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Over on Area 51, there is a proposal for a Software Engineering Research site scoped as:

Proposed Q&A site for researchers to discuss research-level questions in the area of software engineering

My reading of the scope for Programmers.SE is that any such questions would be on-site here, so is this proposal constructive, or just un-necessary fragmentation?

Perhaps an A51 proposal should require debate on any relevant existing site before secession is declared?

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    Related: How is Software Engineering Research different from Programmers?
    – yannis
    Nov 20, 2012 at 7:02
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    Now, I'm not so sure your question is on topic for Meta Programmers. Certainly this is interesting to the Programmers crowd, but at the same time the discussion on the proposal's merits is more suitable for Area 51's discussion zone.
    – yannis
    Nov 20, 2012 at 7:05
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    Touche, @YannisRizos :) I'm curious of the views of P.SE because I'm not so such many peeps rummage around A51, never mind meta.A51
    – Andrew
    Nov 20, 2012 at 7:10
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    The proposal doesn't look good. The guy who proposed it seems to have a fairly relaxed definition of "research level" that isn't really compatible with Theoretical CS's and most of the example questions don't really seem like good SE questions in general. I wouldn't be surprised if the proposal gets closed soon.
    – yannis
    Nov 20, 2012 at 7:50
  • Agreed... but his argument that Research is off-topic here seems weak, too
    – Andrew
    Nov 20, 2012 at 7:52

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I think it's likely we are already at critical mass for the amount of programming related sites that could realistically exist on a single network. Also Research level software engineering seems a little weird as a concept since engineering implies application not research.

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  • Agreed on both points, the only "research" I see in software engineering would either be the analytical and experimental processes which are intrical to engineering in itself and therefore would fit here, any other "research" in software engineering would fit squarely in scientific research which is what CS.SE is for... the crack between the two is really nonexistent so I can't imagine the scope of such a site. Unless it's using that other "Software Engineering" meaning referring to project methodologies etc which fits here somewhat and more on PM.SE
    – Jimmy Hoffa
    Nov 20, 2012 at 23:29

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