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Unfortunately, some aspiring writers seem to confuse doubts about writing with doubts about how to organize, create, or fix world building aspects of their story. I've come across some questions which are closed for being off topic and which I'd like to have voted to migrate instead.

I believe it makes sense to create a migration path to Worldbuilding. As it was mentioned in a meta question when Worldbuilding was in its early stages, it is a sister site to Writing.

It would be interesting to check but, from my experience, most off-topic questions seem to veer towards language use (hence the ELU migration option) and to world building aspects.

I seem to remember having read (can't recall where and couldn't find it) that Beta sites can't have migration paths but, since there's one to ELU, I am hoping this idea can be discussed and, hopefully, considered worthwhile to implement.

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  • 11
    Beta sites can get migration paths by special dispensation, which is how we got EL&U. Also, I'm prepared to push back on our "beta" status if necessary (that's kind of ridiculous after this many years and such a strong site...).
    – Monica Cellio
    Nov 23 '18 at 18:04
  • 6
    That said, I just checked our migration history and of the 50 most recent migrations, we've sent 0 to Worldbuilding. In some cases, I know, it's because the asker re-asked the question there first. So it's hard to collect data on how much this would have helped.
    – Monica Cellio
    Nov 23 '18 at 18:07
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    Thanks for checking the statistics.
    – SC for reinstatement of Monica
    Nov 23 '18 at 20:14
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    I have seen several questions that got closed on Writing appear on WB after people suggested it. Including one this past week. Maybe none were formally migrated, but that could be an artifact of there not being a way to suggest it in the vote to close process.
    – Cyn says make Monica whole
    Nov 24 '18 at 18:40
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    In the last couple of months, I've experienced at least half a dozen times where I voted to close and tried to choose migration to Worldbuilding, but it wasn't there and I had to start over. Then a few more times where I remembered ahead of time but still wished it was an option.
    – Cyn says make Monica whole
    Nov 24 '18 at 18:49
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    @Cyn on those I'll VTC for being "what to write" and then manually flag the mods to ask to migrate to WB.
    – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum
    Nov 26 '18 at 21:10
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    As @LaurenIpsum said, a custom flag is the way to go in such cases. However, it's even better to encourage the OP to flag and request migration themselves. That way, OP knows what's going on, and they will hopefully know that they can and should follow their question over to the target site.
    – user
    Nov 29 '18 at 9:18
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Yes we should get one

A migration path to Worldbuilding would be super useful. I think there would be a decent number of question that would use in in VTC reasons.

I suggest we use this post to gather examples that should/could have used it:

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  • I don't have the energy to find the reference but I know I read that custom migration paths is something we'll have more control over after graduation. For Beta sites, you only get them as a special request. So we have migration to English and to Meta and I think the Meta was standard and the English was done as a favor. Another reason to push for graduation!
    – Cyn says make Monica whole
    May 14 '19 at 17:05
  • And in fact it's mentioned above...not having a good week...
    – Cyn says make Monica whole
    May 14 '19 at 17:06
  • Here is an answer from Monica where she lists the amount of WorldBuilding migrations and the answer from Tim Post to the request for such a migration path. In short: No. Not enough questions that need migration. We'd need about 10 to 15 every 90 days and that answer was written at the end of 2017 we had a total of 15 such migrations over the course of 3 years - we would need it in 3 months. Looking through the comments of this meta discussion it doesn't look like we get a lot of such questions. So it's pretty unlikely. CC: @Cyn
    – Secespitus
    May 14 '19 at 19:07
  • @secespitus the problem with that is that many world holding questions get cross posted after getting closer but before getting migrated. If users could migrate I think there would be significantly more.
    – linksassin Mod
    May 14 '19 at 22:10

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