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The Fitness & Nutrition Stack Exchange and Sports Stack Exchange are two separate child sites that both exist on the Stack Exchange network. Each site’s purpose is to provide high-quality information to audiences in the form of a question-and-answer to attract members and create a community where people can further their expertise.

The Fitness & Nutrition Stack Exchange went into beta on March 1, 2011 indicating that the proposal had reached a critical mass of experts ready and willing to participate in the growth of the site. Throughout the year, members of the Stack Exchange community has raised issues of Fitness & Nutrition’s image and perception, namely regarding what “fitness” itself entails as a term.

Nearly a year later, the Sports Stack Exchange was launched into beta status, after a number of smaller sports-related proposal were merged with it. The broad scope of Sports encompasses rules, trivia, statistics, and performance, the last of which is also considered to be on-topic for Fitness & Nutrition.

What do we propose?

Merging the Sports and Fitness & Nutrition Stack Exchange sites would facilitate the growth of both sites. While the scope of both subjects would be greatly expanded, a reduction in the overlap of subjects on either individual site would also be minimized. By providing one central repository for all performance, training, exercise, and athletics questions, in addition to rules, strategies, and tactics of sports, will benefit the greater community that seeks to enhance their knowledge and practicality of their interests.

Proposed new FAQ

If you have a question about …

  • improving your exercise or sports performance or technique
  • measuring performance
  • choosing a training program
  • the strategies or rules of a sport
  • nutrition as it relates to exercise
  • statistics and trivia related to sports
  • gear and gadgets used during exercise or sports
  • achieving physique milestones
  • injury prevention

and it is not about …

  • the rules of a sport
  • a purchase recommendation
  • nutrition unrelated to exercise, such as food safety, nutritional needs for children, etc.
  • trainer certification -- it’s for professionals, but not about the profession
  • wellness, general health, medical advice and injuries unrelated to exercise
  • trivia or fanhood
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  • 2
    Note that this mirrors the same proposal on Meta.Sports.SE
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Mar 5, 2012 at 22:49
  • 7
    My 2 cents: I would rather see exercise AND sports performance/technique included and would NOT want to see statistics and trivia in scope (IMO that will lead straight to spectator & fan questions instead of actually DOING the sport).
    – G__ Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 0:34
  • 1
    @Greg Personally I believe any form of exercise, other than taking the stairs, is also a sports, like running or weight lifting. I'm fine with having both, but it felt superfluous. As for the statistics, perhaps we should view it as "measuring performance" which in team-based sports doesn't necessarily mean you only measure your own actions. That does make a clear divide that we're not here to talk about the batting averages of Babe Ruth.
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 7:49
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    As for trivia, we're not here to duplicate Wikipedia, so questions like who has scored the most points in the NBA would be closed as general reference. Hopefully we can persuade the users (or fans) of Sports that its better to ask a real question than a Trivial Pursuit one. Case in point: What's the history behind the 15-30-40 counting in tennis? This question could have simply focused on why they count like that and the history will naturally follow. But explicitly mentioning the history would probably cause the same drama as Nutrition in the title
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 7:54
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    I like your definition of sports & statistics, but we just need to work on the wording (since I, for one, read it differently). I might include weight lifting as sports, but I wouldn't think of e.g. pushups as "sport". "Measuring performance" is a good way to put the statistics.
    – G__ Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 13:42
  • Feel free to edit it into something you think would be more fitting/inviting @Greg
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 15:20
  • I've taken a pass at it... now let's slice & dice again. :-)
    – G__ Mod
    Commented Mar 7, 2012 at 5:12
  • Why no physique stuff?
    – Dave Liepmann
    Commented Mar 8, 2012 at 2:54
  • @DaveLiepmann I'd hope that falls in the category of exercise? I only removed that point because the list was getting too long and technically reach a milestone is something you measured and probably requires a training program. So its not off-topic, just not on the list
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Mar 8, 2012 at 7:48

3 Answers 3

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As I already discussed on meta.sports.se, I believe a merger is a good idea.

The rules, strategies and physical requirements of sports are often closely involved with each other. The techniques for improving your physical fitness are often identical for improving your performance in some sport or another.

Basically, there's a huge overlap with a lot of material from one site already being on-topic on the other site.

A new merged site with pretty much the same scope as fitness.se has now, but with "the rules of a sport" moved from the "bad question" area to the "good question" area of the FAQ and maybe changed to "the techniques, strategies, rules, or history of a sport". (the actual faq/scope merger needs more tweaking than that, but this change is about 90% of the change right there).

Questions about the equipment should be allowed, too.

If a particular sub-category/sport/activity/whatever (such as "Running") gets enough momentum of its own it may make sense to spin it off into a separate SE site, but I think starting off with all of them on one site is a good idea.

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  • I've added a proposal for the new FAQ as well
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Mar 5, 2012 at 23:22
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I'm a little concerned about the questions I see in sports. What do I care about ice hockey skates, or rules about picks in basketball?

However, these concerns matter little. There is considerable overlap, and bringing the two together will form traffic metrics like Voltron. I can and should ignore the questions that I don't care about.

The end goal, in my opinion, is more fitness-oriented sports questions, more sports-oriented nutrition questions, and more specific (e.g. sports-related) fitness questions. Combining sites will achieve this goal most readily.

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  • I'd also be in favor of this, was this ever considered?
    – JohnP Mod
    Commented Apr 24, 2015 at 20:55
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As the author of the Sports.SE merge proposal I support this effort, with one exception.

I'd like to see high level sports analytics on topic. I'm not talking about historical stats questions, or even basic stats questions (things like who scored the most goals in x year in y league or how do I calculate batting average are trivial). I'm talking about things like WAR, VORP, Pythagorean expectations and other advanced metrics. If they need to be couched in terms of performance that's ok, but I think they can be asked from a sports management perspective that would add value rather than introduce trivialities.

Management, player selection, and how player evaluations work are an essential parts of professional sport and if this proposal takes seriously the idea of expert Q&A those things will need to be on topic at some level.

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  • Seems like level of sports management is a natural extension of "the strategies of a sport".
    – freiheit
    Commented Mar 6, 2012 at 23:44
  • See my comment to Dave.
    – JohnP Mod
    Commented Apr 24, 2015 at 20:55

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