Esperanto is a language constructed by Mr Zamenhof in the 19th century, and actually spoken by around two million people.
It also has its own Stack Exchange site already.
Should questions about Esperanto be on-topic here?
While questions about Esperanto wouldn't be off topic, they'd probably get a better answer on their existing dedicated site.
It's analogous to someone asking about a problem they were having developing a Wordpress plugin on Stack Overflow, when there is a site dedicated to that topic.
You'd get an answer, and probably a good one, on Stack Overflow, but the community on the Wordpress site are dedicated to answering just Wordpress questions and therefore should be able to give you a better answer.
So, I wouldn't explicitly ban questions about Esperanto, but I would point users at the dedicated site instead.
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The analogy is a bit misleading because there are questions about problems users have during the development of a plugin that are borderline to be questions for Stack Overflow (for example, a question asking what
if (!is_active_sidebar('sidebar-2') && !is_active_sidebar('sidebar-3')) { return; }returns to the calling function). – kiamlaluno Feb 7 '18 at 12:11 -
@kiamlaluno You can apply other analogies as well, such as Code Review questions; some questions asking for code review on SO are on-topic and best asked there, others are off-topic there and on Code Review, others are off-topic there and on-topic at Code Review... it really depends on the question. Likewise there is precedent for this exact situation between IPS.SE and RPG.SE; RPG.SE has explicitly decided they want to be the expert community for IPS questions that relate to playing RPGs (table top, obviously, not digital). So IPS sends those folks to RPG when possible/prudent. – TylerH Oct 4 '18 at 14:45
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@TylerH Yes, it depends from the question. I am just saying the example used in this answer doesn't make a good analogy. I would rather avoid making an analogy with programming questions, but that is just me, I guess. – kiamlaluno Oct 4 '18 at 14:54
Just because another site for a topic exists doesn’t mean a question can’t still be on-topic here. The two sites are intended for two different but partially overlapping audiences. They will have two different general flavours and are likely to produce different sets of answers to the same question.
I imagine the Esperanto site will answer questions about Esperanto from the (spoken) Esperanto point of view: it works this way in this language because A and it doesn’t work that way because C and D.
I imagine this site will answer questions from a more conceptional or comparative direction: it was designed this way because of A and the similarity to X, while using C would have violated the principle D.
I suggest the following guideline:
If the question would be acceptable here after replacing all instances of and references to Esperanto with <insert random other conlang name here>, it should be considered on topic.
If not, it should be closed (but we can point towards the Esperanto site).
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1If it's a question that would belong on Esperanto Language rather than here, perhaps it should be migrated (with the agreement of the Esperanto mods), rather than just closed with a "go post there" note. – Jeff Zeitlin Mar 13 '18 at 17:37
