1

As a follow-up on this post On-topic & Off-topic, I wonder if some of the problem related to activity is related to this group's name.

Myself I am not sure why Music Fans has low participation (though I think Arts/Culture will always have lower participation than Science/Math/IT due to the nature of SE), but I wonder about the name "Music Fans" (the fan part).
Like saying "science fans", I would really have no idea what the focus is, or whether it would be a good place to go with my question.
To me, this is far too vague as to what this community is about (other than music that is).

As we know there is the existing community "Music: Practice & Theory" which is at a more professional level of music performance or studies.

Now when I think back to my school years, we had music performance groups (including myself), but for other students there was a class titled "Music Appreciation", which taught music basics and relevance to popular music those students were familiar with.

I can't say "Music Appreciation" would necessarily be better, but I would really recommend some term better that "fans" that would help people understand what the focus of the community is.

Taking a quick looks at the tags used so far, there is higher usage for "lyrics", "history", "genre" and "terminology".
"Terminology" could fit into "Appreciation", and "genre" and specific band/tune/chart related questions could fit into "history".

Admittedly this is generalizing somewhat, but for the sake of a more focused community name may be worth considering.

So my initial take on this would be:

Music Appreciation and History

3
  • 2
    I don't think we have an "activity problem". We are a very young community, and for our age I think we are doing perfectly fine. Both the number of visits and active users are steadily growing. Stop worrying about the numbers and instead focus that energy in asking, answering, voting, and commenting!
    – NPN328
    Jun 18, 2015 at 2:10
  • @JCPedroza I was basically reiterating what was mentioned in the linked post though I have to agree. Anyway you can check the current stats on Music Fans - Area 51. Sure this group is new, but I would prefer to see us aim high rather than low (as some posts have suggested).
    – user3169
    Jun 18, 2015 at 4:34
  • 1
    I'm aware of the numbers. You can't judge the stats blindly, you need a point of reference. That point of reference is the "days in beta". For being 100 days old (part of which was closed beta), and compared to other beta sites of the same age, we are doing fine. It's way too early to carve a definitive direction. We all want to aim high, but we need to do it intelligently, and not blindly. In my opinion the best we can do right now until the site becomes bigger is concentrate on the basics: ask questions, give answers, vote.
    – NPN328
    Jun 18, 2015 at 6:03

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

While the name of our site is important, our content itself should speak much more about the scope then the title. Someone should get a good idea of what the site is about by seeing questions and answers from visiting the site and for more information about specifics they can visit the FAQ, take the tour, or even visit our meta.

It is possible to get our name changed if we really wanted to, but it's not an easy process nor does it guarantee people will get the scope of site just from the name any better than they do now. The Music SE which use to be named Musical Practice and Performance went through so many hoops to get renamed to better refelect the site and even after that there are still people who mistake things being outside the scope because of the name.

There is no silver bullet for participation and page views. We just have to do what we do: ask and answer questions that fit within our scope to show everybody what we are about. We've very slowly been getting more views and questions and answers along with slowly picking up newer users because of the people that do participate and will continue to. People are finding us, just not currently at a very noticeable rate. I encourage everyone to vote, ask questions, and provide answers along with participating/visiting the meta, going through the review queues, and other necessary tasks like flagging problem posts and editing posts and tag wikis.

Every little bit helps and it will pay off eventually.

2
  • As I read the linked posts, originally it was Music SE beta and then became Music: Practice & Theory as it is today, right? To me that is a definite improvement, if I were trying to ask the right thing in the right place. To start off, you need to attract questions (and questioners) so whatever the best way to do that is should be pursued.
    – user3169
    Jun 18, 2015 at 4:43
  • @user3169 that's not quite right. It was Musical Practice and Performance then it became Music: Practice & Theory and the issue was the name didn't reflect a large chunk of the community. Like it or not, fans accurately describes the types of users we want here which are fans of music and consume music. Not to say music fans is the best name, but there are more important things to focus on like creating content.
    – Dom Mod
    Jun 20, 2015 at 13:08
2

The suggested title would make me less inclined to participate, as it sounds quite boring. For the scholarly inclined, there's Music: Practice and Theory. Music history is on topic there.

I think we are slowly moving towards something useful, and different from Music: P&T here, and I don't think this name change would be beneficial at this point (or any other).

1
  • 1
    My suggestion is just my suggestion as an example. What I am trying to say is that a more descriptive name might be helpful to attract users. If you review the Area 51 and beta questions, some more descriptive categories of information should be evident. My issue is really with the word Fan; it does not add any relevant understanding as to the communities purpose. FWIW, fan does not appear in any other community name.
    – user3169
    Jun 20, 2015 at 0:04

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .