Is this the correct attitude for a Server Fault moderator?

Question

Ok... let me explain the case: I recently got the review upgrade in Stackoverflow and start reviewing some questions. I'm not experienced in this and obviously everyone does mistakes initialy, so I reviewed this question here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31387686/a-way-to-find-a-bad-links-to-your-website-that-are-using-https-vs-http?noredirect=1#comment50759786_31387686

I thought it was off-topic in SO and guessed the best site for this question would be Server Fault because is business related and was a server issue in my point of view.

Then the user came back to me in SO with the following comment:

Nelson Teixeira - This was the reply my question got over at serverfault.com: "Unfortunately, many SO people, apparently including Nelson Teixeira, have no clue what's topical here, but feel inclined to sent people over here anyway. He was wrong. – Sven♦ 38 mins ago" serverfault.com/questions/705410/… THANKS MAN. – Kaye Handlon

I came to SF and saw moderator Sven treated him very rudely. I have even flagged the question for rudeness. Here:

https://serverfault.com/questions/705410/a-way-to-find-a-bad-links-to-your-website-that-are-using-https-vs-http

Some thoughts and questions:

• if we are not experienced yet we expect the experienced people teach us the best ways to do things. Not that they are rude at us.
• moderators should promote SF, not repel who's trying to help. Speccially if they are beggining in this function.
• this isn't a paid job and even if it was this isn't the right way to treat anyone.
• what should have been my best attitude so I can improve in the future and avoid this type of behaviour from moderators and users of SO ?
• what is the correct site I should have directed the user ?

EDIT

Ok... I think that with the last explanation from Sven this case is closed. Thanks to all who helped, commented and gave instructions on how I could improve. Sorry for the trouble and I'll try to do a better job next time.

Answer 1

There's a trigger here to this whole thread that people seemed to have missed / ignored.

You don't unilaterally send people around the stack exchange sites!
Let's face it, there are a lot of people out there, and there are a lot of stack exchange sites.
And there's no way that any individual person knows what is or isn't topical on all of them.
Which is why there is a voting system!

If you feel like a question belongs somewhere else, you flag it as a migration candidate. This lets more people chime in and review the question, to make sure that the group agrees that the question deserves migration.

On the other hand, if you're not sure about the question, and you recommend a person to another site, you're just creating a more hostile experience for them.
You put the focus on yourself, and you create two identical questions that might not belong on either site.
In stead of being rejected on one site and having to look for answers elsewhere, the person is now being rejected on two sites. He now has a name to place on his bad treatment, and he's further frustrated that despite following advice nothing improved.

When in doubt, flag and vote! You're trying to help and that's great, but you can't predict peoples reaction to questions you don't fully understand yourself.

Answer 2

First off, while I wasn't particularly friendly towards Kaye, I don't think I was really rude. I was direct and concise and I don't tend to sugarcoat things.

That said:

if we are not experienced yet we expect the experienced people teach us the best ways to do things. Not that they are rude at us.

If you are not really sure if a question is topical on a site, don't direct people to it. This is the same as with technical questions: If you don't know the answer, just don't say anything. I think that's a very important rule! If you really must, at the very least add something like "but check their help center first".

I am not an expert on the topicality of most/all other SE sites, and if I am not sure it's a good(!), topical question elsewhere, I just let it die.

moderators should promote SF, not repel who's trying to help. Speccially if they are beggining in this function. this isn't a paid job and even if it was this isn't the right way to treat anyone.

It's not a paid job for me either. Again, I don't think I treated anyone particularly bad, but if I've offended you, that was not my intention and I am sorry for that. If have to admit though that I don't care for SO at all.

what should have been my best attitude so I can improve in the future and avoid this type of behaviour from moderators and users of SO ?

As written above, if you aren't sure, just don't direct people to other sites.

what is the correct site I should have directed the user ?

Nowhere, really. It is terribly unclear what the real problem is and it just doesn't make any sense to search for anything if they don't get useful input from their clients. "This is off-topic here" is a completely valid comment without a direction elsewhere.

Answer 3

Your main mistake here was to direct someone to another SE site based merely on the very short description in your site's closing options. Guys, please don't do that.

I've been on SF for quite a long time now. I still use the skip button on reviews, where I don't feel that I have the competence to be certain of how to treat it. If a question comes up about e.g. Windows administration, and it's not immediately clear to me that it's obviously off-topic, I'll skip that review, and let someone who actually knows Windows make the decisions on whether it contains enough information to be useful or not.

Occasionally I'll ask in a suitable chat room before voting to migrate, but most of my migrations are to sites where I've spent enough time to have a grasp on what kind of questions are appropriate and wanted there. That's why most of my votes to migrate are to Unix/Linux, which is the site where I have the second highest rep.

Lastly, you say "moderators should promote SF, not repel who's trying to help". That's not quite true. Moderators should promote SF to the audience the site is designed for, not to everyone who has a question that might be business related. There's more to it than that. And most especially, as others have said, if the question lacks sufficient information and clarity, then it shouldn't be migrated - it should be put on hold until the asker fixes the issues, and then it may be migrated if it still doesn't fit the original site.