Essential Meta Question 2: Who is this site for and what is on/off-topic?

Question

I've been reading The 7 Essential Meta Questions and #2 is about who the site is for and what is on- or off-topic for the site. This will serve as the basis of the documentation for the site, in particular the listing of what is on topic that is currently pretty sparse compared to say StackOverflow's page.

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Comments

Please forget that obsolete blog post and read [The Real Essential Questions of Every Beta](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/223674/the-real-essential-questions-of-every-beta) instead. (Yes, [we've asked SE to link it instead of the blog post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/201776/could-we-update-the-7-essential-meta-questions-blog-post-or-not-link-it-promi)).

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What's on/off-topic should be discussed with a separate meta thread for each topic of contention, preferably with an example of a debatable question. Shoving this into a single thread gets very messy, with important discussion lots in comments and no way for people to keep track of the issues they care about. So I am voting to close this question as too broad.

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Nice find. This is my first private beta, so I'm still learning the ropes.

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Everything related to open science is on-topic, unless something is voted/decided to be off-topic. General SE rules apply.

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Actually, you should split this up into specific meta posts.

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