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I'm an elected moderator on Stack Overflow.

I recently flagged the following question on your meta to be migrated to Meta Stack Overflow:

Do mods of stackexchange sites get paid?

The reason I did this is because Meta Stack Overflow (for better or for worse), is the site for governance that applies to all of the Stack Exchange sites.

Given that the scope of the question is about all elected moderators on the Stack Exchange sites, it would be better suited to have this question on Meta Stack Overflow (as this area in regards to moderators is consistent across all the Stack Exchange sites).

However, the flag was denied with the boilerplate "A moderator reviewed this but found no evidence to support it".

Why?

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    $\begingroup$ How this question got downvoted so heavily when it lead to such a reasoned and informative answer is way beyond me. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 18:12
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    $\begingroup$ @ToddWilcox Votes on meta can be used to indicate dissent. Meta voting is double edged in that votes (both up and down) can have multiple meanings. Also, a good answer doesn't always indicate a good question. While I believe that this question is a good question in terms of quality (researched, reasoned, rational), I also believe the votes are almost exclusively to indicate dissent, and that's OK. My dissent, of course, is in not accepting an answer. =) $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 18:42
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, that clarifies the downvoting perfectly. Picking up the meta meta is not easy. :) $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 18:45
  • $\begingroup$ @ToddWilcox As you can imagine, with me being a moderator on Stack Overflow and Meta Stack Overflow, I live in a special kind of Meta hell. =) As a matter of fact, this is the reason that reputation on meta is tied to your reputation on the site, and that voting on meta doesn't affect your reputation (because disagreement isn't a bad thing and not reflective of your ability on the main site); if you look on Meta SO, you'll see we have different rep levels, before we learned about this the hard way. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 18:47
  • $\begingroup$ @ToddWilcox You might be the first person to thank me, thank you for contributing. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 18:49
  • $\begingroup$ Oh my "contributions" have been dubious to say the least. I'm now concerned that the mods of the greater SE/SO community are not shown the appreciation that I'm sure the members feel for their efforts. I guess it's hard to make gratitude a question. "Should we thank all the moderators for their hard work?" Hmm.. could backfire though, some people might just answer "No." $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 18:55
  • $\begingroup$ @ToddWilcox Long story short, our mistakes are highlighted often and with great brutality, and when we're doing things that make everyone happy, you never even notice. But it's OK. And it's discussed on Meta SO (it applies to all the moderators on all the SE sites). $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 18:58

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Because there's no need to migrate it. It's a question that's perfectly good here and had answers that were interesting and relevant to this community.

If you want a canonical version on MSO for the site-wide FAQ (though I'm not sure there's a point - it's not exactly frequently asked), you can ask it again.

Grace Note is adding this part here, as another Community Manager. ♪

Per-site-metas exist as a local support channel for people to voice concerns, interests, and thoughts about their own site. This existence is two-fold - to allow users of a community to stay in their comfort zone when reporting these things, and to provide an avenue for "smaller" issues to get resolved if escalation is unnecessary. That something is network-wide doesn't preclude the fact that it is still relevant to the community in which the request organically arose.

As a result of that "cross-topicality", migration from a per-site-meta to Meta Stack Overflow is something we'd call "Escalation". That is, we perform this action to improve the eyesight on the feature in order to help get it resolved and handled. For feature requests, this means appraisal of feasibility on a wider scale, as well as to fish for alternatives/modifications of the initial suggestion from a larger audience. Support and bug questions would instead be helpful as more eyes means more analysis of what might be the source of the problem, as well as to spread awareness of the issue if it cannot be solved locally. All of this is dependent that the extra views are helpful to get that thread resolved. For the benefit of the question, which, coincidentally, is the philosophy behind migration on parent sites normally.

The thread in question, however, became resolved already. Not only did the local moderators show up and give their own perspective, but a Community Team member (Anna, here, as it were) also happened to show up and give our own official stance. The need to migrate the thread is thus negated - it's already gotten the closure and exposure it needed. There are many times that a discussion being moved to Meta Stack Overflow is beneficial to the nurturing of that discussion, but this simply isn't one of those cases.

So at the end of the day, it falls down to the fact that Metas are allowed to jealously guard their questions too. In being asked on a local site, a question develops a local flavor and appraisal. If that isn't doing the question justice, then moving helps, but if that is sufficient, moving the question is just taking away from the community. You force users to visit a separate realm just to find answers to a question that not only arose from their own ranks, but also got settled within their own ranks.

I'll repeat Anna's sentiment. If you want to spread awareness of something, you can just open up a new copy of the issue on your own site. There is no need for migration.

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    $\begingroup$ I disagree with this. I don't think it's an offense or anything to keep it here, but it serves the network better to be on Meta.SO. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 15:12
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    $\begingroup$ @casperOne Questions have a context. This question was not asked because someone idly wondered whether mods were paid, but because there is some ongoing drama about suspended moderators on this site, and not surprisingly, the thread that you want to migrate away contains many references to this. (And don't forget that math.SE users don't have rep on meta.SO and are drowned out by a majority of SO users which makes it a very unfriendly place where as likely as not SO users will flag "irrelevant" comments for deletion which were the actual motivation for the question.) $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 21:46
  • $\begingroup$ @Phira I'm aware of the ongoing drama, but that doesn't change the very essence of the question (in how generalized it is), if anything, the drama is what keeps it from being useful to the rest of the network; most everything is collaboratively edited, and all of the answers don't reflect the drama. There's little context in that question that's actually directly related or useful. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 21:52
  • $\begingroup$ @casper Useful to who? The place where you want to migrate it or the place where it is? $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 22:21

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