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When a question is migrated to another site, and it is then closed on the receiving site, it gets locked. This means the question is not editable, nor is it possible to vote to delete it.
That is what happened with https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/39550/how-to-make-a-good-valid-post-that-will-not-get-voted-down-by-other-users

The lock also avoids that questions with a negative score, and no answer are automatically deleted from the script that runs once per week.

What is the reason for locking such questions? What is the lock trying to accomplish?

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    Well, normally if it hasn't been delete don the old site, the question on the old site gets unlocked as per the migration rejection. So the question on the new site is probably locked to prevent further discussion on a single question occurring in two different places. I don't like that it prevents us from deleting it, though, which is usually what needs to happen in cases where a site rejects a migration...
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 19:04
  • What's the reason to leave two "live" copies of the same question? To me it doesn't make sense to have two editable copies of the same post flying around.
    – Zelda
    Commented Sep 27, 2012 at 1:40
  • @BenBrocka Apart not being editable, the question is not deletable too.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Sep 27, 2012 at 21:06
  • Are you sure? As a mod I've deleted several closed, rejected migrations...maybe normal users can't vote to delete them though
    – Zelda
    Commented Sep 27, 2012 at 21:13
  • @BenBrocka I am sure. Moderators can deleted locked posts, but other users cannot.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Sep 27, 2012 at 21:19
  • Oh, eh, I'm pretty sure the migration stubs get auto-deleted after a while anyway so I don't see that as a big deal.
    – Zelda
    Commented Sep 27, 2012 at 21:21
  • @BenBrocka For what I know, the migration stubs get deleted in the site where the question was first asked.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Sep 27, 2012 at 21:23

2 Answers 2

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The lock is preventing you from reopening the question on the target site, since it's already become a candidate for reopening on the source site as a result of the migration rejection. Leaving the potential for it to be open in both places would be a Bad Thing™.

As you noted, this also prevents you from editing the rejected question on the target site. If the question had lasting value on the target site this might be an issue, but the fact that the target site rejected the migration suggests otherwise and makes this acceptable.

If the question did (potentially) have lasting value on the target site, but needed to be closed first anyway, the problem is in the fact that the close reason caused the migration to be rejected. Provided people are adhering to the philosophy of "Don't migrate crap" though, this should usually not occur.

Now, the fact that you can't vote to delete rejected migrated questions is a bit inconvenient. However, the system seems to have automatically deleted your example at the end of the week it was rejected anyway, so I'm not sure that there's too much cause for concern there.

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    This is not good: we get SE-bad migrations that are ontopic. We close them pending improvement, but users can't improve their questions. I call bug.
    – Raphael
    Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 13:29
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I believe that the lock is there to prevent low quality, close-worthy questions from being passed around between various sites hot potato style.

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  • The question is closed, and it was migrated from another site; the lock didn't prevent neither of those actions.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 19:12
  • @kiamlaluno That is correct. What it does prevent is a second migration to yet another site (or back to the first site).
    – Servy
    Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 19:13
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    How does it prevent that? It's already closed. In order for it to be migrated (again), it would have to be reopened then re-closed as "belongs on x"... Considering the same people wouldn't be able to vote to close it again, I don't see how this would be a worry.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 19:16
  • A closed question can just be migrated in two ways: Re-opening it, and voting to close it as off-topic to be migrated to another site; flagging for moderation attention. In the first case, it would require at least 5 users; in the second case a moderator. I don't think that a question closed as not constructive would be migrated, as it would be not constructive in any Stack Exchange site.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 19:56

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