Most of you would know that I'm active here and on Ask Ubuntu. Recently, I started a discussion about enabling one-way migration paths from Ask Ubuntu to Unix & Linux, so I'm here to discuss with the other party so discussions can be in parallel for both sides and expedite the process.
Here are the relevant migration stats over the last 90 days:
Relevant:
It seems to me most/all of the objections to this discount the significance of answering the question well and instead focus on minor technical hassles and how it will impact people potentially providing an answer (e.g. "Why would you want our crap?"). Perhaps this misses the forest for the red tape, so to speak.
I'm kind of baffled as to why these paths don't exist already. WRT to good questions:
Very ubuntu centric questions will be better off on AU because:
General linux questions would likely be better off here because:
The lower volume of questioners means they will get more attention -- keeping in mind also that, given time, a cross-over of knowledgeable users from AU should occur.
This re-reinforces to the questioner that it is a general linux question and not something specific to their distro -- an issue which seems to confuse many new users.
WRT to bad questions, good questions should not be restricted from migration because bad questions exist. Further, if somebody has to deal with crap, I don't see what difference it makes whether it is dealt with here, there, or wherever. The larger community of which we are all a part is Stack Exchange.
Another objection which seems to assume there is nothing to be done about the lowest common denominator and that we must all simply throw our hands up on a race toward the bottom is
Migrations are abandoned more times than not (unless the user is already a user in both places)
If we were selling product for money, this kind of statistical analysis might be useful, since getting paid to do something the wrong way is better than not getting paid. Fortunately, such is not the case. Going back to two points I've made already:
That new linux users would benefit from understanding the difference between distro specific question and general linux questions.
That the community in the large is actually SE, not AU or U&L.
Migration is a positive thing even if it often fails to bring the user, because not migrating is certain to fail to bring the user (i.e., it is a gesture of pure defeat). People should be encouraged, not discouraged, from learning about the various boards. Given time, this would likely increase the amount of cross-over; saying that there isn't enough now so we can't do this is like saying there's no point in building a bridge here because there's not enough traffic crossing the river.
That's ass-backward. The reason there's not enough traffic crossing the river is because there is no bridge.
I commented on your AU meta Q already, I'd be in favor of this. When Q's such as these are migrated it will contain the typical "migrated from ..." banner so these will be obvious when they come in. I think we need to just coordinate with the regulars that these might need to be treated a bit more relaxed to get them in the door but I have no problem with setting this up as a migration path from AU to UL. I'm not condoning the reverse, just so we're clear!
But we must have AU's buying into this as well, which I believe they're OK with it, assuming Oli is speaking for the broader community.
Do we need this? I wouldn't think so. We have a migration option for SO because of the volume, that clearly doesn't apply here.
Also, it is straightforward enough to edit your generic off-topic close option1 to propose migration to another site in the SE family—that has proven quite a workable solution for a range of sites over the last couple of years that I have been here...
No.
I'm a mod on Ask Ubuntu. Braiam has probably seen the arguments I've made against this on our meta but this is the short version for the Unix.SE community:
The quality of our Mint (et al) questions would often not meet standards here. They barely meet our standards and if not for being off-topic, many would be duped, nuked, edited down heavily or otherwise butchered. But on seeing the word Mint (or another distribution) our users will migrate them here.
Migrations are abandoned more times than not (unless the user is already a user in both places) — we need to push the users not their questions
There's very little that you would need to send to us and what there is can be handled by moderators just fine
Even if the follow-up wasn't an issue, I honestly don't think you'd want to be on the receiving end of our close-OT firehose. Again, if you haven't, look at the stuff you'd be winning. If that's really content you as a community want, I'll stop wringing my hands and help this along.
For the questions that actually need migration (great questions or requested migrations) there are more than enough moderators between us to handle the migrations. These are few and far between.
I've taken so writing this post that the question was halved but the above should still apply.
