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I've seen this question on Stack Overflow, which got closed by moderators as off-topic.

The thing is, that I think that whenever a question is off-topic, moderators should first think if these questions belong to other sister-sites like https://serverfault.com/ or https://superuser.com/.

So my question is:

Why don't we allow some kind of vote/poll on these closed off-topic-questions? Does this question belongs to another site? Let other users (not only moderators) decide about it?

I know that one can flag question and tell the moderator his opinion, but maybe a non-moderator will think it belongs to one site, while moderator will think it belongs to another.

To down-voters: please write your reason as a comment. I really want to know.

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  • 5
    That question is not closed by moderators but by users.
    – Himanshu
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:12
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    We already have this feature. Vote to close as off-topic offers you a few sites where auto-migrations by users is expected to be effective.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:17
  • @Martijn Pieters - I'm asking for more - let other user to vote on CLOSED question.
    – itsho
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:18
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    @itsho: the time to vote on this is when users are voting to close, not when already closed.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:21
  • To me your question is Not off topic at all.
    – S Nash
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:21
  • @S Nash - Why ? Just because I've asked more "power" to simple users ?
    – itsho
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:29
  • @Martijn Pieters - may I ask why ?
    – itsho
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:31
  • @itsho: The community has already decided what to do with the question. Why go through another round of voting?
    – Martijn Pieters
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:32
  • @Itsho I agree with you. There are many "off topic" posts that never get closed, but just get closed as off-topic. They, StackExchange, is trying to offload what is really a moderator task to a crowd sourced task. IMO, crowd sourced approach is failing because the topics might be better served on the correct site rather than closing them as off-topic.
    – Sun
    Commented Mar 18, 2014 at 16:55

2 Answers 2

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I think that whenever a question is off-topic, moderators should first think if these questions belong to other sister-sites

They do. (And it's not just moderators who close questions, it's also regular members of the community who have earned enough reputation to have close vote privileges.)

But there are some rules we generally adhere to when deciding whether to migrate questions:

  1. The question cannot be a very old question. In fact, the "vote to close" dialog won't even let you vote to migrate a question that is past a certain age.

  2. The question must (aside from being off-topic on the site where it is originally asked) otherwise meet our cross-network quality standards. In other words, we never migrate crap.

And, people who are active on one site and have earned enough reputation to help moderate the site are not necessarily experts on another site's community. They may not even participate on that other site! So they certainly are not the best people to make the decision whether a question should be migrated there. The other sites do not like it when Stack Overflow dumps all its rejected questions off over on them.

So not all off topic questions get migrated. If you're unsure whether a question really belongs on another site, you are encouraged not to vote to migrate it.

It turns out that good, high quality questions rarely, if ever, get posted on the wrong site. Users who are conscientious enough to post good questions are also conscientious enough to read the help pages and figure out where their question will be welcomed.

Interesting trivia: the first close vote on the question you linked was cast by Sathya, who is one of the community moderators on Super User! Surely, if he had thought the question was a good fit for that site, he would have migrated it himself.

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  • That's absolutely answers my question. But why my question got downvoted ?
    – itsho
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:33
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    @itsho If you look about halfway down here under the heading "Voting is different on meta", that may help explain. My guess is the downvotes are because you are asking for a feature that already exists.
    – psubsee2003
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:35
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    @psubsee2003 - just as I wrote - I'm asking for voting on closed question. That option does not exist.
    – itsho
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:37
  • @itsho you can flag it and choose Other, explaining why it fits other site. Moderator will see the flag and act upon it.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:43
  • @ShaWizDowArd - I know, and yet, I'm still asking to let simple users to help with this decision.
    – itsho
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:45
  • @itsho fair enough, but I disagree as I see no need for such thing.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:51
  • @ShaWizDowArd - That's also an answer I can accept.
    – itsho
    Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 11:53
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The question you have linked is not closed by any moderator but it is closed by users who have close vote privilege.

Why don't we allow some kind of vote/poll on these off-topic-questions : Does this question belongs to another site? And let other users decide about it ? (Not only moderators)

We have the option to migrate our question to other site but in we (non moderators) can migrate in limited sites due to crappy migration.

But if you really think that the question should be migrated to XYZ.SE site then you can flag the question and in Others option write your reason for migration.

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