-8

I'm possibly being pedantic here, but it looks like the likelihood that this proposal will become a beta site is high, so I've been thinking about how the title is going to look as a subdomain:

interpersonalskills.stackexchange.com

Seems a little lengthy to me. Maybe "Social Skills" is a better name?

socialskills.stackexchange.com

I have some other arguments to be made for why "Social Skills" would be a better name, but I'd like to give someone else an opportunity to provide a good argument for or against as an answer. If that doesn't happen, I'll eventually do so myself.

Proposal: Interpersonal Skills

2 Answers 2

13

I can only speak for myself, but I think "social skills" misses the mark.

To me, "social skills" sounds like it's all about how people interact publicly in a social setting. But using the word "social" in this context leaves out a lot of the interpersonal relationship stuff… which was the essence of what lead to this expanded proposal in the first place.

The perception of the word "social" would seem to leave out a lot of those one-on-one interpersonal skills in areas like romantic affiliations, work-life balance, job search and negotiation, conflict resolution, empathy, communications — if I was seeking help about how to navigate a personal situation with a loved one, I'm not sure I would even consider looking to a site called "Social Skills". It doesn't sounds like the right site to me.

"Social Skills" just doesn't capture a large part of what got us to this point in the process, in my opinion.

Incidentally, the URL slated for this site is

interpersonal.stackexchange.com

1
  • 1
    Nicely put! I didn't realize a URL was slated, either. May 5, 2017 at 4:54
4

I vote for Interpersonal Skills.

In my opinion (and agreeing with Robert), social skills connotes "social communication and interaction", and this includes interacting with groups of people as a whole -- as well as individuals. On the other hand interpersonal skills connotes (to me) interacting with another person's feelings, ideas, persona, etc -- as well as how this ultimately would work if you had to interact with people simultaneously. Please note the order in which I structured these two sentences.

So the name preference would depend on your outlook of how you intend to pursue this subject. For what it's worth, my preference is to start with the individual, and work up from there.

You must log in to answer this question.

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