When should one use a section sign (the link is only for 10k users) has been voted as off-topic and better suited to writers.SE by 5 users, but the question was simply closed.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/39343/is-it-always-ok-to-use-the-verb-to-say-after-a-question has been voted to be migrated from all the users who voted to close it, but the question is still not migrated. This time I have been sure to check twice how many users voted to migrated, and before I voted too, they were 4.

Did I miss a new feature announcement, or is this the way it should work since the beginning? Is there a bug, or did not all the voters vote to migrate?

  • That's very odd that it happened a second time—I've updated my answer in response. @simchona No such process exists, although it's been proposed and rejected on MSO before. – waiwai933 Aug 27 '11 at 6:37
  • @waiwai933 I am just sorry I didn't think of taking a screenshot; as justification, I can say I was really thinking the question was going to be migrated, but I keep hitting the wall with my head all the times I think of the opportunity I missed. Who knows when another question will be voted to be migrated from 5 users out of 5. – kiamlaluno Aug 28 '11 at 22:42

and do not exist on Writers.

To prevent a back-door for creating tags, when a question is voted to be migrated, the tags are checked on the destination site. Any tags that don't exist will be stripped from the question. If that process leaves a question without any tags, then it will simply be closed as off-topic. Mods can override this, notice how this question is tagged with [untagged].

(Not sure I understand the migration on the "to say" question, but that's a different matter I guess.)

  • That explains why a recent question has been successfully migrated without a vote from moderators, and the questions I am referring to were not migrated. Thank you for the explanation. – kiamlaluno Aug 28 '11 at 23:45

Unfortunately, only a dev can view the specific close votes, so I can't speak as to this situation precisely, but I do want to mention two things:

  • Is it possible that some of the close voters selected off topic but not belongs on writers? That would show up as 4 votes to close as off topic, which you have to click through to get to the subselection and might be what you saw.

  • The user has reposted the question on Writers, which is why I've deleted the question and not migrated it.

About the second instance:

  • Since you double-checked, and given the question, I'm 100% sure that the votes were migration votes, and the only other way a migration can be blocked is by a mod voting to close for a different reason. This didn't happen, so I've retagged your question in the hope that it'll kick a dev into looking at this.

  • I reopened and reclosed (with migration) the question, which seems to have worked. The revision history is still there if anyone's interested.


Apparently, fewer than three of the five people who voted to close that question believed it belongs on Writers. Thus, it was simply closed instead of being migrated.

  • Strange, I was sure that all the users selected the checkbox to migrate it to writers.SE; I checked that before to select it myself. If I saw that just 2 users suggested to migrate the question to writers.SE, I would have not suggested the migration. It is probable that not all the users voted to migrate, if a bug didn't kick in. – kiamlaluno Aug 17 '11 at 14:44
  • I know I selected to migrate. Is it possible for a mod to still do so? – simchona Aug 17 '11 at 20:54

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