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We have some good questions that are off-topic on the Worldbuilding Stack Exchange, that have been closed because of this and are awaiting migration. I just don't understand why people are downvoting these questions were flagging/voting to close is the appropriate way to deal with these.

This behavior annoys me but at least, the reputation penalty doesn't carry over to other sites. Right?

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    $\begingroup$ Downvotes are removed on migration, so those votes and their rep penalty won't follow the asker. I'm sorry to hear this is happening; do you have some links? $\endgroup$
    – Monica Cellio
    Jul 20, 2015 at 20:49
  • $\begingroup$ @MonicaCellio I would assume this is in reference to this: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20888/… $\endgroup$
    – James
    Jul 20, 2015 at 20:54
  • $\begingroup$ @MonicaCellio This one for example, seems like a valid question : worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20872/… This one could be a homework and I don't know about chemistry (hated everything about it), maybe people have a good reason to downvote worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20895/… Other question have been migrated but they are often downvoted as well. $\endgroup$
    – Vincent
    Jul 20, 2015 at 20:54
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    $\begingroup$ Hmm. I did not vote on the sonic boom one because I thought it was good, I downvoted the chemistry one because I would downvote it on Chemistry for showing no work, and I downvoted the Word one because it showed absolutely no research effort whatsoever in attempting to format. I also think that it showed no effort researching what site to post on, but I did not vote because of that. I did vote to close when I could, though. $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868 Mod
    Jul 20, 2015 at 21:01
  • $\begingroup$ For the chemistry and the word one, not only they had no place in WB:SE, but also they did not show any effort at all. Actually asking google would have been faster than creating an account on SE and actually ask a question. $\endgroup$
    – clem steredenn
    Jul 21, 2015 at 8:21
  • $\begingroup$ @bilbo_pingouin Ok but these were just examples taken on the fly $\endgroup$
    – Vincent
    Jul 21, 2015 at 14:46
  • $\begingroup$ @Vincent, sure, but they may indicate a trend. Anyway, I am not a serial downvoter myself, I just think that those do deserve to be downvoted. $\endgroup$
    – clem steredenn
    Jul 21, 2015 at 14:54

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If a question is asked well -- shows research or analysis, is well-asked, etc -- and is arguably in our space, I generally won't downvote it even if I vote to close it. Especially on a beta site where we're still working out some scope boundaries, we can't expect everybody to guess right on the first try. If a question comes in here that should be moved to Chemistry or Physics or Space Exploration or Health or RPG or Parenting, let's help the asker and migrate it.

If a question has nothing to do with worldbuilding, like if somebody asks a question about Python (and he's not talking about alternate worlds or the future or snakes), I may well downvote it no matter how well or badly it's written. The asker may have showed effort in formulating his question but he doesn't seem to have shown effort in deciding where to ask it. Again, if we can help him out with a migration, let's do it and no harm done.

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20895/chemistry-help-needed-molar-solubility doesn't show much research effort and its connection to worldbuilding is, err, non-obvious. I didn't vote, but I understand why some people downvoted it. In its present form it doesn't appear to meet the requirements over on Chemistry, so it's not a good migration candidate.

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20872/how-to-align-all-the-definitions-in-a-symbol-list-word-2010 doesn't seem to have anything to do with worldbuilding. I left a comment (though I could have been more verbose) and closed it. The asker hasn't been back since then. This question might be on-topic on SuperUser; I think I'll just migrate it.

Downvotes don't follow a question to its new home, so the fact that voters here found it a poor fit and voted accordingly does not harm the question (or its author) at the migration site. And eventually the migration "stub" left here gets deleted, I'm pretty sure, so even the local rep loss is temporary.

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  • $\begingroup$ To your last sentence, you don't lose rep for downvoting a question ;-) $\endgroup$
    – clem steredenn
    Jul 21, 2015 at 8:19
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    $\begingroup$ @bilbo_pingouin I think she meant rep loss for the asker. $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868 Mod
    Jul 22, 2015 at 21:43

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