Move to another site suggestion instead of closing a question?

Question

Is there a feature that lets people vote to move a question to another Stack Exchange site?

I am asking this because I asked a question on SO and some members said that you should ask this question in programmers.stackexchange.com and then they closed the question.

I was thinking that if I did a mistake to ask a question that did not belong to SO but to another sister sites of it, it would be more helpful if people could help me move the question there instead of closing it. (For example they could click a move to site button and select a site name and if 4 people select the same site, the question is closed but there's a move button available to the owner that he can use to move his question there)

Edit:

It seems that SO has thought of everything.I salute you, SO programmers :)) but it seems that people are more eager on closing an off topic question as fast as possible rather than helping the questioner to find his answer (even in another site )

Answer 1

If you close a question you can select as reason that it is offtopic (and you can select one of the other sites). As BoltClock commented this is also possible with a flag.

If you move a question, it will still be closed in the site it is offtopic, that's why it's behind that feature I guess.

Of course, it will not be moved if users (closers that is) do not agree on the close reason.

Answer 2

but it seems that people are more eager on closing an off topic question as fast as possible rather than helping the questioner to find his answer (even in another site )

There is nothing wrong with this. We want off topic questions, unconstructive questions, etc, closed because we do not want the site to rot. People left comments directing you to Programmers, which was a bad suggestion, and I left a comment suggesting Code Review. (Note: Code Review is still in beta, and it is not a migration option when voting.)

With those comments, you could have followed the links, read the "About" and the "FAQ," and then determined if the site was indeed a good fit. Frankly, I would prefer that you to have to do this instead of having the code migrated by vote, because people who don't know the target sites tend to have poor judgment, and then your question gets closed twice, which would presumably not enhance your user experience. Nevertheless, the fact that the system allows migration-by-vote is a courtesy, not an obligation, and it requires a majority vote. (Super-majority in the case of some sites, not sure if it applies to all.)

Answer 3

It seems that Stack Overflow has thought of everything. I salute you, Stack Exchange programmers, but it seems that people are more eager on closing an off topic question as fast as possible rather than helping the questioner to find his answer (even in another site).

There are some points to consider about that:

• Migrating a question requires the majority of the votes (which means 4 votes out of 5, if I recall that exactly).
• Even in the case the question gets the necessary votes to be migrated, it is not migrated if the question is not using tags the receiving site is not using.
• The first rule of migrating is, "don't migrate crap"; with this, I don't mean your question was a bad question, but that probably users avoid migrating questions for which they are not 100% sure. I can be sure about off-topic questions for a site I visit more often than another, but I am not sure at the same level for a site I have never visited.
• Helping the OP to find the right home for an OP's answer is not that easy. The fact a user is active on a Stack Exchange site doesn't mean the same user is active on related sites. For example, I am active more on Drupal Answers, and sometimes on Stack Overflow; if I were asked for which site a question would be a better suit, I would not probably be able to correctly reply in most of the cases, especially because there are some sites I have never been in, that are related to programming, or code, in some way.
• Even in the case users could be able to understand which is a better site for the question, there is still to see if there is already similar question your question is duplicating. A user that happens to be active on Stack Overflow, and the other site, can know when there is already a too similar asked question; that cannot be said for every user who votes to close a question.

Answer 4

When voting to close, users have the option of voting to migrate a question to another site. It requires that all of the users agree on this, however. If you want to move your question, flag it and ask a mod to do so. Note that the other site may still vote to close your question if it's not a good fit.