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The OP of this question - "What's the preferred orientation for a toggle script?" wanted the question closing as it "affected his accept rate".

I suggested he asked an SO mod to migrate it here, but the mod disagreed on the grounds that we were still in beta. However, he did agree that it was a good question and I think it would be perfectly at home here.

There have already been some questions migrated from other sites (Stack Overflow, Programmers, Web Applications and Android - see /tools/recently-imported if you have access to the tools menu.

One of the reasons we're still in beta is that our statistics aren't brilliant - particularly the number of questions asked per day and (to a lesser extent) the users and visitors.

That led to the thought that an influx of questions from SO might help in this regard. It would bump up the number of questions on the site and hopefully bring their owners to the site to reclaim ownership. Then (hopefully) this influx of visitors/users will stay on the site and help it grow.

Thoughts?

This question was also prompted by talks of merger:

Graphic Design

Programmers

(both of which I disagree with).

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  • I think these belong on both simultaneously, see my comment on Jeff Atwood's answer
    – bguiz
    Mar 3, 2011 at 5:47

3 Answers 3

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I am becoming more and more open to migrating questions out of SO into other sites, even beta sites, as long as they are a strong match to the site topic. Please note, that part is not negotiable!

Why? Well, Stack Overflow gets 3k questions per day. Depending on the tags and time of day, very specialized questions might get more attention on our specialized expert sister sites.

This is also a way of evangelizing the network and driving the mass of traffic on Stack Overflow out toward related sites they might also enjoy.

So I say yes, flag them, and point them to this answer if necessary. But only if you honestly believe the question is a very strong match to the target site!

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    I'm all for the auto-migration, but then wouldn't it make sense not to have to create an account on each site ? The number of unattributed questions would exponentially increase otherwise given I think most SO users don't have accounts on the other SE sites.
    – wildpeaks
    Feb 6, 2011 at 13:09
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    I agree with Jeff and perhaps should have made it clear that we should go looking for good questions.
    – ChrisF
    Feb 6, 2011 at 16:45
  • I think the OP makes a good point actually, for why the same questions should be allowed to exist simultaneously on two different sites. IMHO the questions he refers to may indeed belong on both StackOverflow and UI.StackExchange
    – bguiz
    Mar 3, 2011 at 5:46
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    @bguiz questions should be tailored to the audience. "how do I go downhill really fast on snow?" is not the same question when asked of skiiers versus snowboarders.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Mar 3, 2011 at 6:13
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What about google? Often you google something and end up on Stack Overflow, probably much more often than you use the StackExchange search right away. So, google has these questions on SO indexed, what happens when you try to access the page with the answer that was migrated? Is it possible to just redirect the user here?

Personally, I don't mind migrating that much if I'm able to use the system as a whole and if I don't end up visiting pages that say "invalid question ID" or something like that because the question was moved to another site. That being said, it's kinda hard for me to tell what exactly does belong on StackOverflow if all questions can be sooner or later migrated to the more specific sites like "UI" or "Databases".

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    If questions are migrated there's an automatic redirect when you click on the original link. Click on this link (apparently to SO) and see where you end up - stackoverflow.com/questions/4835157/…
    – ChrisF
    Feb 18, 2011 at 8:38
  • @ChrisF: thank you, I didn't know that. And what about reputation/badges etc? How are they affected? I would really like to see some FAQ about migrating. If it exists, I'm missing it
    – Dyppl
    Feb 18, 2011 at 8:42
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    Check out meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq for more info about how the system works. Badges are transferred, reputation isn't.
    – ChrisF
    Feb 18, 2011 at 8:44
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I have just discovered this meta question.
In the end I had to ask it directly on UX: What's the preferred vertical orientation for a toggle script?

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  • Flag the one on SO and ask for it to be deleted.
    – Patrick McElhaney
    Jun 4, 2011 at 17:04
  • @patrick someone did it even if my earlier flagging was rejected.
    – Knu
    Jun 5, 2011 at 1:55

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