What are the rules for migrating content from Stack Overflow?

Question

The first question from Stack Overflow has been migrated. This makes me wonder what are the rules for migrating content from Stack Overflow to here.

I started answering Drupal questions on SO when there were only 300; the count now is about 5000. At first I was very strict trying to close questions that weren't programming related. But there weren't enough people with high enough reputation that bothered to make it happen. At the end, I gave up and just answered them instead.

There are a lot of good, medium and poor questions about Drupal on Stack Overflow that really doesn't belong there. The reason is that they aren't programming related. Like the question I linked to above, it's a good question about something that's quite hard, but in it's core it's more about making a module do a task, than how to code it.

Will it only be the diamonds from Stack Overflow that can migrate questions or can we help with the process? What is the official policy? My guess is that the SO team would like to keep the programming related questions about Drupal on SO.

Answer 1

I gave this a trial run in practice. I have a lot of rep there which might have helped.

The question Display the title of related nodes from taxonomy in block was asked at SO, but since it doesn't really belong there not being programming related, I tried flagging it posting that it should be moved here.

It seems it happened less than an hour after I posted. I don't think we should go through all the Drupal questions that has been asked at SO. But it might be a good idea to flag all the new questions asked at SO, that doesn't really belong there. I believe it is in the SE team's interest to keep SO on topic, which we will be helping while promoting this site.

Answer 2

Quite a few medium-level questions get drown on SO (where only easy Drupal questions gets answered usually) while they would fit fine here: for example https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5277408/ only got 11 views despite I even added a bounty on that guy's question to help him out (it was barely 5 views before).

Therefore I think it would be interesting for such non-beginner questions to migrate now, without waiting for the end of the beta.

Answer 3

Generally, folks wait until the beta becomes public to start migrating questions here.

You've got enough rep on SO that you have access to the mod tools, so if you see a Drupal question over there that you think belongs here, I'd say migrate it.

Answer 4

I am not sure if this can be called rule, but generally only recent questions are migrated. Questions that have been asked before a SE site existed are generally not migrated to the SE site.

I think the question should rather be: Between the recently asked question we find on SO, which ones would we like to see migrated on drupal.SE?

drupal.SE's rate of questions per day is actually lower than the minimum reported in Area 51. drupal.SE needs help to get more questions asked, and migrating questions from SO would help with that, if we choose the right questions that are migrated.

Answer 5

The reason is that they aren't programming related.

These are prime candidates for migration: if they're off-topic on SO now, then moving them here gives them a chance to get answered rather than closed, and helps to promote this site as a resource to users who might be unaware of it.

That said, if you're gonna go through questions on SO and start flagging for moderator attention, it's a good idea to heed kiamlaluno's suggestion and stick to questions where the OP has been recently-active. Otherwise, you're liable to end up migrating a dead question that won't bring its author along with it.

After the beta, you can afford to be a bit more liberal with this: the definition for the site will be better defined, and there's less risk of inadvertently offending users who feel their questions are on-topic for SO.

Of course, posting a comment suggesting the author of a question on SO might find this site useful for future questions is fine, even if you can't get a moderator to migrate it.