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While reviewing our close dialogs, I noticed that as of now, only migration to

  • meta.electronics and
  • superuser

is possible.

I'd propose we add multiple:

  • StackOverflow because there's the occasional "how do I program a loop for my microcontroller" question, and SO will not even notice the increase in traffic
  • Arduino.SO because, well, that exists and while the two communities have overlapping topics, I think a lot of the questions about arduinos are arduino-specific both in hardware/software environment and in audience, and the askers might simply be better off in a community understands their needs. The situation has changed, neither Arduino nor RPi are beta sites anymore.
  • Signals.SE (DSP.SE): A lot of the questions here wander the line between electrical engineering and pure signal processing/math. Having that option helps the askers – and the DSP.SE community is fairly active. I'd like to foster that.

Of course, suggestion to migrate are not to be taken lightly, but I see them as the preferrable alternative to "denyingly" closing, of course given that we're not dumping our garbage on another community, but I think "if it's too unclear to be answered, close it for that and comment that OP should improve the question and ask it somewhere specific" isn't that hard a guideline to implement.

So, what're the thought about adding these three options?

Alex just pointed to the last 90 days' migration stats:

Migration stats

My analysis:

  1. Migration is not a popular feature (and that's alright, migration is less desirable than answering, and undesirable when abused to get rid of garbage)
  2. With 35 outgoing migrations in 90 days, we only had 2 rejected ones, in two different receiving communities. We're not putting "a big load" on smaller communities.
  3. SuperUser is by far not the most popular migration target, although being the only suggestion in the "this belongs on..." options.
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  • \$\begingroup\$ I also propose a Mathematics SE migration option as well. It's more uncommon than the list you have provided above but there are times where people ask about topics like the Laplace/Other Frequency Transforms, properties of Boolean Algebra, etc. \$\endgroup\$
    – user103380
    Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 16:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ @KingDuken I propose that should be an answer "Yes, also...", not a comment. (your transform stuff might often actually be pretty EE-specific or fit on signal processing, so not sure I want to burden math.SE with it, but discussion would be better structured on an answer of your own) \$\endgroup\$
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 19:48
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ Statistics for migrations. Visible with 3k (?) reputation. \$\endgroup\$
    – Nick Alexeev Mod
    Commented Sep 22, 2020 at 4:21
  • \$\begingroup\$ @NickAlexeev awesome! thanks! \$\endgroup\$
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Sep 22, 2020 at 10:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ A site moderator can't change site migrations, they can for close reasons. A community manager could, but getting their attention can be problematic. \$\endgroup\$
    – Voltage Spike Mod
    Commented Sep 27, 2020 at 4:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ No surprise DIY.se is the #1 destination. \$\endgroup\$
    – Harper - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Sep 28, 2020 at 20:21
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ Just remember that "This fits better on SO/Arduino.SE/DIY.SE" is not a valid migration reason if the question is on-topic here. \$\endgroup\$
    – BrtH
    Commented Sep 29, 2020 at 11:46
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ I also propose adding the Engineering stack exchange. \$\endgroup\$
    – DKNguyen
    Commented Oct 7, 2020 at 19:17

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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This is fine if...

  1. everyone reads the faq's of the sites before migration
  2. We could actually get this implemented.

One problem I see is people forwarding questions wrongly to another site, a mod is less likely to do so, just my two cents.

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\$\begingroup\$

Each and every "the close menus aren't right" results in "there's little we can do about it."

Perhaps some higher level work is in order

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  • \$\begingroup\$ well, that's about the global close reasons (too broad/unclear...), not about the sites we have a predefined migration suggestion for – that's, as far as I know, in our own hands. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 15:07
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    \$\begingroup\$ electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=migration+close It's been discussed for years. It's been frustrating, as I can see zero rhyme or reason to where we ended up. \$\endgroup\$
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 15:47
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    \$\begingroup\$ fair point, though the facts have changed: a) different site rules, b) different people, c) Rpi and Arduino aren't beta sites anymore and have a realistic amount of users, and well-established and enforced rules. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 15:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ Just to be clear, I do think the migration options in the close menu are bad, and should be fixed. I also believe "nothing can be done" is neither accurate or an answer engineers should accept without challenge. \$\endgroup\$
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 18:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Scott I'm pretty sure something could be done by SE rather easily, indeed. But the real reason why there isn't more migration paths, I believe, is that the are wary about this: if everybody with 3k can vote to migrate to dozens of sites, there could be a lot more bad migrations that will happen. This would add a lot of burden to moderators from everywhere. So the policy is that, except for paths where migration is done very very regularily, user are forced to go through a diamond mod (by flagging) who will take care of the migration after having checked that it really makes sense. \$\endgroup\$
    – dim
    Commented Sep 23, 2020 at 10:03
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    \$\begingroup\$ I don't know about that -- I agree loose migration policies would be bad, but it obviously doesn't take just ONE vote to migrate. In fact, I don't know how many votes it takes. I suspect that all 5 close votes would need to be for migration, or the result would be a simple close. It would be interesting to see stats on how many migrations were done by vote -- before mod intervention did the migration. I bet it's close to zero -- which makes me ask why we waste real estate on a close option that doesn't do much other than mislead voters that it does something. @dim \$\endgroup\$
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Sep 23, 2020 at 12:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ScottSeidman if you don't agree with everything I do then why don't you just say so. \$\endgroup\$
    – Voltage Spike Mod
    Commented Sep 27, 2020 at 4:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ @VoltageSpike -- if that was the case, I would probably let you know. As it stands, my last participation in this question was on the 23rd, and your first looks like it was on the 26th, so I'm not sure quite what you're referring to here. \$\endgroup\$
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Sep 27, 2020 at 23:08
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    \$\begingroup\$ I've been very critical of our close menu for at least six years, which is longer than I think you've been around. If the tone of my criticism has changed, I'm six years more frustrated than when I started commenting on the issue. If this is about your HW close post, I upvoted that and think it's a good idea. I don't care for the language in the close message you put up, and think it could be better. This is the sort of feedback and discussion that discussion should generate. \$\endgroup\$
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Sep 27, 2020 at 23:13
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Other than that, I don't think we've had interaction for about 2 months, and I thought it was fairly benign. \$\endgroup\$
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Sep 27, 2020 at 23:18

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