Post History

_**Lessons learnt from the past**_

I've been at SO pretty much from the start. It is true that SO has sub-communities in a sense. Each major programming language (tag) has their own flavour of slightly different posting rules, different ways to deal with FAQ and canonical dupes and different tag usage rules for sub-categories (various libraries, versions of the language standard etc). Some even hang out in the on-site chat room for that programming language.

Each such major programming language tag has developed a certain culture, even though SO manages surprisingly well in keeping a consistent moderation policy across the whole site. 

At the same time, lots of tags do _not_ benefit from sharing the same site. The C and C++ tags (where I mostly hang out) has a constant problem with cross-posting both tags at once, which is harmful most of the time. You get the occasional C# mis-tag too. There's a similar name conflict between Java vs Javascript and so on. Many of the major programming languages _do not_ benefit from sharing the same site, quite the contrary, since these tag collisions and different tag use cultures cause tension and frustration. 

**_Proposal_**

My conclusion is that it would actually make a whole lot of sense to split up the whole programming site into smaller ones. I think the disadvantage of conflicting tag use and ambiguities is more significant than the dubious advantage of having a one-stop shop for everything programming-related.

Splitting up the site could be done either by spawning one site per major language/technology, or possibly by creating categories. How to categorize technologies and deal with potential overlaps in scope are topics of their own.

The various pre-SO programming sites tended to be one site, but with some flavour of "categories".


**_Regarding low activity/"ghost towns"_**

Low activity won't be a concern if we let these separate sites/categories mature just like any other site in the network. Don't underestimate how many users there are per major language tag on SO. A significant number of the whole veteran user-base there are quite unhappy with all the events over the last year. I'm still only there myself because there's no place else to go.

Each major tag probably has some 50-100 _active_ domain expert veteran users. Then some thousands of active intermediate/experienced programmers and who knows how many beginners. If just 10% of those users were aware of Codidact & would be willing to help out, that's more enough to start a new site dedicated to a specific programming language or technology.