Migrating questions the simple way

Question

What is the recommended procedure when self-migrating a question from this site to another StackExchange site? On the present site, the question at issue has stirred little interest: one upvote, one downvote, one comment (of debatable relevance), and no answer, after 20 days. Now, on MathOverflow, it already received three upvotes and two good answers within half an hour. Clearly, the question is more suited to MO.

To "migrate" the question, I simply did a copy-and-paste. But I have since discovered that there is an "official" method, involving moderators in ponderous proceedings of uncertain outcome and duration.

Is the DIY method disapproved of? Should I now delete the question here? Should I have deleted it before asking it elsewhere? My own view on the second query is that the question isn't doing much harm at the moment, and there is still a small chance that it will get an "elementary" answer, which would be welcome; but I will probably delete it if it gets no further response (or only negative response) within a reasonable time frame.

As for the MO perspective, I think that they are well able to decide for themselves what questions are suitable for their site; unwanted postings there are soon shown the door.

Answer 1

The "DIY method" you refer to is called "cross-posting", proper migration would generally include deleting the local copy.

Cross-posting between sites—especially sites with a large intersection of population, like Math.SE and MathOverflow—is highly discouraged as it leads to duplication of efforts, and often a situation where one could spend a lot of energy coming up with information just to learn that the same information was already known (sometimes before the cross-posting).

But if you've waited for a while, and nearly three weeks is plenty of "a while" here, then it's fine with the caveat that you should add a disclaimer and a link to both posts. Preferably on the top of the post.

Note that moderators may reject your migration request, if the request is inappropriate (e.g. if the question is very rudimentary); or they might not be able to do so as questions older than 60 days are not eligible for migration at all. Just thought I'd mention that for completeness.