Scavenging questions on-topic in the site from other SE sites

Question

As a follow up on my previous question Should questions regarding licenses and usage of OSS from other sites be migrated here

1. Should we start re-posting questions from SO which are tagged as licensing and are related to this site?
2. If we are to do so, shouldn't that be task for mods so the site does not get flooded with duplicating/low quality questions (made wikis maybe?)?
3. If such task should be carried from the community as a whole, should the questions be left open or quality/accepted answers from the originals should be reposted as well?

The main reasons for asking these questions is that:

• as per comment on my original question, questions closed for more than 3 months cannot be migrated
• Some users might exploit the opportunity to gain some rep (rep-hounding) in time and start posting duplicate questions and questions with low quality or which are not quite fitting the definition of this site

Answer 1

Users who want to gain rep by posting questions will only gain if the community approves of the questions, in which case there is no problem. Rep is supposed to be an incentive to ask good questions - that is by design.

If you have a question you would like to see answers to, post it here. Whether it exists open or closed on another site is irrelevant. This community will judge whether it is a good fit here.

Answer 2

Should we start re-posting questions from SO which are tagged as licensing?

Ask if you think that the question is relevant for this site and you care about the answer.

If you reuse material from elsewhere, make sure to provide suitable attribution. Do link to the original so that people can browse the answers that are available there.

Make sure that you ask in a form that's suitable for this site's audience. For example, unlike Stack Overflow, we don't automatically assume that a question is about software. Conversely, we automatically assume that a question is about open source.

If we are to do so, shouldn't that be task for mods so the site does not get flooded with duplicating/low quality questions (made wikis maybe?)?

Don't ask low-quality questions! Ask only good questions, whether you found them elsewhere or thought them up by yourself.

Wiki is irrelevant. We don't really do wiki questions anyway, only wiki answers.

If such task should be carried from the community as a whole, should the questions be left open or quality/accepted answers from the originals should be reposted as well?

Repost an answer if you think that it's a good one and relevant to our community. Provide suitable attribution, of course.

It would be better to produce better answers. Licenses, for example, are outside Stack Overflow's expertise, so answers can sometimes be uninformed. For example, if Stack Overflow has several answers that provide complementary material, then rather than copy all of the complementary answers, write a single answer that combines the material in one smooth flow.

Some users might exploit the opportunity to gain some rep (rep-hounding) in time and start posting duplicate questions and questions with low quality or which are not quite fitting the definition of this site

Don't make low-quality posts. That does regardless of whether you're copying or getting inspiration from elsewhere.

Answer 3

I agree with the existing answers, but want to add another perspective: The point of having a Stack Exchange site in beta phase, be it private or public, is to try and gauge if it's a viable site that can be graduated out of the beta phase. In different words, it's a dry-run to see if we're able to build a community around the proposed subject - does the subject generate enough interest so people continue visiting here? Is there a steady stream of new questions being asked? Is a sufficient portion of these questions getting answered with reasonable qualify? Does the community moderate itself by flagging or closing inappropriate questions? Are badly phrased posts edited to be made more coherent?

Copying questions and answers from other established site (even with the necessary attribution) is not "normal" behavior in an established site. Doing so to artificially inflate the volume of questions in a beta site kind of misses the point, IMHO.

Answer 4

1.Should we start re-posting questions from SO which are tagged as licensing?

First, not all of the licensing questions on Stack Overflow are on topic here, as has, I think, been established. Just because a question has the licensing tag does not mean that it is okay here. Let's be careful.

Let's keep one thing in mind here: cross-posting. It's generally not okay. Post a question to one site, and one site only. The point of all this is that if a question is good on Stack Overflow, it should stay there. Questions can be on topic on multiple sites; I wrote up a long spiel here. Martjin's answer here also sums up the basic idea.

Also, we should attribute the original posters if/when questions are posted here.

If a question satisfies all the criteria I mentioned and are mentioned in the links, then yes!

2.If we are to do so, shouldn't that be task for mods so the site does not get flooded with duplicating/low quality questions (made wikis maybe?)?

The idea of community wikis is okay (and has the side benefit of relating to rep, as trichoplax said). I don't think that they convey any significant advantage, though.

I say that any user who wants can put in a question here.

3.If such task should be carried from the community as a whole, should the questions be left open or quality/accepted answers from the originals should be reposted as well?

This is nullified by point #1: Don't bring over questions that already have good answers.