Music and Dance Fans?

Question

Inspired by this question, Can I ask this question in Music Fans SE?, and by the current chat discussion on improving the site and attracting more members. Please see also this Area51 question

Maybe we should rebrand ourselves as "Music and Dance Fans." Music and dance quite often go together, and fans of one are often fans of the other. Almost all dance is done to music, and much of the most popular music around the world is associated with dance. There is bound to be overlap in expertise and interest, and searching for Dance on Area 51 even leads to our site. Since we don't have either a robust user base or supply of questions, why not integrate dance into our charter, and potentially double both?

To make it clear, I'm primarily asking if we should reach out to dance "fans" not dance practitioners. Practitioners might well need a SE site, but that doesn't seem like as obvious a match with us.

Sample questions might be along the following lines:

Who is the dancer in [the Outkast Music Video]?
Are there set moves to the "Achy Breaky"?
What's the difference between the Detroit Hustle and the Chicago Hustle?
Was Martha Graham the first modern dancer?
Have any dance crazes been actually physically dangerous?
Is there a widely used method for notating dance moves for hip hop?
What is the first popular dance to be invented in America?
Is the Gavotte a partner dance?
What's the name of the dance done in the [video] (link provided)?
Where did all the dances in the "Watch Me" video come from?
Is the Stanky Leg a "real" dance?
Does the "limbo" dance traditionally have any religious significance? Is it related to metaphysical limbo?
Is there any traditional African dance style that matches the kind of dancing done by Storyboard P?
Who invented the Moonwalk?
Are the professional dancers on "Dancing With the Stars" really among the world's best?

These all seem to me to be good matches to the kinds of questions we already cover. Of course, we might field the odd dance practice song, given there's no Dance Practice SE, but we wouldn't expect that to be any major part of our traffic.

Answer 1

But it could a good idea. I don't have much knowledge about dancing so I don't think I would contribute a lot to that part.

We will need to know if there are demands and expectations for this. And find a way to make this known and attract Dancing would be experts.

May I suggest creating a dance tag and asking some example questions? Ask a bunch of different questions and try to answer them. See what kinds of answers they get.

That way, if you choose to change your name to "Music and Dance", you'll know if Dance questions will actually work for this community (i.e. they are well received, get good answers, and people enjoy them). You don't want to change your name only to find that dance questions don't have a place on this Stack (e.g. no one is interested in asking or answering the questions, or the questions get terrible answers, etc.).

If the dance tag turns out to be a bust, it's pretty simple to close dance questions. Changing names is a lot more difficult.

Scope is a tool to build a community. A scope is useful so long as it helps achieve that goal. If you think there's a chance that a scope is limiting the community, don't be afraid to try a new scope. Avoid clinging to a scope for the sole reason that the scope is your scope. Scope should serve at the pleasure of the community, not the other way around.

Answer 2

I would say Music and Dancing, to avoid ambiguation with Dance as a the music genre.

But it could a good idea. I don't have much knowledge about dancing so I don't think I would contribute a lot to that part.

We will need to know if there are demands and expectations for this. And find a way to make this known and attract Dancing would be experts.

Answer 3

What I am missing so far is some consideration of how this scope extension would look like. E.g. what kind of questions with regards to dancing would you be looking for? And based on that, how do you think the concerns and approach of people asking about "dancing" fits into the current site's community and its approach to questions and answers? (What even is "dancing"? When I first read this I thought of ballet persformances, but then in chat it sounded more like social dancing.)

To get a little more concrete, this site seems much more of a "consumer-/appreciation-oriented" site, as compared to a more "production-oriented" site like Musical Theory & Practice. So if you want to ask questions about the physical practice of dancing, that doesn't really seem to fit too much to this site's scope and approach and would seem more appropriate on sites like Physical Fitness or Musical Theory & Practice (disclaimer, I have no idea if it actually is appropriate there, but I hope the site philosophy difference is apparent).

But on the other hand, if we get into the more appreciation- and critique-oriented viewpoint, this might then also clash with the site's currently more strict approach to lyrics interpretation, since I could imagine "dance intepretation" to get even more fuzzy than that.

At the bottom line, I'm not saying dancing won't work here. What I'm saying is that before talking about any scope extensions, you should first and foremost discuss if and how these questions fit here, beyond just looking at the word "music" but at the community and the site's approach to its topic. Opening the site to more potential questions doesn't necessarily mean a more robust user base and site scope. And having genuine concerns about attracting more users and some users saying "I like dancing, too" doesn't seem enough for such a rather wide-reaching decision.