The GQ description says GQ is only for factual questions.
The CS description says its for any posts about art, culture, leisure, or entertainment. (Or some list to that effect, anyway.)
But what about a factual question about art, culture, leisure, or entertainment?
Should the descriptions be read as giving permissions? In that case, I guess such a question could go in either board.
Should the descriptions be read as giving requirements? In that case, there are incompatible requirements on a factual question about art, culture, leisure or entertainment: It both must go in GQ, and must go in CS, and can’t go in both.
This doesn’t matter. I just noticed it as a result of some discussion on the “death metal drummers” thread in GQ.
I always unreflectively assumed that any post appropriate to CS by its description should go into CS, whether its a factual question or some other kind of post. But now I’m not so sure…
I’m not a mod, but the way I’ve heard it explained is that Cafe Society is the only real topical forum, as opposed to the others, which are categorized by type of question. As such, it overlaps with some of the other forums like GQ and IMHO.
Since Cafe Society was created to be a place to collect threads about the creative arts and entertainment, if it deals with music, fine arts, cooking, or the other main CS topics, it should go into CS, even if it is a factual question or seeking personal opinions.
So yes, there is an ambiguity, and there are always grey areas between forums anyway, but if it is about arts and entertainment, generally it goes into Cafe Society. If you guess wrong on a debatable call, the mods are pretty happy to move it for you.
Rules aside, the CS crowd is different from the GQ one. If it’s something pop-culturish/cooking/or whatever you’re probably going to get more and better answers there. If one day they opened a “Compheads.Bin” forum, you would again probably be better to ask computer questions there than in GQ.
I just woke up to a “reported post from the SDMB” where an alert reader suggested I move that from GQ to CS. Since I’m on my first cup of coffee, I haven’t done anything yet. Still thinking.
I’d say that I(personally) move 99/100 of those types to Cafe Society.
Historical perspective: When we first started forums, Cecil thought there was only need for two: Comments on Cecil’s Columns and Other. We knew that wouldn’t work, but we also knew that traditional categories (like history, geography, physics, medicine) don’t do it either. Most of the questions and discussions we get don’t fit those categories.
So, we started pretty much based on the type of discussion, and then things grew from there. Cafe Society was the only exception: there were so many questions in GQ and debates in GD and comments in IMHO about TV, movies, etc that we decided to start one forum based on topic. Hence, CS was born.
Yes, there was some ambiguity. Heck, there’s lots of cases of ambiguity between MPSIMS and IMHO, f’rinstance. Or between GD and GQ. There’s always gonna be a little room for marginal error: that’s one reason that moderators don’t get too concerned about which forum something is posted in. (Exception: if someone is consistently, deliberately posting in the wrong forums, that’s a symptom of jerkdom.)
So, basically, don’t sweat it. Consistency is in the little mind of hobgoblins.