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In closing questions to transfer to another site of SE, so the "Belongs to another site of SE" option, there is no ready option for the HSM.SE, a really crying need: cf. this question, a poster child for the need.

Is there an easy way to recommend HSM transfer, or a workaround?

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    $\begingroup$ A useful statistic: in the last ninety days, we've sent 28 questions to Mathematics, 5 to Electrical Engineering, 3 to HSM, and a few singletons to other sites. $\endgroup$
    – rob Mod
    Aug 1 '20 at 23:24
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    $\begingroup$ Previous discussion of migration pathways: What migration paths do we want on the site? $\endgroup$
    – Emilio Pisanty
    Aug 3 '20 at 8:26
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The migration pathways can be edited if there is a good reason to, and having a lot of overlap with another site and having a lot of questions that should be migrated over are usually a good opportunity to open a dedicated migration pathway -- we have one with Math.SE, for example.

The guidelines for migrating are generally:

  1. Don't migrate crap
  2. Be certain the question is on topic on the target site
  3. Don't migrate questions that are on-topic here

These are related, of course. If one is not intimately familiar with the target site's policies then it is easy to end up migrating something that is not good quality for the target site.

There is a corollary to the guidelines:

  • Avoid migrating to beta sites

The idea here is that larger sites shouldn't be sending large numbers of questions to a site that is not yet on its feet. It is up to the beta community to find its niche, its voice. So flooding it with migrations from outside is frowned upon.

For the case of HSM.SE, they are still in a beta stage. Additionally, we don't have a large number of questions that would be good candidates to migrate. So I think the way to suggest a formal migration at this point is to raise a custom flag and suggest migrating it -- we'll take a look at it.

In fact, it appears formal migration paths aren't even allowed for beta sites and it will always require moderator approval.

However, the caveat to that is I don't know if any of the moderators are intimately familiar with the scope and culture over at HSM. I personally would decline flags to migrate unless it seemed super obvious to me, in which case I would try to go talk to the mods over on HSM to see if it would fit in well there.

The best option though would be to leave a comment and suggest they post their question there instead, while also voting to close it here (because good migration candidates are questions that are not on-topic here). OP can either edit the question to make it more on topic here so it can stay open (and become a not-good migration candidate), or they can go ask their question on the other site.

The comment will hopefully introduce them to a new community that they didn't know already existed!

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  • $\begingroup$ HSMSE appears to have higher standards than PSE, over-all. The example I adduced is definitely not crap, but it is clearly harvesting eyeballs in the hope that "somebody around here might know this"... there is hardly any deep physics there! HSM.PE has crackerjack experts for that sort of thing. $\endgroup$
    – Cosmas Zachos
    Aug 1 '20 at 21:01
  • $\begingroup$ @CosmasZachos I was writing more about the general case than the specific one here -- we get questions periodically about why we won't/didnt/can't migrate to site X.SE, so it's useful to explain the general migration case when we can. For the specific case -- you can raise a custom flag asking us to look at migrating it, and/or you can leave a comment for OP suggesting they go check out the community and post there. $\endgroup$
    – tpg2114
    Aug 1 '20 at 21:03
  • $\begingroup$ My bitter experience is the OPs always opt for maximum numbers of eyeballs and the crowd they know, not the crowd that would answer their question, often rhetorical, perversely... $\endgroup$
    – Cosmas Zachos
    Aug 1 '20 at 21:05
  • $\begingroup$ @CosmasZachos Indeed... you can lead a horse to water and all that. If the question isn't on-topic here, vote to close and hopefully if it is a good question, OP will take it somewhere that it is on-topic. Alternatively, if it's a question you'd also be really interested in seeing an answer to from the right community, you can post it there and enjoy the right answers! With proper attribution to the original question as needed, of course. $\endgroup$
    – tpg2114
    Aug 1 '20 at 21:08
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, I am familiar with all these paths. I was hoping for a shortcut... $\endgroup$
    – Cosmas Zachos
    Aug 1 '20 at 21:10
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    $\begingroup$ @CosmasZachos The shortest one I can offer is a custom flag for mods to migrate it. I can't guarantee it will happen though, it will depend on if one of us is active enough there to know it's good and/or if we can track down one of their mods to make sure it's okay first. $\endgroup$
    – tpg2114
    Aug 1 '20 at 21:11
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To bring some numbers to the table, the migration statistics page (10k+) lists the following numbers of migrations for the past 90 days:

That amounts to one migration to HSM every two weeks, so it definitely can happen, via custom moderator flags.

It's also worth updating my previous answer here to a 2020 edition of what the global migration pathways look at full-SE-network scale (from this MSE answer):

enter image description here

This serves, I think, a good role in indicating the types of scales that make automation / user-level decision-making worth implementing as seen by SE. Our migration pathway to math.se is definitely there, but all the others look like rounding errors. Maybe there is a case for migration to Electrical Engineering? But even that looks like it's handled well enough by the mods, unless they report that it's getting to be a hassle.

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