Shall migration be further tuned in the sense of moderation theory?

Question

There is a very elaborated system of close votes, where irrelevant question can be closed real quick just by users with enough rep, without the need to bother a moderator. Migration on the other hand is not so easy.

This happens every day. A newbie user starts a question that belongs to another site (GIS in this case). Let's analyze the options I have:

1. Drop a comment to the user: "hey, this belongs to GIS.SE". This almost always results in immediate cross-posting, which we don't want.

2. Close. The question can get closed real quick, but it won't get migrated right away, if at all. The question will be closed for considerable amout of time and the user will be tempted to cross-post. Let alone there is no proper close reason for GIS.SE and other sites.

3. Flag - other (needs ♦ moderator attention). The problem is involved in the name itself - needs moderator attention. The system is not set up for other higher rep users to speed up the process. It will be slow and thus increase the time the question is at the wrong site, increasing the risk of cross-posting.

So, unlike the great closing system, where moderator is just a human exception handler, migration doesn't seem that smooth.

Shall this process be tuned somehow in the sense of moderation theory?

I don't have a particular proposal how to do that, so just throwing several thoughts:

• Is moderator attention needed for migration? Or can be based only on high rep users voting? There are suggestions it's needed and also that even moderators of target site might have to be involved, but this could be matter to further discussion. It could also be the high rep users on the target site :-)
• Higher rep users should be more collaborating and participating in this in the sense of moderation theory and prepare the migration cases on the silver plate for moderator, if his attention is needed (see the point above). Currently, users are lead to both closing and flagging, there is no clear workflow, no place in review items - both for the high rep user and maybe for mods too(?), etc.
• Don't have clear idea how this would work, but for example, high rep users could vote for migration to any SE site. The significant difference between this and voting to close is that there would be no time gap when the question is closed but not migrated yet, thus, motivating for cross-post. This could be e.g. implemented within current system where question closed for "belongs on another site" reason would not be actually closed but be waiting for moderator (or high rep users on the target site, see above) to migrate it.

So please, come up with your ideas. I am not proposing anything particular because I know these things are extremely hard to tune well. But thanks to great SE network we already know that tuning it well is possible :-)

Answer 1

Just another thing to consider: since the OP can delete (sometimes), sign up to the other site and re-post by themselves anyway, why not include them in the process.

Once a suitable site has been suggested (either via close-votes or comments - not 100% sure what criteria would suit best for this) then the OP instead of choosing to delete their question, can choose to "move" their question.

The pros of this are:

• The OP becomes aware of a more suitable target site
• As they're involved in the moving, they're less likely to cross-post in the mean time
• The target site gets a new user, and a post that doesn't have an orphaned user
• The post doesn't hang in limbo on the source site with people unsure whether to answer or being unable to answer

It's simply what the OP can do now, but in a more organised fashion.

Answer 2

I like the idea of having high-rep users vote-to-close/migrate on the front end (maybe make it a 20k privilege), and then have high-rep users vote-to-accept on the back end (maybe just a 10k privilege).

After the first migration vote, you could have it in those respective queues on both sites to speed things up (to cut down on cross-posting). There are some race conditions to work out, but I think it would be a good compromise to the migration problem.

Answer 3

Here's an idea: You can vote to migrate only if you have 10k rep on both sites involved in the migration.

This would hopefully ensure only questions that really belong on the other site would be migrated, and we wouldn't need two queues as in Lance's answer.

Obviously, the rep requirements could be tuned - maybe 10k on the sending side and and 2k on the receiving side would be more appropriate, for example. There might not be that many users above 10k on multiple sites.