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Quite often, when a new user has a question that is migrated to another site, the user does not have an account on the target site. Unfortunately, because users are only notified about the migration and are not reminded to create or associate accounts for the target site, they may fail to create or associate accounts on the target site. It would be a good idea to give such a reminder, so that they know how to regain ownership of the question and be able to respond to answers and comments.

This is related to Migration to a site where I have no account is a very bad user experience, but the linked question only addresses the account association bonus, and without the user knowing that account creation/association is needed on the target site.

I've read other questions like How to handle a "new user" migration situation? as well, only to find that they do not involve any automated means of notifying the user to create/associate accounts upon migration. Manual notification by normal users becomes impossible in most cases except by ♦moderators because the question gets locked on the source site, so it would really be a good idea to modify the existing migration notice to say something like:

Your question … was migrated to site – remember to create an account there and associate it with your other Stack Exchange accounts. Learn more

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  • One of many examples of this issue: superuser.com/questions/497445/…
    – bwDraco
    Nov 1, 2012 at 5:03
  • Another example: stackoverflow.com/q/13394660/827263, migrated from programmers to stackoverflow. I was going to leave a comment on another of the OP's questions, but he's only posted two questions to programmers and they've both been migrated. I just updated my answer; the OP is unlikely to see the update.
    – Keith Thompson
    Nov 15, 2012 at 19:59

1 Answer 1

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I would rather see the migration process changed so that the following happens:

  1. Moderation on the site decides to migrate the question.
  2. Question gets closed and rather than going to the intended site, it goes into a queue where the OP gets notified that the question as asked is set to be moved.
  3. That user is prompted then to ask if they want to move it or let it be closed.
  4. The affirmative step the user takes if they want the migration to proceed is to register on the new site.
  5. The migration finally lands on the new site.

As a moderator where I see many, many, many questions migrated in just to become abandoned, I feel that putting a little onus on the OP to make a new account would solve two problems. Not only will they be interested enough in the answer to make a new account, the moderation team won't be doing all the work in a decent proportion of cases where the OP never again takes an action.

Why foist a potentially uncared for question to a new site without asking the OP to step up before it actually gets migrated? This also hides the nagging screen except when the OP needs to see it and doesn't clutter a closed question with more boilerplate text.

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  • Great idea, but I'll need to see what other users think. The answer should suggest a time frame for doing this: if the question author doesn't respond in, say, 24 hours, the question will remain closed as off topic without migration, unless the question author himself/herself flags the question later to request migration.
    – bwDraco
    Nov 1, 2012 at 15:30
  • I'd leave that up to the coders, but I don't see why the state would need to have any timeout less than 6 months or even ever. The question is closed on the sending site and unless the OP appeals to get it edited and re-opened it is closed there. Having the question sit indefinitely waiting for the OP to care about it just mean's it's not sitting on the new site waiting for the OP to care about it. No one but the stack exchange developers (where it takes space in a database) and the OP will see it waiting to get approved for migration.
    – bmike
    Nov 1, 2012 at 15:34

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