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I have a huge issue with certain individuals closing questions related to running stating that they are either subjective or belong in F&N. Running was my original proposal and the intent was to ask all running related questions there. The confusion is definitely with the definition of recreational running vs competitive running as mentioned at " Will running related questions from F&N be migrated to Sports? " and at " Competitive or Recreational Running ".

Anything dealing with the running equipment (ie: GPS Watches, Shoes, Shorts, Creams, etc) as well as training regiments (ie: equipment, training techniques, etc) should all be considered fair game for Running as that was my original intention. I shouldn't have to visit 3 different sites as a user before I figure out what site I should be asking this at.

One could make the argument that Fitness is too grey as that contains a concentration on Diet as well as Sports.

Please sound off and tell me I'm wrong.

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    I agree that merging so many proposals with sports at the last moment was not a great idea and caused a lot of confusion for everyone in those other proposals as well as long time committers to sports. However, if you have a problem with the questions, we can discuss it in meta, attacking the people who closed your questions by down-voting their questions is not constructive.
    – Marcus Swope
    Commented Feb 16, 2012 at 16:10
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    Please give examples of running questions that have been closed.
    – Michael Myers
    Commented Feb 16, 2012 at 16:38
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    There are 3 running questions that have been closed. That's 12% of running questions. There's a total of 11 questions closed on the site out of 114, so 10%. I would say that's a consistent enough figure to say there isn't a pattern of closing running questions more than any other type of question. I'll grant the small sample size makes it difficult to hold high confidence in the values.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 16, 2012 at 21:33
  • @MarcusSwope I'm not attacking the people who closed my questions by down-voting. The same reasons you have down voted mine would apply to your one specific question you are referring to.
    – Jason N. Gaylord
    Commented Feb 18, 2012 at 15:39
  • @corsiKa - Compare those same stats to other sites. Too me that sounds like a very high number and I'd question the direction of this site.
    – Jason N. Gaylord
    Commented Feb 18, 2012 at 15:59

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Most of the questions that have been voted for close have been product recommendation or general fitness questions. These fall into two separate categories:

  • Product recommendation (or shopping questions) are typically not constructive because they rely on information that is quickly outdated, is very subject, or is just too darn localized. For more information on this close reason see the blog post "Q&A is hard lets go shopping"

  • General fitness questions are a challenge here. If they pertain to a "sport" (however we end up choosing to define what that means) they are on topic. However, a lot of people run for general fitness instead of for competition and then it becomes questionable whether they are participating in a sport or just an activity (or an exercise).

Its worth noting that just about everything you can think of about running is already on topic on Fitness including the competitive aspects of it. While we choose to define our scope more narrowly. If you want to chime in on the discussions related to running you should really do it on the meta posts that are already there for it.

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  • This is the precise reason on why rolling up items into a single area just to get it approved doesn't make sense. To me, that's abuse of the Stack Exchange system and I don't agree with it.
    – Jason N. Gaylord
    Commented Feb 18, 2012 at 15:41
  • And don't get me wrong, I think Jeff and Joel have done a great job with StackExchange and StackOverflow over the years. But I'd have to disagree with that post. Not only do names of hardware change, but so do specs. That's why over on Stack, I've never had an issue with it. One could argue that a piece of code can be outdated after a year when a new version or technique comes out. In that same "Do Not" list, many questions already asked in sports could be closed for "Subjective or too argumentative."
    – Jason N. Gaylord
    Commented Feb 18, 2012 at 15:50
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I am one of those that voted Why don't treadmills offer a manual setting of longer than 60 minutes? down. Primary because I felt the question was too localized to some particular equipment and there not of general interest.

I also voted on What is the most popular running (and fitness) application for mobile devices? - though this time it was in order to re-open the question. I strongly feel at we need to accept the list type of questions as long as they are rooted in serious discussions about the pro-e-con of the various products and not just the typical "which ... should I buy"...

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  • After reviewing my treadmill question again, I would agree that it was too localized. Thanks for the help on this.
    – Jason N. Gaylord
    Commented Feb 18, 2012 at 15:52
  • Also thanks for the vote to re-open. I had a question that I got answered on Twitter that was product specific. I didn't want to ask it here because I feel the site does not have a clear definition yet.
    – Jason N. Gaylord
    Commented Feb 18, 2012 at 15:56
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As noted by @MarcusSwope, the merge of the different groups was not a particular good idea. We basically have two very different groups of people on a single site... On one hand, there was the Sports group, which seems to be more fandom oriented with focus on rules, statistics, and facts (I think). On the other hand, we have the merged-in groups for Football, Running, Body Building, Snowboard & Ski, Soccer, Snow Sports, Extreme Sports, Water Sports, and Scuba Diving which all seem to focus on all aspects of the participation in the particular sports - from the avid amateur to the semi-prof. So more fokus on "How do I...".

To me, it will be very, very difficult to define a common site where all can agree what is on topic or not...

But on the other hand, when I look at stats on Area 51 page for the new Sports site, it is pretty obvious that none of the original proposals would have enough traffic to get lifted for a very long time...

So for better and for worth, we must find a way to co-operate on the site.

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  • scuba was split back out after they protested that they were not a sport...
    – wax eagle
    Commented Feb 17, 2012 at 13:04
  • OK... they are still noted as merged: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/27135/sports
    – Tonny Madsen
    Commented Feb 17, 2012 at 13:15
  • As I recall, running was well ahead of sports on a51, and on track to get the necessary commitments on its own within a few weeks.
    – Kevin
    Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 18:03
  • @Kevin I'm not so sure about that :-) A month back, my guess was 3-4 months given the speed of new supporters...
    – Tonny Madsen
    Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 19:34
  • @TonnyMadsen But that's ok Tony. It doesn't matter how long it takes as long as the purpose of the area remains the same. If people aren't interested (as the promoter of Running), I'd be ok with that.
    – Jason N. Gaylord
    Commented Feb 25, 2012 at 14:51

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