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To be fair, when I submitted the idea to area51, it was meant to hold all the subjective questions that weren't suitable to SO. It has undergone significant change since then, and so confusion is natural.

Keep working on rejecting bad questions, and keep working on helping SO moderators choose correctly. It's a new site, and it'll take several months for it to figure out what it's going to be and what it isn't - just the same way SO had to figure itself out.

Don't get too impatient, and please don't lay this at the feet of the moderators - the community will eventually 'get it'.

• can the "off topic - belongs on Programmers.SE" close reason be removed in favor of manual migration by moderators who can actually spend the 10 seconds to determine if the question should be closed outright first?

No. Fully 1/3 of the questions that I just sampled (that were reasonable questions that do follow the FAQ) come from SO. There are a lot of questions that are submitted to SO which aren't appropriate for SO, but are appropriate for Programmers.SE.

It's a natural migration path, no more or less useful than the migration paths to SF, SU, etc.

Forcing the moderators to manage this workload is not reasonable due to the amount of work that would entail.

• So even if you had no idea what the consequences of using the "off topic - belongs on Programmers.SE" close reason were, there are still all of the other close reasons for which bad questions, like the ones above, can be closed.

Unfortunately people don't like to close questions, so on top of the misunderstanding about what Programmers.SE is meant to be, some people will attempt to migrate it anyway, hoping that it might find a home there.

Sometimes they are right.

Now, I don't have access to the stats on Programmers.SE, but I'd appreciate it if you would give us the scope of the problem:

• How many bad questions are migrated per day?
• How much of the total number of questions submitted consist of badly migrated questions (ie, total volume vs badly migrated)?
• How many good questions are migrated per day?
• How do those compare to bad vs good questions submitted directly to the site?
• Are the moderators on Programmers.SE having difficulty keeping up with the inflow of bad questions?

If the above problem is truly causing Programmers.SE to fail or presenting a severe load on moderating, then perhaps we should look into resolving the problem.

But your arguments lack compelling evidence that something needs to be done. Yes, it's annoying, and yes, it's going to take time for the moderators on SO to understand the difference, but that doesn't mean the migration path should be turned off, restricted to moderators only, or some other drastic measure until we understand the magnitude of the problem.

To be fair, when I submitted the idea to Area 51, it was meant to hold all the subjective questions that weren't suitable to Stack Overflow. It has undergone significant change since then, and so confusion is natural.

Keep working on rejecting bad questions, and keep working on helping Stack Overflow moderators choose correctly. It's a new site, and it'll take several months for it to figure out what it's going to be and what it isn't - just the same way Stack Overflow had to figure itself out.

Don't get too impatient, and please don't lay this at the feet of the moderators - the community will eventually 'get it'.

• can the "off topic - belongs on Programmers.SE" close reason be removed in favor of manual migration by moderators who can actually spend the 10 seconds to determine if the question should be closed outright first?

No. Fully 1/3 of the questions that I just sampled (that were reasonable questions that do follow the FAQ) come from Stack Overflow. There are a lot of questions that are submitted to Stack Overflow which aren't appropriate for Stack Overflow, but are appropriate for Programmers.SE.

It's a natural migration path, no more or less useful than the migration paths to Server Fault, Super User, etc.

Forcing the moderators to manage this workload is not reasonable due to the amount of work that would entail.

• So even if you had no idea what the consequences of using the "off topic - belongs on Programmers.SE" close reason were, there are still all of the other close reasons for which bad questions, like the ones above, can be closed.

Unfortunately people don't like to close questions, so on top of the misunderstanding about what Programmers.SE is meant to be, some people will attempt to migrate it anyway, hoping that it might find a home there.

Sometimes they are right.

Now, I don't have access to the stats on Programmers.SE, but I'd appreciate it if you would give us the scope of the problem:

• How many bad questions are migrated per day?
• How much of the total number of questions submitted consist of badly migrated questions (i.e., total volume vs. badly migrated)?
• How many good questions are migrated per day?
• How do those compare to bad vs. good questions submitted directly to the site?
• Are the moderators on Programmers.SE having difficulty keeping up with the inflow of bad questions?

If the above problem is truly causing Programmers.SE to fail or presenting a severe load on moderating, then perhaps we should look into resolving the problem.

But your arguments lack compelling evidence that something needs to be done. Yes, it's annoying, and yes, it's going to take time for the moderators on Stack Overflow to understand the difference, but that doesn't mean the migration path should be turned off, restricted to moderators only, or some other drastic measure until we understand the magnitude of the problem.

To be fair, when I submitted the idea to area51, it was meant to hold all the subjective questions that weren't suitable to SO. It has undergone significant change since then, and so confusion is natural.

Keep working on rejecting bad questions, and keep working on helping SO moderators choose correctly. It's a new site, and it'll take several months for it to figure out what it's going to be and what it isn't - just the same way SO had to figure itself out.

Don't get too impatient, and please don't lay this at the feet of the moderators - the community will eventually 'get it'.

To be fair, when I submitted the idea to area51, it was meant to hold all the subjective questions that weren't suitable to SO. It has undergone significant change since then, and so confusion is natural.

Keep working on rejecting bad questions, and keep working on helping SO moderators choose correctly. It's a new site, and it'll take several months for it to figure out what it's going to be and what it isn't - just the same way SO had to figure itself out.

Don't get too impatient, and please don't lay this at the feet of the moderators - the community will eventually 'get it'.

• can the "off topic - belongs on Programmers.SE" close reason be removed in favor of manual migration by moderators who can actually spend the 10 seconds to determine if the question should be closed outright first?

No. Fully 1/3 of the questions that I just sampled (that were reasonable questions that do follow the FAQ) come from SO. There are a lot of questions that are submitted to SO which aren't appropriate for SO, but are appropriate for Programmers.SE.

It's a natural migration path, no more or less useful than the migration paths to SF, SU, etc.

Forcing the moderators to manage this workload is not reasonable due to the amount of work that would entail.

• So even if you had no idea what the consequences of using the "off topic - belongs on Programmers.SE" close reason were, there are still all of the other close reasons for which bad questions, like the ones above, can be closed.

Unfortunately people don't like to close questions, so on top of the misunderstanding about what Programmers.SE is meant to be, some people will attempt to migrate it anyway, hoping that it might find a home there.

Sometimes they are right.

Now, I don't have access to the stats on Programmers.SE, but I'd appreciate it if you would give us the scope of the problem:

• How many bad questions are migrated per day?
• How much of the total number of questions submitted consist of badly migrated questions (ie, total volume vs badly migrated)?
• How many good questions are migrated per day?
• How do those compare to bad vs good questions submitted directly to the site?
• Are the moderators on Programmers.SE having difficulty keeping up with the inflow of bad questions?

If the above problem is truly causing Programmers.SE to fail or presenting a severe load on moderating, then perhaps we should look into resolving the problem.

But your arguments lack compelling evidence that something needs to be done. Yes, it's annoying, and yes, it's going to take time for the moderators on SO to understand the difference, but that doesn't mean the migration path should be turned off, restricted to moderators only, or some other drastic measure until we understand the magnitude of the problem.