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The question How can I have a war with no “good” or “evil” side? was recently kicked to [Writers Stack Exchange As the question stands now, this has nothing to do with the literary element of writing. It's purely world building/research which is off topic. It is also a "how to" or "what to write" which is also off topic.

Please note that Writers SE is about the technical aspect of writing and anything involving the actual specific content of the writing is off topic.

This was mostly to inform which ever mod moved it so that they understand what would work for us or not. :) It's not fun to have your question get closed and bumped only to end up closed and sent back again.

If anyone has questions about what Writers is about please see our tour for more details!

Thanks and sorry if this sounds like a rant as that was not my intention. Simply trying to inform so that we can all provide the best experience to the people who visit our sites.

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    $\begingroup$ This doesn't seem like a rant to me. So be reassured about that. Sometimes it can be hard to determine where a given question might properly belong. These are issues that need to be worked through when they arise. Usually one step at a time. $\endgroup$
    – a4android
    Jul 31, 2017 at 5:21
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    $\begingroup$ Still, it looks like it's getting upvotes there, and it's still open. $\endgroup$
    – Mołot
    Jul 31, 2017 at 12:34

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What happened

Thank for bringing this up. I agree that the question should have stayed on Worldbuilding; what happened behind the scenes was a complicated series of events and some miscommunication.

In the interest of transparency, here's what happened:

  1. The OP, Aric Fowler, asked the question.
  2. The question garnered some votes, comments, and a close vote or two.
  3. A user suggested in a comment that the question be migrated to Writers, and raised a custom mod flag stating the same thing.
  4. I tried to talk to the Writers mods but wasn't able to get ahold of them; I talked instead to a high-rep Writers user, in chat, who's a mod elsewhere.
  5. I had a discussion in comments with the OP, who wanted the question to stay here. The OP then edited the question, and I deleted all the comments related to migration.
  6. I marked the custom flag as helpful but explained in my reply to the flag why I kept the question here.
  7. There were more close votes, and five community voters closed the question as off-topic.
  8. The system auto-flagged the question because it had attracted 20 comments in a short span.
  9. Another mod saw that flag and the system displayed thee text of the earlier custom flag, as far as I can tell. The mod didn't see any of the comments about how the question was edited, or the discussion I'd had with the other mod. Basically, they thought the original flag was still open and nothing had happened, and didn't see that the OP wanted the question to stay on Worldbuilding.
  10. The mod migrated the question to Writers.

So, there was miscommunication between a whole bunch of people here. I dealt with the custom flag and made some comments, so I'll take the blame for some of that.

What to do now

What I know of Writers seems to agree with what you said. I don't think it's a good question for that site (and I won't be surprised if it's closed there).

I think the question's a good fit for Worldbuilding after the edits. I would recommend that if the question is closed on Writers, we reopen it here. Doing so is in accordance with the OP's request and, more importantly, is more in line with the scopes of both sites.

Anyway, thanks for bringing this up on meta. It's always good to know when we mess up; we appreciate it.

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    $\begingroup$ This is an example of how things can go inadvertently wrong. The most important action is to rectify the problem, which in this case has been done. It's excellent that you have provided an explanation of the sequence of events and why events turned out the way they did. Well done! Plus one for first class. $\endgroup$
    – a4android
    Aug 1, 2017 at 2:10
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    $\begingroup$ Just a tip for the future: Back when I held a diamond, I sometimes left custom flags on questions to leave notes to other mods. This is somewhat limited, as (at least back then) it is/was only possible to flag any single question once as a single user (even with a diamond), but it can be enough to leave a note like "I'm looking into this, see this chat discussion and deleted comments for details". $\endgroup$
    – user
    Aug 2, 2017 at 11:37
  • $\begingroup$ This is also a nice illustrative example of best practices for addressing issues in general. It has everything! Good tone throughout; acknowledgement of the issue; explanation of how it arose; acceptance of responsibility; suggestion of resolution; and so much more! $\endgroup$
    – Dewi Morgan
    Aug 8, 2017 at 16:48
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Sometimes questions don't belong anywhere within the stack exchange system. That question may be one of them. We'd be annoyed if the question was dumped on us from another site.

We should try to keep in mind whether questions will be a good fit before migrating.

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