Merger with a Worldbuilding site?
Someone posted a Worldbuilding proposal on the Codidact incubator.
The topics allowed on such a site are very similar to the topics allowed on this site; for the most part Scientific Speculation is a subset of Worldbuilding. With some slight differences: this site may allow speculation questions for other purposes than Worldbuilding/creating fiction. And things like magic are off-topic here, unless looking for a viable scientific explanation for "magic x".
I'm not particularly active on either of these sites, but I notice that this site is struggling severely with inactivity. Whereas there's a pretty big and active community over at Worldbuilding SE and similar sites that can form a potential user base over here as well.
So how does the community here feel about a merger with Worldbuilding?
The Codidact category system will likely come into play somehow. Perhaps Worldbuilding becomes a category of this site or vice versa - such details can wait to the point where we know what the community thinks about a merger.
2 answers
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I like Lundin's answer, but with a few changes.
Lots of categories are confusing to people. They also spread out the posts of a low-volume site so that any one place looks even more abandoned than if the content were lumped together. I therefore propose having only the following catagories:
- Worldbuilding. This is similar to the SE Worldbuilding site. Discussion of how to structure magic systems, for example, would be on topic.
- Scientific Speculation. This is the combination of the existing Q&A and Rigorous Science categories. The distinction between these two never made much sense and was poorly described. The activity in Rigorous Science is so low that it's not worth supporting as a separate category. Some aspects of rigorous science are now also supported elsewhere on Codidact, like Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics. Some or all of these didn't exist when the Scientific Speculation site was created.
- Meta. Same as now.
Two things to note:
- Really wild "flaky" stuff is off topic. These kinds of "questions" usually aren't, and actually want to be open-ended discussions. That doesn't fit with a Q&A site. We can't be all things to all people.
- There is no category called Q&A. That eliminates the appearance of one category being more equal than the others. It also distinguishes between the categories more clearly at a first glance.
The following users marked this post as Works for me:
| User | Comment | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Antares | (no comment) | Sep 14, 2024 at 02:25 |
I am positive to a merger and I think perhaps a rebrand of this site so that is sorts below a Worldbuilding one would be the best way to go.
https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/ is already an established "brand" and it includes "science-based" as a tag, so the current contents of Scientific Speculation could easily be made a category below a Worldbuilding site. Similarly, the Rigorous Science category could be preserved as-is, as yet another category.
This would allow existing users from external Worldbuilding sites to get a flying start so to speak, as the site arrangement would be similar to what they are already used at.
The main difference that may have to be addressed, is that the new site would have a very broad scope. I don't think this is a bad thing initially - the scope can get narrowed down later when the site is active and the community notices that certain forms of questions are more or less well-received.
Another thing that's likely a hot potato is how creative vs how science-based things are allowed to get. I think we could have a ladder of sorts for all manner of questions. For example we could have these categories:
- Sandbox. Maximum creativity allowed; pretty much anything goes.
- Main Q&A. Reasonably relaxed and allows both Worldbuilding and other forms of speculations, but questions have to meet the site scope.
- Scientific speculation. Restricted subset, magic and subjective questions are discouraged or simply not allowed.
- Rigorous science. The present category from here, with higher standards when it comes to sources and claims.
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