Proposal: Amateur Radio
Now that we're launching soon, I just wanted to make a simple request. The name that has been chosen for this site is
But I would also like to consider
Which would be better? Discuss.
Amateur Radio operators typically refer to themselves as Ham radio operators. There are a multitude of sites that reflect this, just to name a few:
Most search engines will translate ham/amateur radio. Better SEO should be found by calling the site ham than radio.
Of the options, Amateur Radio would be a bit of a mouthful for a URL, amateur certainly wouldn't work, radio is an okay choice, but would open the door far more to CB, FRS, and even commercial radio than most hams would really like. Overall, I think the best choice would be to use ham.stackexchange.com
Bottom line, here's pros/cons for each:
Radio
Pros- Has the word Radio in the site
Cons- Would invite more questions on CB, FRS, and other types of radio than most amateur radio operators would like. Also might draw people interested in commercial radio, which would not be on topic at all at a site for amateur radio.
Ham
Pros- Short, most amateur radio operators use the term ham interchangably, and commonly refer to themselves as hams. Ham also is somewhat used as an advanced amateur radio operator, not simply someone who has a license, but someone who knows something about the hobby beyond having a license.
Cons- Might be confusing to Search Engines. I doubt this, as a Google Search reveals.
Bottom line, I feel that ham would be a better choice than radio.
radio stackexchange and then google ham stackexchange. ham stackexchange already returns the most relevant content.
The radio.stackexchange.com site URL would be very generic. It refers to radio in general, and would very likely attract all sorts of non-amateur-radio questions, which would probably be interesting, but certainly not in the scope of the example questions targeted.
I would propose using hamradio.stackexchange.com – for preciseness and less confusion. It's a bit longer, but not to the extreme.
radio.stackexchange.com should be the URL, and not just because I have always found "ham" to be pejorative way of referring to amateur radio.
While radio.stackexchange.com is more generic and suggests a wider coverage than just amateur radio, I think it's appropriate as non-amateur radio interests which overlap into the radio hobby (such as R/C hobbyists, CBers, GMRS operators, atmospheric researchers needing answers to questions about the radio devices they want to put on a balloon they plan to launch to 150,000 feet, etc) should be able to find answers for their radio-specific questions on this vertical even if, strictly speaking, they aren't amateur operators. In the same sense that some questions of set-theory mathematics are perfectly on-topic for Stack Overflow (because it overlaps into the realm of computer programming), radio/propagation/antenna-specific questions from non-amateurs should be on-topic for this site IMO.
I think http://73.stackexchange.com would be a good choice.
Three suggestions (+:
