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Comments on What is the policy on importing questions by simply quoting the question over here?

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What is the policy on importing questions by simply quoting the question over here?

+7
−1

Recently, three questions were "imported" from StackOverflow: https://software.codidact.com/q/277934, https://software.codidact.com/q/277930, https://software.codidact.com/q/277932

I put "imported" in quotes, because they weren't actually imported. The user just quoted the respective StackOverflow post as a new question (and then self answered).

While I'm not particular opposed to this method, I'm wondering what the official policy is for this sort of thing. Should the question instead be imported properly?1 (Answers can still be added to imported questions).

UPDATE:

Another question, https://software.codidact.com/questions/277937 had been posted, but is now deleted. It doesn't even bother to provide information needed to answer the question; When asked for clarification, the poster literally just asked viewers to go to the StackExchange question for context.

Maybe a visit there would clarify?

This, I feel, definitely shouldn't be allowed, and I flagged it for 'closure as unclear' since they didn't bother to add the relevant information to the post.

  1. Something that should also be considered is that question 277934 was from Super User, which I don't know if is able to be imported from to our Software Dev community.

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+4
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I haven't consulted with the rest of the team yet, so treat this as my personal opinion and not Codidact policy, please.

Under the terms of the Creative Commons license used at SE (and here), quoting content from there is fine so long as you provide attribution and link. These questions do that (minimally). Further, these questions seem to be paraphrases rather than direct copies.

Data import to Codidact is possible (as demonstrated in other communities), but also comes with challenges (as demonstrated in other communities, where Mathjax and Hebrew didn't come through unscathed). Also, data import can currently only be done by an admin with database access. We'd like to address the issues in the import process and make it self-serve, but we aren't there yet.

Since the license supports re-asking questions (if done properly), I think it's ok to do so responsibly. It's important to make sure the question here contains all the necessary information, whether quoted or paraphrased. It needs to link to the original but should not require somebody to click through to read the original. I personally think it's better to paraphrase than directly copy, since it's going to appear over your name, not the author's name (and we can't easily change that).

Related: Guidelines for referencing and quoting on Codidact communities

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General comments (4 comments)
General comments
Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago

What I was worried about is that they seemed to only be crossposting for the sake of having questions for themselves to answer here - which I still wouldn't take offence to, but they didn't bother to answer the asker, which just feels...

Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago · edited about 4 years ago

If you went through the trouble of answering the question, can't you have a bit of decency and give the answer to the person who asked for it? (generic you here)

Monica Cellio‭ wrote about 4 years ago

If you see a question somewhere else -- Quora, SE, a coworker, whatever -- and you bring it here so you can answer, that's fine. (Of course the question might get other answers too, as is proper.) It's a kindness to share a link with the asker, sure, especially if you already have an active account there. (I wouldn't create a Quora account just to do so, for instance.) Sometimes the original inspires a different question; I've done that and not always reported back to, say, a famous blogger.

Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago · edited about 4 years ago

@MonicaCellio I would agree with you, but the questions they copied over had no answers at all. When you are the only answerer for the question, I feel like it's more than just a kindness to give them at least a link to the answer.