Is it really OK to summarily move a question posted to HR SE to another exchange?

Question

The subject at hand is related to this question in particular: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/131619/how-does-ohms-law-apply-to-superconductors

Before migrating a question to another SE, shouldn't the submitter be provided with the opportunity to defend their submission? Perhaps the question was phrased in such a way as to appear off topic, and its pertinence would become clear if reworded. Why wouldn't a submitter be afforded the courtesy of being notified prior to a migration?

That seems especially true when a question has already received answers from at least two seasoned HR SE participants. Neither of whom objected to the topic prior to submitting their answers. And their answers received several up votes from the community.

Also, the question didn't receive any negative comments, or requests from the community to migrate it.

So without warning I returned to see if my question had been addressed, and poof! It had moved to a different exchange where I could not access it without registering on yet another exchange.

Is this really the way this community operates?

The answer to this post: Questions that aren't off topic shouldn't be moved would suggest that the policy should be one of "presumed pertinence". In other words, the onus should be on the one(s) who want to migrate a question to justify why that is so. With 0.6 questions per day, on average, it doesn't seem that HR SE needs to be throwing out anything unnecessarily.

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A separate question has established that the Amateur Radio SE considers questions related to the fundamentals of new technologies (not widely available to most radio amateurs at this point in time) are not pertinent topics for this community. It is a radio community, not an Amateur Radio community. I can accept that decision as unassailable from a community standpoint, and no reasoned argument need be considered. And so far as I can tell such discussion is not encouraged.

But this question has to do with common courtesy. Even if one's "feeling as the moderator handling the migration suggestion flag" is to summarily cast off a question, why would he not engage with the submitter beforehand? Is this SE so inundated with questions about laying concrete foundations, overhauling engines, cell phone repair, and natural languages, that you have no option to but to act by fiat?

Answer 1

This is not an answer to the question, but only to provide context, too long for a comment. I am not expressing an opinion on whether Stack Exchange's system of migration is appropriate; please do not argue with me that it should be changed.

For the record, as I wrote one of the answers: when I saw the question I flagged it for a nonstandard migration. I also went ahead and answered it because the answer would still be good regardless of whether it was migrated.

I suppose I could have also left a comment, but since it's not possible for other users to vote on a nonstandard migration and I don't know what the moderator handling my flag will decide, I can only say "In my opinion, this question belongs ...", which is likely to be interpreted by users not greatly familiar with SE as either "Go away" or as inviting them to repost their question elsewhere (which is to be avoided in favor of migrations).

The reason I felt it should be migrated is because while it is about physics and electronics, the cases under discussion (DC, superconductivity) are not especially relevant to radio electronics.

Considering your statement of your feelings about the event, I think I will be more likely to leave a comment, rather than (only) a flag, in the future, so that others can see it to disagreee with it.

Answer 2

First off, as I mentioned in my answer to your other question, the question remains yours. There is no further registration involved if you wish to participate on Physics, only one more linked account (the creation of which takes merely a confirmation that you want to do that).

For a question to be migrated to a site where it is a better fit is a fairly common occurance throughout the network, and normally, this serves to increase the chances of getting a good answer from someone who is truly knowledgable on the subject. The odds that a physicist hangs out on Physics are much better than that the same physicist hangs out on Amateur Radio, unless the physicist also happens to be a radio amateur and be aware of the existence of this site.

There are two ways a question can be migrated: by binding vote by a moderator, or by five community members voting to close and a majority of those voting to migrate the question to another site (or a combination of the two, which comes down to the moderator's binding vote; one of the few actual privileges of being a diamond moderator compared to simply a high-reputation user is the ability to override a community vote, in order to be able to step in and handle a situation when needed). The community voting process is not really applicable in our case, because we do not have established migration paths, so the only way the community really can trigger a migration is to flag the question for moderator attention and suggest a migration. Together with moderators from Electronics and Physics, I ended up deciding that your particular question fit best on Physics.

Other sites also have a certain amount of overlap in their scope as well; consider for example Ask Ubuntu, Unix & Linux and SuperUser. That does not make either less useful.