Expand scope to welcome The Armory?

Question

There's a perennial proposal in Area 51 (current incarnation is called The Armory) that's essentially half on-topic here, and half off-topic. A firearms SE actually made it to beta some years ago before being closed due to some sort of neglect that I haven't fully divined.

Since TGO isn't exactly setting the world on fire with activity, why not expand its scope to fully and explicitly encompass the latest Armory proposal? Namely:

Q&A site for shooting sports and weapons, including but not limited to guns, knives, and other arms; and ranging from theory and design to practical tactics, legal questions, and consumer considerations

It's sort of awkward right now that, for example, questions about weapons for hunting or sport shooting are (I assume) on-topic but questions relating to weapons for tactical or defensive purposes are not ... unless the defense is explicitly against an outdoor non-human predator? I can't even tell how abstract and technical questions regarding weapons should be received at present.

Answer 1

Update March 2018

The Armory Proposal failed to launch, but there is a new proposal Weapons which currently has 73% of the required support for commitment phase. Currently it looks likely to full fill commitment requirements.

Many of the top voted example questions are clearly out of scope for TGO (i.e. atomic bombs). Should it reach beta launch, it will not be a duplicate of TGO. Much like Bicycles we can expect there will be questions that can work on either site.

Update April 2018 With the weapons proposal well on it's way to launch within the prescribed parameters, the parameters where changed and the proposal was closed.

• Closed weapons proposal
• Discussion about the closure
• Were the changes to the time limits supposed to occur retroactively?

Answer 2

I think firearms per se should have their own place on SE, separate from TGO.

This seems like an effort to boost the firearms SE and finally give it its own proper place. While I think this is a good thing, I don't think TGO should be that place.

To quote from this answer:

Overlap has never been considered a problem for SE sites, it's the target audience that's the most important factor as far as I know.

In my opinion the outdoors and firearms community really don't have very much to offer each other. Yes, there is some small overlap in hunting and archery. But there are also huge areas (respectively) which have absolutely nothing in common.

I think merging the two communities could result in a lot of frustration because users would essentially have to filter through a lot more unrelated content to get to the things they want.

To end with a personal note: In my very anecdotal experience the overlap between outdoors and firearms communities can be really small, at least where I'm from (Switzerland). I know tons of hikers, trekkers, climbers, bikers, kayakers, campers, ... - almost none of them have any interest in firearms or ever held one in their life, nor do they ever want to.

Answer 3

I think firearms and similar weapons as such should remain off-topic on The Great Outdoors.

Firearms are a politicised, contentious, controversial issue and it may be better for both communities if firearm enthusiasts are cordoned off on their own site. We don't want to alienate people.

A lot of firearm enthusiasm has little to do with The Great Outdoors. Out of the top-10 questions, only one is outdoor-related, and indeed has been asked, and is not even about a firearm.

Answer 4

I think this should broadly be on topic already, but as gerrit says, we would exclude the politics of weapon ownership to focus on the use and practice, similar to the ones we have now, and the bow, crossbow and archery questions.

So yes, this has my support, especially as that proposal on A51 is the fourth attempt to raise a separate community on this topic.

Answer 5

Many outdoor type pursuits and professions have a strong association with guns and shooting. For example hunting is on topic. It's hard to talk about hunting (in certain countries and of certain animals at least) without talking about guns. So excluding it seems silly.

Also, shooting as a sport is ingrained into many outdoor professions (i.e. game keepers, etc).

It's also something that happens outdoors (little o). Though not all outdoor pursuits are Outdoor (upper case O) pursuits this one seems to fit to me.

So (as Rory says) I think shooting is already implicitly in scope of TGO.

Answer 6

I want to get a first draft of an answer on the board. It is a complex question, and I will probably want to edit the answer after more thought.

First, my mind is not closed on the question of the Armory migrating to TGO. Hunting and archery are on-topic in TGO. I just checked the Armory site (05/20/16 at 13:45 EDT); it had 84 question, of which 11 were archery and 2 explicitly hunting. Others were technical questions that could have been motivated by hunting. I'll do a more careful count later.

I'm not happy about self-defense gun questions on TGO -- that is, self defense against humans. We've already had a few questions along the lines of "my friend's mother wants him to take a gun on the Appalachian trail; it this a good idea?" That question -- or rather, the mother -- was silly (the gun in question was a 25 caliber), but on topic. But questions about self defense in the home, at the shopping mall and at restaurants? (1) How is this Outdoors? and (2) how can this not quickly become political?

Thus my recommendation is: What's on-topic and what's off topic need to be better defined. I don't think it is enough to say just "not political".

As for the comment that we not avoid "contentious, controversial issues", we are not going to go far in introducing sanity into the 2nd Amendment debate. I urge that if we want to embrace controversial issues, we expand our environmental scope beyond Leave No Trace. As for the comment that "crossbow strength / pull .... is equivalent to the "too weak to rack the slide" question, I respect the person who made the comment, but c'mon!.