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Proposal: Tor

IT Security already has a rather active tor tag. Questions about the security concerns and technical workings of Tor are on-topic there.

Questions about setting up and configuring Tor already have a home on Superuser, which also has a tor tag.

As far as Tor development questions go, there is oviously Stackoverflow for that, which also has a tor tag already.

Is there really a need for a separate site given that the various questions about Tor are already on topic on other sites in the Stackexchange network?

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  • 3
    Agreed with Terry we already provide tons of answers regarding Tor.
    – Lucas Kauffman
    Sep 17, 2013 at 5:41

3 Answers 3

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I think the question of overlap isn't so relevant as is the question of activity.

I'm sure we all can agree that just about any StackExchange-suitable question there is about Tor is currently in-scope of an existing StackExchange site - most likely one of SOFU or IT Security. However every now and then a subculture grows, within a site or group of sites, which has such a niche interest group, and yet such high volume, that it warrants spawning off a new site of its own. Questions on this new site definitely would be on-topic for one or many other sites, but community built by the new site has a depth of expertise on its specific topic which might otherwise be lost in the noise of a community with broader focus.

This is how we've come to have sites like Unix & Linux, Ask Different, IT Security, etc. Nearly every question on those sites is a suitable question for one of the original trilogy sites, and yet they've spun off thriving and successful communities of their own.

So for something like this, where questions aren't just possibly on-topic for existing sites but already being asked and answered, the deciding factor doesn't so much need to be about whether it has a unique scope that doesn't fit anywhere else. What is relevant though, is to ask whether or not the existing questions across all sites in the network are being asked and answered in such a volume as to support a whole new site.

I don't have access to all the stats myself, but my guess would be probably not.

EDIT

So, I just took a look across several sites for questions tagged .

  • IT Security: 53
  • SuperUser: 41
  • StackOverFlow: 189
  • Unix & Linux: 14
  • ServerFault: 18
  • Ubuntu: 70
  • Apple: 1

So, that's 386 questions with the oldest dating back to 2008 - or about 78 questions per year. Hardly indicative of a self-sustaining community.

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  • Good points, IT Security + SO + SU has a combined 400 questions in tor. I guess this will have to be answered if this site ever gets to beta.
    – Ayrx
    Sep 18, 2013 at 15:45
  • @TerryChia As it would seem now it has.
    – Iszi
    Sep 25, 2013 at 21:09
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I don't necessarily see this as a problem. See, for example Unix.SE. The content there is covered entirely under other SE network sites. To me the value comes in having it all in one place.

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I think that every of this topics has an often used tor tag shows that we need a stackexchange for that.

If someone has a question about tor he has to browse in three different places to find an answer. In addition there is probably a lot of redundancy regarding tor questions at the moment. At first the new stackexchange will of course not reduce it but over time it concentrates more and more at this place.

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