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A while after I answered this question a comment was posted to the effect that the question had already been asked and answered on the English Language Learners site.

Is it my responsibility to check ELL for duplicates before posting an answer on ELU?

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  • 2
    Not anyone's responsibility. It would be nice to have some users volunteer though.
    – NVZ Mod
    Mar 30, 2018 at 10:51
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    Different site, different scope, many ELL users are not members of EL&U, we cannot close a question on ELU because there might be a duplicate one on any SE site. I don't see why it should be any different if the SE site is related to the English language, the two sites are separate. IMO, ELU answers should stay on the main site whenever possible or the whole page should be migrated. It wasn't, there were no votes for migration as far as I could tell.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Mar 30, 2018 at 12:03
  • It's not your responsibility even within the same site.
    – Mazura
    Apr 9, 2018 at 2:22
  • @Mazura - Related Meta question: english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/11352/112436
    – aparente001
    Apr 9, 2018 at 12:28

1 Answer 1

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No, you have no responsibility to check if a question was answered on another site before answering on a site you're a member of. If an on-topic question is asked on EL&U, the person that asked it should get an EL&U answer, not an ELL answer (or a Linguistics or Language Learning answer for that matter).

I took that comment to mean "Hey, here is a link to a question on another site that might be helpful to you." Not "Whoever answered this question should have checked ELL first."

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  • As long as these comments are done politely (as this one was), I think it's helpful to link to relevant questions on other sites. In fact, I think it should be taken a step further, with "association banners" like some questions on SO have to Ru.SO questions. (Due to the language difference, these banners are only visible to people with certain browser settings. I'm not sure if there are any plans to bring this feature to the rest of the network unfortunately.)
    – Laurel Mod
    Mar 30, 2018 at 14:52
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    @Laurel I agree that it's helpful - there are many questions on ELL that have links to EL&U questions in the comments. It would be nice if there were a way to make those links bi-directional, similar to the way a link to a question on the same site puts each question in the other's "related" section.
    – ColleenV
    Mar 30, 2018 at 15:54
  • Thanks. I appreciate your answer as ELL moderator.
    – Shoe
    Mar 31, 2018 at 7:20
  • @ColleenV - Would that take a feature request on SE Meta?
    – aparente001
    Apr 9, 2018 at 12:20
  • @aparente001 I poked around a little to see if a similar request had already been made and couldn't find anything. I had intended to look around a bit more before starting a post but got distracted. There was something on cross-site duplicates that was slapped down, so we should be careful how we phrase it :)
    – ColleenV
    Apr 9, 2018 at 12:26
  • @ColleenV - Well, that sounds like a good reason for me not to be the one to write it up. But if you do, please ping me a link and I'll upvote.
    – aparente001
    Apr 9, 2018 at 13:40
  • @aparente001 It looks like the feature was already declined because the number of cross-site links is not significant enough to have a real impact: meta.stackexchange.com/q/59569
    – ColleenV
    Apr 10, 2018 at 12:02
  • @ColleenV - Looks like a long shot, but there is a suggestion to offer a bounty on that question: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/59569/…. I was surprised to find that you don't have any rep at SE Meta. If you want me to place a bounty I will but would appreciate a suggested blurb about the special case of ELU and ELL being sister sites.
    – aparente001
    Apr 10, 2018 at 12:11
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    @aparente001 I went ahead and added a comment under Jon's answer. Yes, I am surprisingly low-rep for how much time I spend on SE. I tend to find most of what I intend to post has already been done before :)
    – ColleenV
    Apr 10, 2018 at 12:18
  • @ColleenV - I created the bounty and quoted your comment. At 465 rep I figured I could afford to splurge. Can you post about this in ELL Meta and ELU Meta to get support from the communities?
    – aparente001
    Apr 10, 2018 at 12:37
  • @aparente001 I am slammed at work, I will ask on ELL when I get a chance. I wouldn’t be offended if you wanted to take the ball and run with it on ELU.
    – ColleenV
    Apr 10, 2018 at 16:07

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