-3

It appears to be quite common to link both home & garden topics together. For example, one find HGTV (Home & Garden TV), Better Homes and Gardens magazine, House & Garden Magazine. The New York Times has a Home & Garden section, and many, many more examples. It just seems natural to link the two directly.

Proposal: Gardening and Farming Organically

Proposal: Home Care & Maintenance

Proposal: Gardening and Landscaping

Proposal: Home Improvement

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
6

Well we already have "Home Improvement" which has had a ton of "Home Care & Maintenance" type questions on topics like cleaning vinyl siding, pavers, etc. There's a ton of overlap between "improvement" and "maintenance" experts. For that reason, if it was up to me, I'd close home care & maintenance as a dup of our already existing site.

There's also the question of viability. I'm hopeful Home Improvement can make it out of beta, but its struggled in the 4-5 questions/day range for a while with the maintenance kind of questions. Creating a second site would I fear have the effect of taking users away from a struggling beta site.

I'd stick with creating a "Gardening" site which will have some overlap with home improvement, but will have a whole world of questions onto itself. It would cover the 1st and 3rd proposal you list above and attract true gardening experts -- landscape designers, serious home gardeners, plant experts, etc.

7
  • Well, Home Improvement is for contractors and serious DIY'ers. Doesn't quite describe the average home owner.
    – ericg
    Mar 1, 2011 at 15:59
  • @ericgorr well those experts are going to give you the best info on how to care for something. If there's any "paver stone cleaner expert" its probably the guy who installed your pavers.
    – Doug T.
    Mar 1, 2011 at 16:03
  • True, but it still remains for contractors and serious DIY'ers...not average home owners.
    – ericg
    Mar 1, 2011 at 16:13
  • 1
    @ericgorr as an average home owner I ask questions there to the serious DIY'ers and contractors about cleaning siding and random maintenance tasks. I feel I get good answers as they seem to be the best experts for these kinds of questions. They're certainly not the best experts for gardening and taking care of plants, for that we need another site.
    – Doug T.
    Mar 1, 2011 at 16:17
  • @doug Why do we need another site? Many very successful magazines, newspapers, and TV exec's have found a need and desire to link the two.
    – ericg
    Mar 1, 2011 at 16:36
  • @doug Furthermore, since (as you say) Home Improvement is struggling with an insufficient number of questions (and I think a Gardening site will as well), I think makes sense to learn from the expertise of so many others (NYT, etc.) over the course of many decades and link all of these together. The subtopic areas can be handled with tags and anyone not interested in a subtopic can simply choose to ignore tags.
    – ericg
    Mar 1, 2011 at 17:03
  • @ericgorr: As an active participant in Home Improvement, I can tell you that all sorts of homeowner questions are welcome. This meta question helps define the scope of the site. While general lawn care and outdoor construction projects are part of the site's scope, questions such as "When's the best time of year to plant squash?" would be considered off topic. Such questions would be better off in a gardening site.
    – Doresoom
    Apr 15, 2011 at 20:09

You must log in to answer this question.

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