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This is really out of my league, and I wouldn't bring it up except that I'd like to understand how things are done here - at unix.se. That said:

While searching, I found a Q&A that addressed my question perfectly on the SO forum. As you can see it's quite old, and also classified as off-topic and closed. Fair enough, but it seemed quite relevant here, so I posed a question in SO.meta about migrating it.

I got an answer to my question that I felt was credible, but not quite "satisfactory" if you know what I mean. And so, I am posting a question here to ask if there is a different procedure at unix.se for handling such things, or if there are other suggestions.

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  • Note that you can always just ask the question again here. You can link back to the one on SO, mentioning that you feel the question could get better answers here. Ideally, you would also answer it yourself using the information from the answers on SO.
    – terdon Mod
    Sep 4, 2018 at 10:06
  • @terdon: Thanks, I thought of that... I may do it when I get some "free time" :)
    – Seamus
    Sep 4, 2018 at 10:57
  • @terdon: While I agree that this question should be on U&L, either by migration or reposting, you know perfectly well what will happen if a (moderately) low-rep user were to re-ask an already-asked-and-answered question — it would very quickly get a bunch of “off-topic — posted on multiple sites” votes. Perhaps, if and when Seamus re-asks the question, you should rush in and post a comment explaining that it’s OK. Even the Help Center doesn’t say that it’s OK if the other question has been closed (and was by a different author).
    – Scott - Слава Україні
    Sep 4, 2018 at 18:25
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    @Scott if you see that happening, please flag for mod attention. There is absolutely nothing against different users posting similar questions on different sites. Closing for such a reason is abuse and will be treated as such.
    – terdon Mod
    Sep 4, 2018 at 19:08
  • @Scott: Appreciate the comment. It's also interesting since the 3rd link in slm's answer below contains a quote that seems to sanction this provided credit is given, and a link to the original (see comment below for more detail).
    – Seamus
    Sep 4, 2018 at 20:03

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Because new sites get added to stackexchange over time, there is this unfortunate side effect that Q's which previously didn't have a proper home would show up on one of the existing sites. Given SO, SU, and SF are the original 3, they suffer from this the most.

In any case it's generally the policy that after 2 months, Q's that have not been migrated, can no longer be migrated. I believe there are ways to request this, but it's generally advisable to leave things where they are, especially on Q's which have 100's of upvotes and 100's, perhaps 1000's of views. Moving things between sites would lead to too much of a disruption to user's on both the sending and receiving sites.

This topic has been discussed multiple times in the various meta sites.

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  • Yes, I can appreciate the disruption that might result from a move like that. OTOH, it does leave some good viable Q&A "stranded"; in a few cases perhaps even stagnant, outdated. But there's tradeoffs for every decision, eh? And the 3rd post you linked addresses concerns of stagnation: "If someone asks a similar question on your site and you're certain that you can't do better than the original version elsewhere, summarize it, give credit to the author, and link back to the original." Ooooh... I feel a 'canonical question' coming on :)
    – Seamus
    Sep 3, 2018 at 21:07

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