# Questions about LaTeX: when should I post in TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange vs Stack Overflow?

I've been wanting to ask questions about how to make some specific kinds of table in LaTeX. Eventually I decided to ask my question in Stack Overflow. But should I use Stack Overflow or TeX - LaTeX?

I found similar questions on both sites (I even tried to flag a couple as duplicates of each other, which failed because they're in different sites). Stack Overflow seemed to have more questions and more answers, so I decided to ask there. But later I saw a discussion on Meta suggesting that all questions about pure Tex should be moved to TeX - LaTeX and that they are answered faster there. So what's the general guideline here?

Just to be clear: it is perfectly possible for a question to be on-topic on more than one site. And there is not necessarily a single correct site for a question.

For example, I can imagine a single TeX-related question to be simultaneously on-topic on Ask Ubuntu, Unix.SE, SuperUser, Stack Overflow, and TeX.

If a question is on-topic on multiple sites, the site on which to post the question depends on:

• Where the experts are and
• what kinds of answers you are looking for.

In the case of TeX, I think there is a very clear "best" site, namely the TeX site.

However, there are other topics where the decision is not that clear, and might depend on what kind of answer you are looking for. For example, shell scripting questions typically get very simple "Here's the code you were asking for" answers on Super User, whereas on Unix.SE, answers might delve into the various historic incompatibilities between shells, and on Stack Overflow, you might get a concise solution using the latest modern shell features.

And, this might be an unpopular opinion, I believe, you can ask a question on multiple sites simultaneously, provided you specifically tailor the question to each site's audience. See the last paragraph of the canonical answer to Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site? on Meta.SE.

• That's right, each site is striving to become a compendium of Q&A on its respective scope. I don't want to see questions on LaTeX on Stack Overflow closed citing this meta question. Jan 31 at 7:46

LaTeX questions belong on Tex.SE (in about 99.999999% of the cases I've observed). They only existed here because, at the time, there was no Tex.SE.

• OK, well now I have to ask what the 0.000001% of cases were. Jan 28 at 20:21
• @TylerH: Someone using a programming language to automate generating TeX-compatible documents, or something that generates TeX documents through code (like PyX)? Jan 28 at 20:30
• Qualifying the answer... unless you're implementing a TeX-related program that's not itself written in (LaTeX); that might belong on SO. Otherwise Jan 28 at 21:19
• So, from the 22.000.000 questions asked, 0.22 questions were actually on-topic here. That's good to know. Jan 29 at 12:00
• Discounting sampling statistics, 99.999999% would imply at least 100 million LaTeX questions have been observed. Jan 29 at 16:13
• Unfortunately there’s a high-ranking Stack Overflow LaTeX user who has some beef with the tex.SE site, and therefore answers questions on Stack Overflow instead of doing the correct thing, and voting to migrate questions. Since there’s also very little activity in this tag on Stack Overflow, the end result is that very few questions get migrated. Usually TeX questions on SO only have a single vote to migrate them — mine. Jan 30 at 11:38
• @KonradRudolph There is no way to migrate questions to the Tex SE by community votes. The company does not understand, why would it be useful, and most of the close voters does not know that the Tex SE exists. There is also an unsaid and unexplainable wish from the side of the company to minimize the from-SO post migrations. Mods can migrate, users can not. But if a mod migrates, he also takes part in the reponsibility (if the target site dislikes the content, it will be the mods fault), so they don't really like to do that. Jan 31 at 1:22
• @peterh “There is no way to migrate questions to the Tex SE by community votes” — Uh, that is completely wrong. There is a way to migrate posts by community vote, it just requires three users vote to close the question with the close reason “This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network”. This exists, and it works. From your subsequent comments it’s obvious that you’re aware of this, so I don’t understand how you could have knowingly made the false statement in your first comment in good faith. Jan 31 at 9:42
• @KonradRudolph Voting to migrate is just a huge wast of everyone's time, I tried it when I first came to SO, but they simply age away -- I have hundreds of such flags i.stack.imgur.com/akCmI.png Jan 31 at 10:54
• @samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Thanks for your comment. I have to admit that I assumed your inaction with regards to migration, which I’ve repeatedly observed, was for bad reasons. Your comment makes it clear that my assumption was utterly wrong. Please accept my apologies. Jan 31 at 11:08
• @KonradRudolph Accepted :) My current view about migration is a bit similar to the answer by @ JörgWMittag Posts should be where they get answers. If a post got an answer here, there is no need to migrate it. If I think the post is more likely to get an answer at tex.se, migration is, also most likely futile, the way to go (e.g. tex.stackexchange.com/questions/628666/…). Voting to migrate those, would only increase the backlog in the review queues. However one important point for me: the post needs to have sufficient quality. Jan 31 at 11:28
• There is no gain from migrating low quality posts which lack a mwe or other necessary information. That there are often migration votes on such low quality post is very problematic. I would like to vote to close them, but if others vote to migrate them, then my name would be shown as one of the users who migrated the post. As I don't want to be seen as someone to migrate low quality posts, I don't vote to close and rather leave such low quality posts around. Jan 31 at 11:28
• @samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz These are all good points, and going forward I will strive to not cast migration votes without being sure that the post would actually be of high enough quality (in the past I’ve often voted reflexively without considering post quality, only topic). Jan 31 at 12:56
• @peterh: Sort that query by date. That's 1 or 2 questions per day. Can you make the same query for questions that do get migrated? A single data point doesn't prove a trend. Jan 31 at 14:28
• Get one accredited data analist to tell me that a random sample of 100 questions out of 71 million is significant and I'll eat my words, @peterh. Feb 7 at 8:43

The answer of Makoto is right, LaTeX questions are best asked on TeX.SE.

We (I'm a regular at TeX.SE) also welcome questions on generating LaTeX code from other programming languages, such as pylatex for Python and knitr for R, or any program or tool that has "export to LaTeX" functionality like gnuplot or Matlab etc.

One thing that is not on-topic on TeX.SE is MathJax and KaTeX (both are javascript libraries to display mathematics with a syntax borrowed from LaTeX). Questions about that should be asked on SO.

• I'm only an occasional user of [latex] or Tex.SE, so I don't know if your answer represents consensus in those groups, but if it does, perhaps the tag description for [latex] on SO should be updated to reflect it. Jan 30 at 16:51
• @user2554330 which part of the tag excerpt (or wiki) do you think needs updating specifically? Are you referring to my remark on MathJax and KaTeX? Jan 31 at 9:45
• Yes, mainly the MathJax and KaTeX part. You might expand on what kinds of knitr and pylatex questions are welcome on TeX.SE as well. Jan 31 at 10:42
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