A proposed philosophy of question migration

Question

We spend a fair amount of time talking about question migrations between sites. These conversations happen internally, publicly and semi-publicly in the network-wide moderator chat room. In the interest of reducing the time we collectively spend discussing it, let’s see if we can formulate a clear and useful migration strategy.

Can we build a wall between sites?

My first thought was to just block migrations altogether. We already do this when questions are older than 60 days, so there’s some precedent for it. Certainly, it will only have a minimal impact on Stack Overflow¹:

Migrated To site Away from site Migration % Site   
-------- ------- -------------- ----------- ----
    1498     728           770         0.20 Stack Overflow

But there are a number of sites with a fair number of migrations that represent more than 3% of questions posted on the site in the last 90 days:

     700     434           266         4.07 Super User
     541      24           517         9.52 English Language and Usage
     495     482            13        14.61 English Language Learners
     410     157           253         4.55 Statistical Analysis
     367      60           307         3.94 Server Fault
     282      49           233         4.23 Electronics and Robotics
     267     149           118         3.21 Unix and Linux
     265     207            58         0.62 Mathematics
     204     251            79         5.72 IT Security

I looked at the ELU => ELL connection in particular. Organic asking accounts for most questions on the Learner's site. However several hundred are imported quarterly from the general English site. And this occurs with minimal friction as far as I can tell. Despite my subjective impression, question migration generally works, so we ought not take it away.

When does it makes sense to migrate?

In discussions among the Community Managers, we've expressed two mutually exclusive² ideas of when to migrate questions:

1. Don’t migrate with a lot of history since that tends to cause problems on the target site.

2. Don’t migrate questions without a lot of history since there's nothing to lose by asking people to reask elsewhere.

Looking at the questions migrated away from English Language and Usage (mostly to English Language Learners), it seems they are often not answered or much upvoted before migration:

Migrated away Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Avg age (days) 
------------- --------- ----------- ------------ -------------- 
          517  0.388781    0.552742     3.299168       2.865096       

On the destination site, they tend to be voted on and answered:

Migrated here Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Avg age (days) 
------------- --------- ----------- ------------ -------------- 
          482  1.192946    1.445378     3.455525       2.322613      

Obviously, we are preselecting for newish questions since we don’t allow migrations after 60 days. I’m also assuming this is healthy site interaction. Looking at recently migrated questions, it seems the pattern is to limit interaction on these questions to comments (which often point out the off-topicness). In particular, people seem to be avoiding voting on or answering questions likely to be migrated.

Proposed way to think about migrations

Most of the time when we talk about migrating questions, it’s in the context of rescuing content otherwise doomed to deletion. But we already have a ready solution to that problem: historical locks³. Now that old questions can only be migrated by employees, migration just isn’t a practical tool for preserving content. So I’d like to propose an alternate theory of migration:

Migrate questions when it saves the asker the effort to reask.

In other words, migration is a service we offer to people who misunderstand the complex structure of Stack Exchange sites. Rather than forcing them to create an account on a new site, copy and paste their question (including title and tags), and potentially get comments and answers from two different sites, we just move the whole thing to where it belongs.

This is the philosophy behind the guidance⁴ we wrote for moderators:

Please don't "horse trade" questions. Don't migrate crap and remember that destination sites can reject migrated questions by closing them. If you still think a question needs migrating, follow these guidelines:

1. If the question is on-topic for the site where it was asked, and it is answered, decline immediately. (If you feel like being generous, check if the flagger is also the answerer and migrate if this is the case.)

2. If the question is off-topic or unanswered and the flagger has a good bit of reputation on the target site, go ahead and migrate; they probably know what they're talking about.

3. If the question is off-topic but seems reasonably well-written and you understand it well enough to believe it belongs on the target site, migrate.

Don't ping another site's mods about potential migrations unless you're honestly interested in learning more about their site's scope. Be sure to read the site's help/on-topic page.

---

I'd love to get your feedback on this proposed migration philosophy. But there are a few things it's probably not constructive to focus on:

1. There are some UI concerns with migration right now. While changing the interface to match the goals of the feature is good idea, let's nail down the purpose of migration first.

2. If you've seen an example of a bad migration, it's only helpful to bring it up if it illustrates a principle not considered above. My subjective judgment based on years of anecdotal evidence is that migration isn't working. But looking at aggregate data, I know that's bad analysis.

So what do you think?

---

Footnotes:

1. The numbers from public data don't match the numbers below because the public data doesn't retain post history information about deleted posts. The numbers are also from a few weeks ago when I wrote the draft of this question. But these are representative.

2. I sometimes get the feeling that users assume CMs have a unified view of how things should work on our sites. That's a carefully crafted illusion created by having intense arguments in private and then having the winning view written up for public consumption. Many times we've talked about recording our conversations to publish as a podcast or somesuch.

3. Unfortunately Meta sometimes makes the internet just a little bit worse. A Google search for "historical lock" turns up: What is a historical lock, and what is it used for?

4. If you are a moderator, please see /help/mod-tl on your site. That article also includes information on the Teachers' Lounge, which is valuable resource you might have forgotten about.

