I think there should be more Stack Exchange networks available when flagging a question to be migrated. For example I'd think that the following question:
...would be a better fit on unix.stackexchange.com instead of Stack Overflow. But without the option to mark it so, I feel hesitant to mark it.
OK, even accepting that the actual process of migrating questions should be left to moderators, the current user-interface flow is suboptimal. So I suggest adding one more option to that dialog:
You could do this both for the flag-for-migration case and for the vote-to-close case. The technical effect would be the same in both cases: a moderator would have to migrate the question. But the user experience would be different:
Seeing as this question here currently has status-declined, you might want to also look at this more recent answer along the same lines, and if you voted here, vote for that, too.
In response to Jeff's post:
This is a "Don't Make Me Think" barrier; we don't want to present closers with a list of 12 different destinations and make them suss out which one is correct.
Now that there are dozens and dozens of SE sites, the chance that the question should be moved to one of the "blessed" sites is getting smaller and smaller. At this point, either:
Either way makes more sense than the current method.
There are only 5 blessed migration slots, of which 1 is dedicated to meta.
This is a "Don't Make Me Think" barrier; we don't want to present closers with a list of 12 different destinations and make them suss out which one is correct. There should be 4 most frequently correct destinations + meta. If you believe a pet site deserves a place in that list, prove it with data of existing closed questions, not blue sky "what if there were.." imagineering
If you feel strongly a question belongs on a site that isn't listed, then there is a way to do this -- flag them for moderator attention instead!
Can you make a case that these Unix questions are more prevalent than one of the other 4, and should displace it in the list? Do you have data to support this, in the form of a giant list of closed questions that belonged on {x} site?
(I am also disinclined to randomly migrate questions in the network unless they are of good quality, and strong fits to the target site.)
Since main problem with extending this list seems to be "users are not familiar with entire network and would vote to migrate questions to inappropriate sites", I think good solution would be to let user to vote to migrate to any site where he have some good enough reputation, that, presumably, shows that he knows what is on-topic there.
I was going to post this very same question/request in here. Based on Jeff's comment:
"prove it with data of existing closed questions"
I ran into two questions yesterday that could have been answered on other SE sites rather than outright closed:
This would have been a good question for Graphic Design or UX: web 2.0 web design
And this would have been for Graphic Design: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6479825/why-is-everything-i-draw-in-inkscape-invisible
While I appreciate the intent of keeping the list of 'blessed sites' one can migrate too short, it is probably backfiring now that there are so many SE sites out there. The fact that I CAN'T pick those sites to migrate made me think...I couldn't figure out where the option may be. I finally flagged it and added some comments that it should be migrated, but the questions where still closed.
So, yes, one can add custom comments to a flag to get it migrated, but if those two questions are an example, people aren't using that method.
If the SE network is going to grow at the pace it is, it'd be great to have more of these questions get to the appropriate sites rather than fall off the radar as closed.
What if there was a 6th option to the main 5 of 'other' and, when selected, either a comment field or a DDL of the other options could be presented.
The idea of being able to migrate something to any site is very appealing, especially given how many more SE sites are than at the time this question was originally asked. The presence of several overlapping sites, like wordpress questions on SO and Wordpress.SE, adds additional need as users might not be aware of one of the more specific sites, and might realize they could get a better answer elsewhere.
But given the age of this post, I am surprised no one has mentioned the 2nd issue with migration in addition to the Jeff's "don't make me think" mantra. The 2nd problem is, as a collective whole, the community sucks at migrating questions. A user with vote-to-close privileges will see a networking question and say "this should be migrated to Server Fault" without really knowing what Server Fault is all about and whether the question is actually on topic there. Then at least 3 others would see the vote for migration and also vote the same without really know if the migration path is correct.
This "lack of knowledge" migration leaves the other site to have to clean up the crap coming from SO that doesn't really belong. And most SE sites do not have substantial enough community moderation to deal with the volume.
If a solution to this lack of knowledge can be found to work reliably, I think we can trust the community (or at least a subset of the community) to migrate posts to any site without having to get 2 sets of moderators (on the original site and the target site) involved.
Moderators can migrate anywhere in the Stackexchange network, so flagging a question is the right way to get it migrated to a destination where ordinary users can't migrate to. Just use the free-form " it needs ♦ moderator attention" option and suggest where the question should be migrated to.
There is no real need for more canned flag messages as you can write whatever you want into a flag.
While I fully understand the argument, that adding too many migration options is impractical simply because the people should not be able to say that something is on topic on site X without practically knowing the site X, that doesn't mean that no StackOverflow user knows other sites.
This is quite obvious and I don't think anyone would doubt it.
So the practical solution would be to give 3-4 general migration options to all (such as Meta, Programmers and WebApps) and, as additional options, the sites related anyway with SO, for the users which have at least YYY (say, 500) reputation on them.
Giving migration option to, say, Travel.SE would make no sense. I can hardly imagine any question asked on SO that would fit there. But, for example, WebApps, WebMasters, Unix, Ubuntu, Wordpress etc. are perfect candidates to such expanded list.
