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Possible Duplicate:
Off-topic flag should allow “other” choice text entry

The 5 sites listed in the off-topic site list cannot encompass all the possibilities for off-topic questions on SO.

While accepting the reasoning behind the Don't make me think barrier mentioned in the answers to the post More options when flagging for migration, there is a healthy compromise which allows users who want to think to suggest appropriate target sites.

Similar to how the Close as exact duplicate UI suggests a list of similar topics as well as providing an autocomplete text box for users to suggest other options, it might be useful to keep the current list of 'most likely target sites', but to also add such a text field where users can suggest a more appropriate destination.

This will prevent useful, insightful, and well thought out questions, which have simply been asked in the wrong forum, from falling between the cracks, so to speak. This is also obviously simpler for users than having to flag for a moderator's attention to suggest the duplicate, as suggested in this answer.

The place where I see this feature being most useful is between SO and math, though there are several obvious instances in which this feature would be helpful.

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    You need at least 4 votes for the same site for a migration to happen. Otherwise the question is closed as off-topic.
    – Mat
    Commented Dec 30, 2012 at 20:58
  • @Mat I do think there is a distinction to be made between the people flagging as off-topic and those voting to close as off-topic, since that represents a different rep privilege. The feature is in reference to the latter.
    – nbrooks
    Commented Dec 30, 2012 at 21:18
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    Your assumption that people with close privileges know how and when to migrate is a bit optimistic. You'll find numerous posts here on meta about sites complaining that migrations from Stack Overflow were... sub-par to say it politely. Programmers & Server Fault were removed from the list on SO for that reason. Flagging works just fine for posts that deserve migration to other sites, and allows local mods to talk with the target sites mods to make sure everything is ok.
    – Mat
    Commented Dec 30, 2012 at 21:21
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    This is not a duplicate. It is asking for a mechanism to input a possible site, and have the moderators review that; which is what would happen if you just flagged them, but it saves all the extra steps.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 0:41
  • @nbrooks, It was pointed out that your last paragraph actually is asking to skirt the moderators (which would be dupy). Can you change it to what I described in my prior comment?
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 3:56
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    @lance Sure, made the change.
    – nbrooks
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 4:01
  • @random, I was just making an answer for it, couldn't you have let it live a little longer?
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 4:47
  • Don't worry, any answers for this will apply for the canon @lan
    – random Mod
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 4:50
  • Ok, my feature-request here.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 5:04

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This will prevent useful, insightful, and well thought out questions, which have simply been asked in the wrong forum, from falling between the cracks, so to speak.

You can already custom flag as "migrate to X", which works well enough, IMO. Plus it encourages you to explain why a post ought to be migrated, directly inside the flag. (unlike a comment, which a moderator has to use a few extra clicks to get to). I've found these custom flag messages quite useful as a moderator when dealing with migration flags.

AFAICT, there won't be much of a difference "falling between the cracks" here. It will take just as long to use both options (since you have to click through two dialogs to reach the off topic one, but you have to type a bit more for the custom one). Why would your proposal be more efficient over the current system--custom flags?

Though there is one benefit that I see. Which may be a benefit, not sure: Making migration a separate flag (instead of a confidential custom flag) will enable 10k users to review it via counterflagging. Which may filter out stuff--BUT, it may not work as well, either. You can't trust users on one site to deal with migration to another site (unless they are active there as well) regardless of their rep on the first.

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  • But, you could have the choice made, auto=generate the flag, instead of the extra steps involved (remembering that he's in the close as off-topic dialog now).
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 4:50
  • @LanceRoberts: ? My main point is that if you are allowed to specify random migration targets in the flag dialog, (1) less people will specify why something should be migrated, (2) Those who do so will have to do so in the comments, which takes longer for both them and the mods.
    – Manishearth
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 4:52
  • See my feature request here.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 5:05

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