Answer 1

Yes, migration is a poorly-understood ball of sorrow and frustration right now; let's fix that. Your goal of migrate when it makes things easier for the asker is, IMO, the right goal. To that end:

Treat migration suggestions like duplicate suggestions. When somebody votes/flags to suggest a migration, present that suggestion to the OP along with the other site's on-topic summary (kind of like this suggestion, but on the receiving side instead of the close-voting side). If he agrees, create the account for him (if necessary), migrate, and create the stub on the original site. This should leave the user on his question on the new site, so he'll be right there and can further edit, tag, etc. This approach also speeds up getting the OP his answers; he can act immediately instead of waiting for a community migration or a mod to handle a flag.

That stub on the original site should be just that -- a migration stub. Don't allow reopen votes or edits; the OP has moved on.

This should be the only path to migration. No community migrations, no mod actions. "Migrate" is really "move", and it's up to the OP.¹ It makes sense for the OP to control this because he can already, instead, just go ask the question there, leaving duplicates in his wake.

Further, if the OP doesn't follow through on the other site, it's not going to be useful to the other site unless it's already super-well-asked and requires no clarifications from comments. How many migrated questions do you see with no user attached to the question? I think that's the majority of migrations I see. I sometimes wonder if the answers to such questions help anybody at all. (Yes answers are for everybody, not just the OP, but when I'm answering a question I know there's at least one person who cares. Except if there isn't because there's no user.)

So instead of communities making the decision to migrate, let's help the asker move and maintain his question.

If the question is then closed on the destination site, don't send it back to the originating site. I've seen that give OPs whiplash, and I don't think I've ever seen it help. Since the only way to migrate a question will be by action of the OP, there's no point. This makes the situation equivalent to "closed and reposted on the new site", instead of leaving the user confused about where his question really is.

This approach allows SE to bake in any restrictions you like on migrations. If you don't want questions to be migrated under some circumstances, then you won't offer that option to the OP. (Ideally you'd also disable to close/flag option in that case, but we don't have that now so it's not required for an MVP. You can come back to that.)

¹ I can see an argument for letting mods do migrations, but as a mod I'm not thrilled by having to evaluate requests for migration to a bunch of different sites. Mods aren't supposed to be arbiters of correctness. So I'd rather that mod migration be an unusual exception, not SOP. I've seen first-hand that community migrations don't have a good success rate.

Answer 2

Right now the problem with migration is that, on the target site, holding the question and rejecting the migration are two different decisions that are coupled. The meaning of VtCing on the target site is being overloaded to do this. Yes, there's overlap in “this should be put on hold” and “this question doesn't belong here”, but the overlap isn't 100% — I'd say it's closer to a minority of the time, even, depending on the site.

It also means that holds do not do what they say on the tin when it's an incoming migrated question — instead of a temporary hold, VtCers are actually voting for a permanent rejection, whether they know it or not.

A different philosophy needs different tool behaviour. Migration currently does not behave in a way that makes migration a desirable tool to use, except in rare circumstances.

I see two ways of decoupling VtCs and migration, both of which make migration more effective and less drama-ridden: one that is lightweight but potentially leads to a non-zero increase in “crap” on the target site's front page, and one that requires development time (and debugging and etc.) but is much more friendly and less invasive to the target site. Both would make migration decisions easier on the source site.

Both make migration more useful and likely to be tried, therefore making it easier for us to save the asker the effort of reposting manually.

1. Only reject migrations when VtC'd as Off Topic

It makes sense to reject a migration when a migrated question is closed as off topic on the target site.

What doesn't make as much sense is when potentially temporary holds for “please give us more details” (Unclear), or “please add information on the specific problem you're facing” (Too Broad), or “this question might be answered elsewhere” (Duplicate) also reject the migration. (Primarily Opinion-Based is a bit of a tossup: sometimes it means “hey, this needs work to be asking for something more objective” and sometimes it means “this doesn't have a hope of being constructively asked and answered on a Stack”.)

As a fix, make only Off Topic cause migration rejection. Leave the question on the target site for all the other close reasons, so that temporary holds can work as intended.

This wouldn't change much, except leave fewer questions in limbo due to VtCs. Questions not off topic but which for whatever reason still get and stay closed would just “live” on the target site instead of the source site.

Worth noting is that although this would still mis-fire some rejections when the target site uses a “not actually off topic” Off Topic custom close reason, it would still significantly reduce the frequency of unintended rejections.

Pros:

• Migrations simply work better, with rejections being done only in response to a clear “this is off topic” decision.
• Question that are on-topic but need a bit of work before answering don't get soft-locked by the “migration rejected” state.
• Questions that seem to be on topic elsewhere but obviously need some work can be migrated without worrying about them being quickly rejected. This eliminates the “you should reask this on Site B with some edits” process that has arisen to work around the current migration system's flaws.
• Lightweight to implement.

Cons:

• Doesn't completely eliminate source-site worrying about whether the migration is appropriate or not.
• Can still mis-fire a migration rejection at sites that have custom close reasons that are technically in the Off Topic category but shouldn't be.

2. Make migrations proposals to be reviewed on target site

Alternatively, build some intermediary infrastructure so that migration closes questions on the source site and then tosses them into a review queue on the target site, where they need to be reviewed and accepted by review-level users before they appear on their front page. Send them back if rejected, just like the current effect of migration rejection.

