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Home Improvement versus a more general "home stuff" community?
Would the proposed Home Improvement community be open to questions about "house stuff" more broadly? I have in mind not just home improvement, but household operations more generally. I'd been considering proposing "Home and Garden" but was trying to come up with a better name.
I'd like to be able to ask questions about energy conservation, cleaning, accessibility (e.g. how do I make things better for my wheelchair-using guests without doing construction?), organization, growing food, general maintenance, and so on. Most of that isn't home improvement, but it's "home stuff".
Are we open to a broader proposal, or is Home Improvement focusing primarily on actual improvements and do-it-yourself projects?
3 answers
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"Home Improvement" isn't the most descriptive name, but it is something many people will be familiar with.
This site should be about the structure and systems of a residential building. That includes how these things work, details of repairing and maintaining them, and adding/removing/modifying them. Examples include plumbing, electrical wiring, heating, air conditioning, walls, finishing a basement, etc.
This is not meant to include things you generally do at home. This site isn't about cooking, for example, just because that's something you primarily do in the home. For the same reason, gardening shouldn't be part of this site. It's really got nothing to do with the design, operation, and maintenance of a home. A live roof might be an exception, but then it's not about the gardening aspect as much as keeping the "garden" functional as a roof.
Gardening, like cooking, would make a good topic for a separate site.
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Regarding scope overlaps:
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Outdoors currently accepts some of the topics proposed here, including questions about various outdoors equipment, gardening, accessibility (how do I visit place x given y).
I would propose to either keep questions about gardening and misc outdoors equipment on Outdoors, or to allow an overlap. One sensible distinction might be that questions regarding repairs of various equipment does not belong on Outdoors but on Home Improvement.
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Domesticated animals is a tricky topic: questions about horse riding, dog agility etc sounds like they belong on Outdoors, whereas questions regarding how to adapt your home for a pet sounds like they belong on Home Improvement.
Whereas questions like "my cat is ill, what to do" do not belong on either site but somewhere else. Ideally at a site moderated by at least some professional veterinarians, or it would be ethically questionable to even consider hosting it.
So I don't think "Homesteading and livestock kept for personal use" belongs on this site, it's a big topic without much in common with DIY/Home Improvement.
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"Life hacks" and organization stuff has been proposed as a separate community before iirc(?). It does not sound too far-fetched to include such on a Home Improvement/DIY site, especially since a lot of amateur DIY stuff tends to just be a "hack" compared to hiring a professional to do the job. Maybe suitable for a category of its own?
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Electrical Engineering does not really overlap since electrical work isn't really on-topic there and I think the community there would generally just be grateful to have somewhere to refer such questions.
Simplified: questions you would ask an electrical engineer/developer belong on Electrical Engineering, whereas questions you would ask an electrician belong on Home Improvement.
To make a distinction:
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Any theoretical question regarding the underlying physics, formulas, behavior of components etc belongs at Electrical Engineering. It also accepts questions about electronics assembly on circuit boards and soldering. (As well as questions about proper English names/terms for electrical components.)
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Any question about applied electronics in a home environment belongs at Home Improvement. This includes questions about wiring 120/220/230VAC, suitable connectors, fuses, cables etc and also the repair of consumer electronics or home appliances.
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Power Users accept questions about computer repair/building/modification. "Life hacks" related to software also belong on Power Users.
Apart from that, questions about the use and repair of electrical products belong on Home Improvement.
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I created https://proposals.codidact.com/posts/288863 but I was not trying to set the agenda - I was merely trying to reproduce what the author of https://meta.codidact.com/posts/288095 intended (as far as I could tell) but following the new format more closely.
My 2 cents is:
- Generally speaking, "home stuff" should be included, even if it's not technically about maintenance. To me, the most succinct statement of the site's purpose is "improving your enjoyment of your dwelling", which covers a lot of such things (and nothing else does).
- Gardening should be on topic. For homes with a yard, taking care of that yard has a big impact on the overall quality of the home. Even matters pertaining to homesteading (growing food for personal use) and personal livestock should be allowed, both because it's hard to justify drawing the line there, and because such questions would attract knowledgeable experts. On the other hand, we want to exclude commercial farming, because the parameters are quite different there from the average person growing tomatoes in their backyard or keeping a few chickens to eat the eggs.
- Energy conservation is definitely on topic. I can see how even questions like "what architectural style of home has lowest heating bills in this type of climate?" would be a great fit. Also code often prescribes certain energy efficiency standards.
- Cleaning should be on topic, so long as it's relevant to personal homes (so no asking about cleaning out your vacation rental between guests or cleaning out public restrooms in a hostel). Stack sites have a "lifehacks" section which potentially overlaps with this, but it's not a given that we will have such a section, and IMO "lifehacks" is too vague a topic anyway.
- Accessibility should be on topic. I think this is a very pertinent consideration in the construction or modification of many homes. For example: Wheelchair ramps, staircase design, accessible features in bathrooms, installing wheelchair lifts, and many more.
- Organization: Not too sure here. Certainly things like closets should be relevant. But asking how to organize the drawers in your desk does not seem like it should be on the home improvement site, rather it should be in some personal organization section since it's not specific to a home (the advice would be largely the same for eg. an office).
- General maintenance (like keeping doors lubricated, patching up old walls and cabinets, many other things) should definitely be on topic.
While the proposal is titled "home improvement", there is no reason to restrict it to new alterations only. Homes are owned for many years and accumulate wear and tear, therefore they doing upkeep and maintenance is essential to "improving" both the resident's personal enjoyment and the market value of the home. Similarly, making better use of what's there is a legitimate (and IMO desirable) alternative to adding new features to a home. So it makes sense to unify these topics under one site.
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