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I know this topic has been oft repeated, but I find it silly that there exist only options to migrate questions to Meta or SuperUser. Really?! The vast majority of questions I see migrated seem to go to diy.stackexchange.com or mechanics.stackexchange.com Of course I'm aware there are stacks for Arduino and Raspberry Pi and a myriad of other applicable sites as well.

I'm usually told that the pushback for adding these options is due to the target site rejecting migrated questions for whatever reason... Or some sort of hell where questions go when nobody wants them.

The reason I bring this up is a new user recently posted a question which was about home mains wiring, which I thought a better fit on DIY. Without the option to migrate, I voted to close with the reason being that it should be migrated. Subsequent users agreed with the vote and the question was closed. This led the user to be confused and post a new (deleted) question which specifically called me out for effectively shutting them down.

While I'm not surprised the question got closed (due to the current sub-par mechanism), I am annoyed at the fact there does not appear to be a way to suggest a proper migration, and even more irritated that I have no way to help the user understand what the closure vote comment was actually trying to do.

When a question is voted as belonging to another site as a migration candidate, what actually happens? Do moderators see it and decide whether it should be migrated or closed? If so, then what is the [expletive redacted] problem with having a couple more options to migrate?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Investigating a bit, this recent question was migrated, and "returned" to electronics. It is a lower-quality question; but that leads me to wonder: If it's on-topic for DIY, why can't it just be closed and stay on DIY rather than be "returned?" It makes no sense why a closed question without enough detail should be returned to an off-topic stack. \$\endgroup\$
    – JYelton
    Jan 11 at 21:00
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    \$\begingroup\$ Related - from the FAQ: What is migration and how does it work? - gives some background info on how migration currently works, what users should do before considering to involve moderators etc. \$\endgroup\$
    – SamGibson Mod
    Jan 11 at 21:11
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    \$\begingroup\$ Reading a bit on this topic (this 2y old question, for example) looks like this is a painful subject. It appears one reason is that sites don't like being migration targets. I can't say I blame them, but isn't having random new users create accounts and ask on their site just as likely as an inbound migration to generate crap they have to close? \$\endgroup\$
    – JYelton
    Jan 11 at 21:18
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    \$\begingroup\$ I see your point but I'll say no, having a user ask directly on a site (rather than being migrated) means they have more sense of ownership & they are more likely to be responsive e.g. to requests for more information from the new site. I see time & time again where, after migration, the OP doesn't go to the new site to get an account or participate in their question. If more info is needed & not supplied, effort spent by users on the new site has been wasted :( || I think it was Joel (might have been Jeff) who wrote that migration is courtesy, not a right. If unsure, we don't have to do it. \$\endgroup\$
    – SamGibson Mod
    Jan 11 at 21:27
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    \$\begingroup\$ @SamGibson I have to admit I completely agree with you. Upon reflection, migrated questions do tend to be a bit of a "dead on arrival" affair. It may ultimately be better to just close and encourage the OP to ask on the relevant site. Thanks for your input. Aside from this, I suppose my close comment could have been more verbose to help the OP understand that the goal was to move the question where it would be better received and probably get more relevant answers. As it is, the OP reacted very negatively. \$\endgroup\$
    – JYelton
    Jan 11 at 22:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ 10 months on- fwiw we moderators have recently been abused by other site moderators for attempted migratiiomns :-) \$\endgroup\$
    – Russell McMahon Mod
    Nov 9 at 3:47

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A quick look at the list of questions migrated to DIY (not available to all users) suggests that it is a decent migration candidate: DIY is the migration target a significant number of the questions migrated from this site, and they seem to be generally accepted by DIY. It might be a good idea to add DIY as a migration target for this site, though I'd have to look into it more to be sure.

The main reason why the company is reluctant to add options to migrate is that inappropriate migrations are an annoyance both on the original site and the target site. To mitigate this, moderators are able to migrate to any site on the network even if there is not a dedicated migration path.

The correct way for a non-moderator to suggest a migration to a site that doesn't have a dedicated migration path is to flag for a moderator's attention with a request to migrate to a specific site. In this case, you simply voted to close as off-topic on this site (albeit with a custom close reason) and none of your fellow close-voters raised a moderator flag to have it migrated. No one raised a moderator flag and no moderator saw the question before it was closed, so no moderator had a chance to decide whether or not to migrate it.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Thanks Null. In the future I'll use flag instead of close. Longer term, I think the company should strongly consider making migration less of a "close" option and more of a "flag" option to make this more clear. \$\endgroup\$
    – JYelton
    Jan 11 at 21:23
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    \$\begingroup\$ Another problem is that not just DYI and Mechanics are frequent targets. Physics, Math, Stack Overflow, Arduino... there's lot of questions asked here that don't actually have an electrical engineering aspect, but is just pure math, pure software, pure use of premade Arduino tools/libs etc etc. \$\endgroup\$
    – Lundin
    Jan 17 at 11:10
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Lundin Arduino should not be one IMO - there is a tendency for people to vote to migrate, if it's convenient, even if the question is suitable for both sites. \$\endgroup\$
    – user253751
    Apr 4 at 18:06

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