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I recently noticed a question that was asked by the same user, the exact same content, at the same time (within minutes) across two Stack Exchange sites - Stack Overflow and Geographic Information Systems.

In trying to Flag as duplicate, the interface only allows searching or using an id of the same Stack Exchange site, not across another.

So my question is:

Is posting the same question across multiple stacks something that ought to be flagged, or is that fine? If one is answered, and the other isn't, are we incentivizing cross-posting questions without cross-closing answers?

If we should discourage cross-posting duplicates, where would we propose that kind of change?

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Cross posting is not allowed.

Of course if different people have posted similar questions on different sites, that's not a problem. It's just that we don't want single individuals to post the same question in multiple places, we want them to spend the time to determine which site would be best for their question and ask it only there.

Custom flag one of the posts. Explain the situation and say it's a cross site duplicate and should be migrated to the other site or deleted. If it's migrated it can be closed as a duplicate.

If one has already been answered then it's probably best to flag the other one, assuming that the question is on topic on both sites.

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    It's not that your answer is wrong, per se, but I'd just mention that there are cases where the same (or very similar) questions can exist on two sites without warranting any sort of action (e.g. posted by different people, being customized for the specific sites, etc)... My concern is that someone reading this answer and nothing else would think that any duplicate questions between sites are not allowed.
    – Catija
    Commented Mar 25 at 19:21
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    @Catija Thanks for the feedback, I've added another paragraph to clarify.
    – Robert Longson
    Commented Mar 25 at 20:11
  • Thanks @RobertLongson for your response on how to actually handle the flagging.
    – Mike Fiedler
    Commented Mar 26 at 16:34

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