Post History

> I am a new user to Codidact that just migrated from StackOverflow and there are some things I would like to get across.

Welcome to Codidact! Thank you for sharing your suggestions for improvement. One of the differences with Codidact is that the code is open source, so anyone who wants to can contribute to improving it. This can be by writing code, raising new feature requests, finding bugs, or suggesting improvements to documentation.

There is a lot of work still to be done, but it is encouraging to see regular improvements that do not need to wait for employee availability. You can keep track of these at [Recent feature changes to the Codidact software](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/39539).

## Downvotes
The question is a self labelled rant, and that can lead to downvotes, but please don't let that put you off giving feedback. Each potential improvement / feature / bug that you spot is useful to hear about. If you raise each one in a separate Meta question then each can receive up and downvotes accordingly, rather than good ideas being lost under the downvotes on unrelated parts of the question.

Some of the points you raise have been discussed in other Meta questions, so I'll link to them during this answer.

There has also been previous discussion of [What should I know when coming here from Stack Exchange?](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/277998)

> StackOverflow has been divided into 2 categories (PowerUser/SoftwareDevelopment) which to me makes no sense

From the context, I guess that this should read "Codidact has been divided into 2 categories" (Stack Exchange has 182 communities).

Codidact currently has [18 communities](https://codidact.com/), plus a [Proposals section](https://proposals.codidact.com/) for communities that are not ready yet.

You are not the only person to be concerned about splitting communities. There has been discussion of [How granular should network communities be?](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/278084) There has also been a specific discussion about [Is it possible to merge Power Users and Linux Systems?](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/285122) For Power Users and Software Development there is less likely to be a merge as Power Users is for software and hardware usage, while Software Development is for programming.

> Everything looks desolate, the first question I clicked on was 8 years old and had 1 answer, ... import some questions/answers from StackExchange

Some Codidact communities have tried this, and others have chosen not to. Of those that have tried this, at least one has chosen to later remove them. This still leaves open the possibility of importing or re-asking a small number of carefully chosen questions, but some of the disadvantages remain, so I'd recommend reading the previous discussions before deciding to what extent to do this:
- [What is the policy on importing questions by simply quoting the question over here?](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/277936)
- [What kinds of data import can QPixel support?](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/39468)
- [Proposal: tool for user-requested import of a single question and its answers from SE](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/278394)
- [We should delete all old imported content](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/280358)

> I saw a question on cabbages needing oxygen to live.
> 
> Don't get me wrong but this ... we learn at 4th grade

The question [Do plants need ambient oxygen?](https://scientific-speculation.codidact.com/posts/287274) may seem simple to you, but different people learn different topics at different rates. We don't have a rule against simple questions. It's also worth bearing in mind that the question is from Scientific Speculation, which is a community with roots in Worldbuilding Stack Exchange. This means some of the questions may be from people working on a novel, a screen play, a board game, or a computer game, whose specialisation is not in a scientific field. Their fictional worlds will benefit from being able to ask the basic scientific questions.

> There's no in between either it's 5th grade basic questions, or rocket science that only a small group of people can interact with.

I agree that we would benefit from a broader range of questions for many of the Codidact communities. I don't know the best way to achieve this. Each of the communities has a Meta post seeking suggestions on how to grow. For example, the post on Scientific Speculation is [How can we grow this community?](https://scientific-speculation.codidact.com/posts/285030)

> SE never had some place suited for discussion

There may be a Codidact chat function at some point but likely not in the near future. There has been some discussion of this:
- [Would like written chat](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/278016)
- [Would be nice to have a link to chat on the main sites](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/74914)

As mentioned there, we have a link to Discord in the right hand panel in the meantime.

> Lastly, separate yourselves from SE, ... people who moderate there can't moderate here for the sole difference of objective and rules, it's only a matter of time until someone mixes them up.

There has also been discussion of this, in [How can Codidact be independent from Stack Exchange, when you have same moderators?](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/289018)