Welcome to Codidact Meta!
Codidact Meta is the "town hall" (meta-discussion site) for the Codidact community network and the Codidact software. Whether you have bug reports or feature requests, support questions or rule discussions that touch the whole network – this is the site for you.
Let's clarify rules on crossposting
I received a mod warning on https://powerusers.codidact.com/warning and I am now confused about some rules on Codidact. In this meta question, I'll focus on the rules around crossposting, e.g. posting the same question on both Codidact and Stack Exchange.
I read on Post on Stack Exchange and Codidact that crossposting is allowed. I was not aware of any other rules but the mod warning I received today seems to introduce some rules on crossposting:
- don't submit too many crossposts (no idea if that means 1/week, 1/day or 10/day)
- must link to the other posts
- wait some time before crossposting (i.e., don't post the same question on two sides at the same time)
Questions:
- Is this list of conditions correct and comprehensive?
- Do these conditions apply to all Codidact sites?
- Can someone clarify how many crossposts are allowed (e.g. how many crossposts per day) and how much time one must wait before crossposting (e.g., if one posts a question on Stack Exchange, how long does one have to wait before being authorized to post the same question on Codidact)?
Part of the mod message about crossposts.
Hello,
You have posted a large number of questions that are cut-and-paste copies of questions from other sites such as Reddit and Stack Exchange. These questions do not link to the other posts, nor have you edited them to improve them based on what you have learned elsewhere. In some cases, you have cross-posted the same question to multiple sites at the same time. Moderators have asked you to change this behavior but you have not.
There are several issues here:
This kind of cross-posting wastes the time of people answering the question. They won't know that you already got an answer on Reddit or that discussion on SE led you to edit the question there. This is disrespectful of our community members' time and attention.
Excessive copy-pasting from elsewhere makes Codidact look like a scraper site. We're not.
The sheer *volume* of these crossposts takes attention away from other questions.
This must stop.
For transparency, here is the entire mod message, but let's focus solely on crossposts in this meta question. E.g., let's ignore the quality debate.
Hello,This message is from the Codidact community team.
You have posted a large number of questions that are cut-and-paste copies of questions from other sites such as Reddit and Stack Exchange. These questions do not link to the other posts, nor have you edited them to improve them based on what you have learned elsewhere. In some cases, you have cross-posted the same question to multiple sites at the same time. Moderators have asked you to change this behavior but you have not.
There are several issues here:
-
This kind of cross-posting wastes the time of people answering the question. They won't know that you already got an answer on Reddit or that discussion on SE led you to edit the question there. This is disrespectful of our community members' time and attention.
-
Excessive copy-pasting from elsewhere makes Codidact look like a scraper site. We're not.
-
The sheer volume of these crossposts takes attention away from other questions.
This must stop.
In addition, the quality of the questions is often low, with little explanation and screenshots in place of text. We'd like you to slow down and focus on quality.
This doesn't mean you can never ask a question you've asked elsewhere. But do it one site at a time, link to the prior versions, and thoughtfully incorporate what you learned when you write the new question here. Share what you've tried already, just like if you had consulted the documentation or used a published example, and incorporate it. When you post a question on Codidact that you have previously asked somewhere else, the version on Codidact should be the best version of the question, not a blind copy. Slow down and be mindful of the other members of the community.
We are revoking the Participate Everywhere ability on your account across the network. This imposes a rate limit on questions. When you have enough positive activity to demonstrate that you have improved, you will re-earn the ability.
We are also reviewing your activity and expect to delete many of these questions. This will be a human review, not a SQL query, so it will not be instantaneous.
We welcome your participation with original quality content and hope you will also try answering other people's questions. A community has its best shot at success when people work together toward a shared goal -- asking, answering, editing, and making Codidact the best place it can be.
If you have questions about this message, you can send email to [email protected].
This is a formal warning from the moderation team. In the event of continued violations of the site rules, your account may be suspended. If you have any questions regarding the site rules, you can ask them in the Meta category of this site or on meta.codidact.com. If you have any questions about this warning or would like to dispute it, contact us.
☐ I have read this warning and will follow the rules from now on.
Our communities get to set their own rules for acceptable content, within our basic rules like the Code of Conduct and a …
3mo ago
On Codidact, the individual sites are more autonomous than on other platforms. What you ask is therefore more of an iss …
3mo ago
It turns out each site has their own policies about crossposts: - Cooking: (When) is cross-posting ok? - Power Users …
2mo ago
> I received a mod warning on `powerusers.codidact.com`, so I am, now, confused about some rules on Codidact. In this me …
3mo ago
4 answers
The following users marked this post as Official Post:
| User | Comment | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Monica Cellio | (no comment) | Dec 4, 2025 at 15:31 |
Our communities get to set their own rules for acceptable content, within our basic rules like the Code of Conduct and attribution. Everyone understands that newcomers don't start off knowing all of the local norms. It's important to pay attention to community feedback to learn these norms and adjust one's participation accordingly. Community feedback comes in many forms, including votes, comments, meta posts, edits, and direct communication from moderators.
If you're getting the same feedback over and over, then there's probably a disconnect. You can adjust what you're doing, or ask for help if you're stumped (directly or on meta) -- or you can forge ahead anyway and keep doing the same things. It's this last case that's a problem for a community. And it's not just about one participant; this sort of thing leads to a main Q&A page where half the questions are massively downvoted. It's frustrating for all involved, the broader community and the person who's not meshing with community expectations.
I had forgotten about the five-year-old Meta post you linked to. At the time, we thought importing content from SE communities would help those communities carry on here on Codidact. That did not work out the way we hoped, and a couple years later we made another post about cross-posting, currently +33/-0. I'm sorry this was not more discoverable and I will try to figure out how to make our evolving conventions easier to find. From that post:
We ask that you review what you're copying and see if you can make it better here -- have you learned anything since you asked it on SE, or are there any other updates that would help people answer you? Can you help to make the newest copy, the one you post here, also the best copy of that question on the Internet? [...]