This would be a complete replacement for the current binding between VtCs and migration rejection. A question that passes incoming migration review that later gets closed, for any reason, would be treated like any other question on the target site.

Pros:

• Reduced decision angst on the source site about whether something is suitable for migration to the target site. Source site migraters can make their best informed decision without feeling like they're dumping things on the target site.
• VtCing is completely decoupled from migration logic, eliminating soft-locks due to holds that are intended to be temporary, and dodging the issue with custom close reasons all counting as Off Topic even when that's not what they mean.
• All questions on a site are first-class citizens.

Cons:

• Aforementioned development hours, which are probably not negligible.

Answer 3

I've come to the conclusion that migration usually isn't worth the effort expended to facilitate it. There are several reasons for this.

1. Some people use it as a proxy for closing poor quality questions. They know that the question is off topic (or just plain bad) but propose migration as a way of getting rid of the question without being seen as the "nasty person who closed my question".

2. People don't understand the scope of the site(s) they propose as the migration target. They've either got an outdated view (Programmers Software Engineering) or simple misunderstanding. Thus, if the question is migrated all the OP still get's the question closed but has to go elsewhere to find that out.

3. Misguided attempts to help by posting "this question belongs on X" just leads to cross posting and then wails of "but I was told to post here" when either the cross posting is pointed out or the question is closed as it was off topic on X anyway.

4. People don't follow their question anyway. I can't count the number of times I've seen a question migrated where the user remains stubbornly greyed out. This doesn't help anyone. The OP isn't reading the answers and/or comments and the people trying to help aren't getting any feedback.

5. Questions with answers often get migrated. This doesn't really help anyone. The asker has probably already seen the answers and has got their solution, new answers will have difficulty competing with the existing upvoted answers that get migrated with the question and those answers may not be as rigorous as they need to be on the new site.

Removing migration as a thing users can do would help all the above issues (apart from the "belongs on X" comments, but there's not a lot we can do about that). All off topic questions would simply get closed and eventually deleted so having a question temporarily existing on multiple sites wouldn't be an issue.

There may be a case for the migration of the few stellar but off topic questions all sites get from time to time, but even that could be the source of extra flags for moderators. We'd have to judge whether it was on topic on the target site and that's not something we can reliably do.

Answer 4

A few loosely related thoughts:

Migration also serves the answerers

For example, if a question is borderline on-topic in its current place, a per-case decision has to be made, either by a moderator or by the close voters. Naturally it is impossible to predict this decision (otherwise the question would not be borderline). Now, if I have a good answer to such a question, I usually want to answer it right now. I do not want to wait whether the question gets closed, migrated, cross-posted, re-posted, or completely abandoned. I just want to answer it, help somebody, and possibly get some flattering feedback – be it via comments, acceptance, or upvotes.

Even with blatantly off-topic questions, there is some uncertainty: I cannot predict whether they will be migrated, re-posted, or abandoned.

As an answerer, I want that my answer is read by the people whom it concerns. A good migration system should ensure this without requiring me to keep track of a question.

UI is crucial

While changing the interface to match the goals of the feature is good idea, let's nail down the purpose of migration first.

A big problem with the current situation is that users do not know what to do with a question that they consider misplaced:

• Should they leave a comment encouraging the asker to re-ask on the appropriate site?
• Should they leave a comment encouraging the asker to ask for migration?
• Should they flag it?
• Should they vote to close it?

On top, many comments concerning migration are just horribly misinformed – be it about the scope of the current site or the scope of the target site.

No amount of Meta posts will satisfyingly solve the above problems (though they may alleviate them). A good UI may solve some of these problems by taking the opinion of regular users and turn them into an appropriate response, e.g., a moderator flag, a dialogue for the asker (like for duplicates), or possibly even an actual migrations. Moreover it may handle misinformed suggestions by having them be rejected by moderators or a majority of voters/flaggers/whatever.

In addition, one problem with migrations right now is that it may take a while till they happen. This is partially because it takes some time for a moderator to notice and partially because of the following:

Clarify when moderators may use the “migration hammer”

A considerable amount of migration candidates is borderline on-topic on their current site. As a moderator, I have the following dilemma:

• Should I instantly migrate such a question? If I make a good choice here, this will quickly clarify the situation and arguably provide the best experience for the asker and potential answerers. However, I bypass my community’s decision on the on-topicness of the question.

• Should I wait till the community closes the question? This way, I make sure that the question is really not on-topic on my site and there is little to lose when migrating. However, it may take considerably long and leads to more confusion and a worse experience for the asker and potential answerers (see above).

I would appreciate some official guidance on that manner, and be it just to wave it in front of those people who complain that I did not choose the correct option of the two above.

Answer 5

As a moderator on two sites with similar topics (Music SE and Music Fans SE), I see migration as a big topic that needs to be addressed. Making it easier to move questions as needed would be a big help, but how it's done needs to be thought out carefully. Pointing to the other site is something I commonly see when users of one site know it is off-topic there. While in good faith typically, this is not always true and can lead to the question being not fit for the target site.

