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Software Recommendations is graduating and will soon be a non-beta site!

There is a question on their meta about being a migration target: they are asking about other sites such as Super User having a migration path to Software Recommendations. Programmers did not come up there: while I would expect some other sites to have more recommendation questions, we do see some of these questions on Programmers and we have a few open slots for migration targets.

Once Software Recommendations is fully graduated to a regular site, should Programmers have a migration path to it?

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    SR mod here, not a regular on Progse. Can you post a representative sample of questions that might potentially be migrated, so we get an idea of whether they'd meet our guidelines?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 17:56
  • @Gilles given that such questions are off-topic here, those questions get closed and deleted rather quickly making it difficult to find links. Personally, I have never even flagged one for moderator migration to SoftwareRecs.SE due to quality. I think the votes on the answers to this question back up that assertion with community consensus.
    – user22815
    Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 17:59
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    @Gilles I found a single software recommendation question in the "recently deleted" list and added it to the "don't migrate" answer if you want to take a look.
    – user22815
    Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 18:09

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Software Recommendations moderator here. We're technically a non-beta site now - which means moderators aren't discouraged from migrating questions to us any more.

I would be against adding SR to Programmers' migration target list. Not that I don't trust y'all, but we have some really strict requirements for questions.

That said, if you take the time to read those requirements, and you happen to see a question come through here (or any other site where software recommendation questions are off topic), feel free to throw an 'other' flag on it, asking your moderators to throw it over.

It's much easier for us (SR) to train a few dozen moderators in what is on-topic than a whole community... that isn't even our own. If we start getting a large number of (good) migrations coming from a site, I would absolutely be in favor of being a target on their list.

But I'd like a site to prove that its moderators can give us good content before we open it up to its users.

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    I had not realized the subtle difference. SoftwareRecs has the beta style but no "beta" after the name. That probably has something to do with the recent announcement about graduation changes.
    – user22815
    Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 18:07
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No, there should not be a migration path.

Many of the questions asking for software recommendations fail to meet quality guidelines for the Software Recommendations site and cannot be salvaged through editing. An open migration path will only cause additional problems and grief with the Software Recommendations community.

Example questions supporting not having a migration path:

Is there any software for a pdf auto renaming pc software (10k link)

I scan and rename proof of deliveries daily for my company I work for. I am looking for some software that I can set up a template on it to mark areas of text on the pdf I scan and save it so in future it will detect the text of the marked areas of the any future documents I scan and rename the saved file as the text from the marked ares.. e.g. the date the proof of delivery was made and the recognition numbers the document contains like out will be an i/o number and a M10057474 number. I'd be so appreciative if someone could lead me to the right software please.

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    My opinion on programmers.stackexchange.com/q/300141 : it isn't so bad, but not answerable as is. It has a precise usage scenario but lacks some critical requirements, mainly the OS that the software should run on. It's a textbook candidate for closing with a comment that the question should be re-asked on SR with the missing information.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 18:13
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Yes, there should be a migration path.

Programmers receives enough of these questions to warrant an open migration path. This will allow the askers to receive quality answers from a community where such questions are on-topic.

As with any migration, poor-quality questions should either be edited before migration if they are salvageable, or should simply be closed and not migrated.

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