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Cross posting tends to be frowned upon on SE sites. I recently had a flag declined for "flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention" on this question. If flags are not desired, what is the appropriate process to handle a cross posted question on this site?

Here is the meta.SE discussion on cross-posting for reference, but that doesn't really cover what to do after a question has already been post to multiple sites.

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  • Returning the question: what do you think a moderator should have done with the question when receiving your flag, what course of action were you expecting ? (BTW thanks for opening the talk)
    – Tensibai
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 22:21
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    @Tensibai few options I can think of. Comment from the mod pointing to the SE policy against cross posting and asking them to voluntarily delete one of them. Or deciding which site is the better fit for the question and closing it on the other site. Could also look at where the active conversation is happening and close the question on other sites.
    – BMitch
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 22:28

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Mostly for reference: What to do with cross-site duplicates?

Now according to your comment (split on 3 points to address all of them):

  • Comment from the mod pointing to the SE policy against cross posting and asking them to voluntarily delete one of them.

    You already did it, mods are here to be exception handling for things the community can't solve alone or to enforce the community decisions. There's no reason to pile up another comment after yours which is absolutely clear.

  • Or deciding which site is the better fit for the question and closing it on the other site.

    We're mod on only one site (well usually, some are mods on multiples sites), on others we're just users as you, as per the reference above there's no real reason to close a question when it is on topic on both. (cross posting is not a close reason).

  • Could also look at where the active conversation is happening and close the question on other sites.

    Same as above, I don't see any reason to close one over the other, leaving a comment if you're so inclined to point to another site where there's an answer is also ok. (Or as you did, answer on both site)

For the specific question, if it was necessary to something I'd vote to migrate the SO version to Devops.Se to be closed as duplicate.

This is my personnal point of view on the subject and in no way a hard binding. If the community disagree I'll review my actions on this kind of flags accordingly.

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  • The meta link is helpful, thanks! There's a Teacher Lounge to ping mods from other sites to work out cross-site issues (I'm a mod on another site and just a user here :) ). I feel dirty posting the same answer to the same question on two sites, hence my flag. Still trying to internally reconcile the two meta posts, one saying "don't cross post", and the other saying "but if you do, we'll probably leave it".
    – BMitch
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 22:56
  • I think the main idea is that's not an offense per se, if someone insist in cross posting after a warning then sure it worth a flag, but first course is as you did, leave a comment to let the person know that's not really appropriate
    – Tensibai
    Commented Jul 25, 2018 at 5:11

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