For example, I've seen a user post a question on Music SE that was off-topic, but also way too opinion based. Another user then suggested it would be better fit for the Music Fans SE. The user then cross posted on Music Fans SE and both questions ended up closed. I've also seen a case where a question was worded poorly and migrated to Music Fans too quickly, but it was actually on-topic on Music SE and off-topic on Music Fans SE.

In a different example, a question was accidentally migrated to the Music Fans SE instead of the Music SE from the Sound SE. It was obviously off-topic on the Music Fans SE and it was taken care of quickly, but having a double check would have prevented the mis-migration from happening.

These issues along with other similar events encountered leads me to suggest a check on both sides

Add a queue on both the incoming and outgoing site to facilitate the exchange.

The idea behind this is the site where it's posted needs to acknowledge that it is off-topic there and the incoming site needs to acknowledge that it is on-topic. It's kind of a different take on the close & and reopen queue respectively.

This allows the outgoing site to:

• Make sure the question is actually off-topic on the current site.
• Improve the post before it goes to the destination site

This allows the incoming site to:

• Make sure the question is actually on-topic.
• Make sure there is no other issues with the question (too broad, duplicate, primary opinion based, ect).
• Clean up tags and the question itself as needed.

This will also (hopefully) expose users on one site to the other site and vise versa. The only downside I can see is the process would obviously be slower due to both sides needing to take part in the migration, but hopefully it will lead to a better experience overall in migrations.

Answer 6

This is basically a variation of WGroleau's suggestion.

Allow users with sufficient reputation on the target site to suggest migrations, including when no previously set up migration path to that site exists

Migrating questions involves two parts: Telling that the question is off topic where it has been asked, and that the same question (or a very similar question) will be on topic on some other site in the network.

The current process puts all focus on the off topic where it is part. There is (insofar as I know) no requirement for being even the least bit familiar with the target site's scope.

If migrations remain a thing, then there needs to be some focus on whether the question would be on topic on the proposed migration target site as well.

A low bar might be to set a minimum reputation threshold on the target site (100-200 on betas, 500-1000 on established sites, maybe? The exact value would have to be tuned to ensure we don't limit the set of users who can do this too much.) to ensure that the user proposing the migration is at least somewhat familiar with the target site's scope. An alternative could be some count of net upvoted, separate posts (possibly restricted to questions). If the user doesn't meet that bar, they can still propose migrations for review, but the proposals don't themselves carry any weight (like flags from low-rep users do already).

With this, it would also be possible to open up to non-diamond-moderators to migrate to sites in the network which do not have an established migration path from the source site, because there will be a check to ensure that the user casting the actual vote has some familiarity with the subject scope of the target site.

I suspect that such a relatively small change could cut down dramatically on rejected migrations, while also taking diamond moderators out of the loop in many cases.

Established migration paths could then be used as a means to allow users that do not meet that criteria to migrate anyway, if that ability is desirable.

Answer 7

The process should be

1. closed as off-topic, the close voter may choose other stackexchange sites where he has enough reputation as sites where it is on topic
2. the closed as offtopic lists the sites where it might be ontopic
3. the user that asked the question has the ability to reask the question on one of the recommended sites(if there are any) with one click
4. the closed as offtopic removes the sites where it might be ontopic and instead links to the reasked question
5. the user that answered the question has the ability to reanswer the question on the other site in one click

This solves following problems:

1. Question is only migrated if it is off topic
2. The user that asked the question is informed about the sites where it is ontopic
3. Doesn't punish the user if the question was just asked on the wrong site(only one extra click)
4. The responsibility of a bad migrated question is shifted from the community of the migrated from site to the question asker and the user of the migrated to community that invited the question.

when in process stage 2 it looks like:

{question}

This question is off topic on this site.

It may be on topic on one of the following sites:

• stackoverflow
• ...

when in process stage 4 it looks like:

{question}

This question is off topic on this site.
It has been moved to {link}

Answer 8

In other words, migration is a service we offer to people who misunderstand the complex structure of Stack Exchange sites. Rather than forcing them to create an account on a new site, copy and paste their question (including title and tags), and potentially get comments and answers from two different sites, we just move the whole thing to where it belong

I always thought about migration exactly that way. I'm a bit confused how this is new.

Here's what I see on the network:

• On some sites, the question gets closed or downvoted quicker than it could be migrated.

• On other sites migration works flawlessly, because users are going through the effort of saving the question and might be active on both sites.

• On other other sites, scopes of two sites overlap and migration is merely suggested via comments, in order to point the asker to the community that most likely has the experts to deliver the best answer.

I would go even further with the philosophy of migration than your proposed one:

make migration a mature moderation tool

So far, migration paths are limited to avoid abuse of the feature. Instead, allow a voting process similar to the closing vote process that requires a certain amount of votes. Users can suggest a migration target (not necessarily every user, see below) and/or vote on existing ones.

When reaching a certain threshold, the question is migrated. At every time in the process is the asker allowed to simply hit "yes, I want to migrate there", to fully automatically migrate the question to the suggested place. just like a suggested duplicates can be accepted.

understand migration as a cross site moderation task

A cross site moderation task requires cross site knowledge. Suggesting migration of a question or denying it should be based on reputation. A user that has high reputation on a site has proven that he understands the scope of the site (hopefully) and that he can estimate that if a question would be a good fit for a particular site (or not).

