Recently, I'd suggested a post be migrated. It was denied because the post failed to meet 'migration quality requirements'. Where are those defined? I have read https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/03/22/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ which does not seem to spell out much beyond Don’t migrate poorly-asked or non-constructive questions.
1 Answer
TL;DR: Don't send bad questions to other sites.
That's about it. Each site has its own rules, its own preferences, and its own standards. It's important that any question you send to that site meets all of those requirements. If you don't know, won't fix, or don't care about that other site, don't migrate the question. Anything else is tantamount vandalism.
Take the following example.
I hate Mint
I installed it because a friend told me to but it's awful. lol.
That is off-topic here, so that means it's on-topic on U&L or Superuser, right? Would you migrate it? That is obviously a flagrant example, but you do occasionally see people forgetting this and trying to migrate some really awful posts.
The threshold for a bad question waivers from person to person, site to site. There isn't a checklist of things I can say will definitely mean a question is accepted. Most people reserve them for objectively good questions in favour of just closing as off-topic and suggesting another site. Migrations are fairly rare.
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2Also keep in mind from moderator to moderator the 'requirements' also vary - what one moderator thinks is migration-worthy others may think are not, and vice versa. (We usually err on the side of caution though and don't migrate things)– Thomas Ward ModCommented Oct 11, 2019 at 13:35
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Absolutely! I believe —for example— that migrations are an extremely blunt tool and don't migrate the user, which is often what needs to happen in Q&A style events. My bar is pretty high.– Oli ModCommented Oct 11, 2019 at 22:19
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"That is off-topic here, so that means it's on-topic on U&L or Superuser, right?" Do people really believe this? If so, we should simply remove the migrate function for ordinary users.– MastCommented Oct 20, 2019 at 14:33
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What if the OP asks for their question to be migrated? Can mods not accept it? :)– ShayanCommented Oct 20, 2019 at 20:54
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@Mast Migration is effectively not available for ordinary users on AU currently, see meta.askubuntu.com/questions/724/migration-paths. According to my experience, it’s more efficient to ask OP to repost their question on the target site than ask a moderator to migrate it.– MelebiusCommented Oct 21, 2019 at 8:04
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@Shayan Often enough the target site will close the question. When that happens, the migration is rejected. The result can be messy.– MastCommented Oct 21, 2019 at 8:12
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1@Shayan OP can request but we're still not going to migrate bad questions. I'd like to think we point that out in a rejection.– Oli ModCommented Oct 21, 2019 at 9:51