11

Through the power of 10K tools, I bring you statistics:

Outbound Migrations last 7 days
        Total  Closed  Ignored
SU      19     1       9
SO      2      0       1
Web     1      0       0
Others  4      0       0   (Mod-initiated: Unix, ITSec(2), WebApps)
Total   26     0       9

Closed = Question was closed on the target site
Ignored = Question gathered no attention on the target site

As you can see, our biggest export are questions to SuperUser. Just under half of them get ignored when they get there. We've actually migrated as many questions to the beta SE site ITSecurity as we have to StackOverflow. If this keeps up, and Security.se gets out of beta, we just might have our 5th migration target.

Inbound Migrations, last 7 days
        Total  Closed  Ignored
SU      8      0       2
SO      33     0       9
Web     5      0       3
Others  0      0       0
Total   38     0       14

Unsurprisingly, StackOverflow is our biggest importer. Just over a quarter of those questions go ignored, and none (in the last 7 days at least) have been closed for some reason.

Both directions, questions usually have answers from the originating site that ship with the question as part of the migration. Sometimes these migrated-answers are Accepted on the target site.

For having a slightly better overall answer percentage than we do (81% vs 80%), questions we send to SuperUser languish unloved almost as often as they get the attention they deserve. We're a lot better about answering incoming questions.

What are the questions that tend to get ignored? Badly asked questions. While it may say "windows home server" somewhere in that mass of incoherence, that doesn't mean we have to send it to SU to die. The one actual close was a close-as-dupe that our own all-rounder Dennis Williamson helped euthanise.

So please, when voting to close, if it is a crappy question just close it. Don't take the easy way out and send it somewhere else.

7
  • Ive often seen questions get moved that, while they were based on home networks, had good info and would probably have held some useful info to the larger community.
    – ErnieTheGeek
    Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 17:55
  • @ErnieTheGeek In my statistics gathering I noticed that home-network questions tend to gather about two answers here before migration to SU. There are some divisions about the topicality of home networking here.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 17:58
  • 2
    I agree, and the only problem with simply closing is that I miss "not a real question" as a reason. Sometimes neither "subjective and argumentative," "too localized," nor "noise or pointless" seem quite right.
    – Ward - Trying Codidact Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 19:00
  • I strongly agree about the close, unless you are certain the question is good question. I even want it enough I think there should be a dis-incentive to migrating instead of closing..
    – Zoredache
    Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 19:11
  • Argh, more proof that my mind is going: the close reasons arne't the same on meta. as on sf. At one point I knew that...
    – Ward - Trying Codidact Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 19:14
  • I suspect, but can't say for certain, that before the option was removed more questions migrated from SO to SF were then migrated to SU. AFter all, a great many of those coming from SO should have gone to SU, not SF.
    – John Gardeniers
    Commented Jan 24, 2011 at 8:46
  • @JOhnGardeniers I think you're right. I had a column on my chart for 'migrated' as an ultimate fate and nothing was. I had plum forgotten that multi-migrations had been disabled recently.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Commented Jan 24, 2011 at 15:20

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

Badly asked question shoulds not be migrated -- they should be closed.

Migrating a bad question is doing a disservice to everyone involved.

I say either edit them to get them in shape first prior to migration, or simply close them.

5
  • Problem is, we've said this before (quite a few times too). People don't do it. The real question, how do we get people to do what they're supposed to?
    – Chris S
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 14:53
  • @chris well it takes 3k rep to close, so that's a fairly experienced user. Do you have UI suggestions?
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 21:10
  • As a form of (very) basic sanity check, when users cast their migrate vote, check the tags against the target site and warn accordingly if you don't already do so. "Not enough common tags with target site: does this question really deserve migration?"
    – badp
    Commented Feb 23, 2011 at 22:04
  • @badp I don't think I agree with that -- closing as off topic is the fallback and is always safe
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Feb 24, 2011 at 2:37
  • I know it is; I thought prodding people to improve a question before migrating it couldn't hurt.
    – badp
    Commented Feb 24, 2011 at 9:48
2

I railed against this soon after SuperUser started, so it's not a new issue, but it is definitely getting worse. I've even started seeing questions that are not only badly asked, but are (or seem to be) about SF topics, such as VMWare ESX and SAN Storage, that are being voted for migration. It seems like some people aren't even looking at the content of the question. I know it may be badly written, but people should take some time to at least get the context of the question.

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