At the moment, migration is a pushing action, from the site that wants to get rid of a question. Allowing experienced users to start the process helps with only migrating questions that are valid on the target site. However, there could (should?) be a mechanism in place to let the receiving site accept or deny the migration "request". To do this, create a migration review queue at every site, which lists questions from other sites that got at least voted to be migrated to the site. This queue is basically about "Hey, one of our own reputable members who's active on another site suggested to migrate this question to us, do you agree?" allow reviewers of this queue to join the migration vote process, even if they are not users of the site that the question was originally asked on.

---

It remains to be debated what the reputation threshold should be to allow migration suggestions to a site and how many votes it takes for migration.

Answer 9

The best system is the one that works. I'm one of those mods who routinely checks with other mods when unsure. The problem isn't really that migrations themselves are bad, but that there's things we could do better.

I don't want to migrate crap. That said "crap" is relative, and I sometimes consult with other mods to see if it meets standards. I might not be a subject matter expert in the target site.

There's no real visibility for migrations, and the destination site has no control over what gets migrated. To me, this is the main weakness with migrations. We don't need a wall, we need a simple border checkpoint to keep the riffraff out.

To me the solution seems pretty simple. Any migration goes into a queue. Let the destination site triage it. Any edits that are needed are done before the migration is accepted, and have a mod or X users with sufficient experience look it over just like the other review queues. That way I know if a migration is bad, no foul, it gets kicked back before migration is completed, and there's eyes on it from the destination site.

Once a migration's done, if its a new user, sending them a message pointing at a explaination of the migration process would be handy.

Answer 10

Migration is the result of a failure to communicate.

Migrate a question and there will be someone who thinks it should have stayed where it was, someone who thinks it should have been closed, someone who thinks it's fine. So it comes down to who among those people has the most power. With our rep system you'd think it's the most experienced user who has the most power. It's not. It's the one with the least experience. It's the OP.

The OP can delete with one click. The OP can migrate anywhere. The OP will be confused when misfiled questions automagically end up in the right place sometimes and sometimes don't.

I used to think there was a magical bot that fixed code I posted. Only later did I realize that it was a human editing in the indentation I didn't know I needed.

Migrating a question is failing to communicate with the one person with the power to correct both this mistake and to stop making it again and again and again.

I'm not just all talk here. I've been doing this on Programmers. (Soon, root willing, to be named Software Engineering). We have almost the same situation ELL has with ELU. We have it so badly that we have a bot that notifies us on our whiteboard the moment anyone on Stack Overflow even mentions Programmers. Why? So we can jump in an stop the OP and the close voters from thinking of sending content our way without first understanding what we're about.

But even with this, we get questions that have nothing to do with our topic (which is Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle, except for code troubleshooting and requests for written code, by the way). So I've been following gnats lead and leaving comments when I close. gnat has a wonderful habit of commenting when he closes and not simply using the close messages to communicate.

I'm trying to do one better. I don't just tell the OP what's wrong. I tell the OP what to do about it.

When I vote to close a question that's not suited for Programmers but seems like it might work better on another you'll likely see a message like this:

Welcome to Software Engineering. We only support good, on-topic questions. Other sites have different topics. Feel free to take your topic to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please don't cross post by failing to delete your question here. Please see the tour and help links below.

The welcome is because the user is new so being friendly and tolerant is the right tone to set.

The good and on-topic links cover most all reasons we ever close. Keeping a positive tone keeps hostility to a minimum.

Presenting the other sites followed by the different topics both acknowledges and assists with how easy it is to get lost and end up on the wrong site. I absolutely love the different rules page.

The line about taking your TOPIC (not question) to an appropriate site, is the money maker. I don't advise anyone to simply move a question, as is, somewhere else. I want the OP to think about what they've learned, where they're going, and reword their question appropriately.

I also want them to search existing answers before they just barge into a different site. They may have been smart enough to search ours before but now we're headed somewhere different.

The coup de grâce is to teach them about the evils of cross posting and invite them to delete their own question. This works surprisingly often.

It ends with a gesture to the tour and help links at the bottom of the page that could have prevented this mess in the first place.

---

I remember the frustration of seeing a carefully crafted question voted down and closed. In that moment you're watching your baby die. You'll listen to anything to figure out how to make it stop. This is when to communicate.

Now we get people sending stuff to Programmers from Stack Overflow all the time. Sometimes those people are right. Sometimes they're wrong. But what I wish they all did was point out the REASON to go to a different site. Because this is a teaching moment. Haven't we all had enough of seeing questions starting with "I was told to post here so don't blame me".

Please, send more questions to Programmers. We like good questions. But when you send people please understand what we are, explain what we are, and if you don't have that kind of time please at least use this link:

[Programmers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask).

It does a better job of teaching everything we care about than any other single page.

Every one of our sites has one. It's the page I use when sending people to yours.

And if you must vote to migrate, please read it first.

Answer 11

Migration needs to be (both) much easier to pull the trigger, and more precise to execute.

As some of you already know, the problem of bad migrations to Programmers is so acute that we actually have a bot that picks up on migration suggestions in comments, so that we can get some early warning and have a chance to provide some clear guidance before a migration occurs. The most common misconception about Programmers is that it is the place to ask "softer" questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow.

