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As @Shog9 mentioned when originally implementing 3-vote-close:

[Previously], migrating a question to another site require[d] that 4 of the 5 votes all agree that the question should be migrated to a specific site.

As migration would be blocked otherwise, I'm also temporarily lowering the threshold for migration from 4 votes to 3 - essentially making a migration require unanimous agreement from close voters. (emphasis added)

When there's a good / question that would be suitable for Super User, I vote-to-migrate and toss a into SOCVR as well, but usually these get closed by (I'm assuming) a single "Not about programming" vote. I know that my personal "muscle memory" often pushes me in the direction of an "Off-topic" vote when I should have at least considered migration.

Is there any reason that the bar couldn't/shouldn't be dropped to 2-votes-to-migrate? This would keep intact the original spirit of allowing one "other" vote to not derail the migration.

Of course, votes-to-migrate should be carefully considered regardless. Only good, suitable questions should be migrated. I'm not proposing that we lower the bar on the quality of questions that are migrated, just that we accept two voters opinions on the suitability.

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    Also happens fairly regularly with questions posted on the main site that are about the main site. So migrating to meta is appropriate, however, a single "Not about programming" or any other close reason blocks that.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Mar 26 at 12:38
  • What if a condition was added to vote for migrations where you should have a minimum amount of reputation on the other site? Maybe having the close votes privilege on the other site? This would ensure the person casting the vote has some knowledge about what questions would be on-topic and suitable for the other site.
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented Mar 26 at 12:45
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    @AbdulAzizBarkat I did consider that, but technically that's a much bigger implementation, of course. I have gold-badge in the tag on Super User, but I can't imagine the cross-site work needed to check that. I'm going for the simple case first ;-)
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented Mar 26 at 12:53
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    A cheap solution here might be for the system to raise an automatic mod flag if 2/3 close votes are for migration. That leaves the current system basically intact with some extra exception handling.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Mar 26 at 13:35
  • Wonder if you could adjust the threshold based on tag popularity too. More viewers = more voters and vice versa.
    – Tanner
    Commented Mar 26 at 13:51
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    @Tanner I've always thought that "scaling" might be a good way to handle lower-volume tags. That said, there are probably a lot of corner cases involved. Regardless, it's definitely not an "easy" solution for an already-constrained SE dev staff ;-)
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented Mar 26 at 13:56
  • @VLAZ My first thought was that it would work. But the corner-case there is that, at least at present, the flag queue is deep enough that the OP might have reposted already after it gets closed. That means that it would require additional effort for the Mod to check if the user had recently posted on the other site. Also, the question would be initially closed regardless, so there's still the "negative reaction" (warranted or not) from the user that could be avoided by automatic vote-to-migrate.
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented Mar 26 at 13:58
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    @Tanner you'll quickly run into an issue trying to quantify what "popular" means. More questions? Some tags have less questions but more oversight because of it. More views? That is partly a function of quantity of questions. But also a tag with very few questions might get a disproportionate representation if it exists on a question with millions of views. Also - views do not account for how active the community is there. The views can be mostly from users already acting on the questions. Or from mostly anonymous users. Who knows.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Mar 26 at 14:03
  • @VLAZ "viewers" is probably the wrong term, but there would be some logical combination of metrics that would allow some form of weighting. Low traffic tags may never get to a higher threshold, where as higher traffic tag could easily surpass it.
    – Tanner
    Commented Mar 26 at 14:57
  • Opinion: The only people who's migration votes should count are the voters who also have close vote privileges (and thus have demonstrated some understanding of what's acceptable) on the target site with the possible exception of migrate to meta.
    – user4581301
    Commented Mar 26 at 18:01
  • @user4581301 While I agree that would probably be a better system, it's just not what's in place nor has ever been. Even better - Just have a "Inbound Migrations" review queue, perhaps. Two reviewers with enough rep on the target site (or one gold-badge in the tag) could vote to allow the migration.
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented Mar 26 at 18:08
  • How often do migrated questions prove worthy of the hassle to migrate them? What percentage of them garner upvotes/answers? Do other sites really want our junk? Where did meta questions with detailed statistics go?
    – oguz ismail
    Commented Mar 27 at 0:33
  • @oguzismail We have no way of knowing the overall number unless SE provides statistics. If migration isn't useful, then it's a feature that SE should just turn off entirely. I'm going on the assumption that it was useful when it required 4 of 5 votes, and that it would still be useful today with 2 of 3. The logic of a single vote derailing the migration just doesn't make sense. Also there's only a "hassle to migrate them" if the automatic vote fails - Then a Mod has to do it manually.
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Commented Mar 27 at 10:42
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    @NotTheDr01ds re "we have no way of knowing" - SEDE schema. PostHistory has migration events (PostHistoryTypeId 35 and 36). then you can join on Posts / Votes / PostFeedback to get voting info, closure info, etc. cross-site SEDE is a thing. in case you're wondering, I don't think info about aged-away migration votes is in SEDE (see this).
    – starball
    Commented Mar 27 at 10:51
  • 4/5 is not the same as 2/3. Migration not happening unless all close voters agree makes perfect sense to me.
    – oguz ismail
    Commented Mar 27 at 10:53

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