Change the name of Programmers to something that more accurately reflects the site scope? [duplicate]

Question

This is a follow-up to the discussion on renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name.

That discussion is one of the highest voted questions on here, so this feature-request is to try and get a definitive answer from Stack Exchange about the possibility of getting this implemented. I apologize if sounds like a duplicate, however I was told to make a separate clear proposal for the feature-request, and not edit the existing question.

If you'd like to discuss the topic itself, please see the linked question

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The name "Programmers" was selected for our site back when this was a Q&A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The site scope has changed dramatically since then to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of Programmers no longer fits our site.

I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.

The best analogy I can think of is creating an Athletes.SE which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.

I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:

• Change the Title and Logo displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.

• Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use

• Keep the programmers.stackexchange domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links

As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.

To summarize, we advertise as a Q&A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.

Edit

Thomas' answer also brings up a valid point, that not all software developers consider themselves to be programmers.

Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture, process, software licenses, and the business side of software development might not consider themselves programmers.

We're limiting our potential by not being clear that this site is for more than just Programmers

Answer 1

I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers, and as a community manager at Stack Exchange.

First and foremost: we will not be changing this site's name.

Why? Well, let's talk about that.

As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems. If anything, I have a counterexample - the site itself.

I think by now we all know how the site came about. When the new scope was handed down, it was not received terribly well and we're still sorting some of that out. The fact is, though, that throughout most of last year, the site slowly evolved to move away from the "Stack Overflow's toilet bowl" image and to what it is today. It happened through comments, (sometimes bitter) meta arguments, flag handling, etc., and look at what we have now - there's an engaged, active community involved in moderation and governance. Even though there were a couple discussions, the site name did not matter.

I remember when most of the front page would be closed questions and I'd be somewhere promoting the site and trying not to feel embarrassed to point people to it. I wouldn't be embarrassed now. I look at the front page and I see 6 closed questions:

• Should I demand unit-testing from programmers?

  Closed as "not constructive" and in my opinion rightly so - it's a discussion-oriented question designed to affirm the asker's existing belief. Discouraging questions like this one is a part of our core principles at Stack Exchange to the point where it's written down in the shared FAQ:

  To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where ...

  • there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”

• https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154339/advice-on-scrum-for-the-solitary-developer

  Closed as a duplicate of a canonical, open question.

• https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154342/are-there-references-discussing-the-use-parallel-programming-as-a-development-me

  Reference-seeking question. I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Could go either way, personally, but usually questions like this result in poorly curated lists.

• https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154338/identifying-methods-with-a-specified-id-in-d

  Migrated to Stack Overflow.

• https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154282/if-variable-type-not-working-properly

  Off-topic, though opted to not migrate, which is fair enough.

• https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154270/is-learning-blackberry-programming-a-good-choice

  Canonically off-topic for Programmers.

When I look at these questions, I see a pattern: all of them are about some aspect of software development. Changing your name to "Software Development Stack Exchange" or anything of that ilk will not stop questions like these. Changing your name to an abstract concept will not automatically draw people in. What attracts experts to a site is the content. Focus on that instead and you will continue to grow.

Now, Gaming SE is currently in the spotlight after having been rebranded to Arqade, so it's natural that that's prompting other sites to ask about getting a brand and a domain of their own. Our official answer is that you can ask, but there is no definite answer. Name changes will happen exceedingly rarely at best, and you should not plan on, depend on, or even anticipate it. There's no fixed traffic criteria or an "awesome meter" that will say definitively that you've earned your name change and that it will happen. If we do it again, it will likely be an act-of-god kind of scenario.

Another example is Fitness & Nutrition now known as Physical Fitness. In that case, part of the site's name explicitly mentioned a subject that was off-topic on the site. The site's community rallied together to start enforcing that and we eventually matched their efforts with a new name.

Programmers is not in either of these situations. So the bottom line is, stop fixating on the name. A name change isn't a silver bullet that will fix your problems. Keep growing the site, solidifying the scope, addressing whatever other issues you (as a community) perceive to exist, but don't worry about the name. It is not holding you back.

Answer 2

Go for a more abstract name that invites users to consult the FAQ.

One thing that seems to be established, both by the data and the experience of posters here is that there is considerable confusion about the scope of the site. The primary evidence is the high closure/deletion rate for new questions.

What is disputed is the root cause of this confusion. @Rachel hypothesizes that the name/URL of the site is a contributing factor, and others have asked for evidence to support this.

I don't think it is possible, without any kind of budget, to tease out the reasons for this confusion. My intuition suggests that it is surprising that a site entitled "programmers" is in reality a lower scope. I also suspect that the history of programmers.SE, which started as non-programming-related.SE, a release valve for software-related questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, plays a role in that. In fact, the founders even recently suggested the programmers.se be used in this way.

Changing the name from programmers.se would have the advantage of both moving away from a general term and making a break from this legacy. This would have the downside of some work and some confusion. My judgement is it's worth it.