Programmers doesn't have enough people actively moderating the site to make migrating away effective. We generally can't muster enough close/migration votes, and when we do, it occurs hours later. So migration is a blunt instrument for us; in those rare cases where I feel that Stack Overflow could benefit from a Programmers migration, I flag for moderator attention instead of voting to migrate.

We get many people asking their "fix my broken code" questions on Programmers; the rare individuals who ask a good Stack Overflow question on Programmers would benefit from some of us having a golden hammer that would immediately migrate those questions.

But the number of off-topic questions asked on Programmers that actually qualify for migration is very small, on the order of 1 to 2 percent.

I am thrilled that migration works for ELL, but I suspect that the reason it works is because the dividing line between E.SE and ELL.SE is very clear and unambiguous. Historically, programmers has had a patchy site scope; difficult to understand site scopes make migration dicey, because people often get it wrong.

Users already get a lot of help with automatic account creation and association. The only real benefit of migration that I see is the elimination of crossposting.

Cross-Posting problems could potentially get a big boost if the SE software detected cross-site dupes and asked the OP "You can't post the same question to two sites. Which site do you want your question to be on?"

Answer 12

Keeping the possibility for migrations open is important, and I agree that this is a good motive:

Migrate questions when it saves the asker the effort to reask.

As long as it is mitigated by a serious concern concern with this:

Please don't "horse trade" questions. Don't migrate crap and remember that destination sites can reject migrated questions by closing them.

Experienced users are more likely to be familiar with criteria common to the network in general ("too broad", "unclear", "opinion based", etc.) than new users, and they are also far more likely to be aware that they have choices about where to post. This implies migratable questions tend to come from new, inexperienced users. In that context migrating relatively innocent questions that are destined for rejection because of other criteria is one way to split the difference between:

• "Okay, they have rules, standards, best practices -- fine and fair!" and

• "This is a just an absurd, out-of-control bureaucracy..." with a literal pass the buck button.

My own policy, as a moderator, is (for the most part) to be a little extra stringent about quality related criteria with migrated questions¹, and if they do not pass, instead close them as too broad/unclear/etc., then take a minute to explain the issue more specifically if necessary and include a link to a site I think is more appropriate.

Because of that attitude while we (Rasberry Pi) have a lot of crossover with larger sites including S.O., I rarely actually migrate but I very regularly close as just described, using cookie cutter comments ala "more appropriate to our parent/big sibling ________".

I think this benefits cases where the question is from new/naive users because it avoids the appearance of a bureaucratic swamp, and gives them something concrete to chew on. On very rare occasions someone will say, "Couldn't you just move this?" in which case either I do, or, more likely, I don't, and explain a little further why I feel this question needs more work put into it first.

Not migrating under those circumstances provides people the opportunity to think about this, if they have been given some hint in the right direction. They can still always just open another account and cut n' paste, but in that case the question has at least not really gotten any worse, and if it does not pass muster elsewhere, instead of having the migration rejected, the otherwise passed back and forth buck is (hopefully) firmly stopped with an unequivocal "You need to think about and work on your question".

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^{1. Although I admit as a human being to occasionally throwing people to the lions because hey, isn't that what the lions are for?}

Answer 13

Much of this discussion frames migration as an end-to-end process that must deal with every conceivable impact on both sites and all players. It includes complicated rules, special conditions, review and approval of the destinating site, different standards for questions depending on how they arrive, etc. If we reframe it as simply "reposting assistance", almost all of that disappears.

Migration doesn't need to be any more complicated than the process without it.

• If there was no migration, off-topic questions would get closed.
• If we know the subject matter is covered on another site, we advise the person to ask there.
• If they ask on the other site and it isn't in scope, it gets closed there.

That's the baseline. The only reason to introduce migration is to make SE a little friendlier to the user. Migration's entire picture can be viewed as just saving the OP the work of reposting. Everything else remains the same as the baseline.

• The idea of migrating only those questions the OP agrees on solves a lot of problems.

• Migration (or lack thereof), can filter out obvious crap. But it isn't the job of users or moderators at one site to be experts on the scope of every other site. If we're going to help route questions to a potentially better site, our role should be just helping the user minimize the work of reposting.

  It's up to the destinating site to do their own housekeeping, regardless of how the question gets there. They would be doing it anyway if the user knew to post there in the first place, or did so because it was suggested. The question's route of arrival should be irrelevant to how it's handled.

• There will be a certain amount of misuse, like people migrating crap rather than closing it. That's the cost of doing business. Much of that crap would have ended up on the other site, anyway, via reposting. We don't need a whole infrastructure to prevent it. Just ignore where the question arrived from and deal with it normally.

• The moderators have enough to do. One site's moderator shouldn't need to talk to the other site's moderator about whether they want the question. The SE sites are community moderated. We rely on the judgement of experienced users. If those users are going to close an off-topic question and believe they can do the OP a solid by migrating it to a better site, that should be the extent of it. The destinating site should handle it the same way they would if the OP posted it.

Answer 14

If a question better matches a different site, why it can't be moved simply, easily there?

