Q:

Are questions about generalized geodesics suitable for GIS despite being off-topic?

I recently asked Which algorithms can be used to generate a euclidean embedding for a manifold given a pairwise distance matrix of geodesics? at Stack Overflow, and @EvgenyPogrebnyak indicated that I might have more success at GIS, even though the question seems to be off-topic.
From my perspective, his primary argument is that even though the question is probably off-topic, the GIS community are precisely the people most likely to be able to answer it effectively, hence the question might not be unwelcome. This leaves me with three questions for Meta GIS SE:

Are questions about geodesics on arbitrary manifolds close enough to the realm of geodesy to be on-topic?
Are questions the GIS community might welcome allowed, despite technically being off-topic?
Would Which algorithms can be used to generate a euclidean embedding for a manifold given a pairwise distance matrix of geodesics? be welcome in the GIS community?

A:

We have not had a large volume of geodesy questions here but those that have been asked are usually answered and appear to be well received:
https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/geodesy?sort=votes
To me, who only ever encounters geodesy in passing, your question looks to be on-topic for GIS SE and I think would be better asked here than at Stack Overflow because it currently contains no code.
However, I would also think that the Mathematics Stack Exchange might be a good site for it and that has a similar number of questions tagged geodesy:
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/geodesy?sort=votes
Wherever, you choose to ask it be sure to do that at only one site at a time, and if you decide to try asking the same question at a site or two other than Stack Overflow then be sure to delete behind you to avoid cross-posting.

