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I was dragged to this site by hot network question concerning one of Tolkien's Elvish languages. I just want to bring to note that there is now a dedicated conlang site in public beta at https://conlang.stackexchange.com/.

I don't think that this site will make questions about artificial languages (or artlangs) used in science fiction and fantasy off-topic here, it is just another option where to ask such questions.

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    Yep, it definitely won't affect topicality considerations for this site. It's a good resource for SFF people to know about though. Please consider making a Community Ad for Conlang.SE, which will get more attention than this separate meta.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Apr 27, 2018 at 15:11
  • If it takes off, we might have a review of whether to keep them on-topic here.
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 27, 2018 at 19:20
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    Why? We don't just make all movies and tv related questions off-topic because there's a stack that covers them. Nor do that with manga/anime. Something being better suited elsewhere has no bearing on whether it's on topic here.
    – phantom42
    Commented Apr 27, 2018 at 22:00
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    @Valorum: I would be kind of annoyed if we did that. I certainly don't want to see our scope narrow to "Everything to do with SFF, unless it happens to intersect with Arqade, or Anime & Manga, or Literature, or..."
    – Kevin
    Commented Apr 28, 2018 at 4:51
  • @Kevin - Honestly I'm not in the least bit invested in questions about spoken Klingon other than the very narrow perspective of how it applies to the show. The same goes for Tolkien's various made up languages. If ConLang is a success, I honestly think we'd do better to shove all of that over to them.
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 29, 2018 at 20:04
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    @Valorum: So use the tag filter?
    – Kevin
    Commented Apr 29, 2018 at 20:08
  • @Kevin - I'd rather change the scope :-)
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 29, 2018 at 20:13
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    @Valorum: I'm a bit perturbed that your thought process sounds like "SFF's scope should exactly match the things that I personally like to answer." I'm sure that's not what you meant to say, but would you mind providing an actual rationale for this scope change?
    – Kevin
    Commented Apr 29, 2018 at 20:15
  • @Kevin - It's more that I don't think that ConLangs are an especially good match in the first place.
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 29, 2018 at 20:17
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    I don't see why questions about how Elvish works should be any less on-topic than questions about how the Floo Network works.
    – MissMonicaE
    Commented Apr 30, 2018 at 18:09
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    @MissMonicaE our resident super-user likes the clickbait questions that give him the little green +10s ;-). The HNQ can only find so much interest in the history of Elvish languages.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented May 7, 2018 at 5:40

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This isn't really a question and thus can't be "answered" as such, so I thought I'd distill some useful advice from the comments instead.

Conlangs which arise from SFF-related works are on-topic on SFF.SE, while conlangs which arise from other settings, and the construction of new conlangs, are both off-topic here. This was true before Conlang.SE existed, and it is still true now. Adding a new Stack doesn't change anything. However, some questions may get better answers there than here, and vice-versa. For example:

  • Some conlangs have fantastical (magical) properties, and those properties are likely to be off-topic on Conlang.SE because they simply don't exist in the real world. So you should ask about such things on SFF.SE instead.
  • Some writers, like Tolkien, spend a lot of time thinking about the history of their conlangs. Determining the in-universe etymology of words is likely to be on-topic on both sites, I think (it seems like Conlang.SE is still determining its scope). However, SFF.SE is probably better positioned for questions relating to the in-universe culture and history, while Conlang.SE is probably more able to talk about linguistic processes. You may get materially different answers as a result.
  • If you want to ask a deep technical question about the linguistics of a conlang, such as "Is Elvish nominative-accusative or ergative-absolutive?", that is probably on-topic on SFF.SE, but you are far more likely to get a useful answer from Conlang.SE or maybe even Linguistics.SE. On any site, you should show your attempt to solve a question like that and describe in detail the part that has you confused, because otherwise it's just trivia.
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    Good answer. It's useful to remember that although questions can be on-topic on multiple sites (and therefore shouldn't be closed or migrated), one site can still be a better fit than another, depending on the specific type of question.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented May 5, 2018 at 18:25

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