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A specific case of a question that has been migrated from StackOverflow, rather inappropriately in my opinion, since it is a question on programming and not on mathematics. I've asked on Meta.SO, and a suggested method of dealing with this is for a moderator to close/delete the question on Math.SE and flag its antecedent on StackOverflow so the Mod there can clear migration history.

But of course, we run into again the question about when the moderator should cast a binding close vote on a question. So my question is: is this a case where the moderator is allowed to close the question and bounce it back to the originating website for expediency?

Argument against that is the usual: this involves a judgement of whether the question is appropriate for this website. And so should be similar to how we should gather quorum for close a question for being "off-topic".

On the other hand, we are not really closing the question: just sending it back to where it originated for further review there. And dealing with this more efficiently may allow the OP to more quickly get the answer he wants, rather than having the question bounce around in limbo.

What are people's thoughts on this?

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  • $\begingroup$ The question in question seems rather off-topic as stated. It can be turned into a math question without too much work, but from the question itself and the answers it already got it does not seem to want to be a mathematical question. $\endgroup$
    – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez
    Commented Jan 3, 2011 at 16:11
  • $\begingroup$ @Mariano: that's precisely the issue. The question does not want to be a math question, but was dumped into math.SE because a moderator over at StackOverflow thinks it is more math-y then programming-y. $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Commented Jan 3, 2011 at 17:08
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    $\begingroup$ Rather than involve a bunch of moderators on more than one site, if you / we think the migrated question is not appropriate for our site, isn't it simplest just to close it? $\endgroup$
    – Pete L. Clark
    Commented Jan 3, 2011 at 18:09
  • $\begingroup$ @Pete: precisely. It is simple to just close it. The question I meant to ask is whether Moderators should be allowed to do it unilaterally in this instance. $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Commented Jan 11, 2011 at 3:14

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This is now more or less implemented: migrations can be rejected on the destination site. If the question is closed (except as a duplicate), whether by a moderator or by the community, it is deleted from the destination site, and left closed as off topic but unlocked on the source site.

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  • $\begingroup$ Ah! Great to hear! $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Commented May 9, 2012 at 7:08
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Well, that's not an unlocked question migration path, so the question was migrated manually by a diamond moderator. We can follow up with that specific moderator to ask why it was migrated.

In the typical case, you should not be seeing questions migrated here for that reason.

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For a question to be migrated to another sub-site, does the process have to be approved by a moderator? Because in that case it might just turn into a result of disparity in judgement of two moderators (and who will have a final say on where the question actually belongs?) and I am not sure how wise that would be.

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