Refocusing from Health to Medical Sciences

Question

I've talked with the moderators (as foreshadowed), consulted the rest of the community team and listened to users on meta about the difficulties faced by a site called "Health". The general consensus is that we would be better off with a site like the proposed Medical Sciences site. Unfortunately, that proposal failed to get sufficient support. Fortunately, we can re-orient this site to be more like that ideal.

Let's follow the precedent set by Software Engineering. They were previously called Programmers, but found that name and implied scope too broad for the sorts of questions they hoped to field. We asked for two things from the community:

1. A description of the new scope.
2. A new name that more accurately reflected that scope.

I'd like to propose Medical Sciences as an answer to #2. The idea would be to make questions technical, academic and generalized. This isn't so different than what Robert suggested, but maybe a bit more formal.

For instance, I woke up this morning with a charley horse. In order to avoid that happening again, I'd like to ask on the site:

How do I prevent getting a charley horse in the morning?

Instead, the new scope would require me to ask:

Are there preventative measures for frequent leg muscle spams (i.e, charley horse)?

If I ask the first question, it could be edited into shape or closed. Either way, answers won't appear to be specific medical advice, but rather making existing medical knowledge more accessible.

How does this sound? How would you define a good scope for this site?

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EDIT

This discussion is back on the table. Let's continue to move forward with our ideas on how to improve this community!

Answer 1

For convenience, I'm quoting the Area 51 proposal as suggested by Narusan in comments.

https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/27306/definition-and-scope-of-medical-sciences

Definition

MedicalSciences is a site primarily directed at professionals in medical and allied health fields, students of those professions, related academics, and others with a sound understanding of medicine and healthcare-related sciences.

Scope

If your question is about...

• clinical guidelines
• disease prevention and management
• human physiology and pathophysiology
• pharmacology
• diagnostic and prognostic methods
• public health
• research

… then this is the right place to ask.

Often asked off-topic questions include

• medical advice for yourself or others
• any other personal advice
• diagnosis requests
• treatment recommendations
• second opinions

Questions which could be seen to be on-topic but is best suited elsewhere

• questions regarding psychology, psychiatry or neurology
  (see Psychology.SE for that)
• fundamentals of biology or chemistry
  (see Biology.SE and Chemistry.SE for that)
• questions about cooking, nutrition and diets that are not directly connected to medical treatments
  (see cooking.SE (Seasoned Advice) for that)

Please see a healthcare provider for any individual health advice; such questions will be closed here.

Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.

If your question is not specifically on-topic for MedicalSciences.SE, it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may commit to or propose a new site at Area 51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.

Answer 2

Stealing from the a different answer

MedicalSciences is a site directed at professionals in medical and allied health fields, students of those professions, related academics, and others with a sound understanding of healthcare-related sciences.

This sounds great in principle, but are there enough people to actually support such a site. How are we (and I only loosely include myself in this group) going to reach out and find new members. I think it is important for the scope to not only include what we want, but also to result in a viable, lively, fun, and informative community. The whole proposal seems very narrow.

As a member (and mod) of the academia.se community, I would think that expanding the community to include potential students (e.g., questions about med school prerequisites) might help expand the potential user base.

Similarly, there is nothing listed about medical devices and I am not sure pharmacology includes drug development.

None of these suggests might be the best way to expand the scope, but I think a much wider scope is helpful. A site with 10 active users is not really viable in my opinion and would not provide the critical mass that I would want to join.

Answer 3

Look at the existing content here. Would the idea of posting alongside it appeal to professionals? I don't see why.

Nuke the site from the orbit. If there is a large number of health professionals eager to participate on Stack Exchange, Area 51 will demonstrate that.