Our earliest communities did large-scale imports from SE. [...] Most people never made the jump from SE to here, and to visitors we looked like a scraper site. Much later, two of the three communities that did large imports deleted a lot of that imported content. We're reluctant to do large-scale imports on this network now, because they don't seem to help the people who are here.
There are no hard-and-fast rules about volume/frequency; as with the other issue, you should be guided by community norms. The system will let you post more than most communities would consider polite, and maybe we need to revisit those rate limits. Even with just the Participate ability, the one that everybody gets automatically, you can post three questions per 24 hours, which is a lot (here, now). It's not a ban but a limit. Most of our communities (including Power Users) also grant Participate Everywhere automatically, lifting that rate limit, because we thought that would help the people building new Q&A communities to bootstrap. Some communities have since changed this setting, and maybe more will in the future.
Moderators (and admins) can suspend or revoke individual abilities; we designed it this way intentionally, so that smaller course corrections (like slowing down) are possible without blunt and public tools like account suspensions. We want you to participate constructively and with less frustration; the private message was meant to help you do this, not to shame.
2 comment threads
On Codidact, the individual sites are more autonomous than on other platforms. What you ask is therefore more of an issue for each individual site.
However, this issue is nothing new and has been discussed on the Power Users and other sites. I remember a discussion about it quite a while ago. The strong consensus was that the users disliked your frequent crossposts. I think it was decided that crossposts should at least be listed.
You got regular downvotes due to crossposts. Your solution was to stop listing them, even though that is against the rules. After that, Sam Carter would regularly add links to the crossposts, and then you'd get more downvotes.
When you got a downvote with a comment specifically stating it was for crossposting, your response was "Get used to it.".
That was 7 months ago. Since then you've accumulated lots of downvotes, with your rep on Power Users currently -154. The users are strongly saying they don't like what you're doing, but you don't seem to have changed anything.
So in short, you've been knowingly abusing sites here, got clear feedback that it was not appreciated, and responded with a "Screw you" attitude. You very rarely contribute anything positive. You've been a help vampire. Feigning surprise when the hammer finally comes down is rather disingenuous in my opinion.
To actually answer the question, I agree with everything in the mod message you received. Other than that, I'm not interested in engaging with a rules lawyer on exactly how much bad behavior someone can get away with. Start by trying to be a good citizen, consider the other users and the overall health of the site you post on, and actually make a few positive contributions instead of grabbing all you can and running away. Once you do that, we can get into the finer points of etiquette here, but then we probably won't need to.
References
- Answer by Sam Carter in Power Users meta about why crossposts are bad. The users overwhelmingly agreed with 6 upvotes and 0 downvotes (3 Dec 2025).
It turns out each site has their own policies about crossposts:
- Cooking: (When) is cross-posting ok?
- Power Users]: Let's clarify rules on crossposting for Codidact Power Users
- Software: What is the policy regarding cross-posting here and on StackOverflow?
0 comment threads
I received a mod warning on
powerusers.codidact.com, so I am, now, confused about some rules on Codidact. In this meta question, I'll focus on the rules around crossposting; e.g. posting the same question on both Codidact and Stack Exchange.
I believe that you have focussed too much on one, specific, aspect of the notice, for although your crossposts are the most notable, and easiest-to-criticise, aspect of your posts, they are far from the sole contributor. However, they because they are easiest to criticise, I shall attempt to elaborate on what I see as why they are problematic. To demonstrate best, consider two examples:
What The Problem Is
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.Conducted Diagnosis
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.My Environment
#!/usr/bin/env pwsh Get-ComputerInfo | Select-Object -Property @('OsName', 'OsBuildNumber') | Format-ListOsName : Microsoft Windows 11 Enterprise N OsBuildNumber : 27975Reposts
I have tried to provide everything in this question. However, most questions on Codidact require some time to be answered. Additionally, because I also frequent some other brilliant communities, whose focusses are more niche, I have reposted parts of this question there. In case their responses are useful, for reference, they are:
“
Topic Title” atreddit.com/r/forum/comment/placeholder
This section would include what is special about this.“
Lorem Ipsum” atexample.com“
Placeholder Title” atstackoverflow.com/a/placeholder“
Amazing Placeholder” atandroid.stackexchange.com/a/placeholder
〃“
Topic Title” atexample.com“
Topic Placeholder Title” atexample.com
Some would continue to consider those reposts to be an annoyance. However, you would be able to justify their usage, and probably get a well-received Meta post arguing your position. As it is, you do yourself no favours, even outside of the reposts, but especially if they comprise 90 % of your post:
-
-
...and, if
languages.codidact.com/users/53566is also you (as appears so), you render the comment section nigh unusable with them: [1]
This takes us onto the next problem. You are, knowingly, not bothering to include the minimum data required for anyone to answer, because you rarely include the version of the server software in use, a reference project (when applicable), your local environment (browser and/or OS), and what you have tried thus far. Consider the original advice:
You have posted a large number of questions that are cut-and-paste copies of questions from other sites such as Reddit and Stack Exchange. These questions do not link to the other posts, nor have you edited them to improve them based on what you have learned elsewhere.
In addition, the quality of the questions is often low, with little explanation and screenshots in place of text. We'd like you to slow down and focus on quality.
This doesn't mean you can never ask a question you've asked elsewhere. But do it one site at a time, link to the prior versions, and thoughtfully incorporate what you learned when you write the new question here.
What you treat Codidact as is your personal scratchboard. If you want that, learn to host QPixel yourself. [3] That is not the purpose of Codidact.
2 comment threads
1 comment thread