I am really sorry for hitting one of your hardest taboos, but note: I also risk a little bit with this post.

Actually, you simply don't answer this question in your whole post.

"Can we build a wall between sites"?

No, you shouldn't, but you do. It is one of the perfectly meaningless, irrational taboos of the SE network.

What is your real problem with the migrations?

Yes, I know they can be a source of territorial conflicts between the sites. We all know - although I am sure, you won't ever admit it - the only real reason to continuously avoiding, hardening, narrowing the question migrations is that they create territorial conflicts. There is simply no other rational reason. But you know, this reason should be handled in better ways (for example, letting vote the target site if they accept the question).

Even in your long post, you don't name a single reason why the migrations should be forbidden.

You say, "it would have a minimal impact", and yes, it is true. Because the question migrations are essentially forbidden already. On a healthy system, migrating questions would be so simple, so common as, for example, the closures.

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In my opinion, having such a "Berlin Wall" between your sites only harms the quality of your site network. I think you know Adam Smith's inivisible hand theory very well, it is a base concept of the economical theory of your home country.

Well, you can destruct your own system if you wish - it is yours - but eventually the SE alternatives will take your place away.

Answer 15

I'd like to give a perspective based on my experience as a user of both the Stack Overflow r tag and Cross Validated, who on Stack Overflow can vote to close as off-topic and migrate. We have a fair number of migrations between these sites. Some crap is migrated, but generally migration works well because the user base of these sites sufficiently overlaps and we've come to a general understanding [1, 2] regarding migration. In principle, your proposed guidelines should work well although I'm not sure what's new about them.

However, what needs to be addressed are some technical issues:

Quite frequently, the following happens: (i) A (new) user asks a question that is off-topic, but would fit well on the sister site. (ii) The user gets advised that the question would fit better on the other site. (iii) The user cross-posts (sometimes he had done so anyway). (iv) The question gets migrated. Now, there are two identical questions on the sister site. (v) The cross-post needs to be closed.

Thus, you should prevent this scenario using technical measures and also mention cross-posts in your guidelines.

I've also never understood what the rules regarding comments are. Sometimes I've seen valuable comments be deleted during migration, sometimes irrelevant comments are migrated with the question. Your guidelines should address this too.

Answer 16

This isn't a direct discussion of the proposed philosophy, but I find problems with migration that don't necessarily fit into the "help the asker" mold, so I offer some insight not covered by that philosophy in effort to expand it.

My biggest issue with migrations is as an answerer. An answer appropriate for the original site is not always appropriate for the target site. A legacy answer can thus cause needless discussion in it's new home. This discussion is carried out in a group that the answerer may never have signed on for, and might not care to have a defenseless answer out there in a group he doesn't care to participate in.

For this reason, I suggest that the migrated questions be stripped of answers from users without membership in the target group.

The flip side is that answerers who have decided to support the community with their answer might be offended by a migration they disagree with. I suggest that an answer in good standing would thus lock out migration. If the site of origin thinks the question is off topic, the remaining option is to close, or for users to downvote answers to questions that are inappropriate to a site, making the question eligible for migration. I think the end result of this process would be to shift some of the decision process from the mods to the user community.

Other than the details I add here, I rather like @Monicacellio 's approach.

Answer 17

Suppose the moderators of group X think question A is off-topic. They think it fits better in group Y.

Let them say so to the moderators of group Y, and let those moderators decide. If the answer is no, try another group or close or delete.

Answer 18

I'd like to expand on my other answer with a few more thoughts that are more far (further?) fetched and very controversial, to be voted on separately.

make migration an act of expansion, not movement

Yes, his is pretty much asking to blur the clear line of site scopes, which on its own is somewhat problematic. But a question that's a candidate for migration is either in the wrong scope or part of many scopes. This does not necessarily mean that the question is too broad.

However, there are a lot of sites that overlap in scope. Migrating a question should not move the question to the target site, but add it. The migration process should keep the migrated question at the site it was originally asked on. If it's off-topic there (and should be removed for that reason) then close voting is the right tool for the job.

The migration process allows questions to span across the network, reaching more experts and allowing them to answer questions in the context of their site. On the other hand, closing a question still stops it from living on a specific site if the users of that site decide so.

Think Conway's Game of Life here. One can vote to make a question live on another cell of the network or vote to make it die on a part of the network. The benefit is that in the process the question organically finds its "right" place in the network, if there is one. The current migration process is strictly yes or no which might not suit every question.

Answer 19

Why not implement cross-posting (i.e. questions being able to appear on multiple sites)? That way you never have to migrate, all you do is add or remove sites the question appears on. Of course the question and answers would need to be on-topic for all of these sites.

Answer 20

My suggestion is to divide the greater stack exchange into groups and subgroups. Migration between different communities in the same subgroup would be relatively simple. An illustration of this is provided by the English language, and English language learners sites. With both of these in the same subgroup, migration could be simple, and relatively uncomplicated. Similarly, the "Ask Ubuntu" and "Unix and Linux" communities might be in the same sub group, allowing simple and uncomplicated migration. On the other hand, the Bicycle community and the board game community might be placed in different subgroups, with the consequence that migration between those two groups is more difficult, and convoluted.

