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The new site is up and running, an explanation of how to claim your content can be found here

I am sure most of you are familiar with "The Mess" and how people have started building alternatives.

QPixel is at a point where they are able to start exporting the content from the SE sites and importing it into QPixel. You can see that in action at writing.codidact.com/ and an explanation here.

If we would like to move Outdoors.SE, to QPixel that door is open. It's going to be different and have it's own challenges, but I think if SE was going to make the type of changes that it would take to get people reinvested in community building and voting and asking again they would have done so long ago.

Apparently we need to decide two things,

  1. Who are moderators will be,
    • My vote would be to offer the job to our existing mods to start with.
  2. What content to import,
    • I would suggest we export everything except the closed questions, with the possible exception of the duplicates.

Thoughts? Concerns?

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  • Codidact/QPixel isn't live though, right? What do you base the "door is open" statement on?
    – imsodin
    Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 7:50
  • 1
    @imsodin QPixel is running on two sites writing.codidact.com and meta.codidact.com I asked about migrating Outdoors to QPixel here meta.codidact.com/questions/39447#answer-39552 and that's why I say the door is open.
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 15:03
  • 2
    @CharlieBrumbaugh I suspect that many user who would migrate may be afraid to show support at this site, in fear of some kind of retribution. There is 100K+ in SE rep posting support for the move, You have been a long time leader of improvement, pick the the site you like best and get it the ball rolling. I for one will meet you there, I have posts to make but I don't have the motivation to post them at SE.
    – James Jenkins
    Commented Apr 10, 2020 at 17:50
  • 1
    Who is QPixel? Is that the new name for Codidact?
    – Mast
    Commented Apr 15, 2020 at 9:11
  • @Mast QPixel is the Ruby based software they have running currently with Codidact the organization name if that makes sense. github.com/codidact/qpixel
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Commented Apr 15, 2020 at 14:52
  • According to their GitHub, it's not yet MVP. Doesn't that make this post premature?
    – Mast
    Commented Apr 15, 2020 at 19:18
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    @Mast it’s already running on writing.codidact.com and they are currently exporting the outdoors content and it should be up shortly at outdoors.codidact.com
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Commented Apr 15, 2020 at 19:23
  • I see that outdoors.codidact.com is populated with questions but the answers did not come over yet...?
    – James Jenkins
    Commented Apr 20, 2020 at 10:52
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    @JamesJenkins Given we are the first community to transition (lately, writing is very old as far as I know) and it's a volunteer project, I think it's safe to assume that the transition is a bit of a challenge and can take some time and experience hickups. I hope it will work out and while I don't have much time, I'll try to look into that community every now and then - I really want to give this a chance. It's easy and there are lots of legitimate reason to have doubts about success, but I feel this is worth a shot (and not much too loose).
    – imsodin
    Commented Apr 20, 2020 at 14:36
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    @Charlie Brumbaugh I just tried to sign up for the TGO alternative, and it told me that my e-mail had already been taken. This is wildly improbable. I signed up a month or two ago for the Writing alternative, using the same e-mail address -- I have only one. Could this be the glitch?
    – ab2
    Commented Apr 21, 2020 at 15:05
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    @ab2 That might be part of the migration: You will be able to claim your account/content from TGO according to a comment on my meta question there: meta.codidact.com/questions/41989
    – imsodin
    Commented Apr 21, 2020 at 15:17
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    @ab2 Its the same signup as writing.codiact.com , that's why it failed because it's the same email and password so you just need to sign in and then claim your old content
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Commented Apr 23, 2020 at 23:13
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    @imsodin and Charlie: If I "claim my content" from TGO, will my content be removed from TGO? I am willing to take an exploratory trip to the new site, but I want a round trip ticket!
    – ab2
    Commented May 1, 2020 at 17:35
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    @ab2 Any content here will stay regardless of whether you claim it there or not.
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Commented May 1, 2020 at 17:55

5 Answers 5

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I agree with @Willeke that approaching this as a community move is wrong (excluding the stealing part, which is just not the case), even though I'd personally definitely jump ship (well more like board another ship) if there was a functional alternative. Even if you disagree, I think it's not practical to "transition the community" - it's not an entity but a ton of individuals. You need to get them over and you do that by getting a working and thriving alternative.

