@Ooker I can see what you are saying about the name of the site, but I don't think that Medical would be a great replacement for Health. I still think it would attract the same types of questions we've been getting.
@Ooker While I don’t think it’s likely to solve the problem by any means, I do think it would be a step in the right direction, as I stated in the comments there. It looks like not a lot of people agree though.
I am following the Medicine Area51 proposal, but also as I said in the comments, I don’t think at this point we have A) enough people/questions to fuel two sites, and (B) substantial ranges of appropriate questions that are unique to each.
So I would favor them being folded into one for now, and if it’s ever overflowing then contemplate separating the “professional” site from the one for more general questions (a la Math [Overflow]).
And to me, the “medicine” topic seems like a better fit for both (A) the stack exchange format, and (B) the strong preference for “hard data” that has been expressed repeatedly on our meta.
(Thanks, @Ooker for the suggestion and for opening the room about it.)
Why is this a locked (“gallery") room? At the moment I believe only mods + Ooker are going to be able to talk here. Was that intentional?
@JohnP @anongoodnurse (and @michaelpri of course), any input you have about ^^^ is appreciated.
@Susan I do agree that Health attracts personal questions. I do like the name Medicine, but I don't think that fully explains our scope. I wouldn't mind a name change, but I'm having trouble thinking of a name that would work.
@Ooker Are you okay with me making this room public?
@michaelpri Yup, I see where you’re coming from. And the professionals are wondering whether surgical topics are on-topic (which of course they are, but distinguished from medicine in some professional circles). Which is why I like either of our * science ideas.
@michaelpri Thinking of hermeneutics.SE... which is Biblical Hermeneutics everywhere on the site.
I'm pretty much of the opinion that there is no name that will protect us from people asking us personal medical questions, or posting one-line questions, or any of the problems that plague us. I would like to be proven wrong, and I'm fine with a name change.
@anongoodnurse @Susan thought of the idea of using [sitename] Science as the name, so for example Health Science.
This might not totally ward off the personal medical questions and one-liners, but it may help to show professionals that we are open to their questions about more advanced topics
I suspect @anongoodnurse is correct. I too would like to be proven wrong, but I confess that I'm not convinced there's a healthy enough signal:noise ratio for that to truly take hold. My thinking is this sites problems are something of a structural problem with the "catchment area" of Stack Exchange
