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I'm trying hard to bring in some new users from EASA-land, but most of the questions seem to specifically mention 'FAA regulations', 'what is the [__] in USA', etc, that I feel kinda silly coming up with an EASA-only answer.

I understand most of the user base so far is from the states, but I feel this really keeps a number of Europeans from joining in.

Is this even a problem or am I just seeing too much into this?

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Well, the most obvious answer is to not "feel silly" for asking EASA questions that you can put that answer on!

That is after all, the purpose of having both and .

There are just too many governing bodies to have a more generic question covering a regulation and have multiple answers for all of them.

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    $\begingroup$ +1. Adding new EASA questions that duplicate FAA ones is not a bad thing, in my opinion. $\endgroup$
    – egid
    Feb 8, 2014 at 2:43
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Very much agree with @egid's comment. A question which is essentially the same, but looking for an EASA answer instead of FAA is not a duplicate question. However, I probably discourage people from simply taking every FAA question and making an EASA question. Instead, if the correct answer to both is ultimately the same, then adding an answer to that question pointing out that it is not only the same, but quoting, and linking to, the appropriate EASA regulation would be great. Even if it doesn't get the accepted answer check, it will likely attract some upvotes.

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  • $\begingroup$ I would not add another answer to an FAA question with an EASA answer as that wouldn't answer the actual question. If they are the same, then perhaps a comment saying that on the existing answer could be appropriate, but then people wouldn't find that when searching. I do think that a separate question/answer is appropriate even in this case. $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Feb 9, 2014 at 16:03
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    $\begingroup$ @Lnafziger I think it's a judgment call based on how specifically geared to the US the question was. People often tag questions as faa-regulations simply because if they don't, someone will comment asking which regulatory body they're concerned with. Since they're in the US, they'll put FAA even though they would be interested in hearing information about elsewhere in the world too. Questions can always be retagged to help people find the information. I just don't want people to get the idea that for every FAA question which comes up, they should automatically create an EASA question too. $\endgroup$
    – Bret Copeland
    Feb 9, 2014 at 20:22
  • $\begingroup$ What would be really nice is if StackExchange made it so you could accept multiple answers for any given question. Especially if we could tag one as FAA and another as EASA. Thus allowing for answers from multiple sub-domains. $\endgroup$
    – Jae Carr
    Feb 10, 2014 at 14:59
  • $\begingroup$ @JayCarr Multiple correct answers is essentially what voting gives you. The check mark is generally an indicator of "this is the answer which helped me the most" and not "this is the one right answer and other answers are wrong." Tagging answers is unlikely to ever happen because there's very little justification for the added complexity. $\endgroup$
    – Bret Copeland
    Feb 10, 2014 at 20:10
  • $\begingroup$ @BretCopeland - I respectfully disagree. Though maybe that's just a remnant of my usually using Stack Overflow. The check mark should always mark the most correct answer, which really is the whole point of the Q&A set up. But, unlike computer programming, aviation is a situation where there can be more than one best answer depending on the airspace. Thus more than one answer can be "the most correct", thus we should (ideally) be able to put a check mark on more than one answer. Complex? Yes, but possibly necessary. I don't think it's more than a reasonably intelligent person can handle. $\endgroup$
    – Jae Carr
    Feb 10, 2014 at 20:43
  • $\begingroup$ @JayCarr I think programming is actually a great example of where there isn't always a most correct answer. Regardless of what anyone thinks the check should indicate, in practice it indicates exactly what I said. If you feel very passionate about the feature, feel free to request the feature on meta.stackexchange. As a StackExchange employee, I certainly don't speak for the whole company, but I would say there's around a 99.8% chance it will never happen for a number of reasons - mostly philosophical, not technical. $\endgroup$
    – Bret Copeland
    Feb 10, 2014 at 22:33
  • $\begingroup$ @BretCopeland - Mmm, well, perhaps. But I do recall that the first law of the internet is that if you don't like how a website functions, go make your own ;). I might suggest it on meta, but I would agree that SE seems pretty set on it's current format and, honestly, there's nothing particularly wrong with it. All I'm saying is if I ruled the world it would be different. ;) $\endgroup$
    – Jae Carr
    Feb 10, 2014 at 22:39
  • $\begingroup$ @BretCopeland - Though this does make me think. StackOverflow is geared towards finding solutions to very particular problems a user is facing. This Aviation Exchange has...more of a wiki feel? Am I correct in saying that? I wonder if that's what we're really after here... Maybe that's worth discussing, because I think if someone is asking a very particular question about their current situation, a single check mark really ought to suffice. $\endgroup$
    – Jae Carr
    Feb 10, 2014 at 22:43
  • $\begingroup$ @JayCarr I don't think aviation has any more of a wiki feel than the average SE site. SE lives in an area that is between forum and wiki with some overlap of both. There have been blog posts about it if you're interested. There is a lot of inherent value in asking the person who asked the question, "which answer did you find most useful?" $\endgroup$
    – Bret Copeland
    Feb 11, 2014 at 3:56
  • $\begingroup$ @JayCarr I feel that if a question can have multiple correct answers, then it is too broad and should be made more specific. The "very particular" question is indeed what we should be targeting here. This is why I suggested asking a second question if someone is wondering how a particular FAA themed question applies with the EASA. Rather than accepting multiple answers, they should be different questions (which of course get their own answers). $\endgroup$
    – Lnafziger
    Feb 13, 2014 at 6:28

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