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How to decide whether a question belongs on Programmers.SE or CSTheory.SE site? Is there a general rule on how to decide what kind of questions belong on these two?

I have read both FAQs, and it looks like these two SE sites have many things in common. Or, am I mistaken?

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CSTheory.SE is for research- and graduate-level questions in theoretical computer science. If you're not a graduate student or a person with a PhD in computer science, the site's not the place you're looking to ask a question.

Programmers.SE is for professional-level, high-level questions in software development and programming. If you're working on a practical problem in a professional setting and trying to figure out some high-level question, this is where you want to be.

For the sake of completeness:

Stack Overflow is for programming questions of all levels that deal with working directly with code: if you want help with code not compiling, specific implementation issues, and other low-level stuff, you'll want to ask there.

There is no site that best serves undergraduate-level computer science questions currently. They're on-topic here and on Stack Overflow, but they do fair-to-middling at best. There is a site proposal currently in the commitment phase for that.

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  • I think many computer science questions can be asked on mathematics if you can abstract them enough - which you should be able to if you really wanna solve a problem. – Tomáš Zato - Reinstate Monica Oct 24 '15 at 19:49

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