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The Area 51 public beta for Project Management is not getting enough questions, avid users or visitors.

After a good discussion on meta-SO yesterday about the direction of SO, it seems that subjective questions are a better fit for targeted SE sites, leaving SO for objective coding questions.

So to combine these two objectives I would like to see all the existing SO questions tagged project-management migrated onto the beta of Project Management SE. This would:

  • Improve the PM-SE metrics by increasing the number of questions
  • Would help publicise the PM-SE site to the many SO users who have contributed to PM questions on SO but are not yet involved with PM-SE.
  • It would also clean up SO by removing a bunch of subjective questions that if they were asked today would be quickly closed.

Migration of some types of questions may not be welcomed by their new home, but PM questions are usually timeless - the same question could be asked in 2008 or 2011 without trouble.

So would a mass migration be possible, should questions be flagged for migration individually or is this just a bad idea?

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    Some posts I'd like to point those in this discussion would be this question, ChrisF's answer here, and more importantly Hendrik Vogt's request in a second comment here.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Mar 23, 2011 at 13:24
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    A mass migration would be possible, but wouldn't be advisable
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Mar 23, 2011 at 13:55
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    Improving the number of questions by migrating old, answered questions wouldn't really improve the site.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 23, 2011 at 13:57
  • Well how migrate about to programmers? I read a few of these questions and they seem like they would have a good home there.
    – demongolem
    Commented Sep 14, 2012 at 15:36

2 Answers 2

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The community coordinators have made it clear that questions generally should not be migrated to a site that is in beta for several reasons:

  • The site may not survive beta. What happens to those questions that were on SO if the PM site dies?
  • The migrated questions may affect the organic growth and direction of the new site. Early questions on a beta determine the site's topic and direction for a long time.
  • Questions may not be tagged correctly, as ChrisF pointed out. Each question must be weighted individually.

Additionally, there is not enough traffic on the PMSE site because it's still new. However, the growth is looking good. The number of referring sites is increasing, which means that the site will eventually be easier to find in search engines.

It takes time to build a good site, so the best approach is to let the site grow on it's own, and once it's purpose is more established by the community, then we can decide if we really want to migrate any questions.

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I have suggested in the past that mods/supporters of beta sites trawl through related questions at SO and request migration, but with a few caveats. I wouldn't migrate if one or more of the following is true of a question:

  1. The question already has a selected answer
  2. The question is old (ought-nine or earlier)
  3. The OP is a ghost (the account was deleted)
  4. The question has up-voted answers

If you find a question that is valid for migration, and does not match one of these four caveats, then flag for migration. As for 4, it would be acceptable to comment on the question asking if OP wants to migrate if they can't find an acceptable answer.

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    Can I suggest they trawl through the questions rather than trolling? ;)
    – MarkJ
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 20:30
  • @markj I don't know what you're talking about.
    – user1228
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 21:44
  • I was pointing out a small typo in your answer - and trying to be funny, but possibly not succeeding. trawling = "methodically searching" but trolling = "abusive behaviour on an internet forum". ChrisF has already edited your answer to change the wording.
    – MarkJ
    Commented Mar 28, 2011 at 12:13
  • @MarkJ: Damnit, I meant to replace "troll" with "trowel"; @ChrisF just ruined my joke. See, I pretend I never use the wrong word, but in covering up my error, I misspelled the correction (see my edit description for more comedy hijinks). You people have no funny.
    – user1228
    Commented Mar 28, 2011 at 12:52

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