up vote 15 down vote favorite
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I thought about it again, and maybe if we can apply a good tagging system there would be a chance that those three proposals could live together on the same SE site and would not compete about the same users: Artificial Intelligence & Robotics, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics (NLP/CL).

If the majority thinks this is a good idea we probably should do the merge before one of the proposals goes to beta and change the name accordingly. In that case I suggest we rename the merged proposal to a name that is a common ground for all three proposals and change the description to: Proposed Q&A site for students, researchers and industry professionals in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computational Linguistics and Robotics to include all communities.

One important point that such a merged site is still attractive for experts from the three more narrow proposals must be that the tagging of the questions is very good (e.g. a ML, NLP/CL or Robotics tag for all questions in the respective area plus the more specific ones so that via favourite/ignored tags the page can be used as if we would have the three different proposals for the people who prefer it that way). So we would have to have some good taxonomists on the site, but I'm optimistic that this is possible.

Please give me your thoughts about merging those three proposals and if nothing crucial stands against it how we can initialize a merge (like it was done etc. for the "Great Outdoors" proposal with Mountaineering, Hiking, Climbing etc. so that the committers are transferred to the unified proposal and the others are deleted).

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I generally agree, but would a second pass at a previously failed name be a problem? Presumably it'd aim to cover all AI - symbolic, sub-symbolic, strong, weak, embodied, statistical, empirical, etc? MSc courses often use 'Intelligent Systems', 'Computational Intelligence', etc. McCarthy preferred CI over AI, and that's what the IEEE uses. I think I'd go for CI but am new to SE so will just throw it in as an idea. – Graham Jones Jan 16 at 7:43
This is a good idea. I support Computational Intelligence as the unifying moniker. – Dave Clarke Jan 17 at 12:39
I also like Computational Intelligence, though it seems to be a specific subfield of AI, so maybe we would be better off with a more 'abstract' name like Merlins suggestion "StackBot". – eowl Jan 17 at 15:19
From what I recall, a general AI stackexchange site proposed a while ago didn't have a good beta and was closed. So while in principle, I agree with merging the above topics, I'm worried that the generality may lead to lower participation. If the merger does happen though, I second the vote for Computational Intelligence as the moniker for the site. "StackBot" is too undescriptive. – Sid Jan 18 at 13:52
I also was against such merge at first with the same argument, and would be still statisfied if those sites would live on their own. The question is if they will draw enough users on their own and if they will ever reach beta and survive it, thats why I asked for oppinions about this merge. Also there might be significant overlap between those topics, so another question is, if the sites would end up competing about the same users in which case it would probably be convenient to merge them before that happens. With a good tagging system it can be possible to have a successful site I think. Or? – eowl Jan 18 at 14:38
[status-deferred] until one of the CS communities stands up united to do this. See my answer below. – Robert Cartaino♦ Feb 6 at 21:57
@RobertCartaino I deeply protest against cutting stats.SE from this discussion. – mbq Feb 16 at 21:52
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4 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Absolultely!!! That was the intention of this proposal in the first place.

I do think that Artificial Intelligence is the most commonly recognized name although if merging this into a Stack Exhange site how about

StackBot

A bot is the old term for a computational agent.

Names aside, a merger would be good and proposals for names are welcome ... if we could get @betamoo to come aboard before the ML beta that would help matters greatly ... I'm worried that ML doesn't have the momentum to pass the strict requirements to be launched fully.

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that's catchy! i like StackBot, a cachy name is a key to get more users :). betamoo doesn't seem to be active on Area51 (last seen Mar 17 '11), hopefully he does see this thread. I would be also interested to see, what @percent20 says about this. – eowl Jan 17 at 15:11
do you know, what the procedure to initialize the merge would be? and should we rename one of the proposals, or create a new one with the correct name and merge the others into that one? – eowl Jan 17 at 15:21
I've flagged this to a moderator in a final act of desperation. I realize that it is very bad practice but without some more senior input these topics will never see light of day on stack exhange. kneels humbly in penitence to the moderators – Merlin Jan 17 at 19:50
I agree - as the original creators of the proposals don't seem to be very active on Area51 it looks as we could use "some help from above" to convert our effort into actions. – eowl Jan 18 at 0:17
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up vote 4 down vote

What kind of questions can I ask here?

[SITENAME] is for students, researchers and industry professionals involved in developing intelligent computer programs. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computer Audition
  • Computer Vision
  • Expert Systems
  • Information Extraction
  • Knowledge Representation
  • Machine Learning
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Robotics

Questions you ask should be specific, answerable and based on actual problems that you face. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much. Search to see if your question is already answered somewhere else (e.g. Wikipedia) before asking a question and include what you have already tried and didn't work. Try to make your question interesting for others by providing some background knowledge.

If you want to ask Questions about the site itself — please ask on meta instead.

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what do you think of such a scope description of the site? – eowl Jan 18 at 2:30
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Excellent list. I also think "metaheuristic optimisation" and "neat AI/scruffy AI" should be listed (certainly m.o. as it covers a range of mostly stochastic optimisation algorithms that may not be picked up on otherwise). The neat/scruffy AI term may also catch the eye of people familiar with the different 'camps' of AI/CI. – Graham Jones Jan 18 at 12:01
This is more or less what the AI+R proposal was ... perhaps a little more detailed but essentially captures the same intent. It's good to see this in a fuller form – Merlin Jan 18 at 14:25
I would use the term Information Retrieval, not just extraction, as IR is becoming a common abbreviation in NLP – Dan O'Day Feb 22 at 15:55
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up vote 0 down vote

I guess machine learning is going to beta today/tomorrow, so this might be the last chance to ask about this merge again, which has been repeatedly asked for by different people. I'm going to flag this thread for moderator review again, hopefully we get an answer.

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up vote 0 down vote

Creating a combined "Computer Science" site has been attempted on many occasions. The larger community seems to want it, but it is almost always met with contempt and disdain by those participating in the individual subjects.

Area 51 does not handle this very well, so we've been going forward with these individual sites (Cryptography, Computational Science, CSTheory (merge rejected), AI (closed), and now Machine Learning) until one of the Computer Science communities stands up and has a cohesive conversation and comes to a consensus about creating a more comprehensive Computer Science site.

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