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To premise my question, understand that I have been (and intend to continue to be) active on MO, and have not yet started to learn how the rest of SE 2.0 works.

The meta.MO question migration versus on-hold reminded me that I don't quite know how migration works. I probably should learn, since I do often vote towards closing (or sometimes towards leaving open) questions on MO. Often "this question belongs on Math.SE" is an option. What happens if I click it (and, presumably, enough other people do too)? Does the question immediately move to M.SE? Often, the questions that I vote to close are not in their present forms appropriate for M.SE — if the question immediately moves as an "open" question to M.SE, then I will henceforth stop clicking the "migrate" button.

I assumed, but migration versus on-hold suggests that this assumption is wrong, that when I clicked "close because this question belongs on another SE site" that the message that the question belongs somewhere else was sent to the OP, and meanwhile the question was sent to some sort of queue at M.SE, where high-reputation users could comment on it and decide whether it really is appropriate.

The same worry applies to migrating to other sites. I occasionally see questions about statistics, but I am sufficiently far from being an expert in statistics that I can't tell, really, whether they'd make good stats.SE questions. I'd be much happier if migrated questions enter some queue in which they are reviewed by experts from the other site, rather than being dumped there.

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  • $\begingroup$ It arrives open (once threshold is reached) on math.SE and also instantly. I think votes are stripped away, at least downvotes (I think also some comments, but not sure about this). If you click on a [migrated] question here you will be taken to the version on the other site (though 'our' version still exists). This works for moving to math.SE and our own meta (the options listed), see meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/141/… for a discussion to have more options; if you want to migrate to other sites flag for mods as they can do this. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Jul 2, 2013 at 11:39

1 Answer 1

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It's just like voting to close--five votes to close with a majority1 of migration votes will just migrate it over. There is no queue on destination site's side (though I would like one), the whole process occurs on MO itself. If the folks at MSE close or delete it (except if it is marked as a duplicate), then the migration is "rejected", and the post is sent back to MO.

If unsure, you can always flag for moderator attention. Mods have a private chatroom called the Teacher's Lounge where they can discuss with other mods. It has a built in ping for summoning all mods of another site. However, the general policy is to simply migrate the post without asking (if the destination site doesn't like it, they can easily reject the migration). Teacher's Lounge pings are useful for edge cases when you'd like to learn about the site's scope by example.

FYI: "on hold" is functionally the exact same as "closed", jut nicer. The wording changes from "on hold" to "closed" in five days.

1. Not entirely sure if it needs a majority or all 5

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  • $\begingroup$ On the footnote: I only did this once, but I am sure it was not all 5, and I even think there were only 2 'off-topic as for other site' (ie, migrate) and 3 'standard off-topic' so I do not even think there needs to be a majority (at least if the other reasons are sort of compatible). I do not know the full details. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Jul 2, 2013 at 11:42
  • $\begingroup$ How do I vote to migrate something to the statistics site, which is probably called Cross Validated? $\endgroup$
    – Will Jagy
    Jul 2, 2013 at 19:36
  • $\begingroup$ @will you can't (not until you fet a migration path). Custom flag it. $\endgroup$ Jul 2, 2013 at 21:29
  • $\begingroup$ @Manishearth Feta migration? Mmm, cheese. $\endgroup$ Jul 12, 2021 at 19:00

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