I think the system needs to start proving a slight disincentive to migrate questions relative to simply closing them. I believe this is necessary since it seems like questions that are off topic seem to somewhat frequently be dumped from one site to another where it is not on topic.
I think it is necessary because a close-to-migrate vote is slightly different then most of the other close reasons. In most of the other close cases the poster can modify his question and it can be reconsidered by the community he posted in. A migrated question cannot be fixed, and if the author had selected the correct audience, but just ask the question badly then there is not hope for getting the question back.
I think that a close-to-migrate vote should cost the caster 2-5 rep unlike any of the other close reasons. If a person has next to no reputation on the destination they may be simply guessing that it is appropriate and not actually know.
If possible an exception could even be made for the rep cost for migration. If the person voting had the more then ~3k on both the source and destination then maybe there doesn't need to be a cost. If a person is established in both communities they probably know what belongs where and reasons for a disinterested would not really apply.
Another exception could be made so that there is no rep cost migrating to the meta.*.
Even if this change was applied retroactively I doubt there would be that much of a rep loss for most people.
I am not sure why people thing that a migration shouldn't come with a rep cost. We loose rep to downvote which tries communicate they question/answer is not useful. Why shouldn't there be an equal or greater cost to take a bad question and dump on some other site. If the question is well written and actually belongs on the other site I will gladly accept small rep cost. If the question is badly written it probably should just be closed as offtopic/not a real question. A small cost may encourage people to be sure that something belongs before trying to migrate.
I think a change like this will become very important if migrating to Stack Exchange is enabled. As nunber if sites increase the likely hood of questions being migrated that are not on topic is just going to get worse.
- Stop sending things to SuperUser to die!!
- serverfault.com is not your trash bin!
Some recent migrations probably shouldn't have happened.
- How many machines would we need to beat google
- Fastest connection between servers in Switzerland(any city) and London. Best Datacenter
- http://serverfault.com/questions/170264/how-many-domains-should-i-buy (someone thought this would be appropriate for serverfault? really?)
- http://serverfault.com/questions/176656/can-anyone-suggest-a-good-windows-server (subjective, probably too localized, and lacking any useful detail)