To that end it needs motivated people taking the initiative to set something up, then an announcement and if things go well, users and traffic will follow.
The first part happened, users and traffic following remains to be seen :) : https://outdoors.codidact.com/questions/74762

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I don't know how I feel about migrating TGO to another site. On the one hand, I still feel estranged from SE, and I thought that feeling was abating, but then I followed Charlie's The Mess link and eventually arrived at a discussion of Twitterers objecting to something on the HNQ; it was depressing. So now my feeling of estrangement is back as strong as it ever was.

On the other hand, I visited Writing on the alternate site maybe two months ago, and, although promising as an early draft, it needs work. And, TGO is getting new users who are asking decent questions. What would be the plans to get them to transfer to a new site?

As for moving the content of TGO to the new site, of course we have to do that. Not to do that would be like rewriting the OED from scratch; who would read it?

I second Charlie as a moderator, and also second asking Rory and the other TGO moderators to join The Trek.

UPDATE to this answer, August 10, 2020: IF, IF we could get a critical mass of the old contributors back and active, I think the best solution is to do CPR on TGO and just ignore the parts of SE that makes us feel like upchucking. And the new contributors are mostly very good. I never paid attention to the politics and insanities on SE until the Monica Outrage, and am capable of ignoring it again, unless Monica herself could benefit from further support. Note: I haven't checked the new site recently, and I should do that.

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    Its still has far less features than SE, but that is to be expected in a new project, and at the same time the members of Codidact have lots of ideas of improving it beyond SE that they intend to build over time
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 22:48
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I support the move to either codidact.com or topanswers.xyz I have started migrating my work related posts to https://topanswers.xyz/databases

I don't have an account at codidact but I would get one and happily start rebuilding the community there.

I support moving all questions that are not closed.

I think Charlie should be a moderator at the new site.

Edit for those not watching the comments: It is ready, https://outdoors.codidact.com/questions/74762

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Bad move, stealing content and discussing so openly on the site you steal from.

Leave if you want but do so decently, build a new site with new content.

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    Not that I necessarily agree or disagree, but it can hardly be called "stealing" when it's all done under the CC license that SE very publicly grant.
    – ArtOfCode
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 10:44
  • 3
    All of the content is licensed for this exact purpose, and besides given that the original authors still retain the rights to their content, its is well within their right to move it to a different site where they won't need to sue the hosting provider for slandering the users who wrote the content
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 14:21
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    RE: Your chat I understand where you are coming from, but there are two different things. StackExchange is vehicle, the members of TGO are a community. SE does not 'own' anything posted by the community. SE is much like a bus full of people, we the people are all going to similar places on the same bus. We pay our fare by the what we do to support the community.
    – James Jenkins
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 15:52
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    Many believe that SE has failed to do their part in maintaining the bus. There is nothing wrong about the passengers on that bus, from openly discussing using a different bus company, one that is less likely to try and carry toxic waste on a passenger transport.
    – James Jenkins
    Commented Apr 7, 2020 at 15:56
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For those who are less pessimistic, SE has just announced a Moderator Council.

Those of us who were voted on to it are all focused on improving the things we have complained about here and elsewhere across the network. We have yet to see how it plays out, but it's definitely a first step to rebuilding bridges.

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    Good luck with that... too much water under the bridge for many of us...
    – James Jenkins
    Commented Apr 29, 2020 at 12:52
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    Thanks James - I really hope we manage to help SE make the right changes. The codidact version looks good already though - I like the Outdoors logo :-)
    – Rory Alsop Mod
    Commented Apr 30, 2020 at 10:51

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