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Poking around today's borked user league I noticed that Xenph Yan got a ton of rep on dba.stackechange.com for https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/12961/how-does-database-indexing-work

But he also gets to keep his rep from the orginal SO question and answer (10K only link) .

I don't think this is fair that get a bonus for migration. Here are two solutions

Solution 1 In keeping with the ideas behind the repocalypse

  • If the posts meets the 3 vote / 60 day rule

Keep the rep that you had on SO prior to migration and don't transfer the rep to the migration target. After migration any new votes will accrue there

  • If the post doesn't meet the 3 vote / 60 day rule

    Transfer all the rep to the migration target.

Solution 2 Keeping things sane

Just transfer all the rep to the migration target. This is probably easier to implement and may potentially easier for tracking rep.

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  • 2
    I'd rather make an exception to the 3 vote/60 day rule that transferred all rep to the new site in case of a migration. That seems to make more sense and be potentially easier for tracking rep on the target site overall.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Mar 7, 2012 at 22:52
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    @AnnaLear good point. I've updated the question to incorporate your comment
    – Some Helpful Commenter
    Mar 7, 2012 at 22:54
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    What about downvotes cast because the question was off-topic on the original site?
    – Pops
    Mar 7, 2012 at 22:57
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    @PopularDemand - they were always cleared.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Mar 7, 2012 at 22:58
  • Just want to make sure they're still taken into account in this new scheme.
    – Pops
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:01
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    Actually, what should happen is that the existing votes remain on the source site and the thread arrives with 0 votes on the target site.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:02
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    I would rather see you get a rep reset on the original site, and the Q get reset on the new target site. Pretty much what Gilles said above me. Sorry guys, just my thoughts.
    – jcolebrand
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:10
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    As a side note, SE.com user leagues are now synced with the recent Recalcageddon, so they shouldn't be borked any more.
    – Emmett
    Mar 9, 2012 at 0:50

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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The bug with migrations is now fixed...the exclusion of reputation for deleted posts that were migrated away was based on some data that was missing, specifically on answers. We've fixed it so the migration data is generated properly and backfilled the necessary stuff behind the scenes.

The affected users have already received a recalc.

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Update: This sort of thing is now impossible...

Please note: there's actually a fairly significant bug with this right now, that results in one of each of the potential behaviors happening depending on whether you're the asker or answerer (one gets source-site rep stripped, the other keeps it). So this is sort of the worst of both worlds. The quick and sane fix is probably to just return to the previous behavior: migrated posts no longer count toward reputation on the origin site, but count on the destination.

That said, there's a reason migrating very old, popular questions is discouraged: that answer is now by far the highest-voted question and answer on DBA.SE. For reference, the highest-voted question and answer actually written on DBA.SE scored less than half of what this SO refugee got... This doesn't reflect the value placed on it by DBA users in any way, shape, or form; meanwhile, the post and score are disconnected from the site that actually did value it.

Frankly, I can't think of any good reason why a popular, on-topic, answered question should be moved from one site to another years after being asked. I've reversed this particular migration.

Resetting all post scores on migration would probably work now without being too unfair to folks who've legitimately contributed something to one site just because it gets bumped to another. This would give each site's local community a chance to rate and rank it according to their own standards. In the past, this would have seemed horribly unfair (in particular for older questions like this one that were perfectly on-topic for their original site and legitimately earned that rep). I'm ok with it working this way, but again... Most of these posts should probably never be migrated anywhere. Resetting votes and reputation on a day-old post isn't a big deal.

Note that "network reputation" isn't really a thing. Your combined cross-site rep makes your Area 51 commitments count for a bit more, but other than that it doesn't really give you any special privileges anywhere.

Right now, there's a bug that needs to be fixed. Beyond that, I think the "solution" to this is probably just to discourage or block these migrations entirely except in very, very exceptional circumstances.

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    I agree with leaving origin rep/score and starting with 0 on the new sites. It's the only solution that (a) treats the distinct sites as distinct, with different users and rep etc. and (b) makes any sense whatsoever.
    – user154510
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:18
  • I agree with your bolded sentiments. But I seem to remember that we have made exceptions to this general policy in the past when the new site specifically requested the question. I realize that probably falls into the "edge case" category and is thus somewhat irrelevant to this question, but would you be opposed to allowing new sites to pull specific questions if they choose?
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:26
  • Yes, I am quite opposed to sites cannibalizing each other for no good reason, @Cody.
    – Shog9
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:29
  • Why choose? Why not strip the voting scores for everything, and let the user keep the rep on the original site? Would that be a pain to engineer? Seems like a simple tweak to the "60 days rule"
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:29
  • @Shog9 What about old, upvoted (3 votes isn't that much, after all) unanswered questions?
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:31
  • @Adam: I'm not particularly concerned about questions that are quickly migrated. In particular, questions that get sub-par answers from folks who aren't subject-matter experts. That's not really the case for this example however.
    – Shog9
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:44
  • @Anna: unanswered questions are ripe for migration when they can be answered on the target site. Note that a positive score is necessary for these to even exist for a long period of time - unclear, poorly-asked, or completely off-topic questions should be closed and/or deleted sooner.
    – Shog9
    Mar 7, 2012 at 23:48
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    If you're suggesting that old questions get their votes striped while new questions take them with them: That would just be a mess without good reason for the distinction.
    – sth
    Mar 8, 2012 at 1:59
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    Reviewing them right now, @Conrad. Frankly, I'm quickly souring on the whole idea of migrating anything that isn't freshly-asked except in very exceptional circumstances.
    – Shog9
    Mar 8, 2012 at 17:35
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    Ok I see the question got un-migrated. Nice. Of course Xenph Yan's profile on dba.SE is a little weird. What a headache.
    – Some Helpful Commenter
    Mar 8, 2012 at 17:38
  • Yeah. This is buggy, and will get fixed, but it really shouldn't have happened in the first place.
    – Shog9
    Mar 8, 2012 at 17:49
  • At the moment, badges are also duplicated on each site. If we're going to have votes reset when migrated, shouldn't badges (usually based on those votes) be reset as well?
    – gnostradamus
    Mar 8, 2012 at 19:01
  • @gnos: you should suggest that on Gilles' FR
    – Shog9
    Mar 8, 2012 at 20:28

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