3

Possible Duplicate:
Disposing of old questions that are now off-topic

Here's an ancient Stack Overflow question that would really have belonged on UX.StackExchange today; in fact we have our own version of the question already. Since it's kind of a duplicate that way I wouldn't be sure about moving that one in particular.

But more generally, what do we do about old, popular questions that were originally asked on Stack Overflow (or another older site) but now would belong on a different site? Do we leave them for historical reasons or do we move them to maintain the categorizations?

Improve this question
1

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

Such questions should be moved to their new home, where they now belong.

If the consensus is that this type of question does not belong on StackOverflow anymore (litmus test: would it get closed as off-topic if asked today), then it should no longer be on the site - this is doubly so if it can be migrated to a better place.

If at all possible, where the question has a duplicate on the receiving site it should be merged.

See for example this question that was originally asked on SO on September 2008 and was migrated to programmers on February 2011, almost 2.5 years after being asked. (as for historical significance of this question - does being featured on the podcast count?).

Improve this answer
5
  • 4
    That's certainly an example of a migration from SO to a new site, but it's not an example of a good migration. It got merged with a popular version of the same thing and subsequently closed. Now it's just a cluttered mess. All the migration really did was shift trying to figure out what to do with it from SO to Programmers.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jan 1, 2012 at 19:30
  • @AnnaLear - Yes, a remnant from the times where "if it is off-topic on SO, migrate it to programmers"... (assuming those times are really over...).
    – Oded
    Commented Jan 1, 2012 at 19:40
  • @AnnaLear's concern is exactly why I'm hesitant to do this sort of move for the question I mentioned; it's a duplicate now. But are there examples of good migrations like this?
    – Zelda
    Commented Jan 2, 2012 at 20:01
  • @Ben Are the answers on the SO version better? If not, there's likely no need to migrate. migration is ideally for great questions that would get better answers on a more specialized site. Subpar questions can just be closed on the source site. We sometimes migrate from SO to Programmers when a question is freshly reasked on PSE an we can use SO's version for a duplicate or a merge. Outside of that, IMHO, migrating an old answered question is rarely useful, but YMMV.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jan 2, 2012 at 20:50
  • @AnnaLear that's a good way to consider it. In this case the UX question is better, though the original asker of the SO question got their answer (they just got the what and not the why).
    – Zelda
    Commented Jan 2, 2012 at 21:15

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .