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How would you feel about a merger with Linux Systems?
On main meta, someone suggested to look into the possibility to merge our Power Users community with the community for Linux Systems to increase activity. (see https://meta.codidact.com/posts/285122)
Just to test the waters: How would you all feel about this?
3 answers
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Since Power Users is essentially a super set of the Linux site, if a merger is to happen, it becomes natural to merge Linux into this site. I don't think anyone at Power Users would mind, *nix questions are already on-topic here. So it ought to be more important to let the Linux community decide if they want this, rather than us here.
I also think at least the following needs to be addressed before voting on a merger is meaningful:
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How would the questions from Linux Systems get imported? Would it get its own *nix category? Is a separate category motivated and if so do we need categories for Windows, smart phones and so on too?
I can swear I've had this very category discussion before somewhere, but I can't find it. I proposed separate categories like above but one valid argument against it was that the questions below each such category aren't really different enough not to be handled by tags. Another valid argument is that too many categories would clutter down the site needlessly.
This ought to be discussed in a separate post.
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How to deal with tags? Can they be imported? Should they be imported? How detailed do they need to be overall? OS type, distro, version? All such OS-related tags would need to be dealt with in a consistent manner with a system agreed upon with community consensus. After that, a tag clean-up might be needed on both sites.
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What happens with mods at Linux Systems? Do they become mods here? Do they want to become mods here?
Personally I think this would be an excellent idea and we would benefit in many ways.
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as the post on main meta already mentions, both communities would benefit from more activity
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looking through the posts on linux system, I think they would be a good addition to the posts we would bring into the marriage. Theirs might sometimes be a bit more detailed and specialised, but some of ours can attract a broader audience. I think this would make a nice mixture.
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makes deciding where to post superflous :)
I'm posting the same answer on both sites, because the questions are basically the same.
Personally, I am in favor of merging Linux Systems Codidact and Power Users Codidact, ideally by transferring the content from Linux Systems to Power Users.
The scope of Linux Systems is pretty close to a strict subset of that of Power Users; any question that is on topic on the former is very likely to be equally on topic on the latter, but there are questions that would be on topic on the latter that aren't necessarily on topic on the former.
By separating the two, we needlessly introduce confusion and separation; requiring of every poster to decide whether a given question should be posted on one or the other. Separating a subset of questions can make sense when there is significant traffic, but since we don't exactly have that luxury, we should start simple and, as with Software Development Codidact, perhaps later consider splitting the sites if the amount of traffic gets overwhelming for one.
There are some practical issues that would need to be worked out if the content from Linux Systems Codidact is merged into Power Users Codidact, which seems to me to be the more appropriate merge direction; for example, there would probably be some almost-but-not-quite-duplicate tags. However, Power Users currently has 143 questions, and Linux Systems 52, both in their respective Q&A categories; going through those even manually can probably be done in no more than a few hours. Even manual curation of the migrated content does not seem a big enough hassle to be an impediment to merging the sites at this point. Any existing links can be kept valid relatively easily since post IDs are global across Codidact; we won't have any case of two "post ID 42" to coalesce.
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