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The title says it all, really. On some of the other Stack Exchange sites, e.g. MathOverflow or Physics, questions tend to pop up every now and then that may be better---or at least equally well---suited for HSM, though not necessarily being off-topic on the site where they were posted.

One question that I have been thinking about for a while is the following: Is it a good idea to try and actively raise the question of migrating to HSM every time a HSM-type question is asked on these (and other science) sites?

The community seemed to be quite clear about not wanting large amounts of old history questions from other sites migrated here, but I think that this idea is quite different. What are your opinions on this matter? Do we, in principle, want all newly posted history of science questions to be migrated here, or not?

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If "all" means "all of reasonable quality" then I would say, yes, in principle there would be nothing wrong with this, as this site does not suffer of too many question and more would be welcome.

However, I would advise against being too active in getting questions migrated here. This might alienate others (sometimes also for unreasonable reasons but still). As long as a question is well-received on another site, I think there is nothing that should be done. (Normally, migration is a sub-point of off-topic; if the latter does not apply there is no case for migration.)

Yet, if questions are badly received on another site, yet seem good for this site, then an active approach can make sense.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for your response. Would you be able to elaborate on what exactly you'd be afraid of as far as alienating other SE-site users goes? $\endgroup$
    – Danu Mod
    Apr 27, 2015 at 18:53
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry for the delay in responding; I saw it first at an inconvenient time and then it was off the radar. It depends what you intend to do exactly. But essentially whatever you do you somehow could be seen as implying the question was not asked at the best place right away. Moreover, some users are simply skeptical against HSM and will not want to ask here. (This is not specific to this site, but is general for new sites. I see this with MESE. I do not promote it myself via comments but sometimes I observe what is said.) And, some just will want to keep the historiy part to the other sites. $\endgroup$
    – quid
    Apr 29, 2015 at 22:40
  • $\begingroup$ What I think could work is to point out the site on questions that are not received well where they are asked. If an OP is faced with VTC, or the question is ignored, and one tells them bout another site they might be happy. (Maybe also not.) Anyway, perhaps I am overly cautious in this; but in any case everybody trying to do this should I think be careful not to overdo it. But if you feel like trying it, the best could be to just try it. Just, if you get negative reactions I'd still suggest to back off quickly. $\endgroup$
    – quid
    Apr 29, 2015 at 22:44
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I actually try to do this in math.se without much success. In fact, once I received a very discouraging answer to one of said flags. I think hsm would greatly benefit from this kind of migrations, but I'm not sure how the mods of the other sites feel about it. You can see the thread I created in math.se about this a while ago:

http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/19699/migrating-questions-to-hsm

There's even an answer from one of our most active users there.

What I've opted to do is leave a comment in every suitable question suggesting the OP to ask the same question in hsm.

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