Should we modify the Tour and Ask a Question pages to reflect our current scope?

Question

Although we are titled "Quantum Computing Stack Exchange", from my experience we tend to accommodate almost all questions about quantum information theory. That's fair, but in the future, that might lead to controversies related to the scope of the site. I'd suggest that we restrict ourselves to this - "quantum computing" and "quantum information" and not stretch the scope to all of "quantum" as suggested here and here. Honestly speaking, our community is not geared to deal with generic questions about say "quantum mechanics", "quantum field theory", "quantum gravity" or "quantum foundations" (of course, those QM, QFT or QG questions which are directly related to "quantum computing" or "quantum information" may still be entertained). They belong to Physics SE.

Speaking of which, I noticed that our Tour page says:

Quantum Computing Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for engineers, scientists, programmers, and computing professionals interested in quantum computing. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about quantum computing.

Maybe we should change that to:

Quantum Computing Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for engineers, scientists, programmers, and computing professionals interested in quantum computing and quantum information. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about quantum computing and quantum information.

The Ask about... section says:

• Specific issues with quantum computing
• Real problems or questions that you’ve encountered

Change that to:

• Specific issues with quantum computing or quantum information
• Real problems or questions that you’ve encountered

The Don't ask about... section says:

• Anything not directly related to quantum computing
• Questions that are primarily opinion-based
• Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer

Change that to:

• Anything not directly related to quantum computing or quantum information
• Questions that are primarily opinion-based
• Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer

The site moderators can make all the above changes by themselves.

However, for modifying the How to Ask section on the Ask a Question page, to show "quantum computing or quantum information" instead of just "quantum computing" we'll need help from the Community Managers or the site's developers. Hopefully, if we receive a positive response to this post, we can request them to make these changes.

Edit:

I just noticed that even the Why should this question be closed? menu that pops up when we click on close option (for any question) has a sentence like:

This question does not appear to be about quantum computing, within the scope defined in the help center.

We might want to change that to:

This question does not appear to be about quantum computing or quantum information, within the scope defined in the help center.

This might also require assistance from the community managers or site developers.

Answer 1

I wholeheartedly agree.

I don't think it's possible to have a well-defined distinction between quantum information questions that are of relevance for QC and those that are not.

On the other hand, I also strongly disagree with accepting all questions about quantum mechanics, as these are very much on-topic on physics.SE (I mean, quantum-mechanics is literally the top tag on physics.SE). To accept all questions about QM indiscriminately would just lead to an unnecessary amount of duplication. Strongly related questions spread among multiple sites are a pain, for one, because you lose all the advantages provided by the Linked and Related lists, and it is often harder to track them down.

Even limiting ourselves to quantum information topics, there will still be a significant amount of overlap with physics.SE, as quantum information questions are just as on-topic there as they are here. I don't think this is avoidable, but also not so bad, and this sort of thing is nowadays pretty common among SE sites.

Of course, the line between "quantum information topics" and more general "quantum mechanics topics" is also somewhat fuzzy, but hopefully most cases will be easily classified as one or the other, and the edge cases will just be dealt with on a case per case basis.