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Hi all I'm a moderator over at cstheory.stackexchange.com, and noticed this question on regex matching, which had been migrated over from programmers.

The mandate for our site is 'research level' questions in theoretical computer science, and so while this question is in scope in general for theoretical computer science, it's not at the right level for our site (as the community has deemed it). It seems like, given the question, the right migration venue is math.stackechange.com (but I wouldn't want to speak for them).

I don't have a question about this per se, but I thought I'd mention this here, in the event that other questions come up for migration. Should I be posting this on meta.SO instead ?

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How can those of us who are not CS researchers make a good effort at judging a question as "research level" or not? I have seen several questions which seemed to fit "CS Theory" but I wouldn't know the first thing about research level. I'd like to learn so I can vote to close or suggest a migration appropriately. – NickC Jan 7 '11 at 18:05
It's a good question. ideally, there are people who inhabit both places and have a sense of what kinds of questions are palatable. Failing that, the level of discussion on cstheory can roughly be characterized as 'things researchers discuss at conferences, or over coffee, or things Ph.D students might be asking each other'. Also, there's less (but not zero) discussion of specific programming questions or low-level algorithms questions: the above example for instance is the kind of question that could conceivable show up as a homework question on an algorithms/automata class. – Suresh Jan 7 '11 at 22:04

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

This is the right place to post this, as it deals with a migration from Programmers.SE.

I agree that it shouldn't have been migrated to CSTheory.SE, and the commenter that suggested that was obviously mistaken. But I don't think it should be migrated to Math.SE: it's a question that's better suited for Stack Overflow, which handles issues related to programming, including regular expressions.

But at this point, that question has no chance to survive: if it keeps getting migrated, it's a sign of a deeper problem, which is shown by the significant confusion as to where it belongs.

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multiple migrations aren't allowed any more and are not possible except by diamond mods. – Jeff Atwood♦ Jan 6 '11 at 5:53
In this particular case, the confusion indicates nothing of the sort. – Shog9♦ Jan 6 '11 at 17:46
@MrCRT indicates nothing of what sort? – user8 Jan 6 '11 at 18:22
@Mark: a deeper problem. The guy posted it, two people thought it didn't belong, it departed. A moderator jumped the gun (and apologized for it) - there was no mass confusion. – Shog9♦ Jan 6 '11 at 20:20
@MrCRT: I didn't say mass confusion, I said significant confusion, which is marked by 2 moderators for two different sites and two active members of the site disagreeing about where the question belongs. It doesn't belong here, it doesn't belong on CSTheory.SE, and it doesn't belong on Math.SE. If you don't see that as the sign of a deeper problem with the question due to significant confusion over its scope, you're working on a pretty unreasonable definition of "deeper problem." – user8 Jan 6 '11 at 20:29
@MrCRT: as a side note, I don't understand why you keep replacing and adding words to things I say, but it makes it pretty close to impossible to consider and respond to your issues in any serious fashion. It'd be helpful if you parsed carefully what other people say before voicing your disagreement. – user8 Jan 6 '11 at 20:30
@Mark: I replace words so that it's clear how I'm parsing them: I don't consider two voices "significant" - individuals frequently make errors of judgement, hence the 5-vote requirement for normal users; moderators are expected to have a better grasp of their own site's scope to go with the additional weight accorded their votes, but often fail to grasp what's on-topic for other sites - an issue you've had first-hand experience with as questions were initially migrated from SO! If there's a deeper problem, then it's not with the question... – Shog9♦ Jan 6 '11 at 20:58
up vote 2 down vote

This was an arbitrary site-to-site migration, which can only be performed by a diamond moderator.

The unlocked migration paths, available to 3k users, are documented on the /faq page of each site. This is limited to a maximum of 4 sites on the network (and the per-site meta) for a total of 5 sites -- and only public sites are eligible. No beta sites can be migrated to.

(err... and programmers currently has no valid migration paths, other than to its meta)

Any migrations outside that unlock list can only be done by a moderator.

Just FYI -- so this post was manually migrated by a diamond mod on programmers:

migrated to cstheory.stackexchange.com by bigown♦ 2 hours ago

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up vote 2 down vote

My mistake, sorry, I will be more careful next time. Thanks for post here.

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no problem. just wanted to clarify the scope. – Suresh Jan 6 '11 at 17:41

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