On the other hand, if you focus on just the experts, the laymen will probably have the good quality information they'll (eventually) need.

Besides, for people who consider walking around to be exercise, the answer to getting more fit is very simple - "start doing something, anything".

the same for people with absolutely no activity

And finally, I think there would be real value in having a Stackexchange site for those same experts, because it's usually very hard to find correct information on the internet and the SE model is excellent for identifying the people who know their stuff compared to those who don't (which is harder on a random forum or blog, if not impossible sometimes).

@MattChan Well, sure, but I see it only as a step to something.. more.

I wouldn't want to settle at "walking" for my desired level of fitness.

/me shrugs.

Actually, I don't mind people who want to do "simple" exercises or stop somewhere (I don't want to squat 3x my bodyweight either)

And we've had questions like that.

"How to get fit for a programmer?" or something like that

I actually think Jeff is confusing issues there.

We are moving to drop Nutrition, we don't want to limit the site to the "hardcore".

When he says, "Which means I need to lead a healthy lifestyle that involves some form of exercise and eating reasonably well." -- I don't like the "eating reasonably well" part.

Because eating reasonably well means "Eat lots of protein, vegetables, lower the carbs and try to be varied."

It doesn't mean "Which nut is the healthiest nut?" nor "Is melted cheese better than unmelted cheese?"

And as long as those questions are.. oh, a quarter of all of our questions, we won't be able to draw the kind of people we'd want.

(for my definition of people we want, of course)

Well, we'll see what happens. I wonder when Ivo is getting back.

@MattChan Perhaps we are coming of as elitist.

But I think that's because our audience (on Meta) are people like... well, Jeff.

Let me compare Jeff to my father for a second here, as I imagine they are/were in a similar position (except my father is probably older): they both want to avoid "dying prematurely" and so want to pay attention to their diet and start exercising. For a few years my father was absolutely convinced walking around half an hour a day was adequate exercise, until I made him do some pull-ups with me... fast forward a few years, he's asking me what kind of program to follow to do a muscle-up (!!)

Ok, maybe that wasn't really relevant, but I just felt so proud! :D

@MattChan Yeah, attracting more actual experts should be an important goal. On the other hand, I feel that we can't do that if we have all those nutrition questions, and we can't do that unless we change the scope of the site.. which, I guess, we can't do because we aren't sure we have enough experts.

If Jeff is seriously considering closing the site (as he mentioned in a comment somewhere), then he should at least give us (the vocal minority of users) the possibility to define it as we want and see if that works instead.

+1

Yeah.

Ok, I think I see your point now.

@MattChan Ok, I think I see your point here.

@MattChan Yeah, but it's even worse when we get swamped by people not from the site, IMHO. In fact, now that I think about it, I don't think people should get the bonus 100 rep on Meta, so they can't actually vote on Meta if they don't use the site.

@MattChan Oh sure, but Jeff is just talking about the kind of site he'd want to use, we all do that.