Do we want CSTheory.SE to migrate bad questions over here?

Question

Do we want the CSTheory.SE moderators to migrate low-quality questions over here? More specifically, when someone posts a question on CSTheory.SE that is not a research-level about theoretical computer science, if the question is poor, do we want the CSTheory.SE moderators to migrate it over here? Or do we only want them to migrate questions that are likely to be acceptable here?

Background: Of course, if someone asks a question on CSTheory that isn't a good fit for that site (e.g., isn't a research-level question about theoretical computer science), but would be considered a good question on this site, I think it's pretty clear we'd like them to migrate the question over here. I don't see any disagreement about that.

The part I'd like to discuss is, should we ask the CSTheory moderators look at the quality of the question before migrating it? If the question is pretty clearly bad (e.g., not well-researched, no evidence of effort, or something we'd immediately close over here on CS.SE), do we want them to migrate it?

The CSTheory moderators seem happy to do whatever we want, so we should decide what we want. On a separate thread over there, one of the CSTheory moderators said that our admins (the CS.SE moderators) told them to migrate all questions that are in-scope for CS.SE even if they are badly written. Do we really want to be telling them that? Do we really want those kinds of questions? What criteria do we want them to use, when deciding which questions to migrate? Let's discuss. I'll sure they'll be glad to do whatever is best for our site, so let's figure out what we want, and then pass that along to them.

Related: Please don't migrate bad questions to CS.Stack Exchange.

Answer 1

My view: If the question is one we would consider a good question here, yes, please do migrate it.

But if it's a bad question -- one that would be a bad question here -- please don't migrate it here. If it's a bad question, we don't want it. In particular, if it's a question where the first thing we would do with it is close it, then please don't migrate it here.

If the problem has some English problems that can be fixed through editing, we shouldn't let that stop others from migrating the question here. If it's a good question -- well-posed, well-researched, on-topic, focused, narrow -- but has some English/grammar problems, we want it. Yes, let's ask CSTheory to continue migrating those sorts of questions here. If it's just the English, we can edit it once it is migrated here.

But if it is a fundamentally bad question -- e.g., not well-researched, or a duplicate, or unclear; if the problems are fundamental enough that we won't be able to fix them through simple edits -- I think we should ask others not to migrate those sorts of questions here.

My rationale: I think there's a "broken window" effect of bad questions here. I personally find it discouraging to participate on the site when there are many bad questions. I also worry that it sends signals to new users of the site that those sorts of questions are OK (because they may see those questions at the top of the list, before they've been closed, and assume they are a good model of what is acceptable). Of course, I cannot quantify this, so it's possible I could be inflating the concern.

For an opposing view, see Kaveh's reasoning, where he suggests that migration is more helpful to the users whose questions are migrated and where he feels there's little or no harm to CS.SE. I personally am not persuaded, but see his reasoning for a lucid and reasonable counterargument.

Answer 2

I disagree with the way you have stated this discussion. No one is saying bad questions should be migrated to here. The issue is that you consider particular kind of question to be bad whereas it is not clear that is the case. As far as I understand, you are requesting the following:

questions which are in the scope of cs.se and make sense but are too easy in your opinion (e.g. what is the big O of the following function, etc.) should not be migrated to here.

As far as I know these question are on-topic here and would only be closed as duplicates and not as off-topic or other issues. I think it is not reasonable to expect users who have incorrectly posted such a question on cstheory in place of here to have searched for answers on cs. There questions are similar to the question on math.se and part of the idea of this site was to have a site like math.se for computer science.