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I joined the SE community by first using Stack Overflow Site via a specific question. After some time I started to feel uncomfortable there because I'm not programmer, so I looked for a site where I do feel comfortable and found Super User and that was great.

I admired the community and the professionalism of the members and I'm very motivated to learn from you to strengthen my own knowledge.

But in real life I have real mates and friends who are members from other SE sites and they told me their sites are hierarchically over Super User, and that is very annoying to me because I think Super User covers a different arena of IT.

I have been facing this problem for a while and don't know how to answer so I decided to stay quiet. In the meantime I appreciate your perspective to help me find a good answer.

I don't know what to say because I don't know the hierarchy of SE sites. But from my point of view their community having more members does not make it better than ours.

Maybe my question is very childish.

UPDATE: Trying to give a scope with my broken English: Is there a hierarchy of SE sites based on skills/experience or amount of active users determining if one community/site is over another?

I really appreciate your answers to help me to get the focus for answer for myself next time.

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    Other users are saying their sites are better because they're bigger than Super User?
    – random Mod
    Sep 8, 2015 at 20:16
  • they suggest SE have a hierarchy and our website is below Sep 8, 2015 at 20:58
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    Sounds like your "mates" are a bunch of hotshot-wannabe programmers who think they're above Super User. So much so that they end up asking all their questions that are on-topic for Super User on Stack Overflow, and then they either get closed or migrated (or answered anyway, because so many questions on SO fall through the cracks). Your friends have no idea what they're talking about. They're probably the same people who beg for help when they have an issue with a compiler or a build script or a server process. We have a lot of knowledge here on Super User that most on other sites lack. Sep 8, 2015 at 20:59
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    Just show them the stats: stackexchange.com/sites#traffic and this quote from the main SE page Expert communities. Each of our 149 communities is built by people passionate about a focused topic. Focused topics is the key there. There is no hierarchy. Sep 8, 2015 at 20:59
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    Ignore your "friends" who claim that there's some kind of hierarchy or that Super User is a second-class citizen. These are exactly the toxic kind of people who you should not be listening to. They are actively harmful to the community by trying to divide it and establish superiority over others. In fact, they're just doing this to compensate for the fact that there are huge gaps in their knowledge, and they're afraid to admit their weakness. Sep 8, 2015 at 21:01
  • i appreaciate all your comments and that is what i think, and im really really sorry for my broken english thats why sometimes i cant express what i feel, just they do a lot of blabla, and im not a robot, im proud to belong here and with every question yours or mine i grow up, ive learned here more than a years at the university. i know ive started a topic based in my feels and judge as emo, but im tired to be pointed because im not code fanatic. Sep 8, 2015 at 21:09
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    @Twisty is officially my personal Broken-English/English translator ;) Sep 9, 2015 at 16:47
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    @FranciscoTapia You obviously have an appetite for learning; why not get to see your own words in good grammatical form and get some personal English training in the process? :) Sep 9, 2015 at 16:50
  • i'll do promise. Sep 10, 2015 at 19:36

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The community is what you make of it and is a matter of personal preference. If you are more at home in one community and find another to be unwelcoming or "not a good fit" for you then it should not matter what other people say.

I could be an active contributing member on several SE sites. Gaming, Android or Worldbuilding are three sites that resonate well with my interests, but if I have an actual real problem then 9 times out of 10 the place that I'll find the actual answers will be in the archives of this site or with our friendly regulars in chat.

I do often get answers from sites such as Stack Overflow, but have rarely needed to ask a question there as my needs are usually simple and already asked. I lack a lot of the "deeper" knowledge to answer the more detailed questions that they get on 'Overflow, mainly because of my generalist nature. I can be classed as an intermediate/power user in several fields of computing but never a specialist.

But that's not a bad thing, I personally like to think that SU is more for the keen system generalist. We cater for pretty much anything you can do with a computer without specialising in one OS, or being a programmer, or being a systems administrator, or having your entire job focus around one specific field. If you only care about Ubuntu, then fine we have a site for that, but if you like both Ubuntu and Windows and Apple you either need us here or you have to get comfortable in two or three distinct communities.

I can bang together a spreadsheet to calculate your taxes and I'm not afraid to dabble in a bit of light Python programming to query an SQL database to make my job easier or even setting up a Raspberry Pi to cross-compile code for a microcontroller. A lot of the how to do this came from a variety of sources across disciplines and I've seen something on almost every SE site that I found interesting or useful, but the centre point for me has always ended up back here on Super User.

While we have specifically excluded several types of computing questions (such as "real" programming, tablets and phones) we are more inclusive than most sites and cater to people who like to use computers and get the most from them.

There is no site that is better for everyone, only a site that is better for you.

The people who suggest that SE has a heirarchy are the same elitists who think that Mathematics is the only "pure" field of endeavour, what they fail to understand is that in order to see the wider picture or do useful things with that knowledge then sometimes you actually need to pull up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.

enter image description here From xkcd: https://xkcd.com/435

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  • Oops, posted after a close.... how did I manage that?
    – Mokubai Mod
    Sep 8, 2015 at 21:04
  • An excellent (meta-)question — you should ask that on Meta! :-)  P.S. While I know we prefer to use i.stack.imgur URLs, you might want to reference the source (xkcd.com/435) for the cartoon, if only to obey the anti-plagiarism rules. Sep 8, 2015 at 21:57
  • @Scott Whoops, and after I posted about linking your sources only a short while ago :S
    – Mokubai Mod
    Sep 8, 2015 at 22:01
  • thanks to all comunnity for answers, i think maybe they only want to make me pissed off, and im a kiddo sometimes, ill get over because we are great here, and i think i belongs here too. greetings and peace. Sep 9, 2015 at 12:38
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    @FranciscoTapia That is often the case. If people find you are easily "baited" into arguing about it and need to defend yourself then a certain kind of person will do that more rather than less.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Sep 9, 2015 at 18:30
  • hehe ye, prolly my friends are trolling me and my baiting lvl protection still being too low. ;) Sep 9, 2015 at 18:32
  • @Mokubai There's a short grace period in which you can post an answer you were already working even though the question is already closed.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Sep 10, 2015 at 4:48

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