The current categories for stack exchange communities is a good starting point, and further subordinate subgroups could be created within these.

Additionally, it might be valuable to create virtual bridges, where there are two groups in different subgroups where migration is more valuable.

Answer 21

My opinion is probably biased or influenced because I spend most of my time on Stack Overflow.

I don't think the site should be migrating to one another. I don't think its within the originating site's purview to decide what's on-topic and off-topic for the destination site. I also don't feel its within the originating site's purview to decide what is "quality enough" to migrate and what is "quality deficient" to deny migration. Those questions are answered by the destination site, not the originating site.

I posit User Initiated Migrations is the preferred tool. If the users of the originating site suggest it, then allow the poster to move the question on their own. It avoids the cross-governance problems, and also places control back in the hands of the poster. If the poster does not heed the advice of the originating site by performing the migration, then close the question as off-topic. I find most new users who wander into off-topic only need to be pointed in the right direction.

ELU => ELL seems to be an outlier. I can envision the tight coupling, and I imagine there are folks who ask "what is the difference between the sites" and "should the sites merge", ... Maybe ELU.SE and ELL.SE should be the exception and not follow network-wide procdures.

Answer 22

The below is just my opinion:

• See if you can improve the question first:

  If the core of the question fits the on-topic policy for the SE site it has been posted on, then ideally it should be edited and improved first.

  However, if the core of the question is not on-topic for the SE site it was posted on, then maybe it could be migrated.

• Does the question really need migration?

  If a question can be answered easily or quickly, and you know a valid answer, try to help out the OP.

  If the OP would indeed benefit from more experienced people at another SE site, try helping out the OP if you can, suggest that "X/Y/Z" SE site could be a better place to ask the question, and only then inform the OP that you're proposing to migrate the question.

• Always ask the OP for clarification:

  Never assume things. If you think the OP should clarify his question more, then request him or her to do so, in a polite manner of course.

  Do not even think about migration until and unless you've asked the OP for clarification and are 99% sure it may not be on-topic for the SE site in question, even if it is improved.

• Is the question really ontopic for the SE site you're proposing to migrate it to?

  Imagine there's a question you're proposing to migrate to the computer science SE. Have you checked and are sure the question is on-topic there? You're not done yet.

  Maybe the question is more suitable for the theoretical computer science SE, rather than the normal computer science site. Always check carefully!

  Maybe there's no SE site yet suitable for that question, in which case you can either help the OP out yourself if you have a valid solution and the answer is short/easy, or if the question's topic is interesting enough, and fits the Area51 criteria, then consider proposing an Area51 site for it.

Maybe the question might not fit on SE in general, perhaps. Even if you're super extra 99% sure about this, consider making a question on Meta. Edge cases, in my opinion, should be handled on a one-by-one basis.

• Does the question possibly fit on multiple SE sites?

Ask on the relevant Metas before you try to do anything.

• Is there something not covered by the above points, or you're just unsure of something?

Always ask on the relevant Metas, even if you think you could be right.

Answer 23

If there's a lot of migration going on between two sites, possibly the sites' objectives are very close or partially overlap, which could be an indication that the sites may need/want to be merged.

Given the low incidence of migrations elsewhere, it clearly serves its purpose to move things that are clearly off topic on some site to another one where they are more at home. Helps everyone I think.
What we should guard against is people just firing questions at one site and relying on the migration system to distribute them to where they belong. Seeing the actual numbers, that apparently isn't a problem (though you'd have to look at not just the number of questions but the users posting them to make sure of that, if e.g. the 700 migrated questions away from so come from only 10 users there's something going on there and a quiet chat between a moderator and those 10 users could be in order, or some filter that deletes rather than migrates their specific questions).

Answer 24

I agree with a lot that has been said here, and disagree with about as much. Here's my idea of how migrations should work:

• When a question is VtC'd as off-topic, the VtCer is asked if there is another SE site where it would be on topic. If so, it becomes a VtM (Vote to Migrate).
• At that point the user gets the same prompt as if it were marked as a duplicate, as suggested by Monica Cellio.
• If the prompt gets accepted or it gets a total of 5 VtMs, it gets put on hold on the originating site and the target site gets a proposal.

I don't have enough rep to do anything that high level on any sites, so I don't know exactly how things like that work now, but essentially at this point it should be approved or rejected by the target site. It should only be rejected if it is off-topic for the target site. If it's a bad question, it should be accepted but immediately closed for the appropriate reason. My logic for this is twofold:

1. It teaches the asker two things: The asker now knows where they should post questions of that topic (i.e. SO vs Programmers, ELU vs ELL), and why it was a bad question. I have almost had personal experience in this: My question Hyper-V Style Hypervisor for Ubuntu at first was closed as off-topic because they thought it wasn't an enterprise setup. Had it not been for a business, I would never have learned that asking for a Linux equivalent of a Windows program was undesirable. However, with my idea in that situation, it would have been migrated to either SU or Unix/Linux and then closed, telling me where I should ask similar questions and telling me why it was a bad question.

2. Even bad questions may mean something to somebody. My way sorts the trash cans appropriately, so to speak.

Also to guard against people not caring which site a question should be posted on, we should implement some sort of question ban and/or reputation loss system for people who have questions migrated too often.