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I just voted as the 4th person to close a question on StackOverflow and wanted to select the off topic -> belongs on programmers.stackexchange.com option. I accidentally left the radio button on off topic instead of selecting the radio button belongs on programmers.stackexchange.com.

But since I saw that the 3 people before me all voted to migrate to Programmers-SE, I thought that the question would still be moved to Programmers-SE. However, after the fifth close vote, I see the question isn't migrated to Programmers-SE...

Questions: has my higher rep and/or higher flag-weight on SO resulted in the fact that the question wasn't migrated? If not, how is the reason for closing a question determined then?

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  • It was a good thing you didn't cast the vote you intended - that question would have been closed on Programmers as well. – ChrisF♦ Nov 18 '11 at 12:39
  • @ChrisF, well, I wasn't sure if it belonged there, but since I don't frequent Programmers-SE, and the other 3 before me all voted to migrate it, I thought it'd be a safe bet... :) – Bart Kiers Nov 18 '11 at 12:41
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    Users of Stack Overflow are notoriously (among some people) bad judges of what makes a good or bad Programmers question. Sometimes a bad question is just a bad question – ChrisF♦ Nov 18 '11 at 12:42
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    @ChrisF, yeah, I think I'll go read the FAQ on Programmers-SE to see what's on- and off-topic there. – Bart Kiers Nov 18 '11 at 12:44
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Normally a simple majority 3:2 is required to determine the close reason (there is a special case of three reasons with 2:2:1 votes but that's not important here).

However, for migration there needs to be at least 4 votes to migrate the question and that at least one of the questions tags exists on the target site. This means that if there is a reasonable doubt over whether the migration is valid or not the question doesn't get migrated. There have been a spate of bad migrations that required this change.

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  • Ah, that sounds more than reasonable. Thanks for clearing that up Chris. – Bart Kiers Nov 18 '11 at 12:42
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    According to this answer from Jeff there's also a tag related requirement to allow migrations to happen, but as far as I can see that wouldn't have been a problem for this particular question. – Flexo Nov 18 '11 at 13:05
  • That question wouldn't have belonged on Programmers anyway, or not? – Time Traveling Bobby Nov 18 '11 at 13:09
  • @Bobby - I think it's too chatty to be a good question - this seems to apply to it, but it also isn't on this list. – Flexo Nov 18 '11 at 13:12
  • @Bobby - no it wouldn't (see my comment on this question and on the SO question itself). – ChrisF♦ Nov 18 '11 at 13:13
  • @ChrisF: Whoops, missed the comments. – Time Traveling Bobby Nov 18 '11 at 13:15
  • Just curious, what happens in the special case of 2:2:1? – Josh Darnell Jan 3 '12 at 15:15
  • @jadarnel27 I think the last close reason that had 2 votes wins... – Lorem Ipsum Jan 3 '12 at 15:16

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