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A few months ago I asked on Meta Super User whether questions about Discord belonged on Super User or Web Apps. I asked this because I noticed that both sites were voting to close Discord questions for migration.

At the time it seemed like the decision was that Discord questions were on-topic. However, 6 months after one of these questions was migrated from Web Apps to Super User, the question was closed and rejected as off-topic.

As an example of how turbulent these migrations can be, here is the migration history for two questions about discord:

Why was this question about Discord emoji rejected? Are questions about Discord off-topic?

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  • It doesn’t help the question your asking about received a spam answer. Question should have been closed due to being a bad question instead and that has something to do with us rejecting the question.
    – Ramhound
    Dec 8, 2017 at 22:31
  • For the custom emoji post, the Web Apps post has 18 views, while the Super User post has 27,106 views. Dec 10, 2017 at 23:00
  • @haykam That's because the question was only on Web Apps for less than a day before being migrated. The question was open on Super User for over 8 months.
    – Stevoisiak
    Dec 21, 2017 at 16:43

2 Answers 2

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I guess it comes from Discord's weird parlance where "server" means my instance of a managed slack-team-equivalent while the traditional definition of "server" is something quite different.

Looking at the comments on the original page, the misunderstanding was the primary reason, it should not have been closed as off-topic on WebApps and has been reopened now.

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  • Discord servers are sometimes referred to guilds as well. Dec 10, 2017 at 23:02
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    ... guilds feels better. Blurred lines much? It almost feels like discord was written by someone who has no idea what a server is ;p
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Dec 11, 2017 at 0:59
  • Thank you for undeleting this question on Webapps. Can you edit your answer to mention that the question was reopened?
    – Stevoisiak
    Dec 21, 2017 at 16:40
  • you're welcome, I have edited my answer @StevenVascellaro
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Dec 23, 2017 at 7:40
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I think a good chunk of the problem is really that the lines here are pretty blurred.

The first question probably could involve the desktop client - which is the reason I undid it. The desktop client, however is probably just a electron front end for the web client. Issues that have to do with the desktop client, and use of it are definitely on topic (even if the web client acts identically).

Discord uses "Server" in a very strange way - Its in a sense, a partitioned off "friends list" of sorts rather than a unique server you run. Administering it as is done with the second question dosen't really feel like a question that's in our scope. Its about administering, and configuring an "instance" of a web service for multiple users. That feels off topic to me.

As such, it fails the sniff test for me in this respect.

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    Correct, it's built with Electron. The UI is HTML5 and the client is Chromium-based.
    – Jason
    Dec 12, 2017 at 17:00

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