I don't think this is a good question for an international home improvement site. It's too localized, and not universal enough. In addition, is it really about home improvement? Is it not about the English language? Maybe this question would be much better in a language community?

I am wondering, though... if I was to ask this question, I'd be asking for the Norwegian word. If this Q/A site is of use to people in English speaking countries, it certainly should be to me as well, right? I should be able to ask the same question but for my own language, right? But, how would I do that? How would that question be on-topic here?

The question is not about language, but about the actual state of the home improvement market. Particularly, I am trying to ask what to search for, if I want to pay someone to redo the floors in my house. I know that it's probably some type of "contractor" or "handyman" but they like to specialize, not every contractor does every type of job. So I am trying to figure out which specific professional I need to look for, so I don't waste my time calling unrelated people.

I assume you consider this localized, because I specified the US. I do not interpret "international site" as being a site where no location specific question is allowed. Virtually all home improvement questions are location specific, there are very few things that apply to every single country in the world when it comes to home building and maintenance.

I think the correct interpretation is that location specific questions are allowed for any locale but they must clearly state which locale (as I have done).

If you want to ask about how to find a specific type of contractor in Norway, I think you should be welcome to. Just include norway in the tags (you may need to create it) so answerers don't mistakenly assume it's another country. I wouldn't be surprised if the market is different in Norway, and contractors are called something else or their specialties are different from say, the US.

It would be very unnatural for me to ask in English, when I’m looking for the Norwegian word. I’d probably prefer asking on a Norwegian forum instead. But if it had been on a language site, it would feel much less awkward to be asking in English. In addition, the chance of somebody having an answer for my question, would surely be much higher on a language site, than here.

I don't think it would be unnatural. The question has to be in English, so that users can understand what's going on. But there's nothing stopping people from providing the local language term in the answer.

As an example, Stack sites like DIY, Money, Law, Travel often have people asking in English about a non-anglophone country. Sometimes the answer may include non-English excerpts but they still read fine. I don't see why you couldn't do the same here.

Regarding the odds of getting an answer, firstly the incubator makes it easy to retag questions with a different topic.

Second, I think asking about types of home renovation contractors would be out of scope for a language site.

Andreas from the dark caverns‭ I think the nature of the site means that we have to use tags for geographic regions. Most notably everything related to mains voltages is kind of different in North America compared to the rest of the world. But also how houses are built... if you look at a typical Norwegian house, it is warm in winter but too warm in the summer. But if you look at a Brazilian house, it is the other way around: cool in the summer but too cold in the winter. Because builders in different countries prioritize different things depending on the local climate.

If we were to enforce questions to be "global" then I think the site would become rather irrelevant and uninteresting. Some things are universal, some things are not.

(And regarding that, united-states might be too broad a tag too, because I suspect that houses in Alaska are built quite differently compared to houses on Hawaii.)

Maybe, yeah. I guess I just can't wrap my head around looking for this particular kind of question in a language secondary to me. And that made it feel rather off.

matthewsnyder‭

Second, I think asking about types of home renovation contractors would be out of scope for a language site.

Not if you're looking for a word or term for a concept, or the definition of a word or term.

Andreas from the dark caverns‭ I made a proposal in a comment here that we try to create some sort of translation/terminology posts, so that non-English speakers can check what a specific term is called in English. Because trying to find the correct English term for a very specific technical item like "earth-leakage breaker" is always tricky - dictionaries and Google translate are not helpful for such.