagged. For example, SO gets a TON of SEO questions that are better suited on Webmasters. However, there still are many programming-related questions that fit under the SEO tag that truly belong on SO so the tag shouldn't be removed. So what they did was put a little note on questions marked with the SEO tag saying something along the lines of: What is your question about? Programming or Marketing...

Perhaps something like that could be implemented here.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Your first idea gave me horrific paperclip flashbacks :) \$\endgroup\$
    – Brian Reichle
    May 11, 2011 at 8:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ Haha, yeah.. I kind of thought it would be kind of annoying for users and not as easy to implement as the second option... \$\endgroup\$
    – Melanie Palen
    May 11, 2011 at 10:21
  • \$\begingroup\$ The problem with a tag system is that some tags fit on multiple sites, for example [C#]. It might work for [code-review], though, if the tag is applied properly for review and not debugging. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael K
    May 11, 2011 at 14:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, which is why I don't think those tags should be removed... but perhaps a warning like there is under the SEO tag on SO... reminding users what kinds of questions are acceptable on SO. \$\endgroup\$
    – Melanie Palen
    May 11, 2011 at 15:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ That could be a solution...I didn't think tag wikis were the place for those but apparently it's been done before. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael K
    May 11, 2011 at 16:44

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