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When using "Close" and "Off Topic", a list is displayed of perhaps better fits for the question.

It only displays three choices.

Is there any reason it does not display all of the stack exchange sites? Can it?

Often, it is clear the site to which it belongs.

Maybe I am missing something obvious.

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    $\begingroup$ More degrees of freedom is not necessarily a good thing. Given too much choice people end up miserable and confused. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Jun 3, 2013 at 0:16
  • $\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila: Good point, maybe it can only include the top handful of sites (those with highest number users, maybe top-5 or 6). I feel bad sometimes closing things when there is a site that it can be directed towards. Regards $\endgroup$
    – Amzoti
    Jun 3, 2013 at 0:18
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    $\begingroup$ The migration paths are the site's meta + up to 4 other sites. This is carved on a holy stone somewhere at SE headquarters. But we could discuss what these 4 sites should be. $\endgroup$
    – ˈjuː.zɚ79365
    Jun 3, 2013 at 0:29
  • $\begingroup$ Grace Note's answer to this question explains why two natural candidates weren't added to the list a few months ago. $\endgroup$
    – Martin
    Jun 3, 2013 at 1:20
  • $\begingroup$ It may be of interest to look at the list of questions migrated in the past month. But I understand it does not include rejected migrations. $\endgroup$
    – ˈjuː.zɚ79365
    Jun 3, 2013 at 1:29
  • $\begingroup$ @Martin: thanks for that nice link! Regards $\endgroup$
    – Amzoti
    Jun 3, 2013 at 1:30
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    $\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila Perhaps Area 51 needs a proposal for Purgatory StackExchange, a destination for all unclassifiable off topic migration requests. $\endgroup$
    – Alexander Gruber Mod
    Jun 3, 2013 at 3:05
  • $\begingroup$ Concerning "often it is clear to which site it belongs"... sometimes it only appears to be clear. For example, questions about physics do not necessarily belong on Physics.SE. $\endgroup$
    – ˈjuː.zɚ79365
    Jun 3, 2013 at 5:45
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    $\begingroup$ @Alexander: I expected an axiom of choice joke, not an epistemological-Dante'ish-Robot Hell ;-) $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Jun 3, 2013 at 5:50
  • $\begingroup$ If we stopped using flags to ask for non-standard migrations, then our clever moderators would get bored. $\endgroup$
    – GEdgar
    Mar 19, 2014 at 12:55

3 Answers 3

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$\begingroup$

Migration is surprisingly easy to screw up, and experiences at other SE site have shown that community migration paths can lead to a large number of bad migrations.

For that reason, only sites that have an established history of successful migrations are added to the dialog. The less related a site is, the higher is the chance that the users that vote to migrate don't properly understand it's scope and migrate an ill-fitting question.

In the meantime you can just flag for moderator attention if you want to migrate to a site that is not an official migration target.

The restricted number of migration targets is also not a technical issue, but an intentional choice. Moderators can migrate to any site via a dropdown with autocomplete:

enter image description here

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Currently, it is not possible to select a non-standard option for where the question would best fit.

I think that it is possible to expand the options for the "off-topic" dialog box, yet maintain the easy-to-use interface.

I recommend that a searchable dropdown (like that on the Data Explorer) should be added to enable a user to select any site. With this addition, the sites displayed by default should also include the sites that other close-voters have selected. The dialog would continue to display the most common sites to which we migrate questions for quickly voting, but the dropdown enables users to have more fine-tuned control.

I realize that this is a big change and would have to be done by SE employees who probably have a lot more higher-priority items to take care of. But, it's an idea that I think should be considered.

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I would second the possibility of indicating a possible candidate site. True, in this way automatic migration may not be possible, but we can collect data to find which sites should be added.

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    $\begingroup$ Already exists. A flag to moderator indicating where the post should be migrated will likely result in the moderator-driven migration, and the data on such migrations is collected precisely for this purpose. $\endgroup$
    – user127096
    Mar 19, 2014 at 14:39
  • $\begingroup$ thanks! I thought that the flag was just a one-bit signal, I never thought of adding information $\endgroup$
    – mau
    Mar 20, 2014 at 9:09

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