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This is an issue that touches every single thing the site does, and will do, from the time it was launched until the heat death of the universe. How we vote, how we post, what we close, what we keep, whether poetry or music or the structure of music and games or polycultural questions or oral tradition are on topic - all these things are determined by the sort of site we want to be. Want, examples? Here, have, a, few, examples, of, scope, questions. Each decidable based almost solely on this philosophical question. (There's a deeper issue here, where many people don't seem to clearly grasp what it is literary analysts actually do and study, but that's a problem for another time.)

This is an issue that touches every single thing the site does, and will do, from the time it was launched until the heat death of the universe. How we vote, how we post, what we close, what we keep, whether poetry or music or the structure of music and games or polycultural questions or oral tradition are on topic - all these things are determined by the sort of site we want to be. Want, examples? Here, have, a, few, examples, of, scope, questions. Each decidable based almost solely on this philosophical question. (There's a deeper issue here, where many people don't seem to clearly grasp what it is literary analysts actually do and study, but that's a problem for another time.)

Here's the problem: Stack Exchange isn't made for enthusiasts. All across Stack Exchange, sites are discussing what makes a question an "expert" question. Blender, Economics, English, Pets, Christianity, Islam... (ex-Programmers even removed "expert" from their site description.) And hey, guess what Stack Exchange used to say about new sites?

Here's the problem: Stack Exchange isn't made for enthusiasts. All across Stack Exchange, sites are discussing what makes a question an "expert" question. Blender, Economics, English, Pets, Christianity, Islam... (ex-Programmers even removed "expert" from their site description.) And hey, guess what Stack Exchange used to say about new sites?

We're not the only site with this problem, either. I'm only going to touch on it briefly, because that's its own thorny issue, but Worldbuilding has faced a similar problem. There's a common opinion that Worldbuilding became much more of a website for amateur ("armchair") speculation, rather than a site about professional consideration of the issues of worldbuilding. Somewhere down the line, Worldbuilding forgot about experts-first site building, and that's a very similar place to where we're potentially headed. The end result is that Worldbuilding does not seem to be performing its surface-level function: allowing real worldbuilding experts to help each other build worlds. (Be it known that I think this is a structural issue with the way Stack Exchange launches sites at all, more than it is reflective of our particular case.)

We're not the only site with this problem, either. I'm only going to touch on it briefly, because that's its own thorny issue, but Worldbuilding has faced a similar problem. There's a common opinion that Worldbuilding became much more of a website for amateur ("armchair") speculation, rather than a site about professional consideration of the issues of worldbuilding. Somewhere down the line, Worldbuilding forgot about experts-first site building, and that's a very similar place to where we're potentially headed. The end result is that Worldbuilding does not seem to be performing its surface-level function: allowing real worldbuilding experts to help each other build worlds. (Be it known that I think this is a structural issue with the way Stack Exchange launches sites at all, more than it is reflective of our particular case.)