Some commentators have noted that the most popular sites, e.g. StackOverflow, have even less specific names, yet do not suffer from this confusion, and therefore a name change is unnecessary. What I think this, as well as things like the Arqade rebranding, suggests is that if a site's scope can not be easily captured in two short words or less, it may be better to have a more more abstract name that invites users to consult the FAQ to get a more concrete idea of what the site is about. This may also help the site to form a unique brand.

What type of name might work for this community? Some have suggested things like "The Whiteboard" which doesn't excite me, but I don't have any better ideas. The celebration of Alan Turing this past week leads me to consider the possibility that we could use the name to honor those who have gone before us in software development.

In any instance, I think both the past track record of SE sites and the current future direction suggests this.

Answer 3

we advertise as a Q&A site about programmers,

We do? I must have missed those ads.

What kinds of questions would one ask on "a Q&A site about programmers"?

• What's a programmer's favorite letter? 01010010
• How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None! It's hardware problem.

Seriously... I never got the impression that this was a site about programmers, and I don't see much evidence that new users do either. If your thesis were correct, most off topic questions would be about programmers; my own unscientific impression is that such questions are only a fraction of the off topic questions we see here.

however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.

If you wanted an expert answer on a conceptual questions relating to software development, who would you ask? A lawyer? A chef? No... a programmer! Programmers may not be the best, most descriptive name for this site as it exists now, but it's the name we've got and it's really not a bad one.

Instead of searching for a name whose meaning gives identity to the site, lets continue to build a strong identity for the site that will give meaning to the name.

Answer 4

To be explicitly clear, this post is coming exclusively from me as member of the Programmers community, not as a moderator.

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I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.

Like Mark Trapp, I want to see data to support this. I'm not convinced that the name has anything to do with the closure rate. Anyone who spends a couple of minutes looking at the FAQ or reading existing questions should see what the site is about, and anyone posting here should take a few minutes to understand the site before they post. The very first line in the FAQ even says that "Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development."

I don't have any numbers, but I get the feeling that most people who visit this site learn what it's about. Even if you look at other sites, like Stack Overflow, you can see that there are closed questions that can be avoided if people read the FAQ and understand the site before randomly posting. You don't spend effort dealing with (and I'm borrowing some ideas from some corporate HR policies) the 5% of the people who are the "bad apples". You focus on the 95% of the people who are good contributors and make it possible for them to do what they do best.

we advertise as a Q&A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers

I don't see that anywhere. Every place I see refers to the site being "for professional programmers" and a place to ask "conceptual questions about software development". If there is a place that makes it seem like this site is for questions about programmers or being a programmer, please provide a link to it. If there is any ambiguity, it should be cleared up. However, I haven't found any yet.

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Now, from my personal experiences (about a dozen or so data points, which is most likely statistically insignificant), the name does cause a small problem when pitching the site to people with professional titles such as "Software Architect", "Systems Architect", "Software Quality Assurance Engineer", "Software Process Improvement Specialist", "Process Engineer", and so on. These people all could ask and answer questions that are on-topic here, however none of them consider themselves programmers. It's not impossible to pitch the site after mentioning "conceptual questions about software development" and highlighting specific topics that they would be interested in, but the name requires an explanation of the acceptable content to people who aren't programmers. It makes an elevator pitch (<2 minutes) more difficult, but not impossible.

I believe that this is the same point that jmort253 brought up in the comments.

If any reason exists to consider changing the name, I think that it would be to rebrand the site to better encompass the things that we consider on topic. Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture, process, software licenses, and the business side of software developers might not consider themselves programmers.

I'd be curious about what experiences people have had pitching this site to non-programming software development professionals (anyone who has the potential to ask and answer on-topic questions, but does not professionally build software) and if there were any difficulties creating an elevator pitch (30-120 seconds) to get them interested in the site. I think that such information could be used to make a case for rebranding - if a member of this community can't easily convey the purpose of this community to someone who would be interested in it, that could be problematic to the continued growth and development of the community.

Answer 5

I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.

Prove it. Show hard data that demonstrates:

1. Programmers' closure rates are directly attributable to the site name, and
2. Changing the name to anything else will significantly affect closure rates on Programmers.

Unless there's actual data to support this hypothesis, making an extremely disruptive change like this is unwarranted and should not be done.

Answer 6

Two suggestions:

"Blame Yannis" .SE
Programming.SE

For the first, I do suspect he'd feel quite honored with the honorific, but it's just a joke based upon the comments from the OP. OTOH, I now fear that any questions I may ask for the next millennium will be auto-closed. :-P

For the second, P.SE is really about programm-ING not necessarily programm-ERS. I don't know that it's worth the effort to setup all the redirects and whatnot. The off-topic questions can be annoying though.

And FWIW, I'm praying the up / down votes on this answer will balance each other out....

Answer 7

We wouldn't be the first site to try a new name, and I don't see the harm in trying it out if we can agree on a new one. Its not unprecedented that a sites name gets changed after launch.