Migrating closed, off-topic, on-hold questions (past, present, and future) to more appropriate SE sites

Question

I had the intent of finding better SE sites for my questions that were closed, put on hold, or off-topic. I flagged a moderator for one of my questions, but I don't think an action was taken (if there was, I would not know how I would be informed). This led me to think about all of the other questions out there that are not a fit for the workplace, but would be better suited for another site.

Should such questions, at either request of the question asker or the discretion of a moderator, simply migrate questions instead of having them closed?

Answer 1

I'm speaking as an individual moderator, not for the team. (I'm not saying I think they'd disagree; we haven't talked about it.)

First, there's a time limit on migrations: questions older than 60 days can't be migrated. So there's nothing we can do about questions that old no matter how clear the case is otherwise.

Second, if the question might be on-topic somewhere else but it's poorly asked, missing important information, hard to understand... the other site would just put it on hold anyway, bouncing it back to us, so we're not going to migrate that.

Third, if a question already has a bunch of good answers here, it shouldn't be migrated. That's not fair to the people who answered here, and it's not fair to the other site (which now has to curate answers that might not meet their rules even though they met ours). In this case we should close the question here and advise the OP to re-ask the question on the other site, linking the current question for background.

If the question is well-asked and unanswered and the OP is an experienced SE user and actively engaged in the question, it's probably faster for the OP to re-ask the question himself instead of waiting for a moderator to see a flag. But if the OP asks for migration anyway and it seems like a reasonable destination I'll generally honor that; after all, I'm not doing anything he couldn't have done himself.

We can ask for more migration options in the close dialogue. SE generally avoids setting up migration paths to young beta sites; they're trying to find their way and it's better if they do it organically, not by being flooded with stuff from other sites. I would want to see buy-in from IPS for a migration path from here, and they would probably want to see a list of closed Workplace questions that our community thinks belong on IPS, so they can decide how much they trust our judgement.

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In my personal opinion, migration is pretty broken in a lot of ways, some technical and some behavioral. I'd like to see SE eliminate migration entirely, replacing it with a way to help the OP manage his question.

Answer 2

should such questions, at either request of the question asker or the discretion of a moderator, simply migrate questions instead of having them closed?

Surely a mod can do the migration at will, but I doubt they do that lightly or "just because" OP requested it.

As far as I know, a way to justify a migration is for the question to be closed as off-topic for "belonging to other site". This can be done via Closing > Off-Topic > Migration ...

...which, surprise!, is pretty useless here on TWP as we have no more options for sites to flag as migration targets (that's a status-declined so I won't get my hopes too high). There was also a "more recent" follow-up request asked (about 5 years ago), but no clear actions to be seen for this.

What I see folks do here on TWP is to flag with Closing > Off-Topic > Other and link on their comment the SE site they consider more appropriate for this case. The OP can then ask for the question to be migrated, or some mod can see this and take proper action.

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Now, what I think is not possible (and that doesn't make much sense either) is to attempt to migrate a question that was closed for any other reason:

1. If a question was company-specific or legal advice I doubt it can be answered elsewhere but maybe here on TWP (but we would probably be guessing) or maybe in Law. This I also doubt as they clearly say that:

   Please don't ask questions seeking legal advice on a specific matter. These are off-topic for Law Stack Exchange.

2. If the question lacked a goal or asked us to make a choice then the question was indeed Workplace related (thus unlikely, if not impossible to fit in other SE site), but off-topic. Hence no migration.

3. If it was unclear what the poster was asking then definitely it's a lost case and no migration required (at least not until it is clarified).

4. If the question was too broad or primarily opinion-based it was again Workplace material (no other place to migrate) but is not answerable in a clear and objective way, or as specified by the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions

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So, bottom line, I think that what you ask is already actively carried out by our kind and diligent Moderators ... and with some of our help :).

They currently handle the migrations that take place in TWP, either by their own judgment, OP's justified request, or well with the outputs from the organic Closing Process handled by the Community.

This you have probably seen by now, when we get questions that go to IPS (which seems to be our main migration target) ... did I hear we should add that as migration option?... oh wait, I already explained that part.

Still, I would like to hear what our Mods have to say about this question and my perception of it.