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I just noticed this today but a question was battered with down votes, rightfully so, and was migrated to one of the other SE sites. However, the downvotes stuck with the question. It seems like downvotes placed because a question was off-topic for SF should somehow get removed when moved to the proper location.

When they arrive at the new location they already look like crap questions and don't get nearly as many answers as those with a neutral or positive vote score. Maybe I'm being overly thoughtful, maybe its this summer of love stuff.

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This is a known problem although it is usually seen the other way round in that the originating site upvotes too much.

Personally I think the solution is to just stop migrations, the convenience to the OP of migrating questions is far outweighed by the problems caused.

Off topic questions should just be closed as such and the OP should be advised that $elsewhere may be more appropriate (based on voting like it is now) but to search first. This is pretty much what I do unless someone from $elsewhere asks for something to be migrated.

It's not like it's difficult for an OP to copy+paste their question to another site if they see fit to do so.

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  • So you close the question then instruct them to copy & paste?
    – Brent Pabst
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 20:56
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    @BrentPabst:something like this. Welcome to Serverfault! Your question is off topic for Serverfault. It may be on topic for Superuser but please check their faq and search their site before asking.
    – user9517 Mod
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 20:59
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    @BrentPabst It generally depends on the question - If something is a real gem but not on-topic for SF a migration can be a good thing, but for the most part the stuff we close around here is so awful it shouldn't be inflicted on other sites.
    – voretaq7 Mod
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 21:17
  • Works for me...
    – Brent Pabst
    Commented Aug 13, 2012 at 21:19
  • I could see this working but would prefer to see the questions deleted, rather than just closed. The current method of deleting by votes means that it's very rare for questions to be deleted. Having those questions around, whether closed or not, just seems to attract more like them. Cleaning up has become much more important since the FAQ was effectively made null and void.
    – John Gardeniers
    Commented Aug 15, 2012 at 6:45
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    One other potential problem with migration is that (I believe) the migrated question keeps the age it originally had, so is liable to be overlooked by anyone who sorts questions by age - because it suddenly appears in the middle of a bunch of questions you've already looked at. (Is there a better way of seeing new questions that doesn't have this problem?)
    – Harry Johnston
    Commented Aug 15, 2012